Building a digital learning strategy at Hertfordshire County Council

Hertfordshire County Council uses the Learning Performance Benchmark to pinpoint where it is on its L&D journey – and where it wants to be. The L&D team also gets advice on how to improve, helping to stay up to speed with the changing needs of learners.

From planning a sustainable environment to looking after children who need care, Hertfordshire County Council offers a wide range of services. This means it has to offer the right kind of L&D training to help all employees grow and develop. But finding a learning strategy that suits everyone can be tricky.

The council have been using the Learning Performance Benchmark since 2016 to benchmark where it is on its L&D journey. This helps to:

• Create an action plan and identify areas for change
• Build a digital learning strategy that engaged all staff
• Keep an eye on the changing trends of consumer learners
• Get buy-in from senior stakeholders on new L&D initiatives
• Give different council learning teams clear sight of shared goals

With the development of learning technologies, teams moving to online meetings and remote working, the council noticed fewer requests to attending on-site training courses. And it wasn’t just down to logistics, but changing mindsets.

Our Learning Performance Benchmark helped the council to better understand the needs of its learners. And identify key areas to improve and engage staff with more digital resources.

Why it works:

The Learning Performance Benchmark shows your learning impact, lets you reflect on successes, and supports you to overcome any barriers.

It provided Hertfordshire County Council with the confidence and reassurance to progress with its transformation journey. As Tara says, “What I thought needed reviewing and enabling came up, so it wasn’t a shock.”

And it’s not just theory. The Learning Performance Benchmark gives you practical tips to support you in those areas where you are looking to improve. Tara continues, “It wasn’t just, ‘here’s where you need to focus on, goodbye’, there was advice and useful tools to go with it.”

Hertfordshire County Council has been using the Learning Performance Benchmark every year for the past four years. And for the past two, it has taken charge of over 12,000 learners on its learning management system iLearn+.

As Tara says, “Keeping those learners happy and engaged all the time can be quite tricky, so I use the Learning Performance Benchmark to measure our learning offer against other organisations and really support me on our teams goals.”

Now, the Council has goals to benchmark from each year and add value to their L&D strategies comparably with other organisations. The L&D team’s personalised dashboard of results highlights trends in technologies, common barriers to learning and the top L&D skills.

The Council’s L&D team can deep dive into these performance metrics and get a quick overview – explained in plain language so they can share insights with stakeholders across the wider organisation.

Hertfordshire County Council is on the right track, but it sees the value in taking the Learning Performance Benchmark every year. That way, it can keep up with its learner’s needs, improve business processes year on year, and benchmark against the top performing organisations in the public sector – and beyond.