How Dalkia increased LMS engagement through self-directed learning

The challenge: Building a culture of self-directed learning

Dalkia’s L&D team made a conscious decision to create a culture of self–directed learning.

Previously, their offering was limited to some core leadership development programs and compliance modules, but they wanted people to use their LMS for more than that.

Rather than learning that meant “click on this, answer these questions”, they wanted content that was authentic, engaging, and that people could use at their point of need.

They’ve been using inrehearsal’s human-first content library for more than five years to help make this possible. Here’s their story…

“Before inrehearsal, we didn’t have the content to promote that self-directed learning, and now we do.” — Hazel Pursey, Head of Talent and Development

Why inrehearsal?

Dalkia’s five-year journey with inrehearsal began when Tracey Elson (Group HR Director) met our Co-Founder Ben Gallacher at an L&D event. 

Immediately, our library felt different:

“There was nothing on the market at that time that came close to what it offered.” — Hazel Pursey, Head of Talent and Development.

inrehearsal content didn’t feel corporate or scripted.

It felt credible, culturally relevant (being produced in the UK), and flexible, making it a great fit for Dalkia and their mission to engage people in self-directed, meaningful learning.

 ”We’re a really diverse organisation, consisting of five distinct Divisions, each with their own specialism.” 

“Having content that relates to everybody is normally really difficult. But with the content inrehearsal has, there is something for everybody.” — Hazel Pursey, Head of Talent and Development.

Four ways Dalkia use inrehearsal to drive self-directed learning

1. They break up our content and arrange it in their LMS

Although inrehearsal content is packaged into Boxsets based on topics, we encourage customers to treat it as a cupboard of ingredients and use individual resources where they make most sense.

“We’ve got the flexibility to break up Boxsets if we need to. Thanks to Sophie (Dalkia’s dedicated CSM), we can put something on SharePoint that gives people a flavour for one of the Boxsets.

“And say: if you like the look of this, go to this Boxset, have a look at all these other ones.” — Rob Hastings, Digital L&D Lead.

When there’s no compulsion to complete a Boxset from start to finish, people aren’t being measured on completion.

This means they can pick and choose what’s relevant to them instead, reinforcing that culture of self-directed learning.

2. Promoting content by connecting it to what’s happening in the business

“We just really muscle in on anything that’s happening around the business, to be honest with you.

“The content’s available to everybody, nothing’s out of bounds, so how we promote it is the key.” — Hazel Pursey, Head of Talent and Development

A big part of this ‘learning by stealth approach’ is connecting content with internal events to generate interest, for example supporting the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) calendar with related content.

During Neurodiversity Week, they promoted the Dyslexia Decoded Boxset on their LMS and, over the long-term, this approach has helped drive trust and interest in the content library.

“Because we’ve utilised and engaged with inrehearsal for so long, people know it to be credible. There’s no persuasion needed now.

“If we say this has been developed by inrehearsal, then people’s ears kind of prick up and they’re really keen to engage with it.” — Hazel Pursey, Head of Talent and Development.

3. Creating catalogues of relevant content for specific roles

“We engaged with the HR teams early on and developed a catalogue for them on our LMS, where we added Boxsets and content from inrehearsal that would really speak to them. 

“It’s a way of building advocates for the content, because we’re a small team and we just can’t do it by ourselves.” — Hazel Pursey, Head of Talent and Development.

Creating catalogues for the main stakeholder groups across different disciplines has helped Dalkia’s L&D team drive engagement.

“It’s been so helpful in the engagement piece. They know that we understand their challenges and the content that we’re offering and promoting speaks to them specifically.” — Hazel Pursey, Head of Talent and Development.

4. Hosting watch parties for inrehearsal content

They’re also engaging people by bringing them together to discuss content at watch parties.

“For example, Anna Manning hosted a masterclass on confidence and we ran it as a watch party. We stopped it every so often and talked about it as we were going through it. It was a proper interactive session and it went down really well.” — Hazel Pursey, Head of Talent and Development.

This happens across the organisation, with HR teams also playing videos in meetings and using them to create more collective learning experiences.

The outcome: Increased LMS traffic driven by self-directed learning

When we asked Hazel to explain the impact, her answer hammered home that the culture of self-directed learning is working as they’d hope:

“ [The impact] has been centered around people’s willingness to grow, learn, and develop, irrespective of where they are in their career and what their ambition is.” — Hazel Pursey, Head of Talent and Development.

People are consuming content related to both their role and their personal life.

It’s not just the role-specific content that’s motivating people to learn, Dalkia’s data shows that they’re also engaging with content related to their life outside of their role and outside of work in general.

“The fact that people are looking at content off their own back and in their own time sometimes, that’s massive because people are trying to grow in their existing jobs.” — Rob Hastings, Digital L&D Lead.

Among the most-watched Boxsets at Dalkia, you’ll find topics like:

• A culture of wellbeing
• Hacking neurodiversity
• Social value
• AI confidence
• Coaching conversations

“ Dalkia has a big emphasis on people’s wellbeing. But it’s because we engage with those additional things outside of the traditional energy space that we get that engagement.” — Hazel Pursey, Head of Talent and Development

Rob summed this shift in self-directed learning and LMS engagement perfectly:

“In normal circumstances, people would just access the LMS because they had a handful of mandatory modules to do.

“But we know that they’re now going on there for other purposes too. So it’s keeping people interested, and being able to keep refreshing the LMS with new content has helped us achieve that.” — Rob Hastings, Digital L&D Lead.