Personnel Today Awards 2023 shortlist: L&D Supplier of the Year

We continue our series profiling the Personnel Today Awards 2023 finalists with a closer look at the companies shortlisted for L&D Supplier of the Year. 

Development Beyond Learning

Graduate development specialist Development Beyond Learning uses behavioural science to future-proof businesses and people. It focuses on pre-boarding and onboarding interns, graduates and new managers.

Since 2018 it has partnered with Jardine Matheson, a company that runs the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group and has a broad portfolio of retail, motoring and hospitality businesses in China and Southwest Asia. It needed to reimagine and improve its Jardine Executive Trainee (JET) three-year learning programme, to build a pipeline of future leaders and reskill and upskill employees for the future of work.

Jardine Matheson’s head of early career talent and DBL’s chief talent and learning officer worked together to develop the new programme, looking at recruitment and evaluation data and inviting previous JETs to focus groups. A significant part of the project involved building a general manager route, and a new recruitment process. They also developed a success profile and critical experience framework to ensure trainees and those who supported them were clear about what success looked like.

The programme was moved online during the Covid-19 pandemic, until in-person learning returned in 2023.

Retention at year three of the programme has grown from 61% to 83%, which is higher than the Institute of Student Employers’ benchmark. Over the past three years more than 28,000 applications have been received for the JET programme, with an offer ratio of 580 candidates per hire.

Fuel Learning

Network Rail chose Fuel Learning to redesign and expand its Accelerated Leaders Programme, which previously only catered for executive and senior leaders. This resulted in the creation of an Emerging Leaders Programme, which complements the ALP and prepares people at every level to become future leaders.

Many of Network Rail’s target audience had not experienced structured training before; many were very competent in technical skills, but not in other more ‘human’ areas. Therefore, the ELP offers a varied progamme of learning spanning 12 months, featuring immersive workshops, coaching, transformational presentation skills training, academic lectures, group mentoring and more. Each module involves theory, but some also include the opportunity to live role-play scenarios, work with senior managers to devise solutions to real-world scenarios, learn from external guest speakers, and take part in charity projects to make an impact that would not normally be possible in their usual roles.

Between 2019 and 2022, 44% of candidates who applied for the ELP were promoted within a year. More than 1,200 applied to join the first cohort which offered 60 places. Of the successful candidates 45% are women and 12% are from an ethnic minority group.

All applicants receive professional coaching, regardless of whether they are accepted onto the programme or not.

Huler

Huler aims to put individuals at the heart of the digital learning it provides and seeks to truly understand the needs of its clients and people to create personalised solutions.

Working with wealth management company St James’s Place, it created a bespoke learning platform to boost learner engagement while they worked remotely. The platform needed to engage all employees, from apprentices to senior executives, and help develop a range of skill sets.

It created SJP House, an end-to-end learning platform that blended cutting-edge tech with real-life scenarios. It acts as a hub for all of its learning content and can be accessed from any device, integrating with virtual reality content and mixed media. In-app analytics allow admins to track learners’ progress, and there is an examination area where learners can demonstrate their competence. Learners may also accumulate CPD to use as evidence for regulators.

Huler seeks to continually improve SJP House and has recently added podcasts as another learning format, a new mentoring area, a social feed with reaction and comment features to boost learner engagement, and improved search functionality and integration with other learning platforms.

Four in five employees are enrolled with the SJP House app and learners have received almost 2,500 accreditations for exams.

Management Dynamics Global

Launched in 2016, Management Dynamics Global harnesses over 25 years of HR expertise to drive results for brands such as Pandora, PepsiCo and NATO.

In 2021 it started working with Northern Ireland-based medical equipment provider Eakin on a learning solution that would boost its leadership pipeline, improve talent acquisition and retain staff. As a family-run business that shifted to a professionally-led organisation, Eakin’s big challenge was a lack of experience in developing leadership competencies.

