100% course relevance, 90+ course authors, and more
Combat Stress, the UK’s leading charity supporting the mental health of veterans, has a rich history spanning over 100 years. Their work is life-changing, and their mission to provide specialized care to veterans serves to help former military members live full and meaningful lives.
As the organization continues to expand its network of 150 charities and services, it must evolve its learning and development strategy from purely transactional to more impactful and collaborative solutions.
Combat Stress needed a robust, scalable solution to manage both internal and external training needs, including onboarding, employee development, compliance training, and support for veterans and their network groups.
team
Andrew Veevers, Learning and Development Partnership Leader, Dr. Jessica Bolton, Clinical Maximization Officer and External Training Specialist, Erin Solomon, Learning and Development Assistant Trainer, and Gil Gallagher, Training Program Coordinator.
challenge
Before implementing 360Learning, Combat Stress relied on a transactional learning management system (LMS), which did not meet its evolving needs. While it covered essential courses such as GDPR and fire safety, it lacked the flexibility and interactivity needed to foster a culture of collaborative learning and knowledge sharing. This created five major challenges:
Difficult to create expert-led training. Previous systems did not allow subject matter experts (SMEs) to effectively share knowledge, relied on L&D teams to create content, and were not scalable. This made it difficult to foster a culture of continuous learning. Lack of engagement among colleagues and subject matter experts. The organization’s previous transactional learning culture minimized interaction between learners, resulting in low engagement and poor knowledge retention. It was important to move from passive content consumption to active collaborative learning that fosters peer engagement and knowledge sharing. Challenges in delivering digital training to veterans. Combat Stress faced significant challenges in providing training to veterans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their in-person support ceased overnight, and moving training from in-person to online became an urgent priority. Developing siled employees. Training was often delivered in silos, with different departments managing their own training independently. This led to distributed and disorganized training and a lack of consistency in L&D strategies across the organization. The start-up of new recruitment is delayed. The onboarding process wasn’t as efficient as it needed to be, with new employees taking up to 13 weeks to become fully up to speed. This long ramp-up period impacted overall productivity and delayed the impact of new hires.
Tipping point: The discovery of 360Learning
Combat Stress’ 360Learning initiative goes beyond compliance training to create a more interactive program that external L&D consultant Andrew Veevers says can support both internal onboarding and employee development, as well as external training for veterans. It started when we recognized the need for a learning platform.
“360Learning has been integral to transforming our training program,” says Andrew Veevers, currently Partnership Lead for L&D at Combat Stress.
Solution: 360 Learning
Since implementing 360Learning, Combat Stress has seen significant changes in its L&D processes. Here’s how the platform has made a difference.
Authorized small businesses and course creators
Combat Stress has empowered over 90 subject matter experts, more than a third of its workforce, to create content on the 360Learning platform. This particularly decentralized and streamlined the process, freeing up time for the L&D team. A two-step quality assurance process ensures content accuracy and alignment with organizational goals, with fact-checking by the deputy SME and final checking by the L&D team.
The course authoring feature is revolutionary and has turned initially reluctant small businesses into active content creators. “It was a real lightbulb moment,” says Andrew. “Before, everything was transactional. Now, small businesses are receiving positive feedback from learners and are eager to find new ways to share information.”
Increased engagement and collaboration
The introduction of a blended learning program has increased overall engagement. Feedback from both internal employees and external users has been overwhelmingly positive, with many praising the platform’s user-friendly interface and the variety of content available. Andrew said: “The platform is intuitive and easy to use, and the front end is clean. This really helps us attract a multi-generational audience.”
This shift from a transactional to a collaborative learning culture directly addressed the issue of low engagement and lack of development opportunities for everyone, leading to improved knowledge retention and a stronger sense of community within the organization. .
Build a valuable learning community
One of the most transformative outcomes of implementing 360Learning at Combat Stress has been the creation of learning communities across the UK. “These communities change lives,” says Andrew. “It provides real-time peer support and knowledge sharing, which has greatly improved our responsiveness to training needs.Before 360Learning, it took weeks to stay up to date with policy changes from the government. It used to take months, but now it can be done in one afternoon.”
