Royal Mail and getAbstract Customer Success Managers successfully introduced employees to self-directed learning. With getAbstract’s solution, employees can read or listen to book and video talk summaries to acquire the knowledge they need to learn at their own pace. getAbstract’s expert content curation on relevant business topics also opened a new door for learning and development. “We’re not limiting ourselves to what the internal learning team thinks is important,” says James Barton, Royal Mail’s Online Learning Manager. “getAbstract provides unbiased information from a wide range of sources, allowing us to consider a wide range of perspectives.”

Within only a few months, getAbstract became one of Royal Mail’s most used digital learning resources. “The engagement is striking: Employees are using getAbstract not just to enhance their job-related competencies, but also to work on their own personal development,” says Barton. Using the impulse of the UK-wide “Learning At Work Week,” Royal Mail and getAbstract introduced the learning solution through webinars, social media and face-to-face meetings with employees. The key was to show how getAbstract can help leverage knowledge to address specific business problems.

Senior managers were on board with the continuous learning approach from the start. They acted as influencers, sharing the resource with their teams and encouraging employees to use getAbstract in their day-to-day work. “You may not have time to go to a conference, but you have 5-minute time windows spread out throughout the day,” says Barton. “With getAbstract, you can make those moments 5-minute bursts of learning.”

getAbstract’s seamless SSO integration and the user-friendly mobile app allowed employees to have easy access to the content on demand. “There was no need to provide complex instructions on how to use the new tool,” says Barton. The use of mobile devices (app, E-Reader) was so popular that within a few months, one third of learners had adopted it as a way of accessing knowledge.