Brunel empowers employee autonomy with a personalized learning experience

Brunel is an international agency specialized in project management, recruitment and consultancy. Training and learning have played a central role at the company for many years.

Brunel has always invested in training talent, it’s in the company’s DNA. Traditionally this was done through classroom training. Until a few years ago, Brunel had little experience with digital learning solutions, but saw potential and became increasingly curious about what it could mean for them, especially in relation to their successful classroom training.

One of Brunel’s wishes was to make the logistical and administrative process around classroom training more efficient. They also wanted to get more out of the classroom sessions; for example by having the main preparations for classroom sessions taking place digitally.

The Solution

Since 1975, they have grown into a global service provider with over 14,000 employees in 35 countries. How do you ensure that you retain the experts in your organization?

Brunel solves this with a unique learning management system called BeSmart.

Totara Learn offers Brunel the outcome in the field of learning and development. In the upgrade Brunel has put their employees first. Brunel has developed a customized solution so that the design gives the employee an even better overview of which learning interventions they are currently working on.

All employees now have a personalized homepage with their own to-do list showing which courses they still have to take. It’s very easy for employees to search, find and register for courses.

It is a big advantage that you can do everything in one system. The reporting possibilities are very nice for management, it really is a learning management system. You can get so much data out of it and analyze it.

The Results

As an employer, Brunel believes it is important to invest in employee development. That is why they find digital learning very important.

Digital learning enables them to remotely reach their employees with personal, interesting and relevant information to be a better and stronger employer. They want to expand the LMS and use it for all employees in the Netherlands and, in time, for all employees worldwide.

Patrick Kostwinder, Lead Digital Learning Innovation at Brunel commented:

“We now realise that Totara Learn as our LMS has been a great choice. Visually and in terms of possibilities it’s a great step forward for the employees. In the new version, our L&D specialists can now easily set up courses for our people themselves, which is a big plus.”

Since then, the digital learning innovation has been growing. Recently Brunel upgraded to the latest version of Totara Learn and rediscovered the system.

“My role is to ensure that the learning innovations can make an important contribution to the development of our people. At the moment there are several projects running to place even more content and to set up different programs for multiple target groups.”

“I think the partnership with The Courseware Company deserves a compliment. We work with a dedicated consultant who knows us and knows our way of thinking. Our consultant grow along with where Brunel is and that is very valuable. We find it an added value that they have a help desk that can do substantive things and handle difficult questions. They also offer training that my colleagues gratefully use. They stimulate us to broaden our view for what else is possible, such as during the Learning Labs. A lot of companies call themselves partners, but I really experience this with The Courseware Company. We celebrate successes together and we manage to bite through the difficult parts together. They go the extra mile when things get harder.”

We’re continuously expanding what we can do with Totara Learn. It’s really taken off. The ability to be a good employer has improved substantively. We work top talent in the market and people who are intrinsically motivated to develop. As an employer you want to stimulate and facilitate that.