VRT gives employees, freelancers and temporary staff control over their own learning

The Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroeporganisatie (Flemish Radio and Television Broadcasting Organization), or VRT, is the national public-service broadcaster for the Flemish Region and Community of Belgium.

The Challenge

Several years ago, the training and development team at VRT was very large. It produced a huge amount of traditional face-to-face training and learners (2,200+ employees and 1,000+ freelancers, temporary employees and interns) benefited from training on a wide variety of topics. A couple of years ago the training department was reduced and decided to bring more focus into the learning efforts across the organization.

They knew that they needed to bring structure with a more user-friendly solution and a way to guide people to the training that would match their development goals. They reached out to the market and decided to partner with Deloitte.

The Solution

After collaborating with their IT department to create a list of requirements for the new LMS, VRT went out to tender, and they selected Deloitte Learning Solutions’ Totara Learn recommendation as the best option. What set Deloitte’s approach apart from other vendors’ was the guarantee that they could tailor the platform to VRT’s specific needs, make it user friendly and offer a more personalized learning experience. VRT’s previous platform was too large, too difficult to use and didn’t have the flexibility required, and VRT liked that Totara Learn would allow them to offer self-service training without pushing everyone into a full-blown course – this was wasting a lot of time, especially when learners had relatively simple questions they needed answered.

VRT knew that their new LMS needed a “sexy front end,” and that an “ugly back end” mattered less, as the user experience was most important for this LMS. It also needed to be very visually appealing and fit in with the VRT brand, and had to be interactive to stimulate user engagement.

Deloitte Learning Solutions and VRT worked together to populate the LMS with content ranging from video tutorials, blogs and resources designed for self-service access. Initially, the LMS was set up to encourage employees to discuss their developmental goals with their managers before enrolling on training programs, whereas now much of the course enrollment process is automated, allowing learners to get started faster.

During the global pandemic, VRT started a pilot with the GoodHabitz content library, which they decided to continue using via a Totara Learn plugin. This ensures that learners have access to a one-stop shop learning platform, and adds to VRT-specific content with courses about topics such as time management and Microsoft Office, ensuring VRT’s training team can focus less on creating this training themselves, so GoodHabitz enables them to further support learners in these areas. Upgrading to Totara Learn 14 also enabled VRT to benefit from the enhanced catalog functionality so that learners can find internal development opportunities, GoodHabitz content and, in the near future, LinkedIn Learning content in the same place. This content can also be filtered to help match learners with the appropriate content, whether this is the type of learning or the amount of time required.

“We encourage people to first of all start a rich dialogue with their leaders so that they can agree on the development challenges for that individual, the team or department. Then we come in to help them find the right solution for their problem.”

The platform was set up to inspire employees, freelancers and temporary workers, with most content, which covers everything from technical training to soft skills, set up to be open and visible to everyone. VRT also made use of the language packs in Totara Learn to present both Dutch and English content.

The Results

VRT’s Totara Learn platform has proved hugely successful. The aim of the platform is to encourage everyone working at VRT to take responsibility for their own learning and development, as well as facilitating more learning. The platform is now open to the entire organization, including VRT’s 2,200 employees, 750 freelancers and 250 other external employees.

Part of the success of VRT’s LMS project can be attributed to their internal communications around the platform. They created a brochure (above) outlining the new, important topics covered on the LMS, such as podcasting, fake news and storytelling. QR codes take learners directly to the relevant content on the LMS, creating a powerful link between the online and offline worlds.

The ongoing aim for the LMS is to continue to support valuable conversations around employee development, alongside a user-friendly online offering for day-to-day improvement of professional and personal skills for all. Like all organizations, VRT doesn’t have the budget or capacity to offer everyone everything, so maintaining good conversations around what’s new in the media and what training and skills might be required to stay ahead is key.

VRT is delighted with their partnership with Deloitte Learning Solutions. They have experienced great co-creation, with the talent and development team and IT teams working together with Deloitte to develop the right solution. VRT also appreciates that Deloitte were willing to challenge them based on their wealth of experience with other Totara customers, helping VRT realize their overall vision and mission of building a user-friendly, flexible, self-service learning platform for use across the organization.

“More than 3 years after first launch, we are still very happy with the co-creation of our LMS between Deloitte and several departments within our own company. The recent technical update of the platform was combined in a very smooth way with our need to update our learning focus and look and feel. For us it is still the best possible user-friendly and VRT-branded platform we could have fitting with the organization and learning strategy.”