The challenge
David Lloyd Clubs is the largest health and fitness operator in Europe with 100 clubs in the UK and 14 across Europe. The company employs approximately 8,600 people and has been voted one of the Sunday Times Top 25 Best Big Companies to work for three years in a row.
David Lloyd Clubs has grown rapidly in the last three years. Driven by the need to manage growth and expansion within Europe and improve the learning and development opportunities for such a large workforce, the search for a new scalable LMS began in November 2017.
A broad search was undertaken and Kallidus was selected from a final shortlist of three companies.
The solution
David Lloyd Clubs opted for a trial first and the system was piloted in December 2018 at three UK clubs – one that was performing highly, another adequately and the third poorly in terms of compliance. The pilot proved that compliance rates were being directly impacted by how difficult and unengaging the old platform was to use and validated what could be achieved with a new system in place. Feedback from both learners and managers during the pilot helped to shape the internal communications plan to support the launch of the system to the whole organisation and also helped determine key reporting metrics.
By the beginning of March 2019, the full roll out to the remaining 111 clubs had been swiftly and successfully completed.
“Kallidus was very good at supporting us against tight deadlines throughout the implementation and because the system was so intuitive and easy to use we didn’t need to train end users which was a big plus. The pilot was particularly helpful in enabling us to set up very clear reporting criteria to measure the success and ROI of learning,” – Josh Warrell, eLearning Manager.
Historically, the organisation had only ever produced a report detailing who had or hadn’t completed the required training. Today, Learn enables David Lloyd Clubs to track and report on a wide range of metrics on a monthly basis, from the percentage of people who Clubs have logged in to the system and average number of log ins by team members to the completion rates of all mandatory and optional online learning.
The results
Learners are very positive about the new platform and the new media-rich content they can now access, anywhere, anytime, using a desktop or mobile device.
“Our people were crying out to learn in a more accessible way and we’ve been able to meet this demand thanks to Learn. Our previous system didn’t support mobile learning yet in just a few months of going live, 40% of online learning is now being carried out on mobile devices and this has inspired us to put additional tablets for training into our clubs,” – Josh Warrell, eLearning Manager.
In 60 days of going live, 81% of David Lloyd staff logged in and used Learn and compliance rates for mandatory eLearning are now very high and the organisation is able to be sure of this. The average number of logins per user per month has risen from less than five to nearly seven. It is possible to see from the reporting metrics that the organisation is on track to achieve its desired 100% compliance rate by the end of 2019.
“Learn’s reporting functionality has enabled us to proactively manage compliance and has also enabled us to offer a range of eLearning to support our internal development programmes . For example we are now able to identify the bottom performing 10 clubs and provide them with reports on who hasn’t logged in and completed their training. Once we get staff to log in, see how easy the system is to use and change their perception of the learning they need to do, they very quickly become self-sufficient,” – Josh Warrell, eLearning Manager.
Learn has been integrated with David Lloyd Club’s HR system to improve automation of HR processes and, as a result, the organisation has been able to significantly reduce administrative time spent in clubs onboarding new starters onto its system.
The future
Learn is enabling David Lloyd Clubs to adopt a more blended approach to learning. With the use of interactive off-the-shelf content and bespoke learning developed in-house, the business expects to increase staff log ins to 90% by the end of the year.
Prior to the new system going live, David Lloyd Clubs’ records showed that 55,000 mandatory courses had been completed in the past 15 years. In 60 days of the new system going live, that number doubled and is set to increase to 170,000 mandatory course completions by year end.