Online vs. In-Person Bus Driver Training: Which is Right for You?

Effective bus driver training is the difference between growing your organization and suffering from cost of loss. It’s the difference between attracting more business and having a bad reputation. Most importantly, it’s the difference between your people making it home safely every night and someone losing their life.

With how much is on the line with safety training, you want to make sure you get it right.

Whether you’re trying to develop a training program from the ground up or make changes to something already in place, you’re asking an important question: is online or in-person bus driver training better?

The Difference Between Training & Education

Before we jump into the pros and cons of each training method, we need to define some terms. There are many things people in the transportation industry refer to as training that actually are not training at all.

When you hear training, you might think of activities such as employee orientation, safety meetings, and watching videos.

In the instructional design and employee learning industry, the word “training” only refers to hands-on practice. Training is how people learn the physical component of skills. It’s how your operators learn to perform a squared left turn, safely back the bus, and perform a pre-trip inspection. You cannot learn these things in their entirety just by sitting in a classroom or watching a video.

The other common forms of employee learning such as videos and presentations fall under the category of “education.” Education is how people learn important knowledge about their job, such as rules, regulations, and safe driving principles.

So before we continue, we should apologize for the misleading title of our blog. It is our opinion that online and in-person training are equally important to developing safe, professional operators. We’ll explain why.

The Pros & Cons of In-Person Training

As a bussing operation, it’s guaranteed that you do some form of in-person employee learning today. 

It could be in-person training in the form of closed course exercises, vehicle inspection practice, or behind the wheel coaching. You also might do in-person learning in the form of safety meetings, presentations, and new-hire orientation.

There are a several powerful benefits to in-person training:

• As stated earlier, without hands-on practice, people cannot learn to be safe drivers
• Covering important topics in-person shows employees that they should care about them
• In-person orientation connects employees to the company and reduces turnover
• Complex topics that employees are likely to have questions on are better handled in-person

With all that said, there is one significant draw-back to in-person training: the cost. In-person training involves the wages and salaries of employees being trained, the employees implementing the training, and the people scheduling it.

If you want to learn more about how much bus driver training costs, check out this article.

On top of the cost, in-person training is not flexible. You need to overcome scheduling conflicts, and if someone is sick or has an emergency, they will simply not receive the training.

Outsourcing your in-person training can relieve some of these issues. We recommend taking a look at LLLC Instructor Certification, our  world-class train-the-trainer program. We teach your instructors how to better develop safe, professional drivers and give them all the necessary tools to do so. They take what they learn from us and help you create a safety-centric culture where everyone is committed to reducing accidents.

The Pros & Cons of Online Training

Many bus fleets are moving their employee learning online, whether it’s video calls or courses hosted on a learning management system.

Let’s get the downside to online learning out of the way. People cannot learn safe driving skills from only watching videos. If you were to only implement online training, you would not see your accidents go down.

That being said, online learning can be extremely useful. First, it’s flexible. If you utilize a learning management system, your employees can access professionally-produced and highly effective courses anywhere and anytime.

Second, it saves you money. Removing the costs associated with having everyone in one place and at one time means you spend less on training overall.

That’s why best-in-class bus fleets supplement their in-person training with courses delivered over a learning management system. They cover topics such as:

• Company policies & procedures
• Company history
• Federal regulations
• Principles related to defensive driving
• Recurring education
• And much more

When you utilize online training in this way, it cuts down on your overall training time and budget without reducing your efficiency.

If you want to implement online training but don’t know where to start, check out The Bus Safety Course. You and everyone at your company will get unlimited access to a library with over 40 effective and engaging safety and defensive driving courses. Plus, it includes your own learning management.

Using an off-the-shelf program is a powerful way to get a consistent message on safety and defensive driving to your entire organization.

How to Develop a World-Class Training Program

If you want a world-class fleet full of safe, professional bus drivers, you need to utilize both online and in-person training.

Use in-person training to highlight how important certain topics are, and to build rapport with employees. And of course, no one can learn to be a defensive driver without hands-on practice.

Use online training as a supplement to cut down on costs, increase your program’s flexibility, and deliver a consistent message on safety across your entire organization.

Following these best practices means you’ll save much more in reduced cost of loss than you spend on training. Best of all, you can protect your people from fatal collisions.