Employee engagement exceeds expectations with a curated content strategy

The myCareer team in the NSW Department of Customer Service (DCS) is the creator, administrator and proud guardian of a platform providing People & Culture support to seven diverse ‘clusters’ of government agencies, each with its own unique interface and expectations.

In 2015, DCS selected Cornerstone on the strength of its ability to grow with and integrate every element of the People & Culture unit’s requirements and for its leading Learning & Performance Management System. Since then, the system, now known as myCareer, has proven itself for performance and adaptability.

The myCareer system, comprising the full suite of Cornerstone solutions, has transformed People & Culture operations. It has slashed critical process times from 40–70% and achieved 90–100% training compliance, allowing a team of five to service over 17,700 employees.

The team knew there were a lot of fantastic, exciting courses in Content Anytime, but they were adamant they weren’t just to be loaded into their portal in isolation. Some of the feedback the team sought to address included that employees weren't getting enough development. By adding structure around the content, DCS improved employee engagement. Now, they present courses in a framework with custom pages and playlists that make them more accessible and relevant to employees.

Since implementing the Content Anytime strategy, the myWellbeing tool has had over 14,000 page views, with 2,000 course registrations and completions in the first month after the launch. Most employees accessed the site within the first two weeks of its launch, demonstrating its popularity and effectiveness. Content Anytime material is sourced from a range of global and local content providers, covering a diverse range of topics, like Business Skills, Leadership and Management, Diversity & Inclusion and many more. Cornerstone allows employees to access content from multiple. The episodes are short, smart and digestible, with some being less than six minutes long.

The team now fine-tunes the playlists into topical themes such as myWellbeing and myDiversity covering burnout, inclusion, belonging and development training, which is what employees have been asking for, and the result is that employees are actively searching for the content rather than DCS reminding them to do so. The team is also developing new pages with curated content, such as myPerformance, myLeadership and myPrivacy.

The new types of learning modalities and downloadable resources, such as printable summaries, transcripts, guides, quizzes and surveys add to the programme's effectiveness. These tools have made the Content Anytime content more engaging for employees, contributing to the programme's overall success. Best of all, it’s all on a single platform rather than multiple SharePoint hubs.

The team also created a disaster recovery support page on the back of the bushfire and flood crisis that have impacted parts of DCS in recent years. The team was able to easily use Cornerstone to create a custom page where employees could submit their expressions of interest to support the residents in impacted areas. The team was impressed they were able to use a simple tool to develop a training platform when they needed to quickly mobilise large groups of employees to help communities replace lost documents such as birth certificates and driver's licences or claim disaster recovery payments. Henry Parsons, Project Manager myCareer, says, “Employees can submit their information and talk about their experience, and we can quickly match skills and upskill the right people and get teams on the ground where they are needed quickly.”

DCS has had more than 200,000 courses registered and completed in myCareer in the last six months, uplifting the results for development after the PMES (People Matters Engagement Survey) for employee development. By offering training in areas such as well-being, diversity, development and disaster recovery, DCS has demonstrated its commitment to employee welfare and development. This has created a sense of loyalty and engagement among employees, contributing to a positive and supportive work environment.