{"id":38612,"date":"2022-11-24T21:29:23","date_gmt":"2022-11-24T21:29:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/customer-stories\/catalyst-upskills-develops-and-supports-employees-with-totaras-talent-experience\/"},"modified":"2024-08-06T21:44:12","modified_gmt":"2024-08-06T21:44:12","slug":"catalyst-upskills-develops-and-supports-employees-with-totaras-talent-experience","status":"publish","type":"customer-story","link":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/us\/customer-stories\/catalyst-upskills-develops-and-supports-employees-with-totaras-talent-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Catalyst upskills, develops and supports employees with Totara\u2019s Talent Experience Platform"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Catalyst is a founding Totara Partner, specializing in developing, designing and supporting enterprise-grade open source solutions. They are strong advocates of open source technology, giving customers the freedom to innovate, and have a global presence spanning the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia and Canada.<\/p>\n

The Challenge<\/h3>\n

With a global, geographically dispersed team, Catalyst is always looking for ways to better connect its people. Much like the rest of the world, the global pandemic in 2020 led to Catalyst\u2019s team working remotely, which prompted the team to think innovatively about how they could better support their team throughout the pandemic and beyond.Catalyst had three main learning, engagement and performance challenges to tackle:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. How to better support new employees through remote onboarding<\/li>\n
  2. How to keep staff motivated without regular face-to-face contact<\/li>\n
  3. How to ensure staff are up to date on data protection and asset management policies<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The Solution<\/h3>\n

    As a founding Totara Partner, Catalyst\u2019s choice to use Totara\u2019s Talent Experience Platform was a no-brainer. Comprising learning management system (LMS) Totara Learn, learning experience platform (LXP) Totara Engage and performance management system Totara Perform, Totara\u2019s Talent Experience Platform<\/a> ticked all the boxes when it came to meeting Catalyst\u2019s talent experience needs.<\/p>\n

    Onboarding new starters<\/h3>\n

    To meet their need for engaging remote onboarding, Catalyst opted for Totara Learn\u2019s programs feature. This is configured to require a due date relative to when a new employee joins Catalyst, giving everyone time to complete their required onboarding with minimal manual intervention.\u00a0\"\"\u00a0Courses are then grouped into sets based on when they should be completed, ensuring content is drip-fed in sequence rather than being delivered all in one go, which can easily overwhelm a new employee. Courses include those welcoming new staff to Catalyst, information on remote working, introductions to key systems and the all-important information security certification. Line managers and the HR team have access to a report allowing them to monitor progress and intervene if necessary.<\/p>\n

    \u201cI was new to Totara when I joined Catalyst, so exploring its features while following my own induction program on the Catalyst learning platform was extremely useful for my future work as a developer.The system is clean and intuitive to use and courses are easy to follow. There\u2019s also a variety of tools to support professional development, such as competency assessment, goal setting and progress evaluation\/check-ins.\u201d- New employee, Catalyst IT EU<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Keeping staff motivated with continuous performance management<\/h3>\n

    Monthly check-ins are set up for all employees via Totara Perform. This is a monthly form asking questions on wellbeing and performance, along with requesting evidence of progress towards goals and competencies. These forms are also completed by an employee\u2019s line manager during arranged meetings, providing a digital record of what was discussed. These monthly meetings ensure that everyone has the opportunity for a structured discussion with their managers about their performance, and help to keep everyone motivated and on track.\u00a0\"\"\u00a0\u00a0Catalyst also took advantage of Totara Perform\u2019s competency frameworks. They underwent a competency mapping exercise with team leads and heads of departments to identify which skills and knowledge are required across the organization. The aim is for each individual role to have its own set of required competencies, as well as company-wide competencies that apply to everyone. Employees and managers can add extra competencies to their list to evidence further skills.\u00a0\"\"\u00a0Competency profiles and achievement pathways are used by employees, managers and the HR team to get a visual display of an employee\u2019s current proficiency level, which can also be used as a discussion point in monthly check-ins. Catalyst has applied its own internal \u201cmastery\u201d scale, ranging from \u201cNo experience yet\u201d to \u201cChampion,\u201d at which point employees are awarded a digital badge of recognition for that competency. All staff can rate themselves against this scale, with line managers reviewing the results during monthly check-ins (with the power to change them if necessary).<\/p>\n

    Information security certificatio<\/h3>\n

    Catalyst administers its crucial information security certification using Totara Learn\u2019s certification feature. Using this feature, Catalyst created a program of learning where learners\u2019 course completion data is \u201creset\u201d after a set period of time. This allows their Data Protection Officer to get an at-a-glance overview of the status of all staff via a custom report, which helps them complete compliance audits, and helps them maintain their ISO 27001 status.\u00a0\"\"\u00a011 months after completing the program, Totara sends each staff member (and their managers) a notification that their certification is due to expire, giving everyone time to complete their compliance training on time. This automates the annual compliance process and reduces the time spent chasing people to complete their training. All new employees have this certification built into their onboarding program, so their renewal date is relative to their start date.<\/p>\n

    \u201cWe have been able to deliver high-quality training in information security to all our staff, using content unique to Catalyst Europe, with just the right mixture of seriousness and humor, to ensure people engage with it. This content can be easily updated every time there is a change in policy and the announcement function (with the acknowledgement button) helps to promptly communicate changes to all staff.\u201d- Compliance and Process Manager, Catalyst IT EU<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    On top of their three key needs, Catalyst also implemented Totara Engage to support peer-to-peer learning. Staff are able to create their own resources, including links to interesting articles, notes from recent training courses, team discussions or event reports, which can be shared across the company. These resources are then \u201cdiscovered\u201d in the course catalog, with the most popular appearing on each learner\u2019s dashboard in the \u201cRecommended for you\u201d block.Additionally, some Catalyst teams use the workspaces feature in Totara Engage. One team uses a hidden workspace to collate notes on team progress during weekly meetings, but users can also hold discussions, upload documents and share resources publicly or privately, with a set audience.\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

    \u201cWe use workspaces for \u201cretros.\u201d In the retro, everyone answers three questions regarding the previous week: what went well, what didn\u2019t and what did you learn. We record the answers in the workspace so we have a historical record of them, enabling us to spot patterns, e.g. if something appears in the \u201cwhat didn\u2019t go well\u201d answer several times, we need to do something about it.\u201d- Team Lead, N7 Project Delivery Team, Catalyst IT EU<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    The Results<\/h3>\n