Willmott Dixon is a privately-owned contracting and interior fit-out group – their purpose is to deliver brilliant buildings, transform lives, strengthen communities and enhance the environment so our world is fit for future generations.
Willmott Dixon is driven by its values of being ethical and sustainable, contributing to society, bringing out excellence in people and delivering quality work. Willmott Dixon’s focus on these beliefs has seen the company ranked 5th in Sunday Times top companies to work for and Top 50 employers for women lists, and win awards for sustainable development and promoting opportunities in local communities.
Aim
One of Willmott Dixon’s core beliefs is people excellence, and ensuring they have the best people in the industry to work for their customers. A key part of this is learning. Willmott Dixon identified that there were some problems with their current learning platform, including:
- Inconsistencies of what ‘good’ looks like
- Lack of clarity for managers in what success looks like
- People were unclear on what learning they need to deliver their role
- Existing learning is difficult to find
After identifying these problems, Willmott Dixon created the concept of the Willmott Dixon University, a self-led learning platform. The aim of the Willmott Dixon University was to unify the approach to learning across the business, ensuring people understand how to grow their career at Willmott Dixon, and to improve staff retention.
The platform needed to:
- Allow people to define what success looks like for roles across the business
- Identify and undertake essential learning
- Map the learning needs for each role
- Enable people to find all their learning, in one place, in a very simple way
Willmott Dixon approached Silicon Reef to help bring the Willmott Dixon University to life.
Approach
Working collaboratively with Willmott Dixon, we approached the project with a three-phase approach which included:
Discover
Agreement of business requirements and success measurements, and user experience (UX) activities including user research and user stories tailored to Willmott Dixon people.
Design
Creation of custom SharePoint page designs for each of the four areas of the Willmott Dixon University, and testing carried out by our UX team to ensure all designs met Willmott Dixon’s requirements.
Build
Bringing the Willmott Dixon University to life based on validated research and designs.
We used a combination of SharePoint, LMS365 and our own product Beacon to deliver Willmott Dixon University. Some of the key features of the platform included:
- Integration of multimedia video content
- Mobile-friendly to ensure ease of use for all people
- Full integration with the Microsoft 365 suite, including Microsoft Teams
- Simple, user-friendly interface
- Fully brand-aligned page design with Beacon
Silicon Reef provided a highly professional and knowledgeable service from beginning to end of the project. They were a pleasure to work with and the designs hit the mark and have been replicated across the platform.
Lorna Comerford, People Systems Development Manager
