Where would we be without aviation? In far fewer places, and we’d get there much slower, that’s for sure. There would be no mass tourism industry, a much hampered global trade, and, one would imagine, no duty free shops.
Fortunately, the Wright brothers averted this dystopian future, and aviation is now a $800 billion industry (according to IATA figures).
It’s a challenging and complicated industry, with lots of specialties and supporting roles that have to work well together — from pilots, control towers and mechanics to boarding desks and airport management.
It’s also a highly regulated industry (which makes sense, considering the risks involved), with IATA, government, airport and airline regulations filling sky-high stacks of volumes and being actively updated.
And whether for pilots (for which annual re-examinations are required by law) or for something like an airline’s support desk, the training needs in aviation are a constant.
All the above (plus a few more, like the crazy schedules for everybody involved) make eLearning a great fit for the aviation industry. While certain details change, most of the use cases for eLearning in aviation are not that different from any other business.
Employee orientation
Employee orientation is the task of introducing new hires to your working environment and giving them the basic information they need so they can be productive fast, including your company’s operating procedures and policies, restrictions and guidelines.
Airlines and airports hire new people frequently, so automating employee orientation with eLearning software, such as the eFront learning management system (LMS) is one of the best investments.
eFront lets instructors organize orientation material in accessible units, add video, audio, images, PDFs, PowerPoint presentations etc., and include third party content (YouTube, Wikipedia, blog posts, etc).
It also includes tests, quizzes, automated grading and detailed statistics designed to help instructors and managers assess the training progress.
What’s more, in a litigation heavy industry such as aviation, with lawsuits covering anything from traveler treatment and lost luggage to delayed flights and more, eFront’s tracking of training attendance can serve as proof that an organization or business has informed its employees about company policy, sexual harassment laws, etc., in case of legal dispute (of course, as law differs around the world, consult your legal team before relying on this).
Training
Aviation industry’s rules change frequently and employees are often re-assigned to handle different posts, departments or destinations, and, as we discussed before there are always new hires (including temporary hires for the holiday seasons).
eLearning makes handling these training needs easy and cost effective, something important as aviation, while a huge industry revenue wise, often has margins as low as 4%.
It also enables you to train your employees at their own pace, without business disruptions which cannot easily be afforded in the fast paced world of commercial flights.
And if your training material changes frequently (new IATA rules, new airport guidelines, new operating procedures, etc.) an eLearning based solution helps there too, as it lets you update all your courses without costly textbooks and wasted paper, re-use and expand content, and share courses between different departments and airports, anywhere in the world.
You also get the flexibility to choose whether to run all of them from a central location for complete control, or install dedicated platforms in each branch.
And with eFront’s integration with content markets such as OpenSesame, you can even buy ready-made professional grade courses in thousands of topics.
Last, but not least, eFront provides a comprehensive reporting system that gives you quantifiable information and statistics for your employees’ attendance, progress and understanding of the material.
Knowledge retention
All businesses have a few employees whose experience is crucial for their day to day operation, or for handling some special crisis scenarios that occur once in a while. Ideally, this shouldn’t be the case, and with eFront it doesn’t have to be.
An eLearning solution will help you store this valuable information in a formalized and easily accessible way that can be consulted from existing employees and taught to new hires.
Adding that knowledge in an eLearning platform (as opposed to some document management system, or worse, some Word files), makes it immediately usable as training courses for your employees, leveraging all of your LMS’ eLearning features.
Conclusion
eFront has thousands of satisfied customers, including several multinational companies and organizations in both the private and public sector. It is renowned for its emphasis in speed and ease of use (stemming from our attention to detail and our no-bloat-allowed policy).
Take it for a test drive today and see for yourself how, with a modern LMS platform for the aviation industry, the sky is the limit.
