Skillsoft has announced the winners of its first Inspire Awards at its annual EMEA Skillsoft Perspectives conference. Held on 17 July, 2014 in London, England, the forum brings together Skillsoft customers to discuss innovations in the elearning industry.
The awards recognise innovative ideas and inspiring leaders who are helping to transform the elearning landscape. The winners include the Bank of Ireland, Bluebird Care, Orange Business Services, SafeGuard World International and John Lewis Partnership. Each winner showed excellence in their learning programmes that has had a lasting, measurable and wide reaching impact within their business.
The awards were judged by an independent panel of industry experts that included Charles Jennings, Managing Director of Duntroon Associates, David MacLeod, Co-Chair for Engage for Success, Lynne Sedgmore, CEO of 157 Group and Susannah Clements, Deputy Chief Executive of CIPD.
“Our first EMEA Inspire Awards have showcased a wide range of learning programmes that demonstrate outstanding business value. Skillsoft are delighted to recognise and reward the organisations delivering professional programmes through elearning. Each programme supports thousands of employees and clearly demonstrates the importance and quantifiable impact of training and development,” said Kevin Young, General Manager, EMEA Skillsoft.
The 2014 Inspire Award categories and winners are:
Best Screen Stars Video: John Lewis Partnership, the quintessentially British retailer, was honoured for its promotion of Skillsoft’s Skillchoice IT Programme, which is available to its 1000+ employees throughout its IT Department. Additionally, Skillsoft’s elearning courses were widely adopted by new recruits and have been integrated into their technology graduate and apprentice schemes. Skillsoft’s extensive collection of professional IT courses, desktop training and books complement John Lewis’s adoption of company-wide employee-centric career development through the creation of flexible and agile learning opportunities that support personalised development.
Best Elearning Project: Bank of Ireland was honoured for its radically-altered training programme, which moved away from labour intensive, classroom-based training towards a sleek, self-financing elearning system, Learningzone. This allowed for a new learning and development model that’s flexible, scalable and adaptable, while optimising return on investment.
Best Compliance Initiative: Bluebird Care, one of the UK’s leading care at home providers, was awarded the Best Compliance Initiative Award for its implementation of Skillsoft elearning to create courses that mirrored policy, procedure and practice. The improved compliance levels received commendations from the company’s regulatory body and showed an enhanced link between quality insurance, staff supervisions, performance reviews and training. Overall the course was completed in 56 offices with over 3,700 engaged learners.
Team of the Year: Orange Business Services (People Development & Learning team) won Team of the Year, through leveraging on the strengths of each team member to continually develop innovative training solutions in a multi-cultural environment. The team works hand in hand with the business to determine development priorities/requirements whilst ensuring alignment with the company strategy and its digital transformation. By creating the Cloud Academy, an elearning portal targeted at 164 000 employees worldwide, that unites individual learning preferences with market trends and company principles, employees increase their Cloud knowledge and therefore improves customer satisfaction. By investing in its employee’s knowledge, Orange Business Services nurtures a culture of innovative learning and development that evolves with business and technological practices. This was achieved through different programmes like HR knowledge, 360 Cloud Overview (training delivered via TelePresence to promote Cloud product and services), FIVE@5(tm) using targeted short videos, and digital development solutions in collaboration with Skillsoft’s inGenius(tm) as part of the Books24x7 strategy.
Best New Implementation: SafeGuard World International was honoured for its implementation of Skillsoft Select Plus to complement existing internal training with soft skills development. SafeGuard University (SGU) was created to aid existing employees and attract a high calibre of new employees. With hundreds of course completions in the first month, employees are measurably more engaged and the programme’s adaptability and consistency has led to employee-wide positive feedback.
For more information on the 2014 Skillsoft Inspire Awards, please visit the awards website.
