How Dubai Municipality is Using LinkedIn Learning to Scale Their L&D Program

In 2018, Dubai Municipality – the entity responsible for urban development, public health, parks, recreation, sewage, environmental protections and other key initiatives for the 3 million-person Emirate of Dubai – was in a situation many government agencies can relate to.

They knew their employees needed to keep learning new skills to stay up-to-date in a rapidly changing world. But, in-person training was both expensive and time consuming, and they wanted their employees to be able to go back to learning materials again and again, so they could fully grok it.

Hence, they concluded they needed an online training solution. This way, employees could take the training around their schedule, while being an efficient buy for the municipality.

“The cost is less when you use online training compared to the class/traditional method of training, which makes you able to include more employees in the training,” Dubai Municipality Director of Human Resources Mrs. Aisha Ahmed Al Hammadi said.

The Solution: LinkedIn Learning, which had the fresh, high-quality content Dubai Municipality was looking for.

With the determination made that an online learning solution was necessary, it came down to finding the right one. Enter LinkedIn Learning – which had many of the qualities Dubai Municipality was looking for.

Specifically, with its 15,000+ courses, LinkedIn Learning had the breadth and depth of content Dubai Municipality wanted. And, with 60+ courses being added each week, it was constantly being updated – so Dubai Municipality could trust the content was always fresh.

Plus, the content was high quality. The Dubai Municipality said they appreciated that LinkedIn Learning had instructors who were “best in their field” to teach its courses, according to Al Hammadi.

“LinkedIn is an internationally well-known and trusted company, so the training material that will be provided from them will definitely be up to a very high standard,” Al Hammadi said.

The last piece – LinkedIn Learning was easy to administrator. Because of those reasons, Dubai Municipality invested in licenses for all their employees in 2018.

The Results: 94% activation and 10+ hours viewed per employee 

Dubai Municipality rolled out LinkedIn Learning in September of 2018. Since then, the usage of the platform has been astronomical – 94% of employees have activated their licenses, with the average user watching more than 10 hours – 10! – of courses in the first 14 months.

How? Obviously, the employees found the content to be useful and applicable. But, to drive adoption of it in the first place, Dubai Municipality did things like:

• Create a competition between employee groups to see who can watch the most learning content.
• Hold workshops with department leaders to show them how they can use LinkedIn Learning to develop their teams.
• Emailed employees after they finished a course to thank them and encourage them to learn more.

The results of these efforts speak for themselves – LinkedIn Learning has solidified Dubai Municipality’s learning culture, equipping employees with new skills to take on any challenge. Plus, it’s all on a budget, with employees getting access to learning anytime, anywhere.