The challenges of the pandemic meant special requirements for social distancing and the shifting of working and learning hours to the home office. This has shown the need for flexible and frequently short-term solutions for the training and further education of employees, against decreasing training budgets and increasing demands. The City of Vienna developed a concept change in the central training institution for the employees of the city administration, under the name ‘Wien-Akademie’. A modern further education training system, development of digitisation and mobility of employees in terms of place and time of work also had to be taken into consideration.
A centralised set-up allows for the implementation of strategic guidelines without disregarding decentralised training needs. The novelty is the combination of the existing in-house expertise and the didactic skills of the training department with targeted use of media and IT for resource-saving learning, and a workplace-independent training world. This makes use of knowledge not only where it is created, but ensures it is spread independently of the learning place and time at the lowest cost – if necessary, even contactless. This is achieved through the production of e-learning programmes by the central training unit in its own recording studio. The programmes are offered to all employees via a suitable training platform, and designed, commissioned and operated by the employees of the central training unit.
As well as this, despite lockdown and meeting restrictions, training events were conducted live via online communication software. By planning, setting up and running the studio, 87 programmes were created in-house in about two years. Each programme goes through a rigorous quality control process and must include at least voice-over, animated graphics and knowledge checks. Most of the content is based on real videos and some already have simulations and work samples in protected areas. In total, 117.5 hours of learning material are now available for self-study. This means that three whole 40-hour working weeks could be spent continuously consuming digital learning material.
Parallel to the expansion of existing paths in digital knowledge transfer, a training initiative was launched. The aim was to build up sufficient digital and digital-didactic competences for trainers of Wien-Akademie’s face-to-face training track. Professional trainers were developed in their digital competences so they could transform face-to-face training into online training. The digital course consisted of four compulsory (three led by our own staff) and several optional training parts, as well as an accompanying e-learning offer and individual one-to-one coaching by an experienced online trainer.