Travis Perkins plc uses apprentices as digital champions, encouraging digital learning for colleague’s personal and professional lives.
What was the challenge?
Travis Perkins is the UK’s largest distributor of building materials. In the construction sector there are lots of opportunities to improve digital skills. Travis Perkins Group is no different. They looked at what training was needed, and decided that doing training the usual way, where everyone goes to a workshop from across the Group of 1,400 sites, wouldn’t be practical.
What they did
Travis Perkins prioritised peer-to-peer learning for digital skills. Their approach centred on tapping into individuals’ personal motivation to learn digital skills – be it for their private or professional life – and encouraging them to share what excites them.
- Using apprentices to share digital tips and enthusiasm
- All 1,000+ apprentices receive digital training and then ‘pay it forward’ and share learnings with 10 others – colleagues, customers, friends, or family.
- Apprentice training includes one standard digital module that introduces the organisation’s main tools and key themes (e.g., cybersecurity) and then signposts additional self-serve training.
- Most of the self-serve resources come from public sources, e.g., Barclays’ Digital Wings, Lloyds Bank Academy, Nationwide.
- To motivate digital learning, they highlight the benefits for employees’ personal lives, not just the workplace benefits.
- When apprentices find something that wows them, they tend to tell lots of people about it.
- Capitalising on moments of openness to learning
- Travis Perkins looks for opportunities to teach digital skills when employees may be more open to it. These include moments of change, such as introducing new systems.
- Travis Perkins squeezes general digital training into training on new devices – to make the most of an audience ready to learn.
Result
Travis Perkins estimates that 50% of the workforce have been trained, reaching 5,000 – 10,000 through the apprentice champions programme. They have found that employees are more open to learning from each other than taking a digital skills module.
Interview with Andy Rayner, Director of Learning and Development at Travis Perkins plc.
For more on how cross-sector employers are building suessful digital skills programmes and boosting the digital capability of their workorces, see the ‘Learning that clicks’ report from FutureDotNow.
