Four Ways to Get More Training for Less Money

Training is a challenge - we know! That’s why Blue House Energy exists: to make it easier and more cost-effective for you to provide fundamental training in building science and construction technology to more people on your team. We’ve developed some services to go along with our courses.

The biggest challenge is managing your training budget when you can’t account for staff and crew turnover. Effective training has been shown to improve staff and crew retention, dropping turnover and improving your bottom line through reduced call backs and other quality control issues.

We did some research (we read more than one article, but the linked article is a good summary). We determined that Blue House Energy could look at four ways to help companies and organizations improve both the level of training and the number of people who could benefit from training:

1. Buy in bulk

2. Semi-automate registration

3. Make it a predictable monthly budget figure

4. Account for crew and staff turnover

When we started out, we knew we had a good thing, easily accessible by lots of busy folks, inexpensive, and not too much of a time commitment. We could make it a better thing for companies and organizations by offering lower prices and volume discounts to companies and organizations. So we dropped our prices and ran with that. 

Low cost and bulk buys: That was a good start to making it easier to get more people trained.

But!

Somebody has to manage all those registrations and sign ins and questions about ‘how do I get back into the course?’

Many contractor and installer firms in Canada and the US are small businesses, and have one person wearing many hats, including the ‘HR’ hat. In firms and organizations where there’s a person wearing a dedicated HR hat, they’re often working at full capacity, and can’t spare the cycles to manage ongoing registrations on top of new hires and all.

So we developed a semi-automated registration service to take the pain away.

But!

There’s no denying staff and crew turnover are a challenge in many ways - keeping a full roster of crew and staff takes up time and energy - and money. Add time, energy and cost for training to that mix and you’re bound to throw your hands up in the air like you just don’t care (but we know that’s not true…). 

So we cooked up a way for you to bulk buy registrations on a monthly basis and dial each registration back to ‘start’ when one person leaves and another one takes their place. 

Bam.

Seat Yourself and Blue House Energy Will Serve Up the Training!

You purchase enough ‘seats’ in one of our full-length courses to cover all the job positions you want to have trained. This is the basis of your subscription, paid monthly. The cost for each seat only includes the course, not the exam that gives you the certificate of completion (more on this below), so we can give you a sweeter deal. 

The seats on your subscription are for current employees only. When you have staff or crew turnover, you let us know once a month who’s gone and who’s coming in to take their place, and we redial the course back to 'start'. When anyone on your team has completed the course and is ready to take their exam and get their certificate of completion, we’ll let you know, and either you, or they, can pay for the online exam. Each exam costs $95 plus tax. 

We’ve got two service levels for Training Program Management. Level 1 is for smaller firms (5 to 24 seats), Level 2 is for larger firms (25+ seats). Level 2 prices are higher because we have a heavier management load once we hit 25 seats.

Here’s how the pricing breaks out for Level 1, monthly (not including client fees and applicable taxes):

Here’s how the pricing breaks out for Level 2, monthly (not including client fees and applicable taxes):

Here’s a breakdown of what subject matter is covered in each course:

You need good, inexpensive training in Building Science, Envelope Fundamentals, or Construction Technology?

Check us out. We’ll be adding more courses throughout 2018.

Built to suit the needs of the industry, Blue House Energy: online, on demand and affordable.