BLOG: Unlocking Industry-Wide Excellence: The Power of Custom eLearning for Regulated Sectors
Tom Loder

Feb 13, 2025

In highly regulated industries such as transportation, aviation, energy, and healthcare, ensuring compliance, upholding safety standards, and achieving operational excellence are not merely best practices—they are essential mandates. The repercussions of insufficient training are serious, ranging from operational disruptions and legal penalties to safety hazards and loss of reputation.

To address these challenges, organizations need scalable, high-impact training solutions that empower both frontline workers and leadership teams. Forward-thinking regulators, industry associations, and oversight groups are already embracing digital learning, accelerating industry-wide adoption and realizing its vast potential.

Through custom eLearning, these sectors are not only improving compliance rates and streamlining certification processes but are also boosting workforce competency. The results are clear—industries leveraging digital training experience fewer compliance violations, enhanced safety records, and greater operational efficiency. And we’ve seen it firsthand with the regulators and industry groups we work with around the globe.

Custom eLearning is no longer a “nice-to-have” solution. It has evolved into a proven approach, widely adopted by industries seeking to future-proof their workforce, adapt to regulatory changes, and maintain long-term excellence. Regardless of industry complexity or unique training challenges, custom eLearning delivers impactful results, faster than ever before.

The Case for Industry-Level Training

Historically, workforce training has been employer-driven, with organizations designing and executing programs tailored to their specific needs. While this model addresses immediate skill gaps, it often leads to siloed training efforts that fail to foster a cohesive, standardized workforce across industries. This fragmented approach can result in inconsistent skill levels, knowledge gaps, and difficulties in meeting regulatory compliance requirements. It also limits employees’ ability to transfer skills between organizations or regions, creating barriers to career mobility.

By contrast, industry-wide training initiatives offer a more scalable and effective solution. With a collaborative approach, organizations within a sector can unite to establish universally recognized training standards and programs accessible to all workers, regardless of their employer. This ensures employees receive consistent, high-quality training aligned with industry best practices, safety standards, and regulatory requirements.

The benefits of industry-wide training extend beyond simply standardizing skill sets. These initiatives foster a culture of continuous improvement, where safety and innovation are prioritized. When workers across an industry share the same foundational knowledge, it leads to greater cohesion, fewer errors, and a more resilient workforce capable of adapting to new technologies, regulations, and market shifts. Additionally, industry-level training provides employees with transferable skills, enhancing their competitiveness in the job market, while employers benefit from a broader pool of well-trained candidates.

Moreover, pooling resources and expertise can help reduce the costs of developing internal training programs and simplify the certification process for new hires. This collaborative model drives broader industry advancements, contributing to the growth, safety, and competitiveness of the entire sector.

Regulated Industries That Benefit Most

Certain sectors stand to gain significantly from industry-wide eLearning solutions, especially due to their stringent compliance requirements, operational complexities, and safety concerns:

  • Transportation & Logistics – Ensuring that all drivers, operators, and logistics personnel are consistently trained in safety regulations, compliance, and best practices.
  • Aviation & Aerospace – Standardized training for pilots, air traffic controllers, and maintenance personnel to maintain safety and operational standards.
  • Energy & Utilities – Compliance-driven training for professionals in renewable energy, oil & gas, and electricity sectors to minimize risks and boost efficiency.
  • Healthcare & Life Sciences – Equipping medical professionals, pharmaceutical teams, and biotech workers with up-to-date knowledge to ensure regulatory compliance and patient safety.
  • Manufacturing & Industrial Safety – Training workers in machinery operation, hazard prevention, and workplace safety to maintain industry-wide compliance.

