From Zero to Hero: DHSC achieves 60% compliance in just 6 weeks with Totara Learn

Within 6 weeks, DHSC went from having no platform for learning and development to having a world–class live platform – that supports the full employee lifecycle – with over 60% of the organisation compliant with mandatory training.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is the division of the government responsibly for policy on health and adult social care matters in England, alongside some parts of the same matters which are not delegated to the other governing bodies of the UK. Its policies are intended to improve quality of care and to help meet patient expectations. It therefore also oversees the English National Health Service (NHS).

The Challenge

Without a learning platform, the DHSC’s learning was fragmented and tracked offline, the process itself was dated and time–consuming. They required compliance content to be tracked more effectively and for reporting to be improved and more readily available. They therefore approached Totara partner Accipio to design and customise a learning platform for them. They had bold ambitions to transform learning and support the employee lifecycle across the organisation and wanted to do so as quickly as possible (within weeks).

The Solution

Accipio rapidly designed and deployed a Totara site within just 6 weeks. It provides an innovative and engaging platform to support employees with their learning and development throughout the full employee lifecycle, from onboarding to becoming a star performer.

Key features include:

• Full–onboarding with the ability to track and report on who has completed
  compliance training
• Diagnostics that allow users to reflect on their performance and self–assess against the Civil Service Behaviours framework, receive feedback from others and have this presented in a glossy downloadable report for further discussions with their line manager
• Specific areas for job families and professions to grow deeper pools of knowledge and skills, and we are currently using the platform to undertake a “skills audit” across the organisation to identify gaps and recommend content and people to support
• Allowing users to receive personalised recommended content based on their profile and activity, and save and rate content.

The Results

Within 6 weeks, the organisation went from having no platform for learning and development to having a world–class live platform with over 60% of the organisation compliant with mandatory training. The site allows managers to easily see where the gaps are in their compliance training requirements.

The innovative site with over 100 courses and 5,000 users has transformed learning within the organisation, with a modern, efficient interface that matches the DHSC’s bold ambitions.

Career development paths and diagnostics are mapped to job families and professions enabling people to become star performers through the development of targeted knowledge, skills and behaviours. People are able to reflect on their own performance in terms of ‘how’ they deliver and identify strengths and areas for growth.

A platform–based skills audit is also enabling the organisation to see where gaps exist, and take action to plug gaps to lift organisational performance.

The platform has had hugely positive feedback. Learners particularly like the clean design, which allows them to quickly locate whatever they need with personalised recommendations.

“I cannot fault the service Accipio have delivered for us. We needed swift delivery, and the team flexed their standard approach to enable this to happen in much shorter timeframes than they would typically see for a project like this. From project implementation to BAU delivery, we have been fully supported in building our site, making tweaks and improvements, and innovating, and we’re now delighted with the product we’ve been able to develop for the organisation. Particularly impressed by rapid response times!”

– Dani Joseph, Capability Lead