As one of the largest UK employers, with a 100,000-strong workforce, BT has recently claimed that it has managed to improve the cost and delivery of its training using e-learning.

BT has followed other large employers to exploit the economies of scale that e-learning offers.  BT has increased its offering of e-learning courses and blended learning to a point where it now cliams 70 per cent of all training is now delivered electronically.

By removing the cost of equivalent instructor- and classroom-based courses, BT has saved in the region of £12m on its annual training budget.

The company now offers over 1,700 e-learning programmes to its 100,000 staff.

Christina Humphrey-Evans, BT Retail e-learning consultant, explains in detail below how BT spends £50m every year on training its staff in corporate procedures, and ensuring compliance with changing government regulations or building individual employee skills.

‘We spend a large proportion of that online with e-learning-based training because of its speed of delivery, effectiveness, accessibility, trackability and ability to manage centrally, as well as its flexibility and the consistency of messaging it can deliver,’ she said.

The bulk of BT’s electronically delivered training consists of compliance courses – generic IT and networking skills for desktop PC proficiency, for example – and bespoke programmes, such as those it develops to be able to launch new marketing programmes quickly.

Humphrey-Evans says accessibility, via the company’s web-based intranet, is very important. ‘Our staff are widely distributed across the country and abroad, including our contractor workforce,’ she says.

But Humphrey-Evans also says that accessibility is not enough to guarantee the success of any e-learning strategy. ‘Identifying and responding to different needs throughout BT, and having a decent support and communications structure, are essential,’ she says.

‘For example, we have also been running Freedom to Learn roadshows for three years now. It is a matter of being there to answer any questions and maintain a human face to the training opportunities.’

The strategy has certainly paid dividends over the past three years, because the amount of training that BT delivers through its e-learning resources has risen by 40 per cent, and now stands at 70 per cent of the company’s total training provision.

The eXperience training programme, for example, shows how the company’s use of e-learning has developed.

It was first launched in 2001 to a BT business unit of 35,000 employees, with the aim of building general awareness of emerging technologies.

Humphrey-Evans says eXperience set out to tackle concerns about the level of employee awareness of internet protocol technology (IP) – and to link back into BT’s global business strategy.

‘But we ended up customising it for different areas of the business because it was so popular, which also meant it was very quickly followed by a number of other courses, such as Understanding the eCustomer or BT Business Sales eXperience,’ she says.

‘And what would have taken at least 18 months to deliver using traditional methods saw 20,000 staff trained in just 12 weeks.’

Humphrey-Evans also says the foray into electronically delivered training courses taught the company a good deal about the minimum technology infrastructure needed to ensure that all staff could access the training.

‘We had to make sure everyone had the right kit, in terms of compatible PCs, with enough memory and the right soundcards for downloads,’ she says.

BT has continued to expand its e-learning programme, making 1,700 courses available to all staff.