Elysium doubled traffic to their LMS with an extensive, innovative redesign

Elysium Healthcare launched in December 2016, bringing together strategic sites from Partnerships in Care and the Priory Group.  Further acquisitions enlarged the group which now has over 6,000 people offering Mental Health Care, Neurological Care, Learning Disabilities & Autism, Children’s Services and Private Patient Services.

Elysium brings together a unique approach to the delivery of care where the individual is embedded in the heart of all aspects of care. Together, with their stakeholders, they shape the care of today and the future. Their aim is to set new standards in the delivery of specialist care through their strategic network of sites which provides a complete pathway of care.

The Challenge

After joining Elysium in 2018, Suzanne Rosenberg, the Head of Learning and Development extensively redesigned Totara Learn with Totara Partner Chambury Learning Solutions because:

• The LMS was not being utilized anywhere near to its full capability
• The look and feel was outdated and did not reflect the Elysium brand
• The setup and navigation caused internal frustration and poor metric reporting
• The lack of visibility of the core learning offer was causing sites to constantly reinvent
• There was low flexibility to respond quickly to new regulations and service requirements
• The ROI was low with poor engagement in the technology

The commitment of the leadership team to development was evident, but the tools and processes to deliver it needed work.

As well as working with Chambury on the design elements, Elysium engaged Practical Change Partners to support them in building and delivering a new learning strategy, with Totara at the heart of their plans for a future-proof learning framework that would enable a one-stop shop for all things learning, development and careers.

The learning strategy focused on three things:

• Delivering compliance
• Enhancing skills
• Supporting careers

Elysium wanted a site that looked like them – reflecting the organization, its culture, its values, its amazing people and its commitment to career progression from within. The result is an engaging Totara Learning platform that employees can access at any time, from anywhere.

Alongside the system rebuild, and with the advent of COVID-19, existing face-to-face training like induction and overseas nurse training needed to be rebuilt overnight to enable virtual delivery, along with new training programs that had to be built to support changes in infection control protocols and the wearing of personal protective equipment (PPE).

“Elysium has always provided great opportunities for employees to advance their knowledge and develop their careers.  But with so many choices finding what fits and then making the right choice has not always been easy. Our Totara-based ‘My Elysium Learning’ [MEL] now delivers a “one-stop shop” with a structure and content that is inspiring – helping signpost employees so they are able to make the right choices for them.

The results speak for themselves with an uplift in employees doing formal qualifications of 68% in 12 months. We are now truly delivering on our vision to provide a career for life, not just a job for now.”

The Solution

Chambury Learning Solutions worked in partnership with Elysium and Practical Change Partners to deliver three things:

• Clean data feeds resulting in more effective statutory and mandatory reporting
• A new course catalog enabling employees to search by title, specialism and course type
• A new fully responsive, branded theme for learning that worked on all devices

The theme was designed to mirror Elysium’s internal systems and new employee branding so that staff felt they were learning in a fully integrated process.

To maximize the user experience the core navigation structure was designed to provide very simple, succinct menus through which staff could find exactly what they were looking for in a minimal amount of clicks.

Linked from the home page now sits brand-new menu structures that navigate staff to skills training, development programs and career pathways. By understanding and articulating the career paths of healthcare workers, nurses and leaders in Elysium the team were able to provide real life case studies, role profiles of jobs that might be the next step forward in career progression and capability frameworks to help people assess and evidence their current skill sets.

The benefit of using Totara Learn was that so much functionality existed that could be used to support the work.  For example:

• Collaboration tools – used to set up shared collaboration spaces for people at the same career step to share experiences, knowledge and support
• Dashboards with custom features were used to showcase and celebrate careers at Elysium in an effective way
• These dashboards guide and direct staff and provide clear guidance on learning and development to support career growth and development
• During 2020, with the COVID pandemic, the Totara system’s intuitive course-building tools and ease of updating system navigation provided ultimate flexibility for the learning and development team who were all relocated to working from home, to redesign, convert and deliver e-learning and virtual sessions to keep the business compliant and patients and staff safe.

The Results

Elysium set out to increase engagement with learning, development and careers, while reducing the cost to serve their sites.  Just one year after the launch, they have:

• Increased e-learning course options from 10 to over 100
• Promoted over 400 course opportunities on the new course catalogue which can be searched by title, specialism and type (i.e. blended, e-learning and face to face)
• Implemented and tailored Elysium online Care Certificate (foundational training for all care workers)
• Seen a significant increase in regional collaboration
• Won a number of awards including Best Dementia Training Initiative (National Dementia Awards) and Nursing Times Nursing Associate Trainee of the year 2020 (John Podmore)
• Finalist for the Internal Learning Solution of the Year award for our Overseas Nurses Development Program
• Run a number of successful recruitment campaigns based on development opportunities
• Implemented virtual classrooms to deliver induction and critical COVID-19 related training to sites nationally

By changing the way learning is designed, delivered and promoted nationally they have:

• Increased staff undertaking formal qualifications by 68%
• Increased traffic to My Elysium Learning by 99%
• Saved one FTE through increased self-service and reduced administration
• Increased staff retention levels

These statistics below demonstrate the level of increased engagement from employees to the newly designed Totara Learn based ‘MEL’ site, and the huge increase of use logins during 2020, even during the pandemic which ordinarily may have lessened engagement due to the increased requirements for direct patient care.

“Every time I show the new Totara-based MEL to teams across Elysium, I am overwhelmed by their positive response. We work really hard to hire great people and we genuinely want them to support them to build their career. The new Totara platform has helped us reach people and highlight what fabulous opportunities are available here, and I’m thrilled when I hear about their progression.”

The Future

With a solid framework underpinning the learning management system, Elysium are now planning for the future and further maximizing their return on investment in Totara. Their plans include:

• Implement Totara Perform for eAppraisals and 360 feedback
• Online supervision forms
• Study leave capture
• Enhanced reporting
• Customized themes based on the service that a staff member sits in; for example if they work in Elysium Neurology the theme will be different to staff working in mental health
• Enhanced leadership tools
• Manager workshops to develop skills in career conversations and raise awareness of opportunities
• Probation period-end workshops to raise awareness of development and career opportunities

“From apprenticeships to online learning, from leadership development to lectures by our amazing colleagues, from case studies of people who have walked the path, to resources to help you think about career direction… it’s all there in one place. The new MEL helps me inspire and develop my team, and helps my team lead their own career. From my own experience, feedback from staff on why they identify Elysium as an employer of choice is the access to Learning & Development and that this is a unique selling point (USP) for the organization, staff can see tangible benefits to remaining in our employ linked to career progression.”

“When I joined Elysium, I wouldn’t have had a clue where to start with growing my career. MEL is a one-stop shop for understanding career development opportunities. It provided the information I need for development conversations with my manager. I feel more positive now about my long-term future here. I feel that Elysium has helped me progress within my role and offered me all the help and support that I have needed over the years. I have been able to access many courses that usually wouldn’t be offered to healthcare workers. I feel that I have been given many opportunities over the eight years that I have worked for Elysium and also have more in the pipeline when COVID has disappeared.”