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New Zealand Customs enhances learning experience with Tōtara
Learn how New Zealand Customs opens up self-managed learning to a dispersed workforce with Tōtara Learn.
The New Zealand Customs Service (Te Mana Ārai o Aotearoa) is a government agency that ensures the security of New Zealand’s borders. They have approximately 1,200 staff spread across the country who achieve their compliance requirements online with Tōtara Learn.
As New Zealand’s first line of defence, the agency’s main purpose is to detect and prevent dangerous people and prohibited goods from crossing New Zealand’s border, to facilitate trade and travel, and to collect revenue owing to the Crown.
Opportunity
With a large distributed team throughout New Zealand, the Customs team wanted to make managing learning easier and more efficient while enabling staff and managers to improve their access to development opportunities.
Compliance requirements and adherence to regulations are key drivers for the organisation. Therefore, they must manage and track progress across all learning activities in their learning management system (LMS).
Solution
Customs ensured that a large catalogue of courses, both off-the-shelf and in-house, would be available. They used the Program feature in Tōtara Learn to create work area frameworks to direct learners across the organisation to the relevant courses and learning activities.
Catalyst provided the technical support, working with the Customs IT architects within stringent security requirements, to deliver an on-premise solution with single sign-on (SSO) integration.
Another key task undertaken during implementation was migrating existing learning records from a legacy HR system into Tōtara’s learning records.
“It’s important for learners to see their historic learning achievements on the new system as it assisted in creating buy-in for the change.”
Chrissy Lyons, People and Capability Manager at Customs NZ
Capturing learner progress with a new plugin
In partnership with Catalyst, Customs developed a plugin 'Benchmark' within Totara Learn to capture and record on-the-job training activities. Benchmark provides a task checklist that can be marked as witnessed by a coach enabling learners to track progress visually.
“Our LMS will change the face of Learning and Development for Customs. It will become the fabric of how we learn and measure.”
Chrissy Lyons, People and Capability Manager at Customs NZ
Results
- Streamlined login process: Learners can easily log in with SSO.
- Comprehensive learning history: Learners now have a full history of all of their learning records in one place.
- Accessible training: With a dispersed workforce, many more online development opportunities are now available to all parts of the organisation.
- Enhanced compliance process: Staff can now manage their learning and progress towards compliance requirements.
- Self-service: Learners can discuss their training with managers who can readily see their data. Offering a ‘self-service’ application, Tōtara Learn helps put the management of learning back into the business.
Expert Tōtara support
Catalyst is the largest Tōtara provider in New Zealand with over 5000 users on our hosted sites. Our team has been involved with Tōtara since the beginning, and enjoy collaborating with our clients to find the best solution.
Contact us to discuss how Tōtara can support your organisation's learning goals.
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