At least, so they say – and with our online training, you can save both!
Whether you are looking to qualify as an auditor or to update your auditing qualifications, the choice is simple. Either you attend a face-to-face training course, or you enroll to complete your course online. While some providers offer a blend of the two, conveniently called blended learning.
Face-to-face is the traditional way that auditors have been trained with the main course being normally 5 days in duration from Monday to Friday and located in major cities. So, for you to attend you must travel to the city and the dates have to line up with when you are available. Now if you have an obliging employer, they will pay for your course, and your travel, and your accommodation, and your meals while you are away. But what if you are completing the course for your own personal development? In this case, you must take time off, which has to be right for you, and for your employer, and for when the course is running.
All of this planning can be tricky and it can take a fair bit of time, so you’re most probably going to need to start a few weeks, if not a few months in advance. And then about a week out from the course, you get an email telling you that the course is canceled! You’re now going to spend serious time in trying to cancel or reschedule all your travel and accommodation and if you were taking holiday too, what do you now do for the week?
If the course does go ahead, you will now be in a room with anywhere from 6 to 20 students and a presenter. You’ll get to see a few PowerPoint slides, hear some stories from the presenter – hopefully, they will be relevant – and learn the process of auditing, along with some discipline normally either Quality ISO 9001, Environmental ISO 14001 or Occupational Health and Safety ISO 45001. During the week you will also be expected to partake in some workshop activities with the other students.
These other students will come from a range of backgrounds, some with a lot of knowledge and some with very little. But the course pace will remain the same, too slow for those with a lot of knowledge, and too fast for those that need a bit more time and few more questions answered.
After the week is over, for many face-to-face providers you will be given a workbook that you will need to complete for your assessment. This workbook will be a challenge for you to complete. It will require you to undertake many tasks and for you to keep evidence of these tasks, such as; conducting an opening meeting, gathering evidence, presenting a closing meeting and writing an audit report. These workbook activities will then need to be sent back to the course provider for marking, and if additional information is required, it will be asked for and have to be provided.
The smart option is to complete the course online. With online you are in control of your learning, you can start when you like and take breaks when you like. You can do it before work, on the bus or train, or in the evening or at the weekend. You can study for an hour or a day. If you are familiar with the topic you can power through, or if you need some extra learning tuition, you can review the module again as many times as you want.
From a value point of view, there is no travel cost, no accommodation cost, no cancellation costs, and no need to take any time off work. All the assessment activities are built in and you get to know your results instantly, there is no waiting. If you don’t pass a module, you get to take it again with some extra coaching.
And if you get really stuck, our support staff are always happy to help both online and by telephone.
The choice is easy if you want to work at your own pace and save significant time and money, book online now.