Hanover Scotland Case Study

About Hanover Scotland

Hanover Scotland provides affordable, modern, and safe housing and services across the country and is Scotland’s leading housing association for older people. It manages more than 5,000 homes on more than 200 housing developments, offering rented housing and acting as factoring agents to more than 2000 homeowners.

Apart from its customers, Hanover Scotland’s staff are its most important asset. More than 500 dedicated people are employed at its housing developments, area offices and in its head office. It is also Investors in People and Investors in Diversity accredited and committed to becoming an Employer of Choice.

The Challenge

Hanover Scotland is committed to providing its staff with the appropriate training required to support its customers. These members of staff are dispersed over a huge area – from Inverness in the north, right down to the Borders. In itself, this creates logistical and cost issues for traditional face to face learning delivery.

/n/n### The Delivery

Hanover Scotland first started using online learning courses from Virtual College in 2012, with their use of these resources increasing each year. In 2013, they chose a silver membership package and upgraded to gold membership in 2015.

Within six months of implementation, all Hanover Housing staff began completing core online induction training to ensure knowledge of legal and regulatory requirements.

These courses, covering data protection, equality and diversity, and customer care, are taken by all staff, including office-based employees, support workers, cleaners, and catering staff.

With around 130 new starters annually, this represents a significant training requirement. Additionally, up to 200 learners per year take functional-specific courses, such as slips, trips and falls’ and housing-specific training.

The Results

Staff find online learning convenient, as they can complete training at a time and place that suits them. The ability to offer refresher courses ensures that staff stay up to date and supports their Continuing Professional Development.

The system is user-friendly, with courses accessed through Virtual College’s Learning Management System, which provides a smooth and modern interface. Learner reports can be quickly generated for management and external reviews by care inspectors and auditors, who require a clear training record.

For Hanover Scotland, online learning reduces the cost and logistical challenges of face-to-face training. It provides a cost-effective way to keep learning current.

The organisation is now trailing the creation of its own e-learning content using Virtual College’s authoring tool, Create, to deliver tailored training. This initiative will be developed further over the next year.