Inspired by free online education services like Khan Academy and Coursera, the California Department of Human Resources (CalHR) has launched a free online training program for California state employees. The program, which is partnering with both state departments and colleges for academic training, is expected to save millions of dollars in training and retraining expenses for state employees.
The program has two broad categories of training available: state mandated training, such as sexual harassment prevention and workplace safety; and analytics training, for employees wanting to brush up on their problem solving skills.
"What ends up happening with state-mandated training is that it gets very expensive if we hire contractors to do this," said Jodi Traversaro, the statewide learning and performance manager for CalHR. "What we’ve found through the program that we administer here is that we have the talent within our ranks of state governments and our departments to provide this training free and online."
State government employees with prior expertise in their given fields will be leading the online seminars, called webinars. The webinars will be recorded and archived online, so that those who missed the lecture when it was live are able to access the material at a later date.
"This is what we would call a reinvigorating of the training for the state," said Pat McConahay, the communications director for CalHR. "A younger workforce is going to want this kind of online training, they’re used to learning with it, rather than just a classroom setting."
The webinars released so far have received "very positive evaluations," Traversaro said.
One ongoing series focuses on executive leadership training, which seeks to train upcoming government department directors, CIOs and other high level officials for public sector work. Nearly 1000 people signed up for the first Executive Leadership webinar.
"I couldn’t be more thrilled with the collaboration across state departments and the willingness of people to share their expertise that enhances people’s skills, prevents problems later, and memorializes knowledge over time," Traversaro said.
The same tool used in the State Virtual Training center will be used to hold a virtual town hall meeting this Friday with the California Technology Agency, according to Traversaro.
