Compass Group

Background

Compass Group plc is a British multinational contract food and support services company headquartered in the UK. It is the largest contract food service company globally, employing over 500,000 people across 44 countries and contracted by some of the biggest venues in the UK including O2 arenas and Wimbledon.

Challenge

At any given time, Compass Group’s learner population can range from 45,000 to 70,000 people varying from full-time to short-term contract employees. This disparity in levels of employment, as well as a wide variety in job roles – from hospitality managers to security guards – means that the L&D function at Compass Group is heavily relied upon and must encompass talent management, employee engagement and onboarding and induction.

In 2019, the company carried out an engagement survey that highlighted three core needs from its learners:

• Awareness – Knowing what learning was available 
• Access – Being able to easily access the learning that was available 
• Purpose – Understanding how to use the learning to secure another job (for contracted employees)

Reviewing their LMS provider, Compass Group’s L&D team decided they wanted a business model that allowed them to have all the elements of their existing platform – wrap-around tools and services, and future updates and innovations – all for one fixed price. This would enable them to innovate and grow with the platform continuously whilst offering a blended approach with instructor-led workshops alongside high levels of line manager involvement to support learners in finding their next roles.

Solution

Learning Pool Platform was chosen by Compass Group as the new platform for its global online L&D offering. Branded internally as ‘The Learning Portal’, the platform is used alongside the Learning Pool authoring tool to allow the L&D team to create new content and tailor off-the-shelf collections acquired from Learning Pool Library Content. 

Compass Group selected a number of off-the-shelf collections from the Learning Pool Library Content, including Foundation Skills and lessons on safeguarding and the plastics campaign, which was tailored to form their Net Zero campaign. Compass Group’s in-house L&D team is well experienced with the platform, authoring tool and the Adobe Suite and can therefore create bespoke content for Compass Group’s vast needs. 

The system integrates with all the relevant HR software to ensure that the staff and learning records are constantly kept up to date. This amounts to a substantial overnight feed into the platform of around 3 million lines of data. The Learning Pool Learning Record Store holds all the relevant learning data and acts as an intermediary between the learning platform and their reports and dashboards within Power BI. 

Through the implementation of the Learning Pool Platform, Compass Group initiated the Career Pathways program which covers all disciplines in the business and is tailored to 45 different roles. The platform enables this learning to be user-led, encouraging learners to sign up to programs relevant to their current role in order to help develop their skills for when they transition into the next.

Outcomes 

Having access to the Learning Pool Platform has and continues to deliver huge benefits to Compass Group when training and onboarding its substantial global workforce. Employee retention has been a challenge for the hospitality industry since the start of the pandemic. The company is confident the use of Learning Pool Automation as well as the LRS will enable them to combat this, introducing them to the onboarding process of new starters to see how new employees are getting on and to intervene when people are struggling. 

Results Realized

• With up to 500,000 members of staff at any one time, the Learning Portal receives around 15-20,000 unique visits a month
• To date, 1,000 learners have access the Career Pathways program. Previously, initiatives has garnered no more than 200 enrollments. 
• User-led training is completed twice as fast as other mandatory training available as learners are able to partake at their own pace.
• The company is confident the use of Learning Pool Automation and Learning Record Store will enable them to combat their high attrition rate – introducing them to the onboarding process of new starters to see how new employees are getting on and to intervene when people are struggling.