Printed materials are out. Apps are in.
It’s official! We’re no longer printing participant course materials.
As a leading risk management training provider in the humanitarian and development sector we, with our clients, are committed to working sustainably and making a positive impact on our environment and society.
For us, this means re-thinking our impact in every area of our work. One way we can do this is to no longer print participant materials for our courses. Instead, we'll be creating customisable apps for each client and their training.
We might be a small business, but each year our printing contributes to a big problem. According to The World Counts:
It takes an average of 5 litres of water to produce a single piece of A4 paper
50% of business waste is composed of paper
Paper accounts for 25% of landfill waste
Pulp and paper is the 3rd largest industrial polluter of air, water and soil
We believe that training participant apps are right for us and our clients. Apps are:
Environmentally Friendly
We want to decrease our environmental impact on trees and water but also by not using the petroleum-based, chemical solvents in ink and reducing the need for global shipping.
Participant Friendly
Most our participants are living and working away from home. They are unlikely to pack their course handbook, or print-out, as they just don’t have the luggage space. With an individualised app on their phone our course materials – including videos, links and references – are portable and accessible when needed. For participants working in low-internet bandwidth locations the apps are downloadable and work without internet.
Client Friendly
Printing participants materials costs organisations thousands of dollars each year for a product which is likely to be shelved or forgotten. These materials can also be incomplete as organisation take tough decisions on what to include to save on printing costs. Apps take these factors out of the equation as they are literally in staff hands and are virtually limitless in the amount of information they can hold.
Curriculum Friendly
Course materials – like our Open HEAT courses – are constantly being updated with new sessions, statistics and information. Printed materials are static and quickly outdated. Apps enable us to keep updated information at ALL our participants fingertips long after they’ve left a course. And, if an organisation wants their personnel to have access to key policies and procedures they can link to these in a secure, password-protected app and update them whenever they need to.
Feedback Friendly
Want feedback on every session? At the end of each day? Only at the end of the course? Apps make it easier for organisations to get real-time feedback on what their participants are learning and how they feel about that learning at just the right time.
We might be a small business but we believe our actions can have a big impact. Living our values in every area of our work is part of what we do every day. If that sounds good to you we'd love work with you on your next course: have a look at the courses we offer here.
Send us an email: operations@saferedge.com
