Success story:
The NEC Group

NEC Group is the UK’s leading live events and venue management company operating in exhibitions, conferences, music, sports, family entertainment and hospitality.

With around 800 full time employees, and a rich history spanning over four decades, it operates the NEC, the ICC, the Vox Conference Venue, Resorts World Arena, and Utilita Arena Birmingham. It also manages a range of support services, including national ticketing agency, The Ticket Factory; hospitality brand, Amplify; and award-winning caterer, Amadeus.

Every year, around seven million people come together at over 750 events at the NEC Group’s venues to learn, do business, and be entertained.

The NEC Group also deliver a rich stream of engaging content hosted in world-renowned venues with award-winning services that combine to provide memorable experiences that reunite audiences year after year.

The NEC Group sought a way to make learning accessible to all employees to ensure its people remained up to date and enhance any learning needed.

“As an operational business with many of our employees in a ‘hands on’ role, for example working through the night for load-in/loadouts for concerts, we recognised that it’s not easy or practical for employees to take time out of their busy schedules to attend a 1- or 2-day learning workshop,” says Steve Russell, Learning and Development Consultant at the NEC Group.

“And as a business committed to the learning and development of our people, we recognised the need to making learning more accessible for employees as part of our HR strategy,” continues Steve.  

The NEC Group researched the market looking for providers that could offer high quality eLearning content which could be delivered virtually, and not face-to-face.

After researching Bookboon Learning, now an Access Group company, the NEC Group had meetings with the team and set up a pilot programme to trial the eLibrary.

“This enabled us to explore the range – and quality – of learning and development topics that would be available to us, as well as get necessary feedback from users before investing in the software and making any commitment. The positive feedback we received really helped us to build the business case with senior management,” explains Steve.

One of the NEC’s Group’s key requirements was that the platform of choice needed to be customisable to reflect its brand, so to the learner it looked as though they were accessing the NEC Group’s eLearning content, rather than a third party’s.

From a user perspective, Bookboon Learning could be linked to from the current learning management system, so employees could easily and quickly access the eLibrary.

To cater to the diverse learning needs of its employees, the NEC aimed to offer a range of eLearning content in various formats. So, since initially investing in Bookboon’s eBooks in 2017, the NEC Group further expanded its eLibrary to include audio content, and more recently in the Live Virtual Classrooms.

“The Live Virtual Classrooms are very accessible – allowing the user to learn in their own time - and provide different takes on topics. I’ve been in learning and development for over 30 years, and I nearly always come out of a Virtual Classroom session learning something new or seeing things from a different perspective,” says Steve.

The Virtual Classroom sessions can be accessed in real-time, but if missed, can be watched on-demand. This is particularly beneficial for employees who are running on an event and therefore cannot make the live session. During the live sessions, attendees can use the chat function to ask any questions they may have.

“With the Virtual Classrooms, it’s as easy as signing up and clicking set a reminder, and then the session is added into your Outlook calendar. I’ve recently signed up to a session around emotional intelligence. The sessions are bite-sized so they can fit in around the time you have available,” continues Steve.

Employees can access Virtual Classrooms on topics, such as: personal resilience, wellbeing, sales techniques, delegation, how to deal with imposter syndrome, how to motivate staff, marketing, making the best use of technology, and coaching methods.

“All of the sessions are run by subject matter experts who really know their stuff, so they’ve instantly got the credibility from the audience from the get-go. The topics are well moderated and well-informed, making a great, quality learning experience,” says Steve.

While the NEC Group values in-person learning, particularly for networking and relationship building, it became evident that solely relying on face-to-face learning was neither sustainable nor feasible for meeting the diverse learning and development needs of all employees.

“Taking employees away from the workplace for learning has always been challenging. However, since embedding Bookboon into our organisation, we’ve seen a real shift in our learning and development culture – and the traction and usage of the eLibrary is continuously growing,” says Steve.

“We’ve been able to bring Bookboon into our induction programme, to showcase all the learning and development opportunities that are available to employees from the initial interaction – which really helps to highlight our commitment,” continues Steve.

The learning and development team at the NEC Group have a monthly meeting with the Bookboon customer success manager to review usage, themes, and preplan topics of interest to communicate on their intranet and in internal newsletters.

“These regular meetings allow us to identify popular topics which provides us with opportunities to organise more in-depth, tailored learning workshops to further upskill our employees. With Bookboon, we can also encourage managers to take more of a coaching style of leadership by suggesting content to reinforce this,” says Steve.

The reporting functionality provides the NEC Group with a breakdown of usage by format, i.e. eBook, audio, Live Virtual Classrooms, and notes the most popular topics that employees are interested in. This helps the learning and development team to market specific content internally.

“This insight shows us what our people are using the platform for, and what they’re interested in. We can then monitor and work with managers to identify key themes across our businesses – for example exhibitions and conventions, arenas, The Ticket Factory, etc. We have also seen that eBooks are still our most popular type of eLearning content across the NEC Group,” says Steve.

“Nothing has changed since the acquisition, and it’s been business as usual. The support and guidance we’ve received has remained consistent and helpful – and our key contacts with Bookboon haven’t changed either. I would absolutely recommend Bookboon,” concludes Steve.

The Access Group's HCM division, Access People, offer an unrivalled suite of solutions for businesses, including HR and Payroll, Absence Management, Workforce Management, Compliance, Recruitment, Talent, Learning, Employee Benefits and Engagement, Health & Safety, all of which are underpinned by the powerful Access Workspace platform. 

The Access Group is one of the leading providers of business management software to small and mid-sized organisations in the UK, Ireland, and Asia Pacific. We help over 100,000 customers across commercial and not-for-profit sectors become more productive and efficient.