HMA consultancy delivers training solutions to overseas government agencies

Hall McMaster & Associates (HMA) is a privately-owned niche consulting agency. HMA provide programme design, training and mentoring to New Zealand and overseas governments in the important areas of criminal justice, family violence prevention, motivational interviewing and parenting.

Challenge

It is imperative for specialist organisations like HMA, who have only a small number of staff, to be able to compete effectively with larger players in contemporary markets. In addition to their existing deep expertise in programme design and content generation, HMA wished to embrace an online training platform that would boost their internal capacity for programme delivery.

To achieve this, HMA required a learning management system (LMS) that:

• is scalable and flexible to meet the needs of their different client organisations
• supports blended learning approaches
• provides excellent reporting, tracking and other functionality that is often very limited in LMS platforms
• offers cost efficiencies in building their internal capability
• is intuitive, with a good user interface and easy to use
• reflects HMA’s professional brand and approach.

The Solution

HMA quickly recognised Totara Learn as a very powerful learning delivery mechanism, strongly complementing their pre-existing core design and sector knowledge expertise. Together, these three strands present a very viable and attractive business proposition for HMA customers.

Totara Learn is a platform that allows for extremely learner-centric design. HMA clients now enjoy very interactive and personalised online learning experiences for their staff, as well as the system’s general ease of use. The learning solutions HMA are designing and delivering today are predominantly blended, which Totara Learn supports very well, incorporating pre-work elearning-based modules that learners complete remotely prior to attending face-to-face practical skill training sessions.

“Hall McMaster’s survival relies on us being able to compete in a contemporary market. Totara Learn has enabled us to do this.”

HMA also credit the scalability and flexibility of Totara Learn for enabling them to design innovative ‘green field’ learning solutions for consideration by offshore government agencies. An example of this is the potential to use Totara Learn as a learning platform for incarcerated offenders to be able to maintain current skills in a bid to help reduce rates of re-offending upon prisoner release.

Results

• Significantly improved competitiveness in an international market
• Increased viability of building internal capability in a small team
• Minimised logistics and financial challenges that were previously experienced using a purely face-to-face training approach
• Hosting 350 offshore Corrections staff from small New Zealand-based office
• Enabled ‘green fields’ market potential.