Virgin Media employs managed-learning company

Citation

(2011), "Virgin Media employs managed-learning company", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 43 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ict.2011.03743cab.009

Virgin Media employs managed-learning company

Article Type: Notes and news From: Industrial and Commercial Training, Volume 43, Issue 3

Virgin Media, a UK entertainment and communications company, has improved the quality of its external training and achieved significant annual savings on course fees through an outsourced learning contract.

All external training for Virgin Media’s 13,000 UK employees is now sourced, managed, administered and evaluated by a managed-learning company named KnowledgePool. This includes leadership development, management, niche, technical and specialist training, and involves more than 8,000 delegate days a year.

“The success of our company is built upon the passion and skills of our people,” said James Iles, head of employee learning for Virgin Media. “Developing our people and making the most of their talent is therefore a critical business factor for us and our partnership with a managed-learning company plays a key role in helping us to achieve this aim.”

For any given training need, the company provides a shortlist of vendors. It also supervises the tendering process and manages the proposals. Virgin Media then makes the final decision on which vendor is chosen, whether it is for classroom-based training, a bespoke e-learning project or on-line learning.

“The choice of the final training solution is down to us,” said James Iles. “Having KnowledgePool to manage the procurement process frees up our time, which enables us to concentrate on business-critical activities.”

The managed-learning company typically saves Virgin Media around 40 per cent off the price of technical training and 28 per cent off other training courses.

“As a business that has grown and matured over the past few years, we now put even greater emphasis on the quality of our training interventions and on their outcomes,” said James Iles. “Cost savings are obviously important for any organization but our relationship with KnowledgePool gives us more than that. They have taken the time to understand our business and our values. They bring us quality training and support us throughout the training life-cycle.”

Steve Allen, account manager at KnowledgePool, said: “We have helped Virgin Media to streamline processes, save costs, improve efficiencies, gain greater visibility of the training spend and ensure the business has the learning and development that is required.”