Public safety’s core mission centers around a safer and stronger community. However, the approach and policies supporting that core mission continually evolve.
Moreover, the environment informing policies, operating procedures, and management can sometimes change more quickly than organizations have the bandwidth to adapt to.
A training management system (TMS) is no longer a luxury in the modern public safety workplace. It’s a necessity that will only become more important as changing ground-level rules and shifting state legislation continue to alter the way public safety institutions do business.
Think about all the tools and processes comprising your current training regimen. Like most training organizations, you likely manage in-person training, online learning (both live and on-demand), scheduling, inventory, housing, and more—often with each segment using its own unique tools and software solutions.
A TMS helps manage the entire training process by providing critical tools for every training-related task and integrating training data with other systems.
This capability becomes even more valuable in the context of adapting to change. When your tools are software-based and integrated within a single system, it is easier to pivot in accordance with the law or other needs.
COVID-19 showed us just how fast an event can change our jobs at a foundational level. For public safety educators, adapting to the post-pandemic world meant becoming (even more) familiar with distance learning tools that allow them to do things like:
…and do them in a hurry. When using a TMS, you get automation and tools that simplify all the components of your blended training program. A TMS makes it easy to deliver, track, report, and navigate from your hybrid classroom to your live training environment and back as needed—which means neither permanent nor temporary changes to training processes hinder your ability to provide education and certification.
That’s just as true if you need to work in a hybrid model, with distance and in-class learners receiving an equivalent experience no matter where they consume the content from.
Making quick changes to address events (from disasters to legislative changes) is essential in public safety training. A TMS with advanced training resources allows you to make those changes in one place that populates across systems with minimal hassle.
Let’s say an academy needs to shift its standard dorm-and-classroom training regimen to a more controlled environment, with quarantined students staying in one set of dorms and those who test negative staying in their usual dormitories. In-depth planning and rulemaking tools built into your TMS will let you dive in, alter parameters in the software, and get things working the way you need in far less time.
A whole host of security issues make public safety training tricky; having multiple disparate systems only invites security problems. For example, a secure scheduling tool isn’t helpful if your coursework system is riddled with possible security exploits.
In comparison, looping everything into a single ecosystem using a modern TMS—especially one built to exacting federal cybersecurity standards, such as Acadis—ensures the whole education chain is safe, secure, and private for the people engaging in it.
Considering the significant costs that a single breach can inflict on an institution, it’s just another reason you should be considering an upgraded TMS.
Posted on Jan 27, 2022
