East Midlands Trains develops learning plans for employees for better planning throughout the organisation

East Midlands Trains is based in Derby, UK and has been serving passengers since 2007.

They operate over 450 train services to and from London, from South Yorkshire, through East Midlands, the east of England and the north.

The Challenge

East Midlands Trains wanted to develop a career path in relation to training for each specific job role, so there would be no ambiguity on who would need what training.

This would enable better planning in all departments and a more accurate head count in terms of learning provision.

The Solution

After an in-depth needs analysis, Webanywhere concluded that Totara Learn 2.9 would be the most suitable learning management system for the specifications. Being an open source platform means East Midlands Trains won’t have to pay per-user licence fees, making it more cost effective than other learning management systems.

The Workplace division experts gave the platform a branded theme to match East Midlands Trains’ brand. Webanywhere consulted on course design and development, including content creation, and provided in-depth training on all aspects of Totara.

They assisted in the setup of hierarchies for reporting, which allowed managers to view teams. An appraisal template was created to facilitate online evaluation.

As the trainee booking process needed tweaking under Totara, Webanywhere built a custom plugin to ensure business processes could be followed whilst using the system.

Since implementation of the Totara Learn 2.9 platform, East Midlands Trains has been using the system to replicate face-to-face training and will be utilising more eLearning features in the future.

“Webanywhere are very approachable and have worked with the development of our requirements for the company’s LMS system. Their guidance to non-technical individuals has meant we have been able to produce the company’s first LMS system, for initial roll out with the development of the system to enable it to fit our working needs.”