Foreword Tepe Defence, since the day it was founded as a Service, Security and BCC Catering service group, has embraced a stand which is innovative, disciplined, values training, is compliant with ethical values and legal regulations, hard-working and respectful of the society and it has made an effort to continue its activities within the framework of these values. The focus of our activities is service to people. This is a huge responsibility for us. Therefore, providing security to institutions and business, providing cleaning services, providing residence and workplace alarm services and providing catering services require us to keep the quality of our services always at the highest level. In this context; one of the most important issues of our company in order to maintain this standard is to continuously improve our understanding of education, and ensure the continuity of national and international quality standards. The experiences we have gained until today and our values will guide us in our future work. I am of the firm conviction that our colleagues who have brought us to our position today will take the most advanced training, continuing the values we uphold without compromising and the successes we have been proud of. Tepe Academy; Tepe Defence and Security Systems Inc. is among the leading companies in the security sector with its 25 years' of experience and 12.700 employees. We observe that in 2017 the accelerating growth of our group companies continues. While continuing our steady growth the number of our employees has also increased; the total employee number of TEPE DEFENCE AND SECURITY, TEPE SERVICE, TEPE SECURITY, BCC, TEPE OSGB companies within the scope of Service Group Directorate as assets of BILKENT HOLDING COMPANY is 25 thousand and the growth continues today as well. This growth was also reflected in the training. As the number of our employees increased, we have given impetus to our training and substructure efforts in order to make our employees more qualified. At this point we basically realized the Tepe Academy project. We started to apply this goal that we set in the past in serious manner in 2016 at our TEPE DEFENCE AND SECURITY company and we gathered all our training programs under the umbrella of Tepe Academy, beginning to offer training to all our companies, even to other companies of our holding company. We have produced nearly 200 online training. We have added into this structure not only technical and professional training, but also personal development training as well. We have also made use of the catalogue e-training that our solution partner, Infinity company, produced. For instance we presented a plaquet, in the company of our general manager, to a security staff who completed more than 200 training program in three months; we have experienced many great stories like this example that make our employees proud. We started to use trainings as a measurement tool for career planning and promotion. Therefore it started to effect the talent management in a positive way as well. With Tepe Academy, we have decided to pursue not only web-based trainings but also mobile trainings which are a must in our era, in order to distribute the system evenly to all of our employees. After the pilot studies, we have published the mobile app of Tepe Academy. Starting from our basic trainings, we made mobile access to all kinds of trainings possible. We have created a mixed training model, linking the digital trainings with the class trainings. Because one of our greatest challenges is the necessity to offer trainings in nearly all cities of Turkey. Even though we used to send away our teachers, there could be a problem of standards. We have solved this problem with the mixed trainings. In sum, 2017 has been a year when we started to experience the results of all of this. Now we've moved almost 50 percent of our training programs to digital platforms. Moreover this has been a year when all the issues other than Tepe Academy were settled. You may think this is very critical at a business with the yearly turn-over rate reaching 35% at some of the companies of our holding company.
What are the advantages of E-Learning?
Tepe Academy saves time and space in training-related process with the e-learning application. In addition, it helps employees use their time more effectively. Thanks to Tepe Academy, pre-determined training subjects could be given online to the registered users within a plan. Users or employees, from anywhere with internet access, including mobile devices, can access their assigned training and receive training.
With what subjects is the project original and what kind of innovative approach is there?
It affords the opportunity to plan easily and effortlessly a process which requires organization and planning across the country. It eliminates the necessity of bringing the employees together for the purposes of training. It enables the direct transmission of the determined trainings to the participant, the extensification of training programs and increasing access by more employees. With this project it will be possible to offer training to all employees spending only 10% of the budget allotted to the organized education.
What are the concrete and measurable gains of e-learning?