Virgin Media - Managed learning service partnership

Summary

Part of the Liberty Global family, Virgin Media is a key player in the telecommunications and media space. With one of  the fastest and most powerful networks in the UK and Europe, the company has a commitment to delight its customers. Virgin Media is a truly dynamic challenger brand, consistently striving to grow and push market boundaries.

Challenge

Virgin Media needed to refresh its learning and development provision and align it with the organization’s strategic aims. Crucially, the new Managed Learning Service partner needed to be able to work within existing systems, streamline processes and be a seamless extension to their internal team, providing a high touch human service to their 10,000? employees.

Solution

We established an interim service to maintain business as usual for Virgin Media’s teams while they transitioned from the incumbent provider. It soon became clear that in addition to the external training previously outsourced, we could also support Virgin Media by taking on the management of internal courses – bringing the annual number of events managed to around 7,000.

Furthermore, to support their digital-first objective Virgin Media asked for the full suite of our off-the-shelf digital content. We were able to provide this in a format that integrated with their existing LMS. 

As the partnership evolves and adapts in line with business requirements, we are providing a responsive and agile service to meet the changing needs of the organization. Virgin Media needs a partner that can work flexibly at pace to support the multiple projects that will enable them to thrive in the new world that is emerging and we are supporting with access to all our in-house digital design capability and also by bringing in the right suppliers at the right time with the skills needed to transform their learning more rapidly.  

Results

As our partnership has matured, we have worked collaboratively with Virgin Media around how else to support their strategic objectives and provide further value – this will include optimizing scheduling, managing occupancy, and increasing trainer utilization. This will enable Virgin Media to redirect internal resources to do more value-adding work. At the same time, we continually focus on how the service can be improved in terms of learner experience and efficiency. 

Highlights:

• 26% average savings on external spend year on year, through consolidation of learning suppliers and aggregation of spend
• Circa £400k savings generated from outsourcing internal training management
• 10% increase in event occupancy 
• 30% reduction in cancellations in the first year

"From day one it felt right. Not only did Hemsley Fraser understand our culture and tick all of the boxes of what we required from a flexible partner - they brought the whole package. Their personalized approach helped to deliver aspirational results."

David Chivers – Director of People Development