ePlus Provides New Development Opportunities with BizSkills

Building Hole-in-One – Like Programs  

Hear us out- creating a standout learning and development program is a lot like a round of golf. When you take the spectator’s point of view, golf doesn’t seem too difficult –swing a club, make contact with the ball, and watch it fly down the fairway. Add in a couple more strokes, and the ball is on the green, and you’re putting your way to victory! But, oh how we wish it was that easy.  

When you approach golf from the player’s point of view, you see that they’re deciding on a certain club to use for the distance they need the ball to go, analyzing the wind, scoping out potential hazards, not to mention pre-drive preparation like doing certain stretches to get their body conditioned and loose. Similarly, L&D professionals are doing lots of pre-work and research, spending time planning the program, setting up the mechanics, and monitoring success metrics to make their programs successful.  

Now, having a caddy can help with certain things, they’re there to support and offer guidance to make the golfer look good – kind of like our BizLibrary solution and customer success managers (CSMs).  

One of our clients, ePlus, is a great example of leveraging all that BizLibrary has to offer to run a top-notch upskilling and reskilling program at their organization. By using BizLMS, BizSkills, and our robust content library they would be able to solve the need for career advancement opportunities in their organization.  

The Prep Work  

At ePlus their mission is to deliver world-class technology solutions and that mission is achievable when they invest in career development at their organization so employees feel engaged. When doing initial research into developing an exceptional upskilling and reskilling program they came across several surveys that found:  

• 94% of workers would stay in a job if they felt their employer was invested in them, 
• 70+% of employees say they will be forced to leave their current employer to advance in their careers, and  
• Replacing a trained employee costs 200% of their annual salary.  

Their conclusion was simple, investing in their talent was critical to their business’ success.  

So that they could truly meet their employees’ development needs, they sent out a survey, and the results were eye-opening. Employees reported that their future career growth was top of mind, and if ePlus didn’t support this initiative, they’d look to find it elsewhere. This sentiment was echoed when they found an additional study done by Gallup reporting that 1/3 of the workforce is actively job-seeking.  

Teeing Up for a Great Program Launch  

Taking the survey results coupled with the research they had done, it was time to start assembling all the pieces needed to make an excellent learning program that resonated with employees. Caroline Raiszadeh, Training Director, took the customization route with BizSkills, the first and only upskilling platform that has over 500 job roles already mapped with relevant skills that provide your workforce with personalized training and career growth for each unique employee, and began mapping the skills that were necessary in each role at ePlus. She first looked at the organization and divided it into manageable segments by departments, functions, and titles.  

Once her segments were made, she did a deep dive into each role by reviewing job descriptions. While she recalls this process was time-consuming, it allowed her to take a three-step approach to building the right training curriculum. Her three-step approach detailed the soft skills, technical skills, and industry certifications needed to be successful in the role. From there, she defined criteria for meaningful training for when the next step in an employee’s career path is available.  

During this process, she partnered with her CSM to outline the training curriculum by department and role by necessary competencies and career-leveling progression (entry-level, intermediate, and advanced). Once this critical step in setting their program up for success was completed, they began loading everything into BizSkills.  

While the product was new to ePlus, it aligned with their program’s goals and enhanced the experience of learning and development professionals. Additionally, Raiszadeh reached out to BizLibrary’s Content Concierge team, a service that is complimentary with the BizLibrary partnership and available to all clients, to have them recommend curriculum from the BizLibrary Collection to cover critical skill gaps.  

Hole-In-One Program 

ePlus was finally ready to step up to the tee box, but before a company-wide launch, they took a few practice swings by enrolling several trusted advisors in a variety of roles to pilot the program. After some time, they provided honest and constructive feedback that was overwhelmingly positive, and they all appreciated that the program had something for everyone.  

Some trusted advisors noted that they would love it if an ePlus manager training component was added to the program. Rather than keeping the program how it was and rolling it out company-wide, Raiszadeh took the feedback and added in additional microcontent around leadership, which she felt propelled the program beyond ordinary. She also made sure to include step-by-step best practices for internal applications and processes using the custom course upload feature in BizLMS. 

Now, they were ready to officially tee off and get that hole-in-one they’ve been working for! Raiszadeh wanted the rollout to go smoothly, so she created a roll-out schedule starting with new employees who had been with the company for less than six months, then went up in tenure and by departments with the most training needs. This allowed them to be attentive to employees and be able to troubleshoot promptly.  

She coordinated with their marketing department to send out company-wide emails and include the launch in their internal Friday newsletter. They outlined the rollout schedule so that employees would know when their program start date would be. The announcement was even presented at their company All Hands meeting by their C-Suite, which helped emphasize the importance of the program.  

Scores Are In  

Since launching, they’ve seen nothing but success, which sounds pretty birdie-ful to us! For the learning and development team at ePlus it isn’t so much about the quantifiable numbers, rather their focus has always been on launching a program that positively impacts the organization. They’re looking at engagement surveys and polls, internal promotions, and overall sentiment when gauging whether the program has been impactful to their employees. Cue golf claps here!