It’s become ingrained in business vernacular that an organisation's greatest strength is its people. But when Advance Workforce, one of Australia’s leading training and learning companies, told us that this mantra is in danger of becoming just another corporate platitude, and that the key to success is in sustained cultural development, we knew that there was plenty of common ground between its approach and Bridge: our learning and performance management software.

Advance Workforce partners with organisations across Australia to create a people-centric workplace culture. It provides business leaders with the knowledge, skills and understanding of how to maximise the impact of their people - and shows them how to leverage skills to meet clear business objectives.

But there’s no easy or quick fix. It takes, says Nic Stephen, CEO and Founder of Advance Workforce, an average of 18-36 months to achieve real change - and this is where Bridge comes in.

Advance Workforce implemented Bridge Learn and Bridge Perform this year to provide consistent and sustained corporate learning, to automate the delivery of course material - and importantly, to help organisations to measure their progress in affecting change.

Advance Workforce tells us that improving a working environment is a journey. It takes incremental steps and commitment from all parties across an organisation to make a real difference - and crucial to this journey is data capture and analysis. By measuring progress throughout the change process, organisations can help understand employees’ learning behaviours, how the programmes are being consumed - and where the company is excelling or struggling. Harnessing data allows business leaders to make changes - tweaking the course materials as necessary and making sure that training is always working as it should.

When we spoke to CEO Nic Stephen, it became clear where Bridge has really helped the firm. ‘We can deliver consistent teaching and learning material with Bridge Learn’ said Nic. ‘Before we implemented the software we had plenty of tech - a CRM system and a psychometric portal spring to mind - but it just wasn’t consistent. Bridge gives us the architecture to provide a seamless experience for our customers. Everything gets much more accessible - companies can access material wherever and whenever they want - and they get an intuitive and consistent experience. This helps us deliver a true end-to-end solution for our clients.’

Nic also told us that the philosophy underpinning everything that Advance Workforce does is to provide blended approaches and methodologies to fit clients’ needs, whatever stage they’re at. ‘We might start with podcasts and written material’ says Nic, ‘build up to face-to-face learning, and then supplement that with real world case study type materials. What and when depends on an ongoing health-check approach, where we ascertain what’s unhealthy in an organisation and what transition strategy is best suited to become healthy.’ This approach allows ROI tracking and helps companies measure against specific areas which need improvement, whether that’s absenteeism, productivity or the onboarding of new staff. The powerful analytics engine in Bridge makes it an integral part of this approach.

The final piece of the puzzle is in performance management; and this is where Bridge Perform comes in. For us, the idea of the a static annual appraisal is dead - and Advance Workforce shares this view. It uses Bridge to help its customers employ a much more dynamic approach to performance reviews  - where ongoing assessment and conversations are crucial.

We’re excited to see where Advance Workforce goes next, and to join the team in its mission to fundamentally change the way businesses learn and affect healthy change.