The Department for International Trade streamlined and automated their onboarding process with Totara Learn

Department for International Trade (DIT) secures UK and global prosperity by promoting and financing international trade and investment, and championing free trade.

DIT is one of the newest government departments, founded in 2016 to broker foreign trade deals in light of the UK’s referendum vote to leave the EU.

DIT is an international economic department, responsible for:

• Bringing together policy, promotion and financial expertise to break down barriers to trade and investment and help businesses succeed
• Delivering a new trade policy framework for the UK as they leave the EU
• Promoting British trade and investment across the world
• Building the global appetite for British goods and services

The Challenge

As a new organization, DIT had to recruit, onboard and develop thousands of people in a very short space of time. They knew that having the right learning technology in place was key to meeting growth demands, and wanted to find a contemporary and dynamic partner that could innovate with them and breathe new life into their digital learning, processes and people development.

More specifically, they were looking to:

• Build a digital learning platform that would command respect from the organization, and be fit for purpose for global multilingual workforce from apprentices to senior leaders
• Re-engineer their onboarding processes, create bespoke learning pathways, and automate as many of their manual processes as possible
• Create centers of excellence around professions, and devolve ownership for learning content management to parts of the organization
• Create a digital learning strategy that would enable them to create a 21st century virtual learning environment
• Outsource much of the management of the LMS, including user support and configuration
• Make the system as user friendly as possible, and organize and assign a vast array of content

The Solution

After a competitive tending process, DIT selected Accipio as their partner and decided to invest in Totara Learn because it provided a future-proof and feature-rich base to innovate from.

They worked together to reimagine digital learning through a new Totara Learn platform and unlock the true potential of both the LMS and their people.

Key features of the project included:

• Automated end-to-end onboarding process (“One DIT Induction”) with different pathways and detailed real-time reporting
• Personalized and adaptive delivery for different types of users with structured learning pathways, dashboards and dynamic learner segmentation

• Gamification through leaderboards, points and other “sticky” features with incentives for learning and sharing (community points) through rewards and recognition (badges and certificates)
• A dynamic “discover page” with top-rated, new, featured, bookmarked and recommended content tailored for learners’ interests
• Social learning and the ability to access curated content and the digital learning marketplace, and make sense of Civil Service Learning
• An immersive course format, contemporary design and centers of excellence for each profession to manage

• A detailed plan with innovative features to make the most of Learning at Work Week
• Custom toolkits (e.g. world-class change management framework for different types of users involved in change a various levels)

• Single sign-on to improve access and remove the requirement for the learning team to create new user accounts
• A requirement to force users to update and maintain their own data to improve reporting and learning allocation
• Created features for senior leaders, including “Senior Leaders Live” (a content curation hub) and Senior Leaders Lounge (a social learning and discussion area)

The results

Over the last year, page views have almost doubled to over 560,000 per annum. Users have grown rapidly, increasing by almost two-thirds to just under 7,000 users in the last year, as the organization continues to make the platform the key enabler for learning across the business, especially in a post-pandemic world.

DIT were impressed with Accipio’s dynamic and innovative approach, and knowledge of how to get the most out of Totara and build a digital learning ecosystem.

Freedom to save

DIT saved considerable time through:

• Automated onboarding, learning assignment, user creation and content curation
• Improved data management and reporting
• Managing much of the end-to-end solution – including learning support – which has freed up in-house staff to focus on the business

FREEDOM TO LEARN

Users have the freedom to learn with:

• The most relevant content being presented to them via push and pull content
• Dynamic learning pathways and dashboards which change based on role, profession, directorate, level and interests
• Profession leads owning their content area, allowing them to release their latest insights to their colleagues

They had a successful Learning at Work Week with thousands of interactions, which made the most of bespoke features to direct learners to the latest relevant resources.

FREEDOM TO INNOVATE

Totara’s flexible open-source nature has allowed Accipio to develop innovative plugins to tailor the platform for DIT’s unique needs and create a well-received and credible 21st century learning environment, including LXP functionality for Totara with a discover page, recommendations, social learning, and gamification through leaderboards, points and other “sticky” features with incentives for learning and sharing through rewards and recognition.

FREEDOM OF CHOICE

DIT had made the most of the competitive partner network to ensure they have a brilliant system, at the right price with world-class responsive support. They are able to continue to test the market every two years in line with government procurement requirements.

“Being a global organization, the Department for International Trade (DIT) wanted to develop a 21st century onboarding process and an automated checklist to track who has completed what. We worked with the Accipio team to design and build a digital induction.

The key features included:
– a number of interactive and engaging e-learning modules
– an online learning environment that launched eModules and tracked learning
– tailored learning pathways for different types of employees (e.g. individuals, managers etc.)
– sophisticated reporting to enable HR to see who has completed what (checklist for each person)

A large percentage of the organization has now completed the new “One DIT” induction process. The feedback has been positive, the modules are easily navigated, and we are able to track completions.”