To highlight the importance of optimizing training in these sectors, let’s explore aviation. Training hours vary greatly depending on job roles, company size, regulatory requirements, and job-specific tasks. For example:

  • Flight Crew (Pilots, Co-Pilots): Minimum 50-100 hours annually, including recurrent training for safety, operational procedures, and compliance (e.g., FAA, EASA).
  • Aircraft Maintenance Technicians: 80-120 hours annually for refresher courses, skill upgrades, and training on new technologies or regulatory changes.
  • Ground Crew/Operations: 40-60 hours annually focused on safety procedures, equipment handling, and compliance.
  • Other Employees (e.g., Air Traffic Controllers, Flight Attendants): 20-80 hours annually, depending on role and regulatory needs.

While these estimates are approximate, they illustrate the complexity and need for optimized, consistent training across the entire industry—particularly when new technologies or safety protocols apply universally, from airlines to airports and ground services.

But, what about the challenge that aviation or other regulated industries are “too complex for eLearning.” We’ve debunked this over the years along with every other eLearning provider and have shown that these industries are THE ideal candidates for custom eLearning solutions. The advancements in technology and the ability to integrate animations, live video, simulations, regular updates, and more allow for all benefits of in-class training, without the labour and logistical challenges. Further, solutions that are crafted in collaboration with industry experts and tailored to meet each sector’s evolving needs ensure that all specific requirements are met.

The Scale and Impact of eLearning

Custom eLearning solutions delivered through purpose-built platforms provide a scalable, efficient way to upskill an entire industry. The statistics speak for themselves:

  • The global eLearning market is valued at $399 billion, growing at 14% annually due to rising demand for flexible, scalable custom training solutions.
  • Online training increases knowledge retention by 25-60%, compared to just 8-10% for traditional classroom training.
  • eLearning reduces training time by 40-60%, helping employees get up to speed quickly without disrupting operations.

When applied at an industry level, these benefits are amplified.

Purpose-Built Platforms for Industry-Wide Reach

Developing training content is only one part of the equation. Delivering it through a centralized training platform ensures consistent content delivery, real-time tracking, and seamless certification management—all crucial elements in regulated sectors where compliance and safety are paramount.

An effective industry-wide training solution must support large-scale enrollments, cross-organizational access, and adaptive learning pathways tailored to various roles and skill levels. At Bluedrop ISM, our SkillsPass platform is a leading solution for delivering both custom and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) eLearning, including third-party content.

However, regardless of the platform used, the key is ensuring it can handle the demands of industry-wide training, enabling organizations to streamline training, track compliance, and enhance workforce capabilities at scale.

Take the Next Step

As industries evolve, so too must their approach to training. Transitioning to industry-wide eLearning ensures that workforce development becomes a collective effort, driving safety, efficiency, and competitiveness across the sector. Custom eLearning is not a far-off solution; it is a practical and immediate way to address training needs, whether modernizing outdated classroom formats or launching new programs from the ground up.

Visit Bluedrop ISM to discover how our expert team and custom eLearning solutions can help support your industry’s training needs and future-proof your workforce.

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Enhancing Critical Workforce Skills

Bluedrop’s experience and proven eLearning content development capabilities are foundational in supporting our customers’ upskilling & reskilling requirements, and in maximizing the power of the SkillsPass™ Integrated Skills Management Platform.

Whether for broad State/Province upskilling programs, or single use, rapid response training requirements for a specific industry requirement- we can deliver an online solution with proven effectiveness and verifiable training results.

EXPANSIVE

Bluedrop has developed and deployed eLearning training to support large and diverse upskilling and reskilling initiatives of governments and industries around the globe.

EXPERIENCED

Bluedrop has amassed a a vast library of proven and impactful eLearning courses. Specialization includes commercial truck driver training, workplace productivity, entrepreneurship and a host of regulatory inspired courses,

CONNECTED

The eLearning content solution combined with our SkillsPass ISM platform to help connect workers, employers, and related stakeholders. We also offer full execution support and program management including marketing, adoption, and customer support specialists that help drive successful uptake and results.

Our Solution – Multi-Stakeholder Benefits

Offers online training, certification, and credential management capabilities to support the transformation of broad-based upskilling/reskilling.