The creation of this unique collaborative learning community is gaining attention. Combat Stress is the recipient of the Healthcare and Rehabilitation Award at the Soldiers on Awards, a prestigious award honoring contributions to the physical or mental well-being of current and former military personnel.
Provided training and education to over 450 “Veterans”
The platform also plays a key role in Combat Stress’ external mental health education efforts. The L&D team worked with small businesses to create blended learning paths in 360Learning so they could track their sessions in one place. Through interactive online learning, live events, and forums, veterans and their support networks have access to high-quality training on topics such as suicide prevention and creating trauma-informed organizations.
Combat Stress also receives requests from veterans who want to co-author courses and live events and share their personal stories.
“It’s incredibly powerful for veterans to be able to share their stories and use the platform to share this very personal journey and use it for educational purposes,” Andrew says. “On average, it takes 13 years for veterans to seek help after leaving the military. If we can help close that gap by inviting them to share their experiences on our platform, then we can I will do my best to do so.”
Further funding success means more people will have access to content and best practices, with more than 3,000 people joining the Combat Stress online learning community by the end of 2025. “A huge ‘thank you’ to the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust (AFCFT) for their continued support and shared vision in effectively educating our ‘veteran-led team,’” Andrew said. Masu.
Centralized employee development training
Since implementing 360Learning, Combat Stress has centralized and streamlined its training efforts. By managing in-person training and e-learning efforts on one platform, we eliminated the piecemeal approach that previously hindered consistent development.
This centralization allows us to better track employee progress and performance. No longer having to manually track in-person learning on separate platforms, L&D teams can now see reports for all training on one platform. In addition, Combat Stress fosters a more integrated and coordinated learning culture, resulting in employees in all departments having equal access to structured development opportunities that are more consistent and expansive. L&D strategies are being encouraged.
Improved new employee onboarding
Combat Stress has revamped its onboarding process to make it more streamlined and engaging.
New employees now receive a comprehensive induction program that combines organization-specific and role-specific training, significantly reducing the knowledge-sharing time required to be fully on-board from 13 weeks to just 8 weeks. That’s a 40% improvement.
“The best feedback we receive from new hires is that they are amazed at how advanced our onboarding is, especially for a charity.Many companies say they have programs that are more outdated than Combat Stress. This is very gratifying,” he says. Andrew.
Strengthening leadership development
In addition to revamping the organization’s onboarding, Combat Stress uses the platform to share leadership and management expertise and enhance statutory and mandatory training titles as well as role development elements .
These titles are even richer because they have specific leadership and management groups, allowing teams to communicate openly and effectively within the newsfeed and pick up each other’s comments for mutual learning.
result
Combat Stress has seen impressive results since implementing 360Learning.
More than 90 small businesses, representing over a third of all employees, participated in course creation 100% course relevance score 97% course completion rate 1,000 hours of online learning content available to external users Live event participation 600+ people Significantly reduced onboarding time from 13 weeks to 8 weeks – a 40% reduction Created a unique collaborative learning community that led to prestigious Soldier On Awards was selected as a final candidate for
What’s next after combat stress?
The partnership between Combat Stress and 360Learning is critical to transforming the approach to L&D. By moving from a transactional LMS to a dynamic, collaboration-driven platform, Combat Stress was able to foster a culture of continuous learning, improve operational efficiency, and expand its impact across the veteran community. Ta.
As Combat Stress continues to expand its efforts, 360Learning remains central to the company’s strategy in how it supports veterans and their networks. With more funding on the way, Combat Stress plans to add 3,250 new licenses by the end of 2025, allowing it to reach and support even more people around veterans. Andrew and his team are also leveraging 360Learning’s AI by leveraging existing tools such as Learning Needs, Statistics and Reporting data, as well as introducing AI course builders and L&D-controlled prompts across the author population. We plan to start leveraging more of the features we’ve created.
360 learning
360Learning is a learning platform that leverages collaborative learning. Accelerate internal mobility and upskill from within to deliver relevant training at scale with easy-to-use, award-winning authoring tools.
Originally published on 360learning.com.
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