Blue Square Academy: A three month reflection with Natasha Rose

It’s been a few months since we launched Academy: Our home of learning, where we inspire thinking and learning with passion. With that launch came our online platform which includes a learning menu and digestible content tailored to individuals’ learning styles. You’re also able to book in-person sessions as well as bespoke sessions with more enhancements planned in the future.

We caught up with Natasha Rose, our People Director, to get her insight on the mission behind Academy, its impact, success and future plans.

It’s a core part of our people strategy, we knew our people wanted more support to develop, to learn new skills, and to see a clear path for their career with us. The Academy’s our way of making that happen. It’s giving everyone access to the tools and time to get better at what they do and find out what they’re really passionate about.

It’s been brilliant to see. The biggest change I’ve noticed is that learning has become a topic of conversation, not a box to tick. Vic (our Head of People Development) and the team have done an incredible job of showing our people what great learning can look like. The shift to people wanting to be part of it, chatting about the session they’ve attended or the skills they’re trying to master, is the most exciting early sign we could have hoped for.

The numbers speak for themselves, we’ve seen a huge increase in engagement with Academy’s digital content, everyone’s really digging in and exploring the content that Sara has so thoughtfully created and, in terms of feedback on the virtual and in-person learning delivered by the brilliant Shan and Victoria, we’re hitting an NPS of 100, and happiness index of 95 – it doesn’t get much better than that.

The feedback’s been brilliant. Our people are loving that the content’s been tailored to them, it’s not generic stuff, so it feels relevant to their roles and their growth. They’re enjoying the energy and the fun that the Academy team are bringing to their in-person sessions, and our engagement stats show the same story for Academy online – people are logging on, staying on, and coming back for more, which tells us that the team have created something that’s genuinely having an impact.

Honestly, we weren’t sure what the initial launch was going to look like. Our people have complex roles, and we know that can sometimes make it feel difficult to use time for learning, but the spaces on our in-person learning have been filling up quickly (we’ve had to put in waitlists for some of the sessions based on demand), and the Academy online content has been really welcomed by our field-based teams who can now access the content on the go, or download the podcasts for their commutes.

There are BIG plans. The team have so many things on the roadmap to keep building Academy. We’ll have more digital content and in-person sessions, we’re starting to roll-out our development programmes with curated development for our emerging and aspiring leaders, the introduction of our BSq-wide mentoring programme, better access to professional qualifications and technical development – there’s tons of exciting stuff to come.  

It’s a huge part of it. One of the key priorities in our Belonging roadmap is about empowering success, which is essentially making sure that every person in BSq has the same opportunity to grow their skills, take on new challenges, and reach their full potential – Academy is at the heart of that.