Three time-draining tasks for providers to make more efficient this year

Want to build a more productive training business? The start of the year is the perfect time to reflect on processes and find ways to boost your efficiency.

Three time-draining tasks for providers to make more efficient this year

Productive businesses manage to do more with the same amount of resources, increasing profitability and improving resilience. However, productivity is something that UK organisations have famously struggled with since the financial crisis in 2008, experiencing significantly slower productivity growth than fellow G7 members. 

Productivity is particularly important for training providers, who have to deliver consistently high-quality provision with fixed rates of government funding. As we look ahead to the new year, here are some of the top opportunities for providers to save time and work more efficiently.

Streamline your compliance processes

We often hear from providers that collecting and managing evidence for funding is the biggest time drain they experience. 

If you’re using multiple systems or spreadsheets to track learners’ progress, these might be customary for your team but they’re hugely time consuming. Additionally, the risks of duplicated, missing or inaccurate data can lead to further inefficiencies as you’ll need to go back and reconcile the errors.

Introducing digital processes and automations can cut these inefficiencies by keeping learner records in one central location. It removes the risk of human error entirely, automates evidence collection to reduce trainers’ admin burden, and makes reporting for inspections a breeze. On some systems, you can even give Ofsted inspectors access to find all the evidence they need themselves.

Go paperless with enrolment

The enrolment process has to be thorough to ensure compliance, but it can easily end up as a weeks-long undertaking. This can significantly slow your productivity, with training staff needing to shift their attention from their usual jobs to processing new learners.

Far from providing an ideal experience, manual enrolment is frustrating for learners, trainers and employers alike, and an inefficient use of valuable resources.

Transitioning to a digital enrolment process is a game-changer for streamlining – and de-stressing – this process. It means that learners can “self-serve” many of the steps from home, like filling out personal details and submitting proof of ID.

Creating a more efficient enrolment process not only creates a better experience for everyone involved, but gives you the flexibility to scale learner numbers with no extra admin time.

Speed up marking without losing quality

Quality feedback is critical to keep learners engaged, reinforce a sense of progress and ensure they’re achieving the best possible outcomes – but providing it is time intensive. Trainers spend around 20-30% of their time marking assessments, losing an average of a day and a half to the task every week.

Next-generation learning management systems and technology can ease this burden. Advanced AI tools are being developed specifically for the education space, which can automate the bulk of the marking process without any sacrifice to feedback quality. 

Bud Mark is one of these advanced AI tools, which draws from decades of experience in training provision to solve trainers’ specific challenges around the process. 

When launched, programme managers will be able to build rubrics for individual activities, highlighting the key criteria which will be used to mark submissions. Trainers can then send submissions to Bud Mark, to receive feedback against these pre-defined scoring criteria, before reviewing and amending the feedback, before it goes to the learner.

This will free up trainer time, to provide more considered, in-depth feedback where it’s most valuable and gives learners access to consistent feedback much faster. It also has the potential to reduce marking time by 80%, unlocking next-level efficiency for training providers across the board.

Efficient training delivery with Bud

Bud’s end-to-end training management system helps providers to maximise efficiency and deliver a high-quality learning experience for exceptional outcomes. Benefit from:

• An intuitive digital learning environment that learners, employers and trainers love

• Real-time business intelligence for complete visibility over performance

• Automatic collection of the evidence needed to demonstrate learner progress and hit compliance targets

Want to learn more about how Bud can ease your administrative burden and unlock new efficiencies? Book a discovery call now.