Me Learning Improves Staff Retention Rates in the UK’s Social Care Sector with NetDimensions Learning
Me Learning is now taking advantage of the latest features of NetDimensions Learning to streamline the onboarding and training process for several of the UK’s social care councils to help address high staff turnover rate.
NetDimensions (London Stock Exchange AIM: NETD), a global provider of performance, knowledge, and learning management systems, announced today that Me Learning is now taking advantage of the latest features of NetDimensions Learning to streamline the onboarding and training process for several of the UK’s social care councils to help address high staff turnover rate.
According to the National Care Forum, the average vacancy rate among social care staff was 5% and turnover rates were as high as 24% in 2011. The UK’s Department for Education and Skills for Care co-published a report last month indicating that the turnover rate for social workers in children's services alone was 9.1% (1 in 11 workers leaving per year).
“NetDimensions is proud to support Me Learning’s goal to improve employee engagement and retention in the social care sector and enable social care councils to focus on delivering their services to the public without interruption,” said Alex Poulos, Chief Marketing Officer at NetDimensions.
For the last 6 years, Me Learning has been providing systems training solutions to at least 3,000 practitioners and social workers from more than 30 social care councils in England, Wales, and Scotland.
“As a specialist provider of online training for organizations and individuals that work with children, young people and their families, Me Learning exclusively provides systems training for the three leading suppliers of case management systems for the social care sector,” explained Nick Richards, Director at Me Learning.
Personalizing learning with a flexible and open system
“We take advantage of the NetDimensions SDK to create tailor-made portals for each council to access their respective learning programs,” noted Richards. “All these portals are supported by a single instance of NetDimensions Learning.”
NetDimensions SDK (Software Development Kit) enables organizations to integrate NetDimensions Learning’s functionality into existing websites or portal sites.
Depending on their needs, councils may have between one to 40 learning programs in their portal. These include courses, tutorials, and demos that train social workers how to use case management systems from OLM, Liquidlogic, or Corelogic.
“We host about 1,000 tutorials in NetDimensions Learning. We use the Learning Program feature of the system to group tutorials together into what we call ‘Learning Pathways’ to guide council staff through their learning program based on their department and job role,” explained Richards.
“We created workflow process maps using flash, which enable social workers to better understand a complex process and it enables them to launch a tutorial to help them understand a specific element of the process.
“We have also taken advantage of the new Programs-in-Programs feature of NetDimensions Learning to set up dependencies within a learning program. This ensures that social workers take the relevant courses in the proper sequence in order to meet certification requirements.”
Making innovation possible with mEKP, the portable LMS
Karen Steggles, Account Manager at NetDimensions noted: “Me Learning has done really clever things with the NetDimensions SDK to enable them to serve multiple organizations across the UK.
“They have also taken the concept behind NetDimensions mEKP, our portable LMS (Learning Management System), to develop a solution for a council that needs to deliver a total of four terabytes of video courses to its employees, but has a very limited number of training classroom resources and server bandwidth issues. They have successfully rolled out the solution to 500 users so far, and we are currently working very closely with Me Learning help to deploy this solution to the rest of council’s 3,000 staff in the coming months.”
About Me Learning
Me Learning was established in 2006 with the aim of providing local authorities in the UK with engaging and interactive online training tools to ensure all professionals involved in social care are fully informed, working together, and following the latest national guidelines, protocols, and legislation. Me Learning's computer-based courses to cut through the ever-changing red tape and help social care professionals carry out their roles effectively and co-operatively. For more information, visit www.melearning.co.uk.