With MatchFit’s strong NatWest partnership flourishing, the end is in sight for the development of an online training app that will not only prove hugely beneficial to organisations looking for inclusivity across their employee base, but has also been used as a mechanism to retrain at-risk staff at the bank.
“The idea of creating an online app for the MatchFit programme came about because of that need for inclusivity,” says managing director and MatchFit owner Bradley. “If you’re going to develop a high-performing culture, and want to engender culture and values that everyone can buy into, understand and play their part in, you really need the right tools to do that.”
With MatchFit’s typical client profile being well in excess of 200 staff members, highly inclusive face-to-face programmes can take significant time and resources to implement successfully.
“The app is a way to bring some of what we do face-to-face to a wider population whilst keeping the content tailored and unique for each individual.”
Accessibility is key and the app will allow participants to consume content that is relevant to them in their own time, in bite-sized chunks. The high-flexibility infrastructure will also enable a client organisation to select what subjects are available to which groups, so the training can be very tailored, yet with everybody being involved and having their own specific journey.
“NatWest’s agenda was to reskill and redeploy a number of at-risk staff into IT roles. And for them to work on a live project of this complexity from start to (almost) finish has been fantastic,” said Bradley. “In the process, NatWest has been able to support my small business, which I personally think is a brilliant thing to do and something larger companies should do more of.”
The app in action
“One of the things I think the app does very well is enable measurement. Managers can see how far their team members have transitioned through their personal development journeys and that’s incredibly useful,” Bradley continued.
With the app driving users to content they need to know more about, managers can see metrics on individual journeys. This provides insight into what developments are necessary for teams and how far each member has progressed.
“The app has been built such that any content can be added, so it’s really flexible, right from the top to bottom. Clients can use the tool to address any concerns their particular organisation has,” he concluded.
Ready to ‘go’?
“Right now we’re in a position to go completely end-to-end. So we’ve got all of the content in for the CLIMB with GRIT programme as proof of concept, and clients can start right at the beginning—at Basecamp—and work all the way through to the summit,” according to Bradley.
With the main functionality up and working, including the ability to see where you are in the journey and what you’ve completed, the MatchFit team needed to convert content that was used in a face-to-face environment to work online.
“Now that we’ve been through that difficult process once, we know exactly what the developers need so uploading content for subsequent modules will be that much easier,” said Bradley.
In fact, implementing a technical solution for a non-technical team has been a challenge for MatchFit.
“There were lots of iterations of the content and lots of backs and forth with quite a few lessons learned. But we started to work pretty effectively as the project went on,” said Bradley. “I think what we’ve ended up with is very innovative and market leading, and it’s been great to work with such a supportive partner in NatWest all the way through.”