I am the area manager of four children’s day nurseries in Hampshire. We regularly use online training courses as part of staff inductions and CPD. Online training is great, really convenient and quick to arrange but has always had one big downside for us – the learning happens in a bubble and unfortunately, sometimes, it stayed there and was not put into practise.

I chose the team membership with Hello Skills because it closes the learning loop:

• My leadership team is now able to use my performance measures as they always do, communicating them to their team in a SMART way. Hello Skills, allows us to add hyperlinks to our feedback documents that take the right people to the right courses.
• My workforce age ranges from 17 to 50 years of age but our median age is 22 years of age. The vast majority of our organisation are Gen Y and Z, digital natives who expect instant access, easy consumption of knowledge and the ability to network socially. We have found that Hello Skills meets all of these criteria. They can access their courses anywhere and the various games and multi-media formats keep all learning styles engaged.
• As the leaders in my team have admin access, they can monitor their teams progress and will receive a digital copy of the certificate as an entry in their teammates learning record. They don’t need to do anything else; it is all automatic. It even notifies them when training needs to be updated.
• Here is the important bit, for me. Many of the courses have workbooks that are really reflective which keeps my team engaged in how they can embed the knowledge and skills in practice, and a plan of their intentions is sent to their leadership team so they can keep track of their progress and support them through our supervision and appraisal cycle.
• Hello Skills have developed pathways of courses – such as the induction pathway that we have just embedded into our organisation inductions meaning that we no longer have to sign new colleagues up into a number of individual courses, they get started on the pathway and off they go.

Having open access to over 80 courses has had the effect of us training more frequently which I think, in turn, makes my team feel invested in and valued. The pitch of the courses is great – challenging my capable and ambitious team. Without a doubt, Hello Skills is having a very positive impact on the quality of our delivery which goes hand in hand with outcomes for children.

– Aly Murray