EasyJet innovate and improve their online learning academy and completely transform their learning culture

easyJet is the UK’s largest airline. As a multinational low-cost airline group, easyJet operates domestic and international scheduled services on 927 routes in more than 34 countries, via its affiliate airlines EasyJet UK, EasyJet Switzerland, and EasyJet Europe.

The Challenge

Building a culture of learning with innovation, technology, and creativity

easyJet is passionate about building skills that are accessible and transferable to help empower staff for future roles. Employing over 13000 staff, compliance training is always top of mind, but to build a true learning culture easyJet understood the importance of creating an engaging and impactful environment as the backbone of their learning. There was a clear need to grow skills across the business and adopt new ways to deliver learning that supported hybrid working.

Although their existing Totara Learn platform Online Learning Academy (OLA) was robust and created a good foundation for compliance training, it was outdated, (Totara version 2.7) and had been left to languish with little or no maintenance. This resulted in drop-offs in use and engagement as users became stuck in a rut and no longer explored the system for learning.

Almost all training was done face-to-face which meant reporting was disjointed and didn’t offer deeper insights to understand if training had actually worked. HR and performance development systems worked in silos which left  gaps in the learning cycle.

The LMS also lacked capabilities that help personalise and streamline training, offering limited customisation and versatility which led to a poor user experience and low adoption.

But the challenge wasn’t limited to just the platform: easyJet needed to do a complete overhaul of their learning content, to ensure all learning was relevant, personal, and impactful.

To close the skills gaps and provide a first-class learning journey, they needed to completely transform their learning environment and learning value proposition. They wanted staff to be immersed in a full easyJet experience, making learning fun and engaging and building a personality through strong brand identity and storytelling.

To achieve this goal they needed more than just an LMS to capture and deliver learning. Their new learning platform needed to be agile and have the ability to integrate and grow with their skills demands. Understanding what the business needs and supporting them with the right learning to get them there. This would include embedding both technical and personal skills.

The refreshed platform would support the ethos of ‘Explore, Learn, Grow’ and aim to embed a learning culture that empowered, developed, and retained staff, particularly during the pandemic when many roles were displaced, making skills transferable and ensuring development and growth during and after the crisis.

In early 2022 easyJet took on the mammoth task to completely revolutionise their learning environment and provide a first-class learning and development destination for their staff, and they chose Kineo as their learning partner to co-pilot with them in their learning journey.

The Solution

The solution was a collaboration and partnership between easyJet and Kineo to create a perfectly blended learning experience that was engaging and versatile. The solution comprised of 5 key objectives:

• Upgrade and enhance their learning environment with a full learning experience suite that gave them the ability to expand and enhance their learning experience and performance in one platform
• Relaunch OLA with a strong brand identity that builds on the ethos of Explore, Learn, Grow
• Revitalise learning content to be accessible, engaging, relevant and dynamic
• Integrate learning into the flow of work and create a push-pull learning culture
• Remove any unnecessary customisations and unused features to deliver a cleaner user experience and a platform that is easier to maintain.

A fully inclusive blended learning approach

Launched shortly after Covid hit, easyJet were able to support staff like never before. New learning was available to everyone and focused on empowering staff through change and hybrid working and allowed them to develop new skills which could be transferred to other parts of the business.

To kick start the project, easyJet did a full overhaul and refresh of all learning content including libraries, courses, and programs, removing duplication and outdated content and reviving content to align with a variety of delivery types such as eLearning and blended learning.

easyJet took full advantage of the rich features and capabilities available on Totara to ignite their blended learning approach, integrating a variety of learning approaches to create an always-on, engaging experience for staff. This includes e-learning, Virtual Instructor-led training (a suite of structured programmes called Flight Paths), and off-the-shelf learning including several project management & agile certifications that are all e-learning driven and accredited by APMG. This empowered admin users to explore and build learning that people loved. Furthermore, easyJet have added 10 new courses in the MS Office suite, enabling people to enhance their digital literacy such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel, teams and more. This has proved to be an incredibly popular addition.

With a revitalised catalogue of learning, easyJet was able to focus on building more learning that filled the needs of the business by empowering people with skills they need for future roles. easyJet embedded certification courses into OLA that focus on improving managerial, technical, and soft skills. A full content review also allowed L&D teams to build out their roadmap for what learning is most needed and where learners want to develop.

