We spoke with Dave Wildman, BSI's new Head of Professional Services about PeopleTank, his experience and how he’s driving new and innovative solutions for learning teams.
Tell us a little bit about your background in learning and resourcing learning projects?
I’ve been managing complex learning projects for around 20 years or so and have been planning and resourcing key roles for most of this time. I’ve had some great exposure to identifying the right person needed to deliver on a broad range of learning projects. This covers anything from Virtual or Instructor-led learning, through to Digital Transformation projects from solution design to development of digital and blended programs.
Over the last 8 years, a big focus of mine was sourcing and building relationships with Instructional Designers, to deeply understand the work they do. I’ve been a key support to major clients in finding and vetting the right talent – people that understand both learning design, and specific industry sectors such as Financial Services, Professional Services, Construction, Security and Government. At present, there is a great amount of demand for instructional design resources, it is really critical that the right skillsets are matched with the right projects. With a high demand for great IDs at present, this means that the task of finding quality resources is more important than ever - which is one of the reasons I started my business PeopleTank.
What drew you to working with BSI and partnering in the learning space?
Partnering with BSI was easy! The team are locally based in Melbourne, they are experts in digital design and probably the most creative bunch of people I’ve ever worked with. Simon and the team intrinsically understand digital learning design, the importance of making learning stick, and most importantly have the technical knowhow for complex solutions – they also ensure equity and accessibility for learners with learning difficulty or a disability as a standard.
The team are a passionate group of learning professionals - always ahead of the game, thinking outside of the box and collaborating with customers and each other. The partnership elevates my business (People Tank) to deliver digital solutions with an assurance of quality that only a very experienced digital learning studio can. My role as Head of Professional Services crosses over both businesses to support the ongoing recruitment and vetting of Instructional Designers, Developers and key roles required for BSI projects. I support BSI to ensure we hire the right people, that we can scale and fulfil projects quickly. Both brands working together is exactly the kind of service innovation that customers need to see right now. We are offering something unique while maintaining authenticity in how BSI delivers learning solutions.
Explain the different ways Clients can engage BSI Digital team on learning projects
Customers come to us with a variety of requirements and we’re seeing a continued trend (especially due to the impacts of remote learning and digital learning needs due to COVID-19) in virtualising and digitising traditional learning modes to ensure business continuity. Clients are engaging us in a range of different ways to support this:
- Project-based assignments, where we come on board to deliver key topics necessary for teams to build capability, ensure compliance, build technical or leadership skills
- Consulting projects that support clients to define learning goals and design appropriate blended or digital solutions for their programs
- Governance and standards-driven projects where we are brought on to provide advice on digital templates, tools and practical workflows for digital learning teams
- Managed service arrangements, where clients bring a small team of our learning experts onboard for a period of time, working remotely to extend their learning team’s capacity.
Tell us more about the Managed Service offering and who might benefit from it?
Our Managed Learning Service offers businesses an easy way to both understand needs and learning challenges, as well as the people-power needed to build out a variety of learning solutions. Essentially, we become a part of our client’s team to help them achieve more, and faster than they could otherwise. We include a layer of ‘support’ where all team member’s work is peer-reviewed and tested… and a great outcome is ensured. Through this approach, we can take away the risks associated with organisations hiring and having to manage a large team of Instructional designers – we ensure teams are matched to the project requirements in terms of skills and supported to deliver.
A typical engagement might look something like this:
- We assess the project needs, and determine the right people in the team to deliver
- We assign a dedicated BSI team that works with you for the duration of the engagement, understands your organisation, your stakeholders and your expectations
- We work remotely, remaining in close communication with core stakeholders and working collaboratively to ensure end deliverables meet requirements.
- We conduct regular check-ins, and hold a central project plan so that you’ve got comfort over the work completed and that things are on track
- We take the risk away from technical challenges that may occur when implementing eLearning into your environment, ensuring compatibility, accessibility and digital standards are met.
Businesses currently leveraging this service are reaping the benefits and cover a wide variety of industries including Financial Services, Professional Services, Victorian and NSW Government, Legal firms, and Not for Profits. This offering is ideal for learning teams that don’t have the resources to support end-to-end digital learning design on a permanent basis, and for anyone wishing to extend their learning team's capability.
What makes this offering unique from other providers in industry?
The one thing that stands out for me from other suppliers is that all content is created locally, with most of the team based in Melbourne. This is a crucial element to BSI’s ongoing success in delivering great, contextualised work for the Australian audience, and being responsive to customers from start to finish.
Team structure is also a key reason why customers trust and love what we do. Projects and key relationships are supported by Senior stakeholders including BSI’s Director (Simon) and Creative Director (Jesse), along with Instructional Design Leads who understand the brief, and then lead charge in managing their ‘pod’ of designers to fulfil the needs of the project.
BSI are the best in the business when it comes to customer experience - we take people on a journey right from the beginning and are clear about on what they should expect from any learning engagement in terms of process and how we will achieve the outcome they need.
How can people find out more?
Contact me directly! I’d love to collaborate with your business to support your next learning project. If you’re curious, you can chat with some experts to determine whether we’d be the right fit for you.
The BSI team can be contacted via elearning@bsi.com.au or you can email David.Wildman@bsi.com.au or call 0403 740 733 directly to schedule in a time to chat.