Nagware is one of our most popular and powerful features. It automates the tedious task of tracking down people who neglect to complete their training. Our analysis shows that proper implementation of Nagware can increase the completion rate by 300%.

With Nagware’s power comes great responsibility. Nags can be sent to any person at the firm, from any person, at any interval. This can, at times, be intimidating.

With the new ‘Nags Sending Tomorrow’, you have full visibility into who will receive a nag the next day (Nagware sends all emails in one batch at around 7:00 am GMT). This gives you the control you need to postpone or modify a nag before the wrong person receives an automated email.

You can view this information on the ‘List All Nags’ screen:

The audit trail keeps track of every email and Nag sent by the LMS. It is enables administrators to keep track of actions by other administrators; evidence course completions to regulators; and access an historical record when needed.

Previously the audit trail for the entire firm was stored in one long list. However, many times this record needs to be accessed in the context of a particular user. We have now redesigned the audit trail so it appears as a tab on each user’s record.

Here you can see the audit trail for our Product Manager, Adam Sinclair:

One common use case we found for this new feature is during employee reviews. A compliance officer or line manager might want to review how many times an employee was nagged before they completed their training.

Another common use is to verify that a particular user actually received an email, or to remind a user of an email that might have been overlooked or lost in the mix.

In all of these cases we found it easier to view the audit trail as part of the user record.

As well as impacting millions of workers at the lower end of the payscale, pay increases are likely to cascade upwards with senior members of staff expecting proportionately higher pay.

These increases could see wage bills rising by upwards of 50%, adding pressure on businesses to boost productivity levels and minimise costs – in other words, achieving more with less.

Doing more with less

The concept of doing more with less is hardly revolutionary, but as wages increase, companies that focus on productivity will have a growing advantage over their competition.

So, what options are available to businesses looking to offset wage rises? Here are some suggestions:

Reduce employee turnover

The more frequently employees leave your business, the more effort you’ll need to spend on recruitment, which comes with numerous costs including advertising, time spent assessing applications, interviewing potential candidates and performing necessary administration tasks, time and money spent training new recruits, and any agency fees payable to recruiters.

In addition are the opportunity costs arising from not having fully trained staff in place to fulfil the job roles your business requires, and even once new staff are in place it will take them a while to be up to speed.

A combination of factors play their part in minimising employee turnover levels. Studies show that the newer an employee is to a business, the more likely they are to leave, so it pays to make sure you have an effective onboarding programme in place and that new hires receive all the support they need while becoming familiar with how your business works.

Reduce onboarding & training costs

To run a successful business, your staff must understand how the business works and what is expected of them, so staff training is essential, particularly when it comes to new hires.

While some areas of training are job-specific, and make sense to be carried out by the manager or peers of the new recruit, others apply to the whole business, such as training on health and safety and data protection policies.

In either case, if your business relies on face to face training then it could be missing out on opportunities to drastically reduce costs. Every time face to face training takes place – so, every time a new hire joins, or an existing member of staff needs refresher training – the trainer’s time is required, duplicating the work.

Using eLearning enables you to drastically reduce the cost of staff onboarding and refresher training, as the work of completing the course has already been completed, so training can be delivered to thousands of people consistently and immediately, with minimal work required.

Improve staff skills and productivity

Once your staff are in place and familiar with their roles, you can still boost productivity by helping them to develop in a number of key areas.

Soft skills are often mistakenly considered to be ‘nice-to-have’ or ‘fluffy’, when compared to hard expertise in the skills directly relevant to a specific job, yet poor communication and teamwork are among the chief causes of friction in the workplace.

Offering training to all staff in areas such as internal customer management and soft skills can drastically reduce the communication overhead within your business, enabling employees to communicate more effectively and freeing up more of their time to spend on productive work.

Combine this with training managers in getting the most from their teams by setting the right objectives and managing performance effectively and you’ll ensure that every employee within your business is focused on doing the work that brings in the best results.

Reduce stress levels

UK businesses lose millions of days of work every year due to stressed employees.

Stress weakens the immune system, leaving stressed employees more vulnerable to illness and increasing absenteeism, but employees who are suffering from stress are also more error-prone and less productive as a result.

Causes of stress can differ depending on the individual, and individuals are often unaware that they are suffering from stress, so ensuring organisation-wide awareness of the symptoms, causes and management of stress is the most effective way to reduce instances of stress in your business, and enjoy increased productivity and reduced absenteeism as a result.

Implement a flexible working policy

Studies have shown that flexible working can improve employee retention, engagement and productivity.

Flexible working is an attractive benefit for employees, so businesses can enjoy the benefits of attracting talented workers and keeping them happy by allowing them to balance their work and personal commitments.

Although there are a number of benefits, flexible working does pose some challenges, so it’s important to ensure it is the right fit for your business, and the employee in question – and equip managers to handle the challenges that arise from it.

Performance Management eLearning

Our Performance Management Suite contains eLearning courses to boost organisations’ performance in a number of key areas by training managers and employees.

From 1st October 2015, certain categories of self-employed workers will no longer be required to comply with health and safety law such as the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.

The law is in place to protect people from exposure to risks caused by the activities of businesses and self-employed individuals, and will still apply to all cases which are deemed to carry risks.

The HSE estimates that this change will exempt 1.7 million self-employed individuals from legal health and safety requirements, including writers, accountants and online traders.

While removal of some of the ‘red tape’ around health and safety is likely to be a cause for celebration for many, this ruling highlights that the vast majority of businesses, including self-employed workers, cause some form of risk to other individuals – risk which must be managed in order to comply with health and safety law.

VinciWorks have over 20 years’ experience in providing businesses with online health and safety training. If you have a business of any size, we can help you to manage and risks arising from its activities and comply with relevant health and safety legislation.

