SME Member of the Week: Me Learning

Me Learning is the third of December's SME Member of the Week. This month, techUK are focused on social value and showcasing how our SME members are creating social impact through their business, such as through charitable or humanitarian causes, staff volunteering opportunities for employees, or community initiatives.

Me Learning are digital learning experts focused on creating learning that unlocks workforce potential. They provide engaging, informative and clearly explained learning materials for complex and challenging professional environments.

Our roots go back to the early 2000s when we spotted an urgent need to create a fresh approach to training large groups of social workers on new processes, standard and outcomes, following a high-profile child cruelty case that prompted changes in legislation. Software vendors made significant changes to their solutions but didn’t have the training capacity to roll out these out to all their clients. Also clients didn’t have sufficient training resources in house given the scale of the changes required.

One of our founders, a social worker, was close to all this and recognised that an alternative to traditional classroom training was required. He set about creating a new, digitally led style of learning, which was quickly rolled out across organisations.

Wind forward 16 years and Me Learning remains at the cutting-edge of technology-led learning, now providing learning solutions to the public and private sector. We specialise in learning to support software and technology rollouts, transformation programmes, culture change and compliance. We have our own learning platform, developed with and for our customers, and a library of over 200 off-the-shelf courses.

What has also changed is that today there is much greater acceptance that technology-led learning is the best way to equip employees with the skills they need during digital transformation and technology adoption because it helps people retain information for longer. Many of our clients are also latching on to the economic and green benefits of digital learning and recognise that it is also possible to successfully blend different learning techniques.

Like many other customer focused businesses, we have always been mindful of our customers’ strategic aims and where we can, have contributed towards these. This is mainly because going the extra mile benefits our business because of the loyalty this encourages. We also discovered early on that our staff get a real buzz from getting behind something they believe in and helping others. So, when social value was born as a serious concept a few years ago, we found it relatively easy to start to evidence how we were (and will continue to) make a meaningful contribution, which is now a requirement in most public sector tenders.

For example, our developers were only too happy to help a charity client working with young people with learning difficulties create a new website. Every year, through educational establishments, we take part in a programme of careers events to promote career opportunities in the tech industry to the next generation of talent. As a successful entrepreneur, our CEO is involved in business networks and offers advice and support to businesses starting out.

The growing recognition of social value has definitely worked in our favour and opened up more conversations with clients on how we can help them meet their social value targets. A good example of this is the agreement we have with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) where we provide access to free training on personal development. Local authorities have discretion to distribute free access within their local area so Rochdale Council provides free access to training for unemployed people, so they can build new skills and prepare for employment. So far, 2,000 people across the GMCA have enrolled on the free courses in this way.

Me Learning team.jpg 1 — Wearing polka dots with pride: The Me Learning team in support of BBC Children in Need in November 2022.

What’s your perspective on the present and the future of this month's theme?

We find many of our public sector clients are highly focused on regional economic development through their social value activities. Many though are still discovering how to evidence ways they can adapt to reduce their carbon footprint and contribute to a reduction in global warming to no more than 1.5°C. We believe the tech sector can do much more to help clients understand how technology can contribute to carbon reductions.

For example, we can show clients how to calculate the difference between delivering a programme using traditional learning and digital learning and how this reduces travel and the carbon footprint from using training venues. When these calculations are applied across large workforce groups of hundreds or thousands of learners, for example during a major technology software roll out, they can make a significant difference and we would like to encourage others in the tech world to think in the same way.

We also believe strongly in keeping a close eye on the energy we use and where it comes from. We choose to host our cloud-based solution through the Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centres, which use renewable energy sources to operate.

We are about to launch the first course in a suite of learning on wellbeing for the 200,000 police officers and staff working in England and Wales. This learning for the National Police Wellbeing Service is the first of a series of training tutorials covering a wide range of wellbeing topics, designed to help those in policing balance their own wellbeing needs with the pressures of then job. The purpose of this project aligns closely with our own philosophy to put people first.

We’ve seen that the greater the tailoring of learning content to meet the needs of the learner, the quicker learners reach full competency on a topic. This is because the more engaged they are during the learning experience, the more information they retain beyond the formal training sessions. With this in mind, we will continue to work hard to stay across research and developments in the learning industry to incorporate the latest thinking into our delivery model.

We’re working with the University of Sussex to ensure we stay ahead of the curve when it comes to adopting learning tools and techniques. We are already able to offer learners a highly tailored experience through our technology-led learning based on factors such as their role, pace and style of learning. But we anticipate the options available will only increase and that as the cost of emerging techniques in learning such as virtual reality and AI become more affordable for more clients, this will open up a wealth of possibilities..

We would like to connect with other members who are implementing technology or transformation for clients, to discuss the benefit of supporting with bespoke technology-led training. This can range from digital learning on software systems to upskilling staff on the implementation of new ways of working and compliance topics. We can show you how, through the use of learning technology, it is possible for implementations run more smoothly, with less disruption to client BAU activities, and how through provision of a sustainable learning solution, we can also reduce the impact on your service desk teams post go-live. As part of this, we are also happy to discuss with you how you can demonstrate to your clients how our solutions can help them contribute to their social value targets.

For January's SME Member of the Week, we’ll be focusing on digital trade. Digital trade offers a powerful route to economic growth for SMEs, as businesses with international footprint are more profitable, productive, resilient and see expansion in growth. For Janauary, we want to showcase SME member's who have tapped into overseas export opportunities and taken advantage of the UK’s trading partnerships worldwide to successfully export their product or service in international markets. Submit your case study here.