Is industry-agnostic, and is now securely deployed with governments, industry associations and employers around the world, with close to 3 Million users.

Enables the deployment of wide ranging course content options to support skill development including industry mandated, OH&S, and upskilling in those critical in-demand functions required in the new digital economy.

Provides partners with a digital, single line-of-sight into training results, credentials, and certifications at the industry through to the individual level.

SAFEGUARD

With security and support that safeguards our client investments in two key ways:

  1. Battle-Tested Solutions– Having met the highest levels of audit, scrutiny, and testing related to data security, privacy/consent legislation, and web content accessibility guidelines.
    • Our consent-driven architecture supports the latest regulations and best practices in data privacy/consent, security, accessibility. The platform is secure and audit-proof- with SOC 2 Type I Audit Certification, PCI standards compliance, adherence to all SaaS security and privacy requirements, and more.  
    • We are global leaders in this space. Over the past few years, we have been through 500 governmental client Threat Risk Assessments, passed 5 Provincial PIAs, launched with 8 governments and 5 regulators, been approved and deployed by the US state departments to deploy the solution in 30 Countries.  
  2. Full Delivery Support Options– Our experienced Adoption Services Group can help clients realize their objectives after launch. We help ensure that if you build it, they actually will come.
    • Our team has managed client training initiatives that have impacted millions of workers, and support training stakeholders (e.g., training partners and employers) to adopt solutions.
    • Our optional managed services range from supporting client adoption efforts to full outsourcing of the rollout and operation of training initiatives. For some of our clients, we actually operate their entire training solution, including:
      • Full onboarding and training for stakeholder groups (such as training partners or employers) 
      • Generating awareness, engaging with potential partners, performing system demos, signing on partners, etc.
      • Sales and Marketing– we staff account management and sales roles, complete marketing strategies, design and place advertising, and develop promotional materials.

DELIVER

Providing end-to-end training delivery and credential management for all training formats…

  • This can include virtual, online, in-person, and blended training. Core capabilities include:
    • Manage learning paths that can include combination of online, virtual and blended offerings
    • Manage prerequisite requirements 
    • Track microcredentials that can be combined to form a master credential
    • Allow clients to build their own online courses and assessments 
    • Provide bookmarking so that learners can complete training in multiple sessions 
  • We have a globally recognized team of Learning Design and Production experts that work with industry SMEs to produce online and blended courseware and microcredentials.  They can take a project from concept to finished product within a few weeks. 
  • Over the years we have also amassed a large library of specialized courseware to address stubborn or urgent skills gaps with almost immediate time-to-launch and value.

REIMAGINE

A seamless online training ecosystem connection for all stakeholders or partners…

  • Including governments, regulators, industry associations, unions, career centers, training providers, employers and more.
  • These cross-organizational and complex training situations would overwhelm an LMS. SkillsPass fixes that, with a robust suite of NexGen features and functionality including:
    • ONLINE TRAINING HUB– our embedded MarketPlusTM online training marketplace- allowing our clients to go beyond their own training offerings and consolidate external training sources, whether classroom, online, or virtual. 
    • UNIQUE ARCHITECTURE– Industry open architecture solution design that enables third party solution integration and the bringing together of key partners/systems and eliminating the siloed, restrictive nature of the traditional LMS.
    • TRAINING PARTNER INTEGRATION– Training partner enablement through unique storefronts to accept bookings, track attendance, and issue certificates working in concert with each client’s marketplace. APIs are also available for Training Partners with their own software.
    • DIGITAL WORKER PASSPORT– The industry-first SkillsPass Worker Passport, allowing end-users to access and share their validated credentials securely with employers and regulators (via QR code).
    • MULTI-LEVEL REPORTING– Robust reporting and insights at an employer and industry (client) level. Clients can provide a business account for each employer partner to allow them to track valid certificates, assign training, and see the final results and expiry notifications. The platform also generates valuable client insights about training completion at certificate, demographic, partner, industry, and regional levels.

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