Training Providers can beat the effects of Covid-19 by embracing automation and online learning.

Think of the real threats to your business… and take a minute to liken them to the Covid-19 virus that’s currently disrupting course and training businesses worldwide. 

Many people attempt to tackle the spread of infection in schools, colleges and training institutions with hand sanitizer… but in reality they need to simply wash their hands in warm soapy water to truly break down the virus. It’s a matter of science. It is only soap that absolutely annihilates this coronavirus. Not hand sanitizer.

The reality is that many course and training business owners try to tackle problems in their business with the wrong tools or approach… they use the equivalent of hand sanitizer to tackle problems that really need a different solution to be truly broken down and solved. You need to find the “soap” that will fix the problems that your business faces.

Over the course of the next few weeks, it’s expected that demand for face to face training will fall considerably across Europe as Coronavirus takes hold. 

Instead of planning to fail by turning learners away from your doors and cancelling training sessions due to infection risk - training providers need to use this pandemic as an opportunity to improve and reinvent the systems they use to manage their training business. By switching to a training management system that has advanced online automation functionality, trainers can steer learners toward online courses and training modules that can be taken from home.

Here are just some of the ways that a training management system like CourseCo can help at a time like this.

Staff Absenteeism:

Unfortunately a lot of staff will either fall ill with the Coronavirus or have to self-isolate as a precaution over the next few months. This presents many challenges for training education institutions. To put it simply, staff are at the centre of any such businesses and critical to the successful delivery of courses and training programmes.

Training managers need to find ways that enable the staff that are feeling well to work from home. A growing number of training organisations have announced temporary shifts to running classes and sharing learning materials virtually. While in our view a 100% remote learning environment is not ideal – it is steps like this that can slow the spread of a virus down.

Admin Automation:

It’s likely that very soon over 50% of your staff could be off work due to illness or self-isolation thanks to the Coronavirus. This means that you need to find a way to automate as many of your business processes as possible.

Depending on the package you choose, CourseCo has a range of in-built automation features that can help you manage your business on autopilot. Everything from the CourseCo scheduling assistant to the booking features are built with usability in mind meaning that even manual tasks can be sped up. Two automation tools that may be useful in the coming weeks and months are the certificate generation tool which completely automates the sending of digital certificates and the automated email reminder tool which in tandem with a CRM system can replace a full time member of your admin team.

Bulk sending:

One thing that we have witnessed in the past number of weeks is the rapid changes to operations that occur as new information comes to light around the coronavirus. In times of uncertainty you need a reliable and robust system that allows you to communicate with staff and learners to delivery mission critical news and advisories about things like in-school hygiene,  course cancellations and alternative working and studying arrangements.

With CourseCo you can schedule and send routine and emergency communications with staff and learners. Simply identify and select an audience to target and share the vital information with one click. The CourseCo bulk messaging system is very clever and with some customisation can deliver a sequence of emails or text messages based on predefined conditions or event triggers.

Tracking hours:

Companies that have staff working from home or in remote locations for the duration of this viral outbreak need to find a way of tracking the amount of time their team spend working – especially if their staff are used to clocking in and out of work. Allowing staff to track their hours worked helps them focus on work in what could be an otherwise distracting environment.

From a management point of view, recording staff activity during times of uncertainty gives course and training providers a better understanding of which areas of their business are operating as normal and which areas need to be supported with more staff resources.

While we have always offered our clients unlimited learners, we’ve decided to also offer new customers unlimited trainers up until the end of summer 2020 in light of the current challenges that training providers are facing at this time of uncertainty. 

Please contact us on (061) 513 030 if you would like to learn more about what you can do to reduce the risk that Covid-19 presents to your training business.