Aligning learning content to performance development and HR process and platforms through Totara’s integration with the People Development hub allowed easyJet to create an uninterrupted journey from performance review to continuous development, called ‘My Journey’. This assisted in building a culture of continuous learning and development all in one place. To support this further they incorporated Totara’s playlists that aid different themes of learning and support staff at key times of the year, such as year-end assessments and how to create a successful year-end review. This was launched in February 2023 and has already been accessed by 65 people.

Integrations that create a seamless user experience

All roads lead to OLA. For the new OLA to drive a deeper behavioural change it had to become the source of truth for learning and be centred around creating an immersive, streamlined experience for users. Just as importantly the system needed to be less manually intensive for admin users.

Totara’s APIs allowed easyJet to integrate its business tools into OLA to create an uninterrupted experience for users.

Integrating Microsoft teams into OLA allowed users to go from the OLA environment straight into seminars and meetings, providing a seamless journey between programs. This had a dramatic effect on seminar uptake, more than doubling attendance rates since the launch. This also had a knock-on effect for admin users who saw a large reduction in manual reporting and were able to gain more time back to spend on improving learning.

Workday and other integrations such as their People Development Hub mean that all learning directs to and is delivered through OLA, making OLA the source of truth. This is especially important for compliance training that is delivered across the entire business and is the key to keeping easyJet legal and ethical and ultimately in the air.

Managers and employees can now intertwine new learning into their performance reviews and KPIs, through the integration of their people development hub, essentially closing the loop to continuous skills development.

easyJet understood the struggle of motivating staff and encouraging them to engage and adopt learning into their busy schedules, so the goal was to make learning easy to find and provide a rich brand-led and engaging experience. To do this, easyJet utilised Totara’s robust tagging capabilities and rich metadata to create a hierarchy of data that aids the automation of assigning learning, making it intuitive and personalised to the learner and supporting a variety of audiences and roles.

The advanced tagging tool also empowers learners to explore and find the learning they want easily. Pre-course work is loaded onto the page so they know what they can expect and can refer back to it to enhance learning. Further to this the feedback tool means all data is captured in one place and makes it simple and easy for learners to contribute.

One of the key advantages of the Totara Kineo Edition is that the platform is a fully integrated one-stop experience. This allows customers to switch on Totara Engage at a click of a button and begin integrating the rich social features that give learning flight.

Building reporting with future skills in mind

Totara’s reporting and integrations into other platforms gave the L&D team more visibility into performance. Managers can also have more meaningful conversations and improve and support staff through their careers with training. Skills assessments support this roadmap and allow teams to understand learners’ skills status better and see if training had embedded the skills necessary.

With new reporting capabilities easyJet continue to improve by being an early adopter of Kineo Analytics, built into their experience platform. Analytics will help easyJet to gain deeper insight into learning, from course completions to time to competence and more. This insight will be hugely beneficial in creating the roadmap to building future skills, really putting L&D back at the head of the table.

Results

With Totara Kineo Edition, easyJet was able to revitalise their learning offer and enable the OLA to become the destination for all learning. The improvements to the overall user experience, core features, and the restructuring of content has transformed the culture of learning in the business

The learning suite has evolved dramatically through simplification and better data management creating a more effective user experience that enables easyJet to target and personalise learning. The OLA allows learners to take control of their learning and certifications with ease.

Admins have also felt the benefits, with a massive reduction in manual support needed. This has enabled them to spend less time on manual work and more time on the learning. This is seen in several ways:

• Single sign-on has reduced the number of queries coming in from employees with forgotten passwords and has eliminated the need for manual support
• The workday integration has eliminated the need to manually add employees/contractors to the OLA
• Adding courses and inviting employees is quick and easy, course categories have been simplified and manual calendar invites are now automated saving a lot of time and eliminating the need to manually invite employees and update rooms/details etc
• Courses are also clearly identified with an owner which allows for a higher standard of quality control and easy updating.

Since easyJet launched their performance management e-learning experience ‘My Journey’ in February 2023, 65 people have already accessed it, with more joining daily. Seminar attendance rates have more than doubled since launching, going from 7102 completions between July 21 – March 23 to 15492 completions between July 22 to March 23. Compliance completion rates have increased from 91% in 2022 to 93% in 2023.

easyJet’s new ‘flight paths’ were very well received and got extremely high scores for learner satisfaction. 100% of learners rated it as very useful. Further to this 92% of learners are very likely to recommend and 8% likely to recommend. eLearning course completions also continued to soar from 7102 completions pre-launch to 45292 post-launch. Because of the huge success of OLA, the demand for learning from the business has increased significantly with requests for new agile content and Microsoft eLearning. This was made available and ‘sold out’ in one week. Due to the demand more courses have been added.