Mastering Your Foundation Skills Training With Learning Pool’s eLearning Modules

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Rachel Sweeney, Marketing Executive

Foundation skills are the basic elements of business literacy. They are the essential skill sets a modern employee needs to progress. Without them, people will struggle in their jobs and development may pass them by. For the organisation this translates into a loss of effectiveness and sub-optimal performance.

Learning Pool has a tested solution to meet your foundation skills needs. We provide extensive, up-to-date Foundation Skills Training Programmes delivered through engaging elearning modules that plug into your training systems and ready for immediate use. So, how do you employ those modules to make sure that you not only get the best training, but that you also use it to maximum effect?

Why choose Learning Pool for foundation skills?

Let’s look more closely at what Learning Pool’s Foundation Skills elearning modules have to offer and understand why they’re the right fit for organisation’s across the board.

Firstly, the sheer range of skills provided by Learning Pool’s modules means you have your bases covered. Modules offer essential skills applicable for all organisations. Areas include Communications, Team working, Change Management, Managing Others and Personal Development. Health and Safety and Social Policy initiatives are also addressed with modules on Diversity and Equality and Mental Health, as well as Legislative change in areas like combating bribery and money laundering and ensuring data protection. The suite of modules is being constantly updated with new titles being added all the time, which can be accessed as soon as they’re available.

The modules are created according to industry-best practice and standards. The high-quality content is approved by experts and designed to fast-track employees to competence by placing an emphasis on practical application and relevance, rather than just theory. The elearning modules are structured in a way to engage modern learners with a scenario-driven, game-based approach that puts what’s been learned in a context relevant to the job roles and tasks your people need to perform.

The ease of learning is matched by the ease of implementation. Learning Pool’s elearning modules come ready-made and ready-to-go. They plug into existing LMS’s. Or, if you don’t have one, Learning Pool will provide its own LMS.

Modules are created in Learning Pool’s Adapt authoring system. This means the content is fully editable. You can change anything from the font colour to the material content itself, bringing in your own messages and internal policies and making it fit your organisation’s ethos and culture.

The elearning is fully responsive. It’s accessible across devices, platforms and sites. So, your people are always able to access the training they need when and where they need it: in the office, off-site and on the go.

And, one other thing: Foundation Skills Training Modules are linked to CPD. So, learners get the benefit and reward of formal recognition and accreditation from their Learning Pool training.

Good to go?

Learning Pool’s elearning modules are ready to go, but to get the maximum benefit from them you need to think beyond the technical implementation. At Learning Pool, we know that it’s not enough just to plug in our modules to your LMS and start training (however seamless that is), but that you also need to integrate the modules with your existing systems and processes and align them with your business goals.  

Here are some tips on how to use Learning Pool’s elearning to master your foundation skills training programme.

Roll out

Foundation skills are business essentials and they apply as much to long-serving employees as to those just in the door. So, while it makes sense to introduce all new hires to the foundation skills elearning modules at the on-boarding stage, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t require your existing employees to take the training.  You’ll also need buy-in from key stakeholders and use training drives and sponsors to promote the new modules.

Look too to your existing processes and see if they need to be incorporated into the modules. Remember elearning makes editing and updating content easy. Analyse the data from your KPIs to see where improvements are needed.  A key function of foundation skills training is to help you bridge performance gaps.  

It also makes sense to align the new training with your business goals so that it’s seen to support the organisation’s direction of travel.

Make the most of the technology

The Foundation Skills elearning modules are designed to be adaptable and adaptive. You need to make the most of this adaptability. With people so used to getting their information and data wherever they are, no matter what the time, it makes sense to make training equally accessible. Use elearning’s responsive design to make it available across platforms and devices. If you can make the devices that people carry with them all the time a gateway to instantly-available training, you’ll come close to the Holy Grail of just-in-time learning.

Connectivity and mobile access also require intelligent use of the training content. Digital material can be readily re-used and reconfigured. Re-purposing content for different uses and scenarios allows people to have the information they want when they need it.

You can re-purpose a training module into a set of searchable resources or support performance through FAQs or Quick Reference guides. If you use a microlearning approach, you can transform a training module into series of easily-digestible chunks of learning that can act as a quick ‘how to’, wiki-style lesson or a useful on-the-spot refresher.

Intelligent re-use of elearning content improves access and allows people to pull the information they need and take control of their own training. It’s what they’re used to doing when they access the internet in their daily lives and so encourages them to treat training with the same level of engagement.

Target learning

That’s not to say there doesn’t need to be some push. Making training more accessible and available through elearning won’t ensure that people will use it. You need to explain why it’s being introduced, stressing its relevance to the organisation and making it a requirement for those in need of training.

A more sustainable way to ensure uptake and application of training is to use strategies that allow people to motivate themselves. Remember that Learning Pool’s elearning training is tied to CPD. This is a system of formal recognition of the benefits of training that can be cashed in with career progression and personal development.

Recognise too that elearning modules are designed to be self-paced and learner-centric. With features included, giving people a sense of being involved in what they’re learning and recognising the practical benefits of training. They offer far greater involvement and control than traditional instructor-led training. Elearning modules give people the opportunity to be more responsible for their own training and the option of taking it when and where it suits them.

Remove barriers between training and work

Traditionally you do the training first and then you do the job. The pace and constant change of modern working doesn’t afford us that luxury anymore. If we’re to up- or re-skill our people in times of change, we need to re-imagine training as a part of work.

Training is too often seen as removed from the workspace, in terms both of relevance and where it takes place. But, elearning modules make it easier to have training and learning sit inside the workflow, rather than locked away in the classroom.

With elearning modules it’s easier to move training closer to work, by using its in-built adaptability and responsiveness to enable learning on the go. You can have your Learning Pool Foundation Skills modules fully available and accessible on the job, just in time and at the point of need. And that’s a great way of demonstrating the relevance of training to an organisation and its people – supporting performance directly in the arena of work, fully integrated into the workflow.

Delivering results

Learning Pool’s eLearning modules give you the edge in mastering your Foundation Skills programme. It’s not simply the quality or the content or the engaging presentation. It’s also their adaptability and flexibility which allow you to integrate them into your organisation’s structure and culture. They provide a way of delivering a process of continuous learning that can drive efficiency and performance and develop potential across the board.

Find out more

Our catalogues are all CPD accredited and available immediately, so why not try a free demo now and see how our Foundation Skills Catalogue can help you and your organisation get clear and measurable ROI.