The Housing e-Academy have had fantastic response to the free online courses they have offered throughout May as part of Learning at Work Day. If you missed out on the first 3 free courses then you still have until the 31st May to gain access to our final free course “An Introduction to Social Media for Business” – Click here for more information.

Read on to see how two of our members celebrated LAW day in their organisations.

Aldwyck Housing Group

Aldwyck Housing Group held Learning at Work Day on May 20th and one of the activities on offer for staff was a chance to try out some demonstration modules from Housing e-Academy. The tasters on offer were:

• Opening Doors – Equality, Diversity and Cultural awareness
• Value for Money
• Organising your Time
• Healthy Living
• Money Matters.

The organisation also had a lot of other interesting activities available such as:

• Hidden talents – where staff were invited to demonstrate their hobbies
• Trying out games on a Nintendo Wii and entering a raffle to win it
• Learning & development quiz
• Skills swop shop
• E-learning tasters

And to top it off, all staff were in fancy dress!

Account Manager Naomi Hepworth went along to get involved with Learning at Work day, and while she was there she presented Aldwyck Housing Group with a certificate for their Bronze membership to the Housing e-Academy.

“It’s great that Aldwyck are getting so involved with learning at work day and chose to incorporate the roll-out of their e-learning alongside it. The taster sessions were a great way to introduce staff to using e-learning in a fun environment with people on hand to answer any questions”.

One learner from Aldwyck said “I really enjoyed trying out the e-learning and I look forward to doing more courses as part of Aldwyck’s staff training programme’

Aldwyck have experienced great success with their e-learning training so far with forty managers having already completed the Data Protection module. Next month all staff at Aldwyck will be able to access online training courses from the Housing e-Academy.

Berneslai Learning at Work Day

Aldwyck weren’t the only Housing e-Academy members getting involved in Learning at Work Day, Sue Lindsay, Learning and Development Manager at Berneslai Homes said.

“At Berneslai we recognise the value of providing a range of learning opportunities and experiences for our people. We believe that whilst it is vital to provide training which will directly contribute to improving the service we provide to our customers, it is also very important that we enable our staff to gain life knowledge and to learn how to improve their health.

Therefore this year, rather than just celebrating Learning at Work Day, we arranged a series of activities for the entire week based around the “Future Matters” theme. We developed the programme for the benefit of Berneslai Homes and Barnsley Council staff, which enabled maximum attendance at most events. We worked with a range of providers, to whom we owe our sincere thanks.

A physiotherapist explained how staff could improve their posture and demonstrated some simple exercises designed to reduce muscle stress. Relaxation techniques such as Reiki and Qigong were demonstrated at another session, whilst other staff were shown how to make healthy lunches and tasters were handed out. One of the Unions kindly sent someone to advise staff on making a will, and Crematorium staff took staff on a tour and demonstrated equipment- this event was extremely popular. The activities were complemented by fun runs and lunchtime walks.”

So well done to everyone for all of their hard work this Learning at Work Day, we are looking forward to next year already!