How the SANBS built a culture where people choose to learn 

SANBS has been an Access Learning Content customer since 2020. From the start, Natasha, Digital Vocational Accreditation Training Specialist at SANBS, made a deliberate choice about how to position it internally: not as another compliance obligation sitting alongside their mandatory Moodle compliance courses, but as a genuine employee benefit. Something people could dip into on their own terms, for their own reasons, at whatever point in the day worked for them.  

No mandates, no targets, no line manager checking whether there's a login in this month. Just a library of content, made available, and a quiet belief that people would find their way to it.  

That belief has been more than justified. In 2025, their strongest year on the platform to date, 1,193 people actively used Access Learning Content to access 3,393 pieces of content. 

Usage at this level does not happen by accident, and Natasha is clear about what has driven it: consistent promotion. 

Natasha has kept up a steady drumbeat of internal promotion: newsletters, a usage questionnaire to identify where awareness gaps remain, and a link embedded in the learning portal so the platform is never more than a click away. Her advice to any L&D manager starting from scratch with a voluntary content library is straightforward: the content being good is not enough on its own. People need to know it is there, and they need reminding. Regularly. 

The topics SANBS employees gravitate towards paint a clear picture. SANBS has a five-year strategic objective built around customer centricity, and the content people are choosing in their own time maps directly onto that ambition. 

Top topics at SANBS:

• Communication   
• AI literacy   
• Customer service   
• Leadership   
• Wellbeing   
• Avoiding burnout   
• Microsoft skills   

Audio has been the format of choice, with nearly 3,000 listens in 2025 alone: people fitting development into commutes, breaks and gaps between tasks. Virtual classroom sessions, which ask a full hour of focused attention, have also seen strong engagement. When learning is voluntary and the format demands real commitment, sustained engagement is not a given. But at SANBS, people are showing up for it anyway. 

That’s the result of an organisation that genuinely values learning, a team that has worked consistently to promote it, and a partnership that has kept the platform visible and relevant over the long term. The numbers are the outcome of all three working together.