Success story:
RAC

RAC Limited is a British automotive services company headquartered in Walsall, West Midlands. Its principal services are roadside assistance and general insurance, and its subsidiaries include RAC Motoring Services Ltd, RAC Financial Services Ltd and RAC Insurance Limited.

Originally founded in 1897, with approximately 5,000 employees, the RAC provides complete peace of mind to more than 12.7 million UK personal and business members, whatever their driving needs – from breakdown insurance and car insurance to a range of other motoring services including telematics and fleet management solutions.

In 2017, the RAC researched the market for a career development platform that could provide all their colleagues, including their almost 2,000 strong patrol force, with the same learning and development opportunities.

The career development software needed to be intuitive, easy to use and mobile-responsive to enable colleagues to access a diverse library of career development resources at any time, from anywhere.

Since investing in Access Career Development, known internally as My Development Portal, the RAC has access to a platform of 5000+ online personal and professional development tools, resources, assessments, videos and eLearning courses.

Some of the career enhancing tools available include: CV 360, Interview 360, digital career coaching, career assessments (on personality, strengths, management skills), aptitude tests, and career frameworks.

In addition to the expanding portfolio of career development tools and content, colleagues receive a personalised, weekly newsletter highlighting relevant and/or engaging eLearning content to each individual user.

As the eLearning resources are easily and readily accessible in a private environment, colleagues can now complete any training in the time they have available, working around their customers’ needs.

The RAC has configured the platform in their branding, as well as promoting the Access Career Development platform via their intranet to feature topical articles and content.

Users now have access to a range of reports and data to help them identify areas for focus and improvement, from both a colleague and employer perspective. The analytics infrastructure allows the L&D team to track colleagues’ activity trends, engagement and learnings gained.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the RAC heavily promoted the wellbeing content, available through the career development platform, as colleagues found the content valuable.

“We didn’t realise how impactful and effective the courses would be for our people when we originally implemented Access Career Development. In particular, the content on mental health and remote working has been invaluable, particularly during the pandemic,” explains Laura.

More recently, the menopause course has been one of the most engaging; covering symptoms of menopause, how to support someone going through the menopause, and how organisations can introduce a culture which supports their employees who are experiencing the menopause. 

“The Access People team are brilliant at demystifying the stigma of sensitive topics in the workplace, such as returning to work after a bereavement. They don’t shy away from sensitive topics which is extremely valuable," concludes Laura.

As a heavily regulated business, RAC selected Access Learning as an intuitive and easy to use learning management system to empower employees to take ownership of their learning and compliance training. 

"Already having that relationship and seeing how Access Career Development - My Development Portal - has grown and developed over the years, gave us real confidence in Access. The fact that we could also bring Access Learning and Access Career Development together under one roof was really a key thing for us. We could have single sign-on for one service, using one platform, a one stop shop for colleagues, which wasn't the position we were in, so that for us was absolutely massive," says Laura Eaton, eLearning & Development Consultant at the RAC.

The Access Group's HCM division, Access People, offer an unrivalled suite of solutions for businesses, including HR and Payroll, Absence Management, Workforce Management, Compliance, Recruitment, Talent, Learning, Employee Benefits and Engagement, Health & Safety, all of which are underpinned by the powerful Access Workspace platform. 

The Access Group is one of the leading providers of business management software to small and mid-sized organisations in the UK, Ireland, and Asia Pacific. We help over 100,000 customers across commercial and not-for-profit sectors become more productive and efficient.