MySmartForce Platform Underpins Surrey Police IS Learning Strategy

Surrey Police Information Services has successfully implemented e-Learning through MySmartForce, which is being used as the sole driver in a training initiative

Surrey Police’s Information Services Department Learning Strategy aims to improve its levels of recruitment and retention; make Surrey Police a more competitive and attractive employer in the South East where IT salary levels are often beyond public sector budgets and provide a means of tackling limited training budgets.

Following the tight procurement procedures required in the public sector, SmartForce was selected through a framework of government suppliers and initial implementation started with a library of IT skills and project management courses for end users.

“We chose SmartForce because they were one of the few suppliers we felt could meet our requirements,” said Clare Davies, IS Training & Development Manager, Surrey Police. “We felt that their fully hosted MySmartForce solution minimised the amount of internal administration and support that is required. It is not just a content solution but one which spans content, services and infrastructure, providing learners with a superior level of personalisation and interaction through a whole host of learning tools such as mentoring, seminars, white papers and chat rooms which address their individual learning styles and needs.”

“We would not have been able to deliver our learning strategy without MySmartForce,” said Davies. “We can now use our limited training budget in a far more effective and focused manner, initial estimates for the first year suggest a return on investment of 229%, that’s 129% more training that we could have provided through classroom based training alone.

“Previously, we had to prioritise our budget and deliver it to key personnel and trouble spots, now we can deliver refresher training, allow staff to specialise or diversify and prepare for professional qualifications or even degrees,” Davies concluded.

Surrey Police will be encouraging the use of more soft skill content over the coming year in addition to the IT content which it is already using and will be looking at the benefits offered by rolling e-Learning out across additional divisions.

May 16th, 2002