“Times are tough for many businesses at the moment and we understand that the cost of purchasing or developing training materials can soon add up,” says Laura Nelson, Managing Director for RTITB, the UK’s leading workplace transport training accrediting body. “With limited budgets and significant time pressures to contend with, some organisations might be tempted to cut corners, but keeping people safe must always be a priority.”
“That’s one of the reasons why we are supporting UK industry with the new RTITB eLibrary, providing access to high-quality, up to date training materials in an even more affordable and user-friendly way,” she continues. “It is designed to help develop a positive training and safety culture, while meeting regulations and protecting every employee’s safety.”
Accessed entirely online, the RTITB eLibrary contains a range of standardised forklift, plant and LGV courses for instructors to use when delivering training to operators and drivers, including trainers’ guides, presentations, videos, posters, safety codes, handouts, and more. The ready-to-go materials provide a much faster solution, compared to developing materials in-house, especially while instructors’ time is in high demand.
New courses are added throughout the year and the eLibrary content is always kept up to date, ensuring that changes to legislation, for example, are covered.
“The RTITB eLibrary has made accessing the most up to date information so much easier,” says Mick Dyer, MHE Coordinator at Howdens Joinery, an RTITB Accredited Partner that is using the system. “It has allowed us to do away with updating documents manually - when you consider we have dozens of different courses over several sites, the administration of paper documents was time consuming and relied on people to accurately remove old pages and put in the new.”
“Employers could spend thousands buying training materials that could be out of date in weeks,” explains Laura Nelson. “As well as the financial implications, it’s essential that instructors always work to current training and testing standards, as failure to do so could invalidate the operator or driver’s assessment.”
With a single access point for all materials, the RTITB eLibrary also supports compliance by ensuring standardised training is used company wide, while busy training teams also benefit from version control. The smart system also leaves an auditable trail of updates, showing the activity of each user, making it easy for instructors to keep up.
“The RTITB eLibrary allows all instructors over all our sites to instantly access the most up to date and relevant information,” explains Mick Dyer. “It allows them to work from the same version document at all times. There can be no confusion over which document or version to use - it's right there on the screen.”
The eLibrary can be tailored to reflect company branding and can also act similarly to an ‘intranet’ for the instructor team, as business-specific documents such as authorisations to operate, risk assessments, and standard operating procedures can be added.
As everything is online, switching to the RTITB eLibrary also helps organisations to save a significant amount of paper, supporting a more environmentally friendly approach alongside the cost savings and convenience.
“We like that the eLibrary is accessible through a tablet or a computer, giving access to a full and comprehensive training library without the inconvenience of heavy, bulky paper documentation,” says Mick Dyer.
