Developing a bespoke and engaging Regulation 4.5 eLearning module for The Warehouse Group.
Background:
Regulation 4.5 of the Hazardous Substances Regulations 2017 requires all those who uses, handles, manufactures, or stores a hazardous substance (including hazardous waste) be provided with training and instruction that includes the physico-chemical and health hazards associated with the hazardous substances the worker uses at work, the procedures (if applicable) for the safe use, handling, manufacture, storage, and disposal of the hazardous substances, practice in the safe use of plant (including personal protective equipment) necessary to manage the hazardous substances, the worker’s obligations under these regulations, and the actions that the worker should take in an emergency involving the hazardous substances.
Since most if not all employees across the stores will come across a hazardous substance in some shape or form, to remain compliant with the regulations and ensure that all relevant Team Members are provided with this training, The Warehouse Group enlisted the help of Rifft Solutions to create, update, and consistently maintain an eLearning module that is relevant to the business and operational needs of the Group and is compliant from a regulatory perspective.
The Challenge:
The Warehouse Group is not merely one company, rather an entire ecosystem of interconnected divisions working together as one. This meant that in order to ensure that the training is relevant, Rifft Solutions needed to engage with multiple teams spread across the entire country. This also required onsite video and audio recording, stock footage editing, evidence gathering, learning outcomes and course outline development, among other things. Additionally, to adhere with The Warehouse Group’s policy on sustainability, pre-existing paper checklists were distilled into their absolute core and converted into a digital format to be embedded into the training.
Besides this, to ensure that the training meets the business and operational needs of the Group and its internal Learning Management System (LMS), there were strict requirements on how long it took to complete the course, and the eLearning standards and file type that the module needed to adhere to.
Namely the eLearning module needed to be SCORM 1.2 compliant, be able to pause and resume progress, save the interactions of a digital checklist, and to be able to pull and fix spelling errors in Team Member data (Employee ID, first name, and last name) to generate course completion certificates on demand once Team Members completed the course.
The decision to generate course certificates within the SCORM file rather than it being handled by the LMS was an operational choice made to reduce the administrative processes within the Group’s Learning & Development team. This put the onus back on the Team Member completing the course to save their certificate rather than wait for the Learning & Development team to send one to them. This also helped comply with record-keeping efforts at the branch level as mandated by the Regulations:
Regulation 4.5(5) A PCBU must—
(a) keep a record of training and instruction provided under this regulation for each worker; and
(b) ensure the record is available for inspection by an inspector or compliance certifier.
Rifft Solutions broke down these requirements and underwent a lengthy process to develop a bespoke solution using industry-leading knowledge on the subject matter, and custom code and available course authoring tools to deliver the final product.
The biggest challenge required extending the suspend data capabilities of the SCORM 1.2 standard, as it can only hold 4096 characters. This was the key limiting factor behind how much data and documents the final file could hold and influenced how often Team Members were allowed to pause and resume their progress, and how the checklist and even certificate data would be handled and generated within the SCORM file itself rather than being reliant on the LMS.
The Results
From start to finish, the process involved discussions on the Group’s pre-existing learning modules to discuss what worked, what didn’t, and what could be improved beyond the capabilities of their previous offering.
After two months of development, the eLearning module included videos, interactive drag-and-drop elements, sorting activities, and a user dashboard which allowed team members to instantly generate their course completion certificates and have access to other related course materials and documents. The successful rollout and integration of this module into the Group’s LMS lead to a much smoother and more effective training process.
Topic Landing Page: Using images of team members was paramount to bring about a feeling of familiarity and personability within the course.
Users can navigate the course by a simple menu on the top right and revisit any topic they like (each topic must be completed 100% prior to the next being available, an identifiable tick mark shows users briefly which topic they have or have not completed)
Interactive activities such as the card sorting activity pictured above reinforces learning outcomes and promotes knowledge retention (all interactions are mobile-responsive, so users can access the course regardless of device)
Once users complete the course, they are greeted with a “Course Documents” dashboard, where users can download their course completion certificate and access other relevant course materials.
Client Feedback
“I was delighted with both the process and the outcome. The team at Rifft were fabulous to deal with and incredibly professional – particularly when we had a couple of issues. As you can appreciate the creative process is fraught with challenges, and then there were the compliance considerations to take into account. But the team at Rifft were exemplary in how they bought the end result together – saving us time and money and stress. I’m thrilled and we have moved them on to future projects. We now have an offer that is reputable, repeatable and enjoyable for our Team Members to complete.” – Michelle Cooper, HR Area Lead – Health Safety and Wellbeing, The Warehouse Group.
