How Catalyst IT utilises Totara Talent XP to create a sense of community for its remote workforce with strong employee onboarding and development

Catalyst IT Europe is the European office of the global Catalyst IT company and are global leaders in managed hosting solutions for open source LMSs, as well as offering training and consultancy on how to get the best out of them.

The Challenge

Catalyst staff are diverse in nature:

1. Multidisciplinary: They have a mix of technical roles (such as software developers and system engineers) and business support staff (such as finance officers, consultants, and internal services staff).
2. Geographically: They have staff local to our European HQ in Brighton, but also many staff who work remote across England, Wales, Scotland and on mainland Europe itself.
3. Experientially: Their roles are tiered from those who just starting their career journeys to those who are super experienced.

They needed to make sure that we could support everyone who wanted to come and work at Catalyst IT Europe, and provide an ‘online first’ approach to onboarding and development that would ensure that all staff needs were met regardless of their circumstances.

The Solution

Catalyst IT Europe launched their platform shortly after Totara 13 came out, and quickly made use of the extra functionality Perform and Engage brought with it, to design a programme of learning that incorporated everything a new staff member needed to know about working at Catalyst IT Europe.

In addition to this they needed to ensure that the information security training was completed in order to maintain their ISO certification. They were very proud of what they achieved back then and openly shared their experiences through a serious of articles and webinars, and happily contributed to the successful Using Totara for onboarding course on Totara Academy.

Since then, Catalyst IT Europe have continued to review and modify their current adoption, launch a more streamlined approach to competencies, and explore the newer features of TXP to improve the already impressive performance activities to include links to the Evidence bank, use ratings on their competencies, as well as review previous responses.

When reviewing the previous roll out of competency frameworks the feedback from staff was that there were too many competencies, and many staff couldn’t see the connection between the competencies and their role as they were too focused on the knowledge of tools and processes, rather than the ability to use them in various situations. And so a series of workshops were conducted with the leadership team to identify 10 key tasks each job role should be able to do, listing the tools, knowledge and processes needed to successfully conduct them, and then turned them into competencies instead.

• To complement our onboarding programme, Team Lead and Senior Developer, Dale Davies has been working to produce a training programme for all new software developers who join Catalyst IT Europe. This programme runs alongside the existing onboarding programme and includes links to existing open resources and courses, as well as in-house challenges created to simulate real requests that our clients could potentially ask for. This six week programme is supported by regular 1-2-1s with their managers, and ensures that everyone completes their onboarding with the same baseline, regardless of previous experience.

• Catalyst IT Europe are now starting to roll out ‘Champion Badges’ to staff who are nominated by their team leads. To keep these badges, staff must provide evidence of CPD via their monthly check-ins and annual appraisals using Perform, produce resources using Engage, as well as present a tech talk (coordinated using the seminar tool and BigBlueButton) on their specialism.

The Results

Competencies:

The roll out of the new competencies (and archiving the old ones) has proved to be highly successful; staff are more focussed in their 1-2-1s when discussing their progress with their managers, as well as identifying areas that they feel they need further support in developing. It’s also proven a great way for staff to see a clear path for progression, for example from an intermediate level to a Senior level. The reduction of competencies has also led to a more streamlined Competency Profile that no longer looks as daunting for new starters.

“My personal onboarding experience at Catalyst IT Europe was exceptional. The team was incredible welcoming and provided me with all the necessary information to get started quickly. The training sessions were well-structured and informative, and I felt fully prepared to start contributing to the team from day one.”

– Vlad Kidanov, Junior Software Engineer

Developer pathway:

This programme has been deemed a game-changer in how catalyst are onboarding their new developers. Those employed on a junior contract are seeing clear examples and experiencing challenges in a safe environment, constantly overseen by their mentors, and those with existing knowledge can use it as a check-in exercise with their team leads to ensure they understand the way in which Catalyst IT Europe approaches software development. Overall, this programme has saved an enormous amount of time during the onboarding process, and has meant our developers have been able to start working on real client work requests at a much earlier stage in their probation than it was previously.

“We had a real problem onboarding technical team members due to a steep learning curve, feedback from developers was that they found their probation period very stressful.

After several iterations we finalised a solid set of developer competencies backed up by a comprehensive learning programme. Our new induction programme is intended to span a 3 month period for inexperienced new starters but has been designed so that anyone can pick up activities to help toward achieving their competencies.

Feedback from recent new starters has been very positive as they feel well prepared by the end of their probation period. As they are able to make valuable contributions for clients confidence levels are much higher and overall stress during their first 6 months is greatly reduced.”

– Dale Davies, Team Lead and Senior Developer

Champion badges:

Due to the ease of creating and issuing digital badges via Totara, Catalyst IT Europe have been able to quickly adopt the Champion Badge scheme and have seen an uptake in those wishing to participate in knowledge-sharing exercises and tech talks. This drive to share skills and expertise cross the teams (even to those with non-technical roles) has really helped to create a thriving and nurturing community.

“Streamlining the competencies has really helped the teams to focus on what their main objectives are and from an HR perspective, we can identify training needs and interventions far more easier than before. In addition to this, the Champion Badges are a great way of rewarding staff for putting themselves forward to ‘own’ a tool or process, and therefore become the Catalyst Expert in that particular field.”

– Ella Tugwell, Head of Internal Services