SHIFT supports 220+ clients with their multitenant LMS

SHIFT provides a comprehensive, customizable suite of interactive online HR compliance and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training programs to engage and enlighten employees about their responsibilities in the workplace and protect employers from exposure to legal risk. SHIFT’s training programs are tailored to an employer’s individual requirements to help companies create a better culture of ethical & professional behavior and diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in the workplace.

The Challenge

SHIFT had a huge amount of high-quality compliance training and DEI content developed in house for its corporate clients, but they had nowhere to host it. Many of SHIFT’s larger clients have their own LMS, but they quickly realized that many smaller clients, or those in sectors such as retail, don’t necessarily have an LMS of their own, so they couldn’t simply provide a SCORM file of any relevant training.

SHIFT needed a way to provide compliance courses to clients from their own centralized platform, for organizations in many sectors and of all sizes. On top of this, SHIFT wanted to give every client a “white-glove service” for customer retention, meaning they needed a high-quality LMS that would meet every client’s needs.

The Solution

SHIFT first approached Synegen back in March 2015, with a view to launching their first courses on the LMS in April 2015. Totara was quickly identified as the best LMS for the job, as it had the flexibility to be customized to SHIFT’s requirements, along with the scalability to grow alongside their client base.

Not everyone who accesses training through SHIFT is especially tech savvy, so it was vital that the LMS was streamlined and user friendly.

One of the most important elements of this project was Totara Learn’s multitenancy functionality. Synegen built SHIFT a customized enrollment portal to allow clients’ enrollment managers to manage their own audiences. As part of SHIFT’s white glove service, they like to conduct the first system walkthrough themselves as part of their “welcome kit.” SHIFT then purchases licenses for each course and assigns them in the system, as well as teaching clients how to access their reports.

Clients buy a number of “seats” for their organization, which can then be allocated to specific users at a later date. Clients don’t always know exactly who will be participating in each course, so it’s easier for them to allocate as they go rather than being forced to create specific user accounts upfront.

Audiences and hierarchies are heavily used throughout the LMS, allowing SHIFT to keep each client audience separate and create targeted reports based solely on the customers of each client organization.

The entire LMS is SHIFT branded, rather than being branded for each specific client, but the SCORM courses are branded per client.

Clients generally buy bundles of courses from SHIFT, but they can also add additional courses at a later date when needed. There are currently 354 unique courses set up on the LMS, covering topics such as preventing workplace harassment and discrimination, unconscious bias in the workplace, building an inclusive company culture, disability etiquette and tackling racism.

Reminder emails can be sent directly from the LMS to ensure that everyone stays on track with their compliance training. However, these emails are SHIFT branded, so SHIFT encourages clients to promote the LMS in their own internal communications to ensure that everyone knows what to expect.

The Result

There are currently 86,000 unique accounts across 221 client organizations, mostly representing SHIFT’s smaller clients who don’t have their own LMS.

Clients are very happy with how smooth and simple the LMS for their learners – especially as they don’t have to contend with a lot of unnecessary bells and whistles.

SHIFT’s LMS has grown massively since they started working with Synegen back in 2015 – they started off with a Totara subscription for just 500 users, and now they are rapidly approaching 100,000!

Next up, SHIFT would like to introduce an ecommerce option for very small clients. This will minimize SHIFT’s involvement in small projects, ensuring everyone can get started faster without adding extra strain to the SHIFT team. SHIFT will work with Synegen to determine the best course of action, whether this means integrating with an ecommerce platform or integrating ecommerce into the main LMS. With Totara, SHIFT has the flexibility to create the solution that best suits their needs.

“In my opinion, harassment training is all the same: boring and uninspired. However, after seeing this training program, I am thoroughly impressed. It’s current and engaging and nothing like what I’ve seen before.”
– Director of Strategic Alliances, Corporate Training Group, Inc.

“We had a great experience working with SHIFT. They took the time to understand our culture and were very responsive and flexible to make sure that the training met the needs of our organization, both e-learning and on-site. The feedback that we received about the live training from our senior leaders was very positive.”
– Executive Vice President & Chief Human Resource Officer, AMC Networks