Despite the current restrictions brought about by COVID-19, many aviation industry professionals need to continue safety training to achieve compliance, prevent skill fade, overall ensuring a return to safe operations when the restrictions are lifted.
Our team at Baines Simmons, world-leading experts in aviation safety and part of Air Partner Safety & Security division, responded to this demand and implemented virtual training courses in March 2020 to continue to support clients across the aviation sector in maintaining staff competencies and prevent skill fade.
Baines Simmons is currently offering a comprehensive virtual schedule across most areas of the portfolio, including Regulations, Quality and Compliance Monitoring, Human Factors and Safety Risk Management. The virtual training sits alongside our face to face classroom training, which are operating under government guidelines with social distancing in place.
When launching the new virtual classrooms, it was critical that the virtual training solution our team implemented did not compromise clients’ training experience and learning outcomes, in addition to providing reassurance that the time invested on a virtual course was going to have the same value as attending a course face-to-face. Our virtual classrooms content has been carefully adapted for virtual course delivery, still maintaining Baines Simmons’ core value of facilitative training with an industry expert and interaction with peers.
The team are very mindful of mitigating any technological challenges which may exist in a virtual environment and ensuring that the focus is on the learning. This is done by providing clear guidance on how to enroll and running pre-course tests with the delegates. To ensure the training runs smoothly, there are training etiquette rules, just as you would have in a face-to-face environment, such as to put a “virtual hand up” for any questions and send a note if needing to step away from the computer. Breakout rooms have also been organised so smaller groups can work together on their exercises. In some cases, delegates prefer doing this in a virtual environment as they often comment there are fewer distractions than in a face-to-face setting.
The feedback for the virtual training has been overwhelmingly positive with delegates also appreciating that they were able to access critical training whilst shielding or unable to travel due to Covid-19 restrictions. Due to the success of virtual training and the uptake during the pandemic, longer-term, virtual training is predicted to become a permanent fixture going forward in the academy schedule, for those who require it, alongside face-to-face classroom training.
When launching the new virtual product, the team were confident that regulations-based training would be popular but also delighted to have seen the take up on the more practical skills-based titles. The need for maintaining staff competency hasn’t gone anywhere and will be just as important when the industry starts to pick up.
About Baines Simmons
Baines Simmons, part of the Air Partner aviation services group, is a trusted advisor on a global level, serving more than 750 aviation organisations and more than 40 aviation authorities. Renowned for its professional expertise, practical skills and industry experience in aviation regulations, compliance and safety management, Baines Simmons offers Aviation Safety Management, Fatigue Risk Management, Wildlife Hazard Management and Aircraft Registry Services. Baines Simmons, which was acquired by Air Partner in August 2015, is recognized as one of the world’s most influential aviation consultancies in organisational safety performance.
