Back in 2013, Lianne Weaver ran her very first wellbeing course. After a varied career spanning HR, accountancy and holistic therapies, she had found her niche. Sparked by a realisation that what she’d truly enjoyed across all her roles was connecting with people, Lianne’s weekend courses soon led to corporate training contracts – and Beam Development and Training Ltd went from strength to strength.
By 2019, Lianne and her husband realised that the company had grown too big for her to manage alone, so Tom came on board, making the jump from the construction industry to the learning sphere, and shadowing Lianne as she delivered wellbeing and personal development training.
“You don’t often get to see your partner at work. It was fantastic. It was such a learning curve, and I very quickly realised that I’d made the right decision.” Tom
It was always part of the plan to bring Tom’s digital experience to the table. Both Lianne and Tom had recognised a demand for online courses that could be accessed at any time, knowing that they were potentially missing a large segment of the population who couldn’t access face-to-face training, or who had commitments that made attendance a challenge. They even saw this in their own approaches to learning new material; Lianne loves face-to-face interaction in a classroom, but Tom much prefers self-paced elearning.
“We are opposites in the way that we like to learn. I’d much rather focus online. I feel that I learn at a different speed to Lianne; being able to do that with elearning doesn’t make me feel at a disadvantage. I don’t feel I’m being left out. I now really enjoy learning.” Tom
It’s this kind of self-reflection that runs through Beam’s approach. And it’s what led them to choose Nimble as their partner when they decided to take the leap into elearning in 2020. Like so many businesses, the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to change the way they worked, and quickly.
“We went from having a full diary of face-to-face events to it all disappearing overnight. We’d been talking about elearning for a long time, but it was never the right time. And then it was the right time!” Lianne
“We selected Nimble because they were real people who wanted to see our business succeed. From our very first point of contact, we found Nimble to be human and supportive.” Lianne
Once they had made their decision, Tom wasted no time in building elearning courses from Lianne’s market-leading content, something that was made easy by Nimble’s authoring tool. And when Nimble Author was launched just a few months after Beam made the jump to online courses, they could see the potential for expanding their offering.
“People weren’t as interested in buying one course. What people wanted was almost a subscription model, so they could go in and get updated personal development and wellbeing courses. We came up with the concept of paying a flat fee to access content that’s updated at least twice a month.” Lianne
This became the Wellbeing Library and it has proved particularly popular with organisations who are looking for ways to support their employees in the wake of such a difficult time for so many.
It currently features courses about confidence, self care, resilience, emotional intelligence and imposter syndrome, with many more planned – and these range from in-depth full courses to bitesize microlearning opportunities, all built with Nimble Author. For Lianne, the key lies in the employee’s autonomy to access content that is helpful for them on a personal level: rather than management dictating what’s delivered to staff, each individual can focus on their own needs.
Nimble LMS makes delivering this ever-changing suite of courses super simple. By their own admission, Tom and Lianne had to google ‘LMS’ as they began their journey into elearning creation and sales, but this lack of experience hasn’t held them back. With Nimble, the process of adding learners is quick and easy, with the folders function giving immediate, automatic access to updated or new courses in Beam’s Wellbeing Library. Learner communication is also very straightforward, and detailed analytics allow Tom to quickly see how users are engaging with each course.
“We found that Nimble was easy to use, from the interface to the knowledge bank of guides and support to help you achieve your learning design objectives. I love that I am able to manage my learners and enrolments whilst I’m out of the office on a phone or tablet.” Tom
Ensuring that each course is engaging, interactive and beautiful has also been a top priority for Beam. Nimble Author has made the design process easy, with each course containing
Lianne’s insightful videos, thought-provoking feedback and intuitive interactions that learners love.
“Our Customer Success Manager, Lesley, is just fantastic. Any time that we’ve had any interaction with Nimble, it’s been welcoming, helpful and supportive; we definitely haven’t been disappointed! Everyone that we’ve met, from marketing, support and product to the senior managers have all been great to work with.” Tom
In the past year, Lianne has reached learners in 41 countries – and all while wearing her slippers! Nimble has given Beam the opportunity to grow their business, despite the challenging landscape. As a company, they believed that elearning could help them reach new customers and empower them to improve their wellbeing. Lianne’s outstanding subject matter expertise and Tom’s project management skills have made that possible – with a little help from Nimble.
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