Working with Eakin’s global head of HR and talent manager, Management Dynamics Global helped develop the Leadership Development Inspiring Excellence (LDIE) programme, which uses the Myers Briggs Type personality indicator and the Korn Ferry 360-degree performance assessment to identify areas of development. It also used Advantycs, MDG’s framework and toolkit, to measure and manage Eakin’s teamwork.

LDIE helps learners practice leadership qualities, understand the impact of personality and how to flex for effective relationships, develop and sustain a high-performing team, lead change, and to communicate and influence effectively, among other outcomes. It has six impactful modules with over 280 hours of blended learning.

LDIE has helped dramatically improve scores around reslience, communication and instilling trust. Eakin employees loved the programme, with post-module feedback showing high scores around content, performance of workshop facilitators and workshop impact on development objectives.

Purple Story

Purple Story was founded in 2018 by Karen Turton, who left the hospitality sector after becoming frustrated by the fact that organisations seemed to be training their people in the same way as they were 30 years ago. Determined to change this, she launched the company in order to help clients empower and equip their teams for success.

Purple Story creates bespoke in-person or virtual learning programmes for each client. Its modules and methods can be adapted to suit any group size, and aims to support maximum engagement across different learning styles, behavioural preferences and accessibility needs. Its programmes include an interactive and fun leadership development programme lasting up to two years, a ‘Tackling the Great Resignation’ course that teaches clients how to adapt their leadership style to get the most from their team and how to reduce new-starter resignations, and programmes that bridge the gap between the tech businesses invest in and the people who need to use it.

Clients can create and share interactive learning programmes in bitesize videos via its innovative online knowledge sharing platform. Alumni are also able to join the platform to network and share success stories or challenges.

The start-up business delivered more than 100 sessions to an estimated 1,000 delegates between January and April 2023. It has increased headcount and invests in individual’s professional development and promotes flexible working. Organisations that have worked with Purple Story include Care UK, Parkdean Resorts and Leon.

Resilience Development Co.

The Resilience Development Co.’s programmes seek to equip employees with preventative and proactive mental, emotional and social skills.

One client the company worked with wanted a programme that would develop personal resilience, support employees through a period of significant change, and help ensure that the pressure workers came under did not negatively affect team wellbeing and performance. It used its FLOWS methodology to give the client’s employees the skills, tools and common language to think, feel and communicate better, while embedding a culture of productivity over burnout.

Over two years it delivered two phases of training to more than 300 staff. The programme consisted of weekly online learning sessions, a profile exploring learners’ values and strengths, an interactive workbook, the development of resilience champions, and twice-weekly email reminders encouraging learners to make habits of the skills they acquired.

The client saw a 6.6% increase in productivity and 66% of the team were placed in the ‘thriving’ category, compared with 49% before the programme. Retention has also improved, with 11% who were thinking of leaving the organisation now deciding to stay in their jobs ROI was estimated to £6.91 for every £1 spent.

Skillsoft

Skillsoft provides more than 180,000 learning assets designed to overcome critical skill gaps delivered through Percipio, its AI-driven immersive learning platform.

Since 2022 the platform has delivered skill benchmark assessments that enable organisations to determine their learners’ proficiency across the most in-demand technologies, and in areas including leadership and other business skills. It offers personalised development paths, and admins and managers can view individuals’ scores so that suitable assignments can be set.

Percipio also offers career journeys, a series of career-centric learning programmes that blend live, on-demand and collaborative learning programmes. For example, Skillsoft’s Cybersecurity Career Journey blends 900 hours of on-demand content, 300 hours of hands-on labs, 100 practice exams, and 99 days of instructor-led training, all mapping to more than 20 in-demand IT certifications.  A ChatGPT learning journey is also available, helping organisations to develop the skills needed to use the platform ethically and productively.

Skillsoft’s consultants get to know customers’ businesses to help them implement learning programmes that work for their organisation. Support is available 24/7.

One client said Skillsoft has helped it significantly reduce demand for face-to-face training sessions, saving it approximately £130,000 per year.

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