E-learning and LMSs for local government and the public sector
Make learning, work and communication easier
As a major employer, high-quality continuing professional development is an essential talent recruitment and retention tool within the public sector. The culture and conduct of the sector are also highly scrutinised. Local governments face a number of challenges. Firstly, there is the sheer diversity of services that local government is responsible for, ranging from child protection to recycling - and that means a myriad of different training needs.
Then there is the complexity of local government structures in the form of county and district councils, unitary authorities, metropolitan districts and London boroughs, each providing different types of services. And on top of this has been the rapid move to remote working, spurred on as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. And finally, making sure that all employees are in compliance with the spirit and letter of regulatory requirements is essential, including those working for third-party providers.
A fit for purpose e-learning platform can simplify and unify training across your whole organisation while also allowing for the flexibility needed to address these unique challenges.
As a leading UK e-learning solutions provider, Hubken is an “Approved Supplier” from the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) and all of our services are available on G-Cloud 13 – the latest release of the Government’s digital procurement framework.


Julie Ryan
Local government training challenges
Complex structures
Complex organisational structures and the need for training to address this. E-learning solutions are designed to make the complex simple. Powerful automation tools can be used to trigger specific learning pathways for different groups of your employees from a single, centralised platform.
Training diversity
Government organisations have a diversity of other training needs such as onboarding, competency, CPD etc. An LMS enables learning at the point of need. Create and curate custom content and situational training to suit specific roles, and let employees search, discover, and engage in multimodal courses, video assignments, interactive role-playing, and game-based learning. In short, a market-leading LMS will make learning more accessible and inclusive for everyone.
Variety of subjects
A need to distribute training in a wider variety of subjects than almost any other sector. An LMS for the government sector streamlines the training process by consolidating the data and making an endless variety of course material easily accessible to the learner from one single platform.
Compliance training
Consistent measures
A need for robust and consistent measurement and reporting to monitor training efficacy is critical across public sector organisations. A quality LMS comes with the necessary tools to track and analyse the performance of the employees on a regular basis. Powerful performance tracking and analytical tools help government departments ensure that the employees are on the right track and are progressing as needed.
Data Security
Remote working
The explosion in remote working (and therefore training), has been amplified by the Covid pandemic. Employees in the public sector may be spread across a number of different locations. Your LMS should incorporate features such as mobile and offline learning, enabling your teams to access the training courses they need, when they need them, from any location and from any device.
Constricted budgets
Increasingly constricted budgets and a need for any new training solutions to be cost-effective. Switching to online learning can stretch tight budgets, enabling more to be done with less. And with today’s LMS automation tools, an LMS can help public sector organisations save money in terms of easing the training administration costs.
Why an e-learning strategy for the public sector is essential

Faced with the above challenges, it should come as no surprise that Government agencies are always looking for ways to make training and development more efficient and help ensure their workforce is able to stay up-to-date and compliant - and an investment in your LMS is a great place to start.
Adopting a modern LMS such as Totara Learn can not only address the above issues but also gives Public Sector the following:
- A lower overall cost of ownership, especially when adopting a cloud-based SaaS LMS solution
- A very close fit with the agencies’ professional development and training needs, including high degrees of administrative automation and excellent reporting and analytics
- The flexibility to scale and modify their systems to meet the changing needs of stakeholders
- Trigger notifications to enrolments, course reminders and upcoming compliance requirements
- The ability to manage and track certifications, licenses and accreditations
- The ability to track workforce readiness via pre and post surveys with advanced branching capabilities

Public sector users have unique LMS requirements of their own and so much choose their solution and partner carefully. Totara Learn and Hubken’s expertise gives Public Sector agencies a comprehensive and fully-featured e-learning solution that addresses their unique challenges.
Read our local government case studies

St.Helens Council
Hubken’s extensive provision of services, all met with our budget requirements. We like that we can rely on them as someone to go to whenever we need it.

Stockport Council
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