Achieving goals and growing the business

GBM uses LinkedIn Learning to help employees achieve goals, and grow the business

Over the last seven years, Feras Al Majed, Vice President HR at GBM, has seen the digital solutions provider grow significantly. In fact, during that time, GBM’s workforce has almost doubled from 850 employees to more than 1,500. To support such growth, GBM’s HR function has transformed itself in order to equip its employees with all the necessary skills to assist its customers on their digital transformation journey.

GBM’s acknowledgement of globalisation and accelerated change led the company to recognise that an enriched learning programme that engaged its entire workforce – spread across six countries in the Middle East – was required to give it a strategic competitive edge.

Furthermore, the adoption of online learning would cement GBM’s lifelong learning mantra. Supporting employees’ personal and professional development was paramount. In fact, there was a hunger within the GBM workforce to learn more. Therefore, learning needed to be flexible and personalised.

LinkedIn Learning is widely adopted by industry leaders within the Middle East region. It gave GBM the confidence to invest in the learning platform.

This, coupled with high quality content offered by LinkedIn Learning, ensured that GBM employees would receive the best education and skills training from industry leaders and experts.

Pawandeep Singh Arora, Regional Learning and Development Manager at GBM, explained: “Ease of deployment, the support mechanism extended, real-time reports and dashboards, which enhanced our analytical ability and allowed us to fine tune our messaging to employees, were some of the underlying factors that drove our choice to adopt LinkedIn Learning.”

Rolling out the LinkedIn Learning platform to the GBM workforce was incredibly exciting. It involved a three-stage process, including teaser emails ahead of the launch, orientation webinars that encouraged early adoption of the programme and internal communication, which specifically filtered relevant content.

Executive buy-in was also crucial, said Pawandeep. He continued: “We have the support and endorsement of the CEO and management team; that was critical. It allowed our employees to embrace e-learning on the platform alongside our leadership.”

GBM developed a series of campaigns and challenges that excited and engaged employees. To mark GBM’s 30th anniversary in the Gulf region, the business created a 30 Years – 30 Hours challenge, which received an “overwhelming response”. The learning champions were recognised internally and encouraged to post their accomplishments on their personal LinkedIn profiles as true ambassadors of GBM’s learning culture.

GBM also created GBM Learning Week, which gave employees access to courses from Ivy League (Harvard, Stanford, Penn) professors. Exposing the workforce to thought-leaders from exemplary business schools enriched the learning process.

The above campaigns were combined with industry webinars and internal training to develop a virtual and structured learning calendar. This sat alongside a creative and innovative job roles and competency-based course catalogue that was developed alongside the LinkedIn team. It enabled employees to find relevant courses on the LinkedIn Learning platform that would align with their own goals contained within GBM’s Performance Management and Goal Management System.

“Training and development has played a pivotal role in enhancing our employee engagement and resilience during this pandemic,” Feras commented. “We have conducted a number of internal surveys, which have shown that our people are embracing digital learning and our consumption on different platforms is very pleasing.”

For example, when compared with 2019, the number of training courses completed by GBM employees has increased by 292 per cent (6,279 in 2020 compared to 1,603 in 2019). Hours of content viewed also increased by 211 per cent – 7,424 compared to 2,388 in 2019. The number of videos completed again increased by 229 per cent; 137,428 compared to 41,720.

But how has this transformed GBM’s business? Feras concluded: “Learning and development, alongside our business acumen, has played a complementary role in the company achieving record revenues in 2019. Even amidst the height of the pandemic, we have achieved growth in the first half of 2020. This is testament to the continuous investment in our people.”

The results

CHALLENGE:
● Create an enterprise-wide learning system that would give GBM a competitive edge

● Support employees’ personal and professional development

● Make learning more personalised

SOLUTION:
●  Create an exciting learning programme that offered employees unrivalled opportunities to increase skills

●  Give employees ownership of their own structured learning

●  Develop a job roles and competencies-based course catalogue

RESULTS:
● Employees have embraced learning culture across multiple platforms

● 6,269 courses completed in 2020 compared to 1,603 in 2019 – 292 per cent growth

● 7,424 hours of content viewed in 2020 compared to 2,388 in 2019 – 211 per cent growth

● GBM achieved financial growth in first half of 2020 – testament to investment in people

About GBM

With more than 30 years’ experience, seven offices and more than 1,500 employees, Gulf Business Machines (GBM) is a leading end-to-end digital solutions provider, specialising in digital infrastructure, digital business solutions, security and services.

NO. OF EMPLOYEES: 1,001-5,000 employees

GBM Company Page

GBM website

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In their own words

“Investment in human capital is at the forefront of our strategy and employee development forms the core of our employee engagement. LinkedIn Learning plays a vital role, in addition to other learning interventions, and enriches the learning experience of our workforce.”

Feras Al Majed
Vice President HR, GBM

“Every employee across the organisation has the ability to learn by using their immense intellect and talent, many of which still remains unexploited today. This innovative learning platform is pivotal to our digital learning strategy, which allows our modern learners to be the drivers of their own learning journeys.”

Pawandeep Singh Arora
Regional Learning and Development Manager, GBM

How GBM used LinkedIn Learning to help employees achieve goals, and grow the business

How GBM used LinkedIn Learning to help employees achieve
goals, and grow the business

How GBM used LinkedIn Learning to help employees achieve goals, and grow the business

Creating an enriched learning programme would deliver a competitive edge

Why LinkedIn Learning was the learning platform of choice at GBM

LinkedIn Learning created true ambassadors of GBM’s learning culture

How investment in people translated into business growth

How GBM used LinkedIn Learning to help employees achieve goals, and grow the business

How GBM used LinkedIn Learning to help employees achievegoals, and grow the business

How GBM used LinkedIn Learning to help employees achieve goals, and grow the business

Creating an enriched learning programme would deliver a competitive edge

Why LinkedIn Learning was the learning platform of choice at GBM

LinkedIn Learning created true ambassadors of GBM’s learning culture

How investment in people translated into business growth

How GBM used LinkedIn Learning to help employees achieve
goals, and grow the business