Explorance Appointed by St. James’s Place to Support Drive to Increase “Efficiency and Impact” of L&D Programmes

London, UK – April 21, 2022 – St. James’s Place (SJP), a FTSE 100 company offering wealth management and financial planning advice to individuals and businesses, has appointed Explorance to support its “transformative” approach to learning and development (L&D).

With a view towards looking at how people think and learn, SJP has adopted Explorance’s Metrics That Matter (MTM) learning and business impact measurement solution. MTM ensures that learning programmes are aligned to business priorities, relevant to the development needs of employees, and are improving performance for individuals and organisations.

“We need to measure everything in terms of efficiency and impact,” explained Peter Clarke, Head of Learning Performance & Innovation at St. James’s Place. “The aim was to move towards measurement approach of L&D that examines a clear understanding of our objectives, whether we are fulfilling those, and designing our training with evaluation – why we are doing something, what we expect from the experience, and proving that at the end of it – in mind from the start. Ultimately, we want to see the result in terms of employee or business performance, but to do that we need a strong understanding of what makes a good training or development experience.”

St. James’s Place offers L&D for all its employees across the UK and Asia, as well as the Partner population via a broad range of programmes, from compliance to skills and leadership development. Additionally, the St. James’s Place Academy inspires, trains and supports the next generation of financial advisers – around 400 people every year. “Throughout all our training and development we need find the ‘golden threads’ and pinpoint what makes the biggest difference, or jump on areas that may not be working and adapt things accordingly,” Peter said. “To do that well we require insight very quickly.”

Why MTM

Before starting a six-month proof-of-concept project with Explorance, Peter said it could prove complex to compile L&D data and analyse it. He said: “I knew Paul Ceccherini, Explorance’s Enterprise Sales: Europe and Africa, from working with him previously and we started a conversation about how we could do things more efficiently. During the initial evaluation project, Paul and the Explorance team were hugely supportive, with weekly meetings from set up to what they could see from the data. That project finished at the end of February and we are really looking forward to fully implementing MTM.”

With MTM, organisations leverage the world’s largest database of L&D effectiveness and impact benchmarks. Explorance’s measurement experts have built KPI frameworks, validated survey instruments, and created a suite of reports to inform all stakeholders better so that they can drive meaningful ROI. “MTM gives us an intuitive way of making sense of data, the ability to cut it in different ways, and quickly through automated insights,” Peter commented. “The reports help us to diagnose areas of L&D with the highest and lowest impact areas of what we do and highlight information on how useful particular courses or approaches to delivery are. Also, the interactive dashboards allow us to monitor KPIs and use real-time analysis to learn what is driving a score in a particular direction.”

Peter added: “All the decisions we make need to be based on evidence, with confirmed data creating an understanding of links between L&D, performance and business. If we are making a significant investment in a block of training, we need to demonstrate the return on that. In L&D measurement is everything. With Explorance on board, we have a lot more data-driven evidence and, with evaluation in design mindset, this represents a real transformation.”

John Atherton, General Manager – Europe and Africa, at Explorance, said: “An estimated $145 billion is spent annually on L&D, yet less than half of this investment results in tangible application and business impact. Organisations need to be able to focus on what matters, reducing waste in their L&D budget and concentrating instead on investments on programmes that deliver outcomes. We are really pleased to be working with St. James’s Place on their own innovative learning performance journey.”

About St. James’s Place

St. James’s Place is a FTSE 100 company that offers wealth management and financial planning services to individuals, trustees, and businesses. Established in 1991, the organization then began trading in 1992. Today, SJP provides its customers and partners with wealth management services such as retirement planning, banking and mortgages, investment planning, financial planning for business owners, and many more. For more information, visit sjp.co.uk.

Contact

John Atherton

General Manager – Europe & Africa

jatherton@explorance.com