Here at Thinqi, our team of learning experts are committed to seeing our customers thrive. Whether it’s driving a culture of social learning like Bantani Education or maximising learner engagement like Allianz Partners UK, we love seeing the unique and impressive results being achieved with Thinqi’s smarter learning system.
It’s with pleasure that we’re sharing the story so far with our friends at TXM Group, who are currently at the beginning of their journey to smarter learning.
About TXM Group
Established in 2005 and headquartered in Milton Keynes UK, TXM Group is a privately-owned group of companies with a collective annual turnover now in excess of £220 million. With regional hubs based in the UK, Europe, America, Australia and the Middle East, the TXM Groupspecialises in providing recruitment, project delivery and consultancy solutions across multiple disciplines within the engineering, technology and healthcare industries.
TXM stands for The Xtra Mile. The Xtra Mile means many things to different people but for the TXM Group, it means providing an exceptional level of service that goes beyond expectation for their clients, candidates and each other.
We knew TXM Group and Thinqi would make a great team.
We speak to Tracy Sinclair, Head of People Development at TXM Group to find out how they’re using Thinqi to leverage an effective blended learning approach that’s already reaping early results.
The challenge
Prior to using Thinqi, TXM Group was delivering predominantly face-to-face training until Covid prompted a shift to virtual delivery. What was the main challenge of this previous set-up that drove TXM Group to seek a smarter solution?
“We’re a global business: UK, Australia, America and the Middle East. I head up the people development function globally, so that means as a team, we look after everybody in terms of their careers, what their role actually means, what their specialist function is, and how we review those people and their learning, so it’s really important that I make sure that we make sure we’re giving people the right support,” says Tracy. “Our previous set-up pre-Covid wasn’t as efficient and couldn’t reach as many people globally, so we couldn’t really drive a proper learning culture.”
TXM Group wanted to find a way to drive successful learning globally in a more engaging and captivating way, and to reduce the 2-3 hours of repetitive face-to-face training.
“It just wasn’t working within the function,” Tracy adds.
So, what was the tipping point?
“At the time, we were servicing one or two businesses within the UK. As a business, we’re now a more global group function and knew that we had to transition from just servicing those two businesses in the UK to a truly global offering. We had to think about how to set ourselves up so that we could increase our reach, increase our audience and increase our delivery capacity without necessarily having to increase the number of heads in our department too much.”
Time to take a new approach.
The solution
For TXM Group, Thinqi was perfectly fit for purpose.
“We had a wishlist and I was very much able to tick every single one of those things on that list and add some bonus things too, which was brilliant,” says Tracy. “The visuals and ease of content creation made it so engaging. To be able to create professional-looking content as easily as we can is absolutely brilliant—and I’m not the most creative person!”
However, it was the people that really made Thinqi stand out against the competition. Reflecting upon this, Tracy says: “Thinqi felt like a business that very much mirrored ours and that we were in partnership. The amount of preparation and work that you guys put in to support us in the system was absolutely phenomenal—it stood out completely against your competitors.”
The solution allowed TXM Group to take their heavy, theory-based face-to-face sessions and transform them into a bite-sized, blended solution that was more engaging and accessible. People were now able to pursue learning at a time most convenient for them. This freed up the face-to-face sessions to focus on more practical learning and application with a peer group. Along with the networking functionality within Thinqi, the approach has been transformed into something more based on social constructivism.
“We weren’t able to do these practical sessions as much when we were doing these big, chunky, face-to-face sessions,” says Tracy. “This is a far better offering for the individual. With a more efficient solution, we can now reach far more people than we could before. The functionality is phenomenal and we’re only just skimming the surface.”
The results
TXM Group have now completed their initial pilot and received their first set of glowing end-user feedback from this selected group. There have also been examples of motivation and confidence skyrocketing in learners who were previously struggling.
Here’s more about what they’ve achieved so far.
Glowing feedback from end-users
To ensure the implementation of learning technology is a success, it’s important to consider the experiences of the people who will be using it for their own learning. Without taking into account their specific aims and challenges, the chances of getting it right from an end-user perspective are slim.
Fortunately, Thinqi ticked every box for TXM Group’s end users as well as the overall business goals.
“Most of the feedback we’ve had from our pilot group was very positive,” Tracy informs us. “We asked our pilot group to give ratings out of 10 and the overall average was 8.25—so that’s around an 83% satisfaction score which I’m really happy about.”
Examples of end user comments included:
- “I think the system flows easily and when you are looking for content, this is easy to find. There is nothing as such that I dislike. I think it is so much easier to navigate compared to the old learning portal.”
- “Easy flow, good content and fantastic techniques to help you progress.”
- “I think it allows more autonomy for the consultant and allows them to learn at their own speed (within reason). Different people consume information at different speeds so this allows them to redo courses if they missed out bits of information or didn’t fully understand, which is useful.”
- “It’s not text heavy, it’s very interactive with the assignments and makes you properly concentrate on the course...it feels like an app on your phone which is great.”
Boosted learner motivation and engagement
Tracy is keen to tell us about one example of a Sales team member who found himself thriving with the help of the learning solution.
“In addition to some of the management training, one of the other pathways that we took was along Sales,” she says. We did a very personalised piece of learning with one individual who wasn’t very confident in himself and didn’t enjoy the face-to-face groups because he didn’t feel competent enough. We were able to take him through his own pathway through individual learning and his confidence with sales has skyrocketed. His whole demeanour has changed and he feels much more comfortable doing his job now. While it’s too early to see yet, I think he’s going to go from underperformance to overperformance as a result of the support we’ve been able to give him.”
Never underestimate the power of great learning and solid support.
Next steps
What’s next for TXM Group?
The main focus is to continue growth globally and further the scope of what can be offered to people in terms of content within the system—from operational to shared service functions, there are still far more people to reach.
“We’re looking to really increase the size of our business over the next 2-3 years, so we’ve got really aggressive hiring plans and need to be able to support these,” says Tracy. “There are now fewer recruiters out there in the marketplace, so we’re keen to grow our own. A key challenge is to support this growth in an efficient and effective way.”
Having the Thinqi learning system in place will enable TXM Group to standardise the quality of learning experience and outcomes across the whole organisation. Tracy continues: “Whether they’re in Sydney or Dubai, we want people to have the same onboarding experience, and the same learning and development opportunities within their roles.”
Onboarding and talent development will also form part of the next steps for TXM Group.
“We’re just setting up a new associate programme where we’re bringing people in who don’t have recruitment experience and training them up fast,” says Tracy. “I think the efficiency and speed at which these people get up and running is certainly going to be a measure: how can we get somebody from zero to hitting an appropriate target every single month? This is currently sitting at around nine months. I really want to draw that down to a lot less—at least to half that for sure. Thinqi will help us do that. In terms of career development, we also run a competency framework to be sure more of our people are at the right level for their jobs. Thinqi will allow us to measure and quantify people’s success around this.”
We’re more than certain that TXM Group will have no problem achieving these ambitions and we’ll be with them every step of the way.
Keep your eye out for the next chapter of their story as it develops!
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