Edgeworks News

October 05, 2009

On our way to becoming market leader in technology enabled learning

07learningservicesEdgeworks Care Academy now provides learning and assessment materials to more than 25,000 users UK wide along with a range of innovative workforce development and management technologies. In September 09 alone, we recorded more than 5,500 learning hours, with this figure growing month on month. We expect to deliver more than 10,000+ learning hours per month by the end of 2009!

Based on the above, we're well on our way to becoming the market leader in technology enabled learning for the social care sector.

Key Technology Developments

Care Academy is the only Learning Management System on the market that has been developed specifically for the care sector. This means all of our learning content is contextualised and has not been created for another sector and then simply re-badged. Our Learning Disability Induction Award is the only accredited City & Guilds course of it's kind. Furthermore, we aim to use the same unique technology to deliver more courses focusing on Dementia, Mental Capacity Act and End of Life to name just a few.

We have also continued to build more unique functionality such as our Training Strategy Implementation (TSI) funding management and administration solution.  This innovative feature automatically generates the necessary TSI funding forms, complete with candidate details upon completion of the CIS - client's now never need miss an opportunity to claim valuable training funds!

Return on Investment

Care Academy typically delivers 1 learning hour for every £1 of investment, with larger employers benefitting from even greater economies of scale. Compared with the traditional cost of delivering, managing, tracking and reporting on compliance related training, Care Academy continues to provide unbeatable value-for-money.

Enable Training Staff to deliver higher value courses

Many of our client's only really appreciate the true value of Care Academy after it has been deployed. Using Care Academy to deliver, manage and report on routine mandatory training enables valuable and expensive training staff to focus their efforts on delivering higher value, more rewarding training programmes. By re-focussing on 'specialist' areas, the training team can then make a significant impact on the business strategy. So not only do training personnel love Care Academy, but so too do Operation and Finance managers!

If you would like to find out more about how Edgeworks Care Academy can help you deliver your training please contact us on 0161 228 1712 or via our online form.

August 02, 2007

Edgeworks Launches Policy-Safe

Today Edgeworks formally launched our latest product Policy-Safe.

Policy-Safe will enable organisations to create, deliver and track key policies and procedures such as recruitment guidelines, employment contracts, health and safety policies, quality assurance procedures to name but a few. Importantly, Policy-Safe can also be used to demonstrate due diligence in the event of a claim for non-compliance.

Historically, these type of products have only been available to large companies with the financial resources to invest in this type of technology. However, Policy-Safe has been designed to be an affordable solution for companies of all sizes and delivers many of the features normally reserved for technologies costing tens of thousands of pounds.

If you would like to find out more about Policy-Safe please visit http://www.policy-safe.co.uk/.

January 02, 2007

New Year, New Law

As the New Year gets underway it's perhaps a good time to review your online marketing to ensure you remain fully legal and compliant. From January 1st 2007 companies in the UK are required to include certain regulatory information on their web sites AND in their email footers or they will breach the Companies Act and risk a fine.

The legal aspects of the changes are well documented by http://www.out-law.com/page-7594 (our web compliance partners) and basically require all companies to list its company registration number, place of registration and registered office address on its web site, emails and electronic documents including order forms.

It is worth noting, that contrary to popular belief, the information does not have to appear on every web page and many companies will already provide the required information on their 'About Us', 'Contact Us' or 'Legal info' pages. For those companies who subscribe to Edgeworks Web Compliance Service we will review individual web sites and provide feedback accordingly. However, it's important that clients check that the information provided to us is accurate and any amendments or updates will be implemented.

Whilst we don't expect to see a rush of litigation following these changes, its worth getting your house in order all the same to demonstrate a commitment to maintaining professional standards.

July 01, 2005

Disability Discrimination Act

Over the past year or so one topic that has constantly caused a great deal of confusion for our clients and agency partners alike, has been the issue of Web Compliance, in particular what exactly is required to ensure Compliance and moreover is it the client or agency who is ultimately responsible?

This recent article 'The Way I See It… The True Impact of the DDA' written by Rick Williams (CFCIPD) an acknowledged expert in this area provides a valuable insight into the client/agency relationship and offers answers to key questions such as:

'How client marketing teams can unknowingly 'Purchase' DDA liability from serviceproviders that may ultimately come back to haunt them'

'The legal position of an Agency when supplying interactive services'Rick's article makes salutary reading for both client and agency and provides a degree of clarity on an often misunderstood subject.

It also acts as a great link for me to introduce Edgeworks Web Compliance Warranty service, an innovative and unique warranty which ensures your website is fully compliant with UK legislation including:

  • The Disability Discrimination Act 1995
  • The Data Protection Act 1998
  • The Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000
  • The Electronic Commerce Regulations 2002
  • The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003
  • Edgeworks Web Compliance Warranty is available to our clients and agency partners alike, either as part of our standard marketing and development packages or as a standalone product.

To find our more contact Steve Helsby on 0161 228 1712

January 21, 2005

Edgeworks offers free assessments for non disabled-friendly websites

With an estimated eight out of ten websites remaining impossible for disabled people to access the Disability Discrimination Act Part III (DDA) will being taking action, from October 2004. Businesses that have not made 'reasonable adjustments' to assist disabled access to their websites, will be liable for prosecution - with fines reaching up to £50,000. To assist in achieving compliance, local digital agency The Edgeworks, is offering North West based companies and organisations a free website diagnostic appraisal that will highlight key issues and provide a basis for work needed ahead of the DDA.

The technology used by The Edgeworks to complete the diagnostic report has been developed by globally renowned usability experts UseableNet and conforms to World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. These guidelines are generally accepted as the 'de facto' standards for web accessibility development. W3C publish guidelines that enable organisations to attain either an 'A', 'AA' or 'AAA' designation, with the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) advising a single 'A' as a minimum standard.

Director of Business Development Steve Helsby says "Awareness of the DDA is slowly growing, but there are still companies investing substantial amounts of time and money into websites that quite clearly will not meet the required standard."

The types of changes typically required include:

  • Scaleable text.
  • Alternative descriptions for images.
  • Text-only versions.
  • Navigation via a keyboard rather than mouse.
  • A range of high-level applications including sub-titles for audio and video presentations.
  • The Disability Rights Commission (DRC) has stated it intends to get tough with 81 per cent of British based sites that currently fall foul of accessibility guidelines.

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For further information please visit www.edgeworks.co.uk or call Steve Helsby on +44 (0)161 228 1712