The industry leader in digital innovation, Liberty IT, has made a substantial investment in a new Learning and Development Portal which led to a 20 per cent increase in training hours amongst its almost 700 employees during the pandemic.

Over 300 learning resources are offered including over 70 different resources specifically for the company’s management and leadership teams. The portal offers a wide range of flexible learning resources to suit all learning needs, including classroom-based workshops, self-paced online learning and bite sized seminars. Employees are encouraged to use the portal to sign up to all of the learning platforms on offer and plan for the year ahead using the year-at-a-view annual calendar.

Colin Higgins, Learning & Development Consultant at Liberty IT said: “We encourage all team members to take an active role in their development to help build a meaningful career through a holistic and comprehensive learning offering. With all teams working remotely during Covid, we didn’t want this to impact their development or the enhancement of their skillset – in fact, we believed there was never a more important time for our colleagues to invest in themselves.

We used the 5 step Design Thinking Framework to conduct a complete review of our Learning & Development offering to enable us to understand and define the needs of the teams. We then worked cross functionally with key stakeholder to ideate and develop a prototype, using employees in a range of roles and levels across the business to ensure diversity, equity and inclusion were at the forefront of our design. Finally, we tested the solution with our colleagues and product designers and the final result was a ‘one-stop-shop’ portal for our extensive learning offering. The new user experience allows all of our teams to navigate their way to targeted curated learning paths which offer an array of resources.”

“We are delighted with the feedback from colleagues about the positive impact the portal is having on their learning and development journeys. Average training hours per employee last year increased to 40 with a total of 27,603 hours training across the business – that was a 20 per cent increase on the previous year. This is something we aim to increase year-on-year.

At Liberty IT, we pride ourselves on being a learning organisation and as part of this we are continuously evaluating and reviewing the L&D portal to make improvements for the benefit of our colleagues. In doing so, we are ensuring they have all the resources they need to realise their full potential and flourish in their careers,” Colin concluded.