We offer a portfolio of ready-made eLearning courses to meet the most common business health and safety risks, and have produced fully bespoke eLearning solutions for clients such as Royal Mail with more specific training requirements.

In a recent blog post, David Smith, Deputy Commissioner and Director of Data Protection at the Information Commissioner’s Office wrote about how businesses can prepare ahead of the upcoming EU Data Protection Regulation reforms which are likely to be finalised before the end of this year.

Once finalised, there will be a two-year transition period before all data protection regulation is harmonised among the EU’s 28 member states.

When in place, it’s expected that businesses will be expected to provide greater control over data to customers, and penalties for data protection breaches are likely to increase significantly.

Start to prepare sooner rather than later

Although the final regulation is yet to be agreed, there are a number of steps businesses can begin to put in place to ensure they’ll be well positioned to comply with them once they are finalised.

These include:

  • Establishing clear processes and policies for all data-handling activities and systems which can be audited and communicated should individuals request information on them
  • Considering how those processes and policies will be communicated to staff, and how you’ll keep track of who has been made aware of them
  • Establishing a process for updating those processes and policies so that they can be updated once EU Data Protection Regulation reforms are finalised

Simplifying staff training

VinciWorks specialise in compliance eLearning, and provide a number of courses related to information governance including Data Protection, Freedom of Information, Information Security and Records Management.

These courses enable your business to rapidly-deliver training to staff online – meaning staff can complete their training when it fits in with their schedules.

And, with an eLearning platform such as Astute, which we use to deliver our eLearning, you can easily keep track of who has completed what course.

When regulations do change, ensuring your organisation is compliant will simply be a case of updating your eLearning courses – and of course, we’ll be keeping all of our eLearning courses up-to-date with any changes to regulations.

The consequences of failing to comply with regulations are well documented, yet we still see a wide variance in risk tolerance in businesses across the UK, from those who ignore the issue to those striving to create a compliant workplace culture.

Putting policies in place is a necessary step towards achieving compliance, but ensuring that policies permeate throughout an organisation to create a culture of compliance, rather than just being seen as a box-ticking exercise, is an ongoing and complex process.

When English Rugby’s three governing bodies asked for our help tackling the long-term risk posed to players by concussion, the aim was cultural change from grass-roots to professional level, ensuring every player, coach and referee adopted new concussion management policies.

To help achieve this, we produced a Concussion Awareness eLearning module which was completed by 100% of professional rugby players, coaches and referees at the start of the 2014-15 season, and has just been shortlisted for three e-learning awards.

Ensuring 100% completion of the module was important, but the real goal was changing the way concussion is treated within the sport. Here are some of the techniques we used to ensure the module was more than just a box-ticking exercise:

Technique 1: Show that the risk is real

Mismanagement of concussion has resulted in life-limiting neurological problems for former rugby players, so it was essential that the Concussion Awareness eLearning module was taken seriously.

To ensure this was the case, the module included a number of recognisable, hard-hitting real life examples of the consequences of concussion mismanagement to players.

In any organisation, failure to comply with regulations puts the organisation and individuals involved at risk. Showing the actual consequences, which can include fines, dismissals or prison sentences, makes sure compliance is taken seriously rather than being seen as just a liability-limiting, box-ticking exercise.

Technique 2: Develop a clear message that learners can take away

Effectively changing culture calls for a campaign with a strong, memorable message.

The Concussion Awareness eLearning module was built around the “Four R’s” of concussion: Recognise, Remove, Recover and Return, which describe the best practise for concussion management, and form the basis of rugby’s concussion management campaign.

By identifying the key messages around desired behaviours and reinforcing them through policies, communications campaigns and training, an organisation’s employees will be able to take them on board and utilise them in their daily work, creating the desired behaviours.

Technique 3: Get interactive

Rugby players are far more motivated by playing rugby than sitting in training rooms, so it was important that the Concussion Awareness module was as interactive and engaging as possible.

Interactive elements utilised included multiple choice questions, video examples of concussions and a symptom identification game, making the module far more engaging than simple text on a page.

In today’s busy working world, full of different tasks competing for learners’ attention, making training interactive is essential to engage learners with subjects and enhance information retention, ultimately leading to a greater cultural impact.

Technique 4: Elicit an emotional response

Training which creates an emotional response is more memorable and far more likely to make a lasting impact on organisational culture – the main goal of the Concussion Awareness module.

That’s why the module starts with a hard hitting video depicting the consequences of mismanaged concussion for a player – a scenario the target audience can easily empathise with – as well as concluding with a scene showing the positive results of managing concussion correctly.

No matter what the subject, delivering content in a way that creates an emotional response will help to ensure employees engage with new policies and training rather than just going through the motions.

Technique 5: Get the buy-in of senior management

When the Concussion Awareness module was launched in 2014, every player, coach and referee received a personalised letter from Rob Andrew, Professional Rugby Director at the Rugby Football Union and former England international.

Showing that the message is coming from the top goes a long way to justifying the need for policies and training, as well as helping to prevent it from being seen as a box-ticking exercise.

In businesses, this can be achieved by sending email, letters, or having senior executives deliver a town hall meeting to encourage staff to take mandatory training seriously.

Technique 6: Tailor the message to the audience

Policies affect different employees in different ways: a middle manager’s responsibilities around a subject like fraud prevention will differ from those of a senior executive or a graduate.

With Concussion Awareness, we created different versions of the module for each of the three target audiences because each has different roles and responsibilities when it comes to concussion.

While generic, cover-all-bases training may keep costs down, making policies and training as specific as possible ensures that employees engage with, take on board and put in place processes that reduce risk of failure to comply with regulations.

With eLearning, this is particularly straightforward to achieve, as all content is digital and can be tailored to meet the needs of specific groups.