Meet Dext

Dext, formerly Receipt Bank, has over 450 people working to ease the burden that financial admin places on small businesses.

As they progress forward as a business, they want to create a sustainable culture and instil rituals in their people to support that. A big part of that is empowering their people with development. We spoke with Ella McCann-Tomlin, Director of Development and Diversity at Dext to understand how Learnerbly helps them accomplish that.

Their challenge 

When Ella came into her role as Director of Development and Diversity, the only way employees could access funds for their learning and development was through a Google form. 

Hardly anyone used it. And a great many people didn’t even know it existed. Only 15 requests in total came through in the year before Learnerbly was implemented. Some teams were even pulling budgets from elsewhere to support their learning. Those who did know the form existed had no sense of what was reasonable to request. 

It’s no wonder that L&D was one of their worst performing metrics at 3.4 out of 5 on their engagement survey.

The current process wasn't working, and our people were missing out on learning opportunities because of it.
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- Ella McCann-Tomlin, Director of Development and Diversity at Dext

Individuals’ experiences with L&D were based on whether their manager had an interest in championing and supporting learning. It also wasn’t an equitable set up because the engagement with learning was limited to those who knew of the Google form and further limited to those who were willing to ask for resources. It was a classic case of the loudest in the room becoming the only ones heard.

The People team wanted to empower their learners while giving them all the tools, resources and guidance they needed to make learning and engaging effortless. 

Our solution

After reviewing the Learning and Development market, Ella and her team decided on Learnerbly. 

We loved Learnerbly’s curation of resources and the way learning is placed in front of you. It’s like using a Peloton. Half of the battle with a workout — and learning — is getting to the point of starting because there are so many opportunities to procrastinate. Learnerbly makes getting started effortless.’
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Ella McCann-Tomlin, Director of Development and Diversity at Dext

By rolling Learnerbly out to their whole company, the People team can change the L&D narrative at Dext. Everyone will know where to go for learning, everyone will have visibility over what they can spend, everyone is receiving a personalised learning experience. 

Fulfilling each request used to take Dext one hour or more and required the involvement of multiple people from teams such as Finance. Now the burden of admin is lifted and each request requires only seconds.

The outcomes

Effortless access

Before bringing in Learnerbly as a solution, Dext’s people didn’t have the headspace for learning, but now? Well now, ‘learning is in the water,’ says Ella.

Learning is part of their day-to-day lives thanks to the Learnerbly slack integration. Natural conversations about what people are learning and resources they recommend pop up all the time, giving people inspiration to access learning for themselves. And because Learnerbly is such an effortless solution, there are no barriers to logging in, finding something and requesting it.

Dext has successfully engaged their people in learning and made sure everyone has equal access to opportunities.

More requests = More time saved

In the year before Learnerbly, Dext had 15 learning requests. Each of those requests would have taken an hour of time. In the space of four months with Learnerbly Dext had 221 requests come through. That’s 14x more in ⅓ the time.

In that time alone, Learnerbly saved Dext’s people over 220 hours in admin. That’s time back which could be used for impactful initiatives rather than tedious admin. 

Support as they scale

Part of scaling is being able to attract, engage and retain talent. Every new joiner at Dext gets Learnerbly from the onset and is embedded into the existing learning and development culture. 

Before Learnerbly, our development culture was diluted over time as we grew but now Learnerbly enables that culture to scale. It supports our engagement and retention because every new joiner gets access on day one. We expect our people to use it just as we expect them to use the laptop we send them. Development would go out the window without a solution like this in place to help us scale.

Ella McCann-Tomlin, Director of Development and Diversity at Dext

What’s next for Dext

With all of the amazing outcomes coming out of their use of Learnerbly, Dext is next looking to put Learnerbly into their talent attraction strategy. They see it not only as something prospective talent will want but something that could entice them to sign when an offer is made.

Learnerbly is a key benefit and we should be shouting about it on our careers page and job adverts so that anyone considering applying knows the investment we place in their development not just in their role but beyond it.

Ella McCann-Tomlin, Director of Development and Diversity at Dext