How Surrey County Council is achieving their company-wide learning and development goals with Go1

The company

Surrey County Council is made up of a large and diverse workforce of over 10,000 employees. With a need to provide learning and development opportunities to staff members across numerous teams, the council recently partnered with Go1 to improve their eLearning content and help their employees achieve personal learning goals.

We sat down with Sulman Bajwa, Learning Design and Technology Lead at the council, to discuss the issues they faced and how partnering with Go1 allowed them to achieve their company-wide learning and development goals.

The challenge

Sulman discusses the challenges the organisation had when using their previous, time-consuming process, and what needed to change when they implemented a new system.

“Prior to Go1 we were creating our own eLearning packages using an adapt authoring tool. The problem with that was from inception to delivery it used to take months. So we needed to move to a more streamlined and agile process and that’s where Go1 came in.”

The council had a number of requirements they were looking to fulfil in their new partnership with Go1.

“A huge breadth of learning was required by the organisation, and also at a budget that a public organisation could meet. We also needed an improved user experience to engage with our staff and partner organisations … from the tracking of the eLearning completions, right through to the seamless user experience as well.”

The solution

The number and variety of courses available in Go1 Premium definitely appealed to the council, especially when they discovered content from their preferred providers. These factors meant working with Go1 was a great solution for Sulman and the business.

“During our research we came across Go1, and we were amazed at the amount of courses that they had on offer. I think they had 3000 courses on offer at that time, and now I think they are 13,000 plus. We also saw providers that we were having conversations with prior, and saw that they were already in the Go1 library. So it became a one-stop-shop for all our eLearning as well.”

Go1’s ability to quickly tailor a range of eLearning packages in line with the council’s needs, and deliver them before their system went live, was another huge plus for the organisation.

“We were able to get the subject matter experts within the organisation to go and have a variety of eLearning packages to choose from. The Go1 support desk were fantastic in getting them sent over, just before going live, so when we did go live on the 1st April 2019 we had an up-to-date library.”

The results

Sulman explains the value of the Go1 platform both for company-wide training, and when working with a range of different teams who all have unique learning needs specific to their industry and level. The accessibility of the portal, along with staff members being able to select different courses suited to their services, were further benefits for the council.

“Primarily we are using the Go1 courses for our compliance training, so things such as GDPR, health and safety, fire safety training. But what we are actively encouraging is the services within the organisation to log on to the Go1 portal, to have a look around there and see if there’s any service-specific training that they’d like to offer out to their staff. We have 10,000+ users in the portal ranging from our corporate staff to our partner organisations as well, from cooks and cleaners in schools, right through to our senior management.”

As Sulman explains, Go1 has had a significant positive impact on his staff, with an increased level of engagement amongst employees, as well as new ways in which they are accessing their learning tools.

“The impact of the new learning management system coupled with Go1 has been huge. And now routinely we get 20 to 21,000 hits a month. People are now doing learning on the go, using iPads and tablets, and also going into the system out of pure curiosity as well. So services are also choosing the courses that suit their staff by going into the Go1 library, and they’re picking very service-specific courses that they need for their staff, rather than Learning and Development or HR telling them that these are the courses that they must do.”

The future

Sulman and his team continue to work in collaboration with Go1 to ensure the learning needs of all employees are met, and staff receive optimal training in their respective areas:

“It’s an ongoing journey, we have many corporate objectives. Go1 is helping us to achieve those corporate objectives as well. We’re moving to a more agile workforce, a more agile way of working. So Go1 are helping us decide what courses we should offer out to our staff.. we’re also saying what our aims and needs are of the agile working space and Go1 are helping us to find the right courses to give out to our staff.”

We thank Sulman for chatting with us, and look forward to seeing how Surrey County Council’s journey with Go1 progresses.

Keen to learn how Go1 can help you improve the way employee training is managed across your organization? Reach out to our friendly 24/7 support team anytime for a chat.