This Company Has Incredible Usage of Lynda.com. Here's Why.

Two years ago, Just Eat – a global tech company that seeks to connect customers with the restaurants they love – had no eLearning solution for their 2,500 employees. And that was starting to become a problem; a problem many organizations would love to have.

Thanks to the company’s phenomenal growth, Just Eat was hiring new people and existing people were moving up the organization. That was leading to requests from employees piling in to Just Eat’s learning and development department for a variety of needs. When the L&D team could accommodate those needs via an in-person training, it was expensive and many employees wanted the training right away, instead of having to wait for a course. To continue to stay ahead, the business needed a learning solution that could keep pace. 

Two years later, that’s exactly what they’ve got. After a successful pilot of Lynda.com, the company rolled out the eLearning solution to all employees in March. Since, their usage of Lynda.com has been phenomenal – 34 percent of Just Eat employees used Lynda.com last month alone, and averaged 18 minutes a session when they did log in.

Beyond that, the business has benefited. Just Eat can now accommodate most training needs via Lynda.com immediately for a fraction of the cost of an in-person training, so all employees can learn at their own speed. Additionally, it has freed up time for Just Eat Global Head of Talent Development Tania Formosa to focus on the development that's most essential for the business.

How did Just Eat do it? How were they able to inspire such high adoption of Lynda.com, and the benefits that come with it?

Here’s what they did, step-by-step:

1. Just Eat piloted with a great group to pilot with – managers.

Formosa bought 250 licenses of Lynda.com at the beginning of 2016 specifically for her managers. She did this for a few reasons.

First off, Just Eat was implementing company-wide management protocols: for example, regular one-on-one meetings between managers and their direct reports. Hence, there were many skills managers needed to learn, which Lynda.com courses could teach.

Second, Formosa knew that managers started using the product, they’d set the example for their team and would be more likely to recommend courses to their employees. Then, if the pilot was successful, it would make it much easier to get all employees adopting eLearning right away.

“Once you get managers bought in with it, it cascades down to the rest of their teams,” Formosa said. “Once you get them on our side, it makes it way easier for us to go out with a big bang.”

2. They focused on making content as relevant as possible.

A big key to getting people using eLearning is to recommend courses that are highly relevant to them. Good news for Formosa was that because Just Eat was adopting these new management practices, there was an acute need for managers to learn new soft skills.

That caused managers in the pilot to have high initial usage of Lynda.com. And then the managers began to watch the other courses available at Lynda.com, and become ardent supporters.

“You have to tie it into what’s going on in the business,” Formosa said. “So rather than be a standalone tool, it becomes part of your broader talent management strategy.”

3. After a year-long pilot, Just Eat made the case for buying a Lynda.com license for each employee.

This was the easy part. Because Formosa had such high usage among managers – and many managers were asking for Lynda.com licenses for the rest of the team – Just Eat’s leadership team was very open to purchasing 2,500 licenses for the entire company.

Additionally, Formosa argued for the expansion on financial grounds. By providing all employees with Lynda.com subscriptions, Formosa argued that would vastly cut down on the amount of money the company would have to spend on in-person trainings (a prediction that came true).

“Really and truly, it wasn’t that hard of a case to make,” Formosa said.

4. Before and immediately after giving subscriptions it to all employees, Just Eat heavily promoted Lynda.com.

After the purchase of 2,500 Lynda.com licenses, it was incumbent on Formosa and her team to promote the eLearning solution and get them using it. Here are four of the innovative tactics they used to initially promote Lynda.com:

• Before Lynda.com was available to all employees, there was a countdown on all digital monitors throughout Just Eat’s offices. So, a week before licenses were available, there were digital signs everywhere saying “7 days until Lynda” (and on and on until launch day).
• Just Eat worked with the LinkedIn Learning Solutions to get single-sign-on available for all employees, so accessing Lynda.com was a more seamless experience.
• The week Lynda.com launched was “Launch Week.” There, Just Eat Talent Administrator Leah Banner went from office to office with laptops, iPads, swag and, most importantly of all, Lynda.com branded cookies. At the offices, Banner would hand out swag and cookies while showing Just Eat employees what Lynda.com has to offer.
• Banner and Formosa also worked with HR business partners to build Lynda.com course playlists based off of the biggest needs employees on certain teams were having. For example, if tech was adopting an agile approach, Banner would build a playlist of Lynda.com courses on agile.

Thanks to all this promotion, many Just Eat employees became Lynda.com users right away. In the first week alone, 670 employees logged into Lynda.com and watched a combined 82 hours of video.

5. The Just Eat L&D team continues to promote Lynda.com through a variety of means.

Just Eat continues to promote Lynda.com using a variety of tactics. They send out emails highlighting the most popular courses. They share articles in their Google+ group on the importance of learning, such as the skills that’ll become more important by 2020. They continue to work with HR business partners and managers to build relevant course playlists for employees.

Also, starting in July, they began the “Big Learner” competition, where the person who spent the most time learning that month would get 1,000 pounds for a training program of their choice. The first winner was Damian Mullins, a senior engineer.

“For me, the number of courses available and the quality of each course are the most appealing factors of Lynda.com,” Mullins said. “I've used a few other online learning resources but I'm impressed by the wide selection of topics available on Lynda.com, from tech to tips on being productive.”

6. Today, organic promotion regularly occurs.

Call this the highest level of eLearning promotion – when non-L&D employees become evangelists and start spreading the word of Lynda.com.

This is what’s happened at Just Eat. Some senior managers have begun starting their meetings with lessons they learned from Lynda.com, Formosa said. Other managers have actually started “course clubs” on their own where they watch courses together with their team.

One example Formosa saw first-hand was at a meeting among senior leaders she attended a few weeks ago. In the meeting, one of the senior leaders said his team was struggling in some area. Unprovoked, another member of the leadership team said Lynda.com is his solution.

“I was like, ‘yes’,” Formosa said. “It was great to see I don’t even have to promote this, that we have senior managers on our team promoting Lynda.com.”

The takeaway

Formosa and her team have done a brilliant job incorporating Lynda.com into their culture. Starting with managers was key; as getting them onboard early did exactly as Formosa predicted – it created a cascading effect that got all employees on board.

Beyond the usage, eLearning at Just Eat ensures the company can learn at the speed it needs to. Rather than waiting a month for an in-person course that takes a person away from their job, the employee can learn right then and apply it immediately to the problem they face, Formosa said.

“Going to a digital learning model for us made so much sense,” Formosa said. “We are a tech company – our people expect a tech solution. This lets them learn the way they are most comfortable and helps our business stay ahead.”