How Alzheimer’s Society launched an Academy for 350+ employees

The challenge: Launching an academy for 350+ employees

When Amie Boylan joined Alzheimer’s Society’s Income and Engagement Directorate, she was tasked with launching their Academy, a customised development programme for 350+ staff members.

Learning was already happening, but not necessarily in a centralised place or in a way that was aligned to key competencies and core values.

With the directorate working towards ambitious growth and important goals, like developing the perception and visibility of Alzheimer’s Society as a charity, there was a real opportunity for Amie to deliver L&D that supported their growth — as well as delivering value to the wider society.

“ We needed to get that appetite for learning, that autonomy for taking ownership of your own learning and development. We had to establish what learning and development could be, and that’s what inrehearsal helped with.”

An internal survey showed a real appetite for learning opportunities and they’d built a competency framework and assessment to understand important skills.

This meant they were looking for a solution that:

• Aligned to their three core principles: confidence, competence, and career & connection.
• Catered to those key competencies: like  storytelling, presentation and negotiation.

Why inrehearsal?

Amie had used inrehearsal in a previous role, and loved the diversity of thought, how it created opportunities for discussion and critical thinking, and the bite-sized content.

But, crucially, Amie believed it could support the needs of the competency framework and be aligned with those core principles of confidence, competence, and career and connection.

Creating clear links to core principles

“ I could clearly say how inrehearsal aligned with the three principles: confidence, competence, and careers and connection.”

“ The careers and connection element was very much about how can we encourage people to share learning? Which was a key selling point for me with how we can use inrehearsal content to host watch parties, for example.”

Supporting key competencies with content

Aligning inrehearsal content against those core competencies allowed Amie to make a clear case for bringing it into the business.

“I was thinking about the competency framework and mapping that against what was on offer on inrehearsal. So I could make a very specific Income and Engagement-friendly proposal. 

“Where you couldn’t really dispute that what inrehearsal was offering was what we needed, based on that survey, the competency framework, and then the pillars as well.”

The solution: Delivering freedom, structure and a culture of learning

They aligned content to key skills

When they’re running events with internal experts, Amie proactively connects their sessions with resources from the inrehearsal library and encourages those experts to do the same.

“ I encourage facilitators to think about pre-work via inrehearsal, so is there something you can watch to set the scene? I also encourage them to highlight inrehearsal for the post-session, so there’s asynchronous learning as part of that.

“I do that when we have speakers and I do that when I run any sessions too. I’ll always say, these are the inrehearsal resources and sessions that support what we’re talking about now.”

This built on the collaboration Amie did with the inrehearsal team around launch, where she asked for content recommendations to support both the topics raised in the survey and the skills in the competency framework.

Freedom to explore content (with structure in place)

Amie explained that they’ve given colleagues the freedom to explore and choose their own content, while emphasising that selections should address skill gaps and areas highlighted by their competency framework assessments.

“ I thought, it’s going to be something that people can use independently, which was so important to link back to that learning autonomy.  I didn’t want something where I was a gatekeeper.”

“ I was launching the academy and saying, this is your academy. You are going to have ownership… anything on the academy is open to everyone.”

Amie’s role was initially fixed-term, and so she was adamant to build something that sustained — even if her contract came to an end. 

Giving people the freedom and autonomy to explore inrehearsal was a key part of this foundation and habit building.

“It was absolutely paramount that people used the resources and you just have to make things as easy as possible to use. I thought, if people are using this in a way that’s easy for them, they’re going to continue to use it and then they’re going to build habits.”

Building a culture of recommended resources

Around launch, Amie brought the inrehearsal team in to run a session with leaders and then took the library on a manager roadshow around the business.

“Managers have taken ownership and they’ve said, we’ve picked out these things and I’ve told people to look at this resource… So that is happening and  I know that people are recommending things as well, which is great. “

“It was happening when it was appraisal season as well. There was a big emphasis on bringing in the inrehearsal content and the academy stuff as well.

“So lots of people were saying we’re using that… people were taking ownership and managers were directing teams to content, which just happened quite holistically.”

A real partnership with the inrehearsal team

“From an L&D perspective  I work predominantly on my own, so for me, it was really important that I felt like I had an additional L&D expert alongside me who shared the same outcomes to make the inrehearsal launch a success.”

Amie described the  receptiveness, understanding and L&D knowledge as indicators that inrehearsal offered this.

“ Sophie (our CSM) is brilliant at coming up with ideas that will be helpful, and the newsletters are a really helpful tool. I’ve started putting them onto the academy as well”

“ So yeah, great customer service and genuine receptiveness to support users. The scope of what inrehearsal offers is great.”

The impact: A strong launch with great learner feedback

Amie describes inrehearsal as integral to launching the academy and getting people to believe the hype, without creating everything from scratch.

“Without inrehearsal, it would have been so labour intensive to find content and vet everything as well.

“It allowed me to  focus on my skills, to be able to do what I needed to do, and launch an academy within less than six months of starting a new role.”

“To be really confident that I had something to offer for over 350 people on that launch date, that is mega.”

Insights from the Income and Engagement Directorate

The feedback from the Income and Engagement Directorate has been glowing, and shows that the Academy delivered on its goals.

Engagement, skill development and flexibility are central to the internal feedback on inrehearsal:

• “The 5-minute resources mean that I dip in and out when I have 5-10 minutes between meetings.”
• “I think the concept is really great, and I find the videos super engaging. I’m really grateful for the membership and have been telling a lot of people about it.”
• “The live sessions have been really useful in onboarding our summer intern.”

Coming back to building that enthusiasm for development, it’s clear they’ve delivered that too:

• “I plan to keep using inrehearsal for little and often insights.”
• “I like the live sessions, so I’ll make sure I book in those of interest this month, and review boxsets to see which meet my needs.”
• “I’ll be allocating time to work through a boxset, and identify colleagues who are doing the same to share learning.

Looking for expert-led learning that supports real skill growth and helps you build learning culture? Let’s talk!