Our Partnership with The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
We spoke to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea's Head of Digital Inclusion and Behaviours, Timothy Ellis, about their partnership with Learning People.
75% employee registration
RBKC saw 75% of their employees actively engage with our Percipio learning platform
Loved by all levels of tech abilities
RKBC have seen team members of all technical abilities use the learning platform to master fundamentals and explore advanced skills in the virtual learning labs
Learning People (LP): Who are you and where do you work?
Timothy Ellis (TE): I'm Timothy Ellis. I'm the Head of Digital Inclusion and Behaviours for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and my job includes helping residents and the population to get online. But also some other responsibilities, which include learning and development for the IT department and the gap in training that we had and how Percipio fills that.
As a local authority IT department in an increasingly sort of cash strained environment, we've got a really wide range of learning requirements, particularly technical learning requirements. Some of those quite deep technical learning requirements include people needing to equip themselves with skills in relation to cyber security and software development, as well as less technology-related things like project management and general learning and development.
So, we've got a huge range of learning needs, and there's no way our internal corporate learning and development offer could meet the needs of an IT department. So we've identified the need to have a really top-class learning portal that's available to all of our staff. So we purchase licenses for every member of the IT team, and Percipio is the platform that we've chosen, and it fills that need perfectly.
LP: What's the value that you've seen with training your staff with Percipio?
TE: We're used to using a learning portal, and Percipio was chosen as our sole portal in September of this year. We've seen the value with lots and lots of staff signing up very quickly. I can't remember exactly, but maybe 75 to 80% of staff have already signed up to the portal and started using it, and the feedback that we've had has been very positive, as people have found it easy to use. We've shared with people the link to and the information about how they sign up and use it as a mobile app. And we know that some people really value learning in that way, and we know from some of our more technical staff that they really value things like the Learning Lab that allow them to try out their new technology skills in a safe environment.
"We've seen the value with lots and lots of staff signing up very quickly. I can't remember exactly, but maybe 75 to 80% of staff have already signed up to the portal and started using it, and the feedback that we've had has been very positive, as people have found it easy to use."
LP: Why did you choose Percipio and Learning People over other platforms?
TE: We went through a full procurement exercise between July and September. Following the council's procurement policy, we identified three different platforms, including Percipio and did a structured comparison. We got it down to a final two, of which Percipio were one and [we] had interviews where we explored in more depth. The quality of the offer and the different learning modes that were involved, and in that process, we involved senior managers, two of the members of the IT leadership team and also two of our more technical colleagues, one a software developer, the other a data scientist, and we really put the platforms through their paces. So we looked in detail at the different learning offers that were available in those in those particular domains and yeah carried out a a a comparison and the the reason why Percipio was that was our pref was our preferred platform and it was it was. It was close, but ultimately very clear that Percipio, clear and unanimous from the panel of the four of us, that Percipio was the strongest of the platforms, was the quality of the curation and the quality of the learning offer from. So there was a more limited number of courses, but the fact that we felt confident in the quality of all of those courses, and probably the biggest winning factor was the learner experience. So the fact that with Percipio, there was a whole range of different learning options from videos to books to courses, but the interactive features, things like the tests, so one could check one's level. Test where one's weaknesses and strengths were, and then have learning focused on that. And for the for our technical colleagues, the clincher was the ability to try out the new technology skills in a safe learning lab environment. So they. I felt that that was really a clear clincher. I remember one of them saying I wish that this had been the platform that we'd had for a long time now and then the final reason. So Percipio was the was the was the clear winner.
On quality, also, I should shouldn't forget that the quality of the relationship management support which we'd experienced because we'd been a customer of Percipio and another learning platform for some time, but the quality of the of the the, the relationship management was higher. So we felt very confident to invite Ryan to talk to managers and to the wider organisation, and felt that there's been a real kind of continuity but also a real sense that Ryan and Percipio understand our requirements as an organisation and are able to help us get the most out of the platform. And then the final reason was cost. So as well as winning on quality and the relationship management, Percipio was was was was actually less expensive than the other learning portals.
LP: How has Percipio met your learning and development needs, and would you recommend it to others?
TE: I think I've covered a lot of that. It's not disappointed as we're very happy that we've made that choice, and yeah, we've also started to work, although it's early days, with our managers to introduce them to the functionality that allows them to. To assign learning and development to their members of staff, and we'll continue to raise awareness of it and promote it. And yeah, I would most definitely recommend Percipio and the learning platform to others.
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