As the UK’s leading dementia charity, Alzheimer’s Society provides support for people affected by dementia, campaigns for change, and funds research to find a cure for people living with dementia today. With over 6,000 volunteers and 2,000 staff spread across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the Alzheimer’s Society provides learning which enables employees and volunteers to provide the best possible support for people affected by dementia.

Whether someone is an employee or a volunteer, it’s fundamental to the Alzheimer’s Society that learning is something their people find interesting and engaging. Most importantly, their people need to see how the learning relates directly to their role. When looking for a training platform, the Alzheimer’s Society wanted something that was easy to use and would reduce their administrative load, while offering comprehensive learning for all users. Additionally, they wanted an off-the-shelf content library, which could be paired with bespoke courses they were creating in-house. Another existing challenge was that their previous platform didn’t integrate with their people management system. This resulted in reduced productivity and hours of manual imports and file uploads. SAP Litmos provided a solution that meant learning at Alzheimer’s Society wasn’t going to be just a tick-the-box exercise.

With SAP Litmos, Alzheimer’s Society can use an API to integrate with their existing people management system, automating their reporting processes and not only making this process faster and easier, but also more accurate. Quick and accurate reporting is very important to the Alzheimer’s Society, particularly as they are a health and social care charity, and have legislative requirements. Previously, these reports required extensive time to collate; now, they can pull this information in a matter of minutes. Customised reporting is quick, easy and accurate – something they couldn’t produce using their previous platform.

The short and engaging variety of content offered in the SAP Litmos Training Content library also appealed to the Alzheimer’s Society. They now have access to 1,200+ professionally created, SME-tested, video-based courses, which they can pair with their own resources. Together with the SAP Litmos Training platform, Alzheimer’s Society has created several learning pathways which are hugely beneficial and relevant to their people’s individual roles. Previously, it was difficult for people to make a connection between their learning and their roles, but a big benefit of using SAP Litmos is they can now target job roles. Alzheimer’s Society can create tailored pathways for different job roles and assign it to individual job roles that specifically need that learning.

Some of their face-to-face training has been reduced from a two-day course, to just two 20-minute online modules. A significant benefit is they’re just as effective in terms of knowledge transfer and retention, but at a greatly reduced cost. Now averaging 300 course completions a day, Alzheimer’s Society is recording their highest ever completion rates. And this new learning is helping their volunteers and employees improve in their roles beyond assigned courses.

The Alzheimer’s Society doesn’t plan to stop there. In the next twelve months they’re aiming to roll out role-specific pathways across the organisation. “The dream is that everyone has their own role-specific pathway and really knows what their learning is and that it makes a difference for them, and that it makes them better at what they do,” said Becky Kimberley, Learning and Organisational Development Manager at Alzheimer’s Society.