Investing in People: MoneyPlus Group Ltd

The financial services industry is so heavily regulated, it’s important to invest in your people just as heavily. Training can’t be bolt-on – it’s essential!

That’s the verdict of Tony Marsh, Head of Training and Development at MoneyPlus Group Ltd. MoneyPlus have been offering independent financial advice for more than twenty years and they operate in a heavily regulated environment, so it’s essential to maintain, demonstrate and evidence the competency of individuals at all levels within the organisation. It’s a fundamental part of their success and growth of their business.

Tony moved the company to a blended learning model for their compliance and “refresher” training and adopted elearning for several reasons:

1. It’s efficient and cost effective to design, deploy and evidence.
2. It’s suited to everyone, regardless of seniority or position.
3. It can take place at a time that best suits the individual (many employees prefer to learn at weekends or in the evening).
4. It saves time!
5. Employees appreciate being able to learn at their own pace.
6. Content has a greater interactivity which enables better learner engagement.

However, the move to elearning wasn’t without its drawbacks. Tony says, “I’m not the most technical person in the world, I wanted a simple solution that would allow us to easily build and deploy material where we could own and manage the content. I found Nimble and, within minutes of following the tutorial, I realised that it was the right solution as even I could build effective content and make it look good!”

From there, Tony and MoneyPlus have created a range of courses. They regularly evaluate the success of these materials, using staff feedback, identified cost savings and efficiencies as well as learner engagement. It pays dividends because it increases success in terms of their compliance and quality assurance.

Like any investment package, their elearning programme had to be highly responsive to need, efficient in operation, and deliver high performance outcomes. But if you’re not familiar with elearning, you may need support. This is where Tony is so complimentary about Nimble.

“Nimble’s customer service has always been outstanding. The team invited us to their Stonehouse offices where they provided us with a master class on instructional design and showed us how to get the most out of the platform. Nimble Community days are extremely beneficial because we get to share experiences and ideas with other users. It’s rare in this day and age to find any organisation who has either the desire or capacity to provide these levels of service.”

But then, Nimble is of the same opinion as MoneyPlus – it’s important to invest in your customers just as they invest in their workforce!

MoneyPlus now have over three years’ experience with Nimble, so we asked what advice they’d give to anyone starting their elearning journey. Here’s what Tony said, “I would strongly suggest that you keep an open mind, watch the instructional videos, immerse yourself, always ask for help from the Nimble team whenever you get stuck (the customer service is excellent) and simply give it a chance. You’ll be amazed at how easy Nimble makes it. We all once learned to use PowerPoint for building our presentations… this really is easier!”

In other words, to invest in your staff training, spend a little bit of time on a platform that enables you to become an expert quickly, and that investment will pay dividends!