Success story: Capita

Capita is a leading provider of business process services, driven by data, technology and people. Every day its 50,000 colleagues help millions of people, by delivering innovative, digitally enabled solutions to transform and simplify the connections between government and citizens, businesses and customers.

Capita partners with clients and provide the insight and technologies that give time back, allowing them to focus on what they do best and making people’s lives easier and simpler. Capita operates across three divisions – Capita Public Service, Capita Experience and Capita Portfolio – in the UK, Europe, India and South Africa.

Before investing in Bookboon Learning, Capita’s eLearning Development Team developed content and resources internally.

With a relatively small team, and limited resource, it was challenging to keep ahead of the curve. Therefore, the team prioritised technical training, which meant there was a lack of focus on the developmental, behavioural, and soft skills learning content.

With employees in numerous different divisions and locations around the world, Capita needed to cater for the needs of these employees by producing content in different formats, which presented additional struggles for the team.

Any learning content that couldn’t be developed internally would need to be outsourced, requiring significant additional investment.

Bookboon Learning was brought to Capita’s attention as some employees in Switzerland were already using and recommending the eLibrary.

Capita trialled Bookboon Learning to assess its suitability and how employees engaged with it. The team put together a business case and it was approved.

“We already had a strong case study from our Switzerland colleagues, but our CSM really articulated the benefits of Bookboon Learning to ensure that the eLibrary became the infrastructure of learning within Capita,” says Shirley.

Prior to the internal launch, Capita’s dedicated Customer Success Manager at Bookboon Learning ran some informal sessions with key stakeholders. The informative sessions covered how-to, the benefits of Bookboon Learning, and how to brand the Bookboon Learning eLibrary; all to gain buy-in for a successful launch across Capita’s different business areas.

These sessions assisted Capita with establishing an internal communications strategy, updating its online employee portal, and promoting the eLibrary - as well as its benefits and the types of content available - on its internal social media platform, Yammer.

“We launched during the pandemic, in the landscape of introducing digital learning. It felt like it was a perfect, natural time for Bookboon Learning to come along to support the development around our core competencies and leadership skills. And everyone here was very enthusiastic for that,” continues Shirley.

“There weren’t any surprises or anything unexpected. The launch went as we had been promised, which for any IT platform rollout, is pretty rare,” Andy Jackson, Senior L&D Consultant at Capita.

Since the launch of the eLibrary, Bookboon Learning has been integrated into BAU activity.

Bookboon Learning has been integrated into the Capita Academy, as well as the business’s Management Development Programme, sales training, and mental health and wellbeing in the workplace.

The Bookboon Learning eLibrary consists of learning and development podcasts, eBooks, online courses, live virtual classrooms, content strategy, soft skills, blended learning, training and development, plus much more.

“Bookboon Learning has such a depth and breadth of learning content, that there’s something suitable for all business areas and functions. This has contributed to the successful integration of the eLibrary into our culture,” says Andy.

Capita utilises its internal social media tool, Yammer, to communicate and highlight upcoming virtual courses, content of interest, and performance management resources.

In 2022, 6294 active users consumed 48,930 learning resources, of which:

• 24,954 were eBooks,
• 20,066 were audio titles, and
• 3,910 were virtual classroom training sessions.

This would have cost Capita nearly £1mill to purchase from external providers previously.

“Even if we had 10 times the internal resource that we currently have, we still wouldn’t be able to offer the breadth and depth of the content that Bookboon Learning has available. It has great learning content in specialist areas too, such as HR, marketing, and sales, which would have taken us too long to develop in-house. The eLibrary is fantastic,” says Andy.

Capita has also been able to use Bookboon Learning to look at recommendations that support its key competencies and capabilities, to assist with developing their learning pathways.

Bookboon Learning has been well-received amongst employees, with 399 of Capita’s employees rating:

• The satisfaction with quality at 89.2%,
• The selection of titles available at 88.5%,
• Bookboon Learning’s contribution to personal development at 88.5%, and
• The ease of use at 90.9%.

Capita’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) for end users is 66, based on responses from 399 of its employees. According to Survey Monkey, a ‘good’ NPS is a score between 0-30, and scores sitting above 50 are considered ‘excellent’. The Access Group’s Net Promoter Scores range from a low of -100 to a high of +100.

Since launching Bookboon Learning, the L&D team have been more pragmatic with the resources available, refocusing efforts to prioritise value-add activities that align with Capita’s learning strategy.

“From a learning and development perspective, we are no longer required to be experts in absolutely everything. We can point colleagues in the direction of content that already exists, which really frees up the resource to be able to do things that the team are better placed to do, rather than being in constant design mode,” says Andy.

Capita employees now have access to learning content in a variety of different formats, such as eBooks, audio titles and virtual classroom sessions.

“With the previous learning infrastructure, we didn’t have the ability to download a podcast, for example, so you couldn’t listen and learn whilst you’re driving, walking, cooking dinner, etc. Now, Bookboon Learning has given our employees a greater sense of flexibility, catering for different learning styles and preferences,” says Shirley.

“From day one, employees were so inquisitive. We’ve had so much positive feedback about the quality of the content, which has been demonstrated by high levels of employee engagement and our outstanding end user NPS,” continues Shirley.

“Looking back, we didn’t have an appreciation of how much we needed Bookboon Learning, until we had it. We knew the volume of learning materials, for the price per user, was a good cost, but we didn’t expect the intangible benefits of the eLibrary,” concludes Shirley.

The Access Group's HCM division, Access People, offer an unrivalled suite of solutions for businesses, including HR and Payroll, Absence Management, Workforce Management, Compliance, Recruitment, Talent, Learning, Employee Benefits and Engagement, Health & Safety, all of which are underpinned by the powerful Access Workspace platform. 

The Access Group is one of the leading providers of business management software to small and mid-sized organisations in the UK, Ireland, and Asia Pacific. We help over 100,000 customers across commercial and not-for-profit sectors become more productive and efficient.