Transforming Training to Save Revenue: Austin Water
By on May 21, 2018
Training and continuing education are an important part of keeping any organization sharp, informed, and advancing. The need for professional development is something that also can create tension with the need to execute day to day tasks that are mission critical to an organization’s overall objectives. When it comes to companies under heavy burdens of compliance, this is further magnified.
The need to stay on top of in-service training is something Eric Davis, Quality Assurance Officer with Austin Water, is very familiar with. He shared, “When it comes to the accreditations and your maintaining it, it is real easy to let things slip thing through the cracks. If we have someone who lapses in their training they may have to get completely retrained. Training costs a good chunk of time and money.”
Since training is a critical component to maintaining compliance it only makes sense to ensure it is part of the core functionality within compliance management software. This adds visibility, accountability, and the option to run reports in support of audits and assessments.
Beyond streamlining compliance, using a quality management system with training functionality can also save organizations revenue costs. Austin Water used to have to shut down three facilities for a full business day in order to accomplish the mandated training. Eric shared, “When I first started we would shut all the labs down and we would all meet in a room for an annual training. Any time you have people out of the lab you are losing time and money.”
Now, with Qualtrax in place, Eric is able to distribute the training digitally and assign deadlines. “Once we create the training we let everyone do it at their leisure. We don’t have to get everyone combined,” explained Eric. Training is now integrated into their everyday work experience without being a reason to shut down operations. Austin Water is able to save a tremendous amount of money by keeping operations up and running while also being able to accomplish training objectives.
Beyond the consolidation and cost saving benefits of utilizing the training functions of our software, Eric has found that keeping up with information and data is much more streamlined. “We are reducing the amount of time it takes to keep track of stuff. We can keep track of things without the manual labor having to keep track of it,” said Eric. This means Eric can spend less time in administrative functions and more time using his skill set as a chemist and Quality Assurance Officer to continuously improve Austin Water.
When it comes to any organization or company that has a lot of moving parts and pieces–with the need for exceptional attention to detail–it can be difficult to keep up. Without a system in place things will get overlooked, mistakes will be made, and training deadlines can lapse. We are so pleased to see that Eric and the men and women of Austin Water are able to spend less time worrying about keeping up with all the moving parts and more time on critical work functions that lead to safe water for the people, community, and environment of Austin.
If you’d like to learn more about Austin Water, check out our previous blog post where we go more in depth into the amazing work that they do every day.
Categories: Compliance Management, Environmental, Testing Labs
