Dawn Robinson

Said the following about Alan Godding:

“This nomination is for Alan Godding Greater Anglia’s (GA) Learning Design Manager. Alan came into this L&D role from our Customer Service team just before the pandemic with little to no experience in this field. Since then, he has fast-tracked our new and contemporary company-wide social learning platform ‘Fuse Learn’ enabling it to become the heart of organisational learning and interaction. Alan continuously challenges himself by using a range of innovative learning design techniques to create online ‘learning plans’ with end point assessments or quizzes. Alan has helped develop over 25 in-house learning plans uniquely tailored to GA and 88% of Greater Anglia now engage/log into the platform.

To achieve this success, Alan has worked tirelessly and in his own time over evenings and weekends. Unknown to us, Alan even self-funded technical learning to advance his use of learning visuals, enabling animations to be visually modified to incorporate the GA brand, fleet, uniform, language, and locations, exceeding expectation of the tool.

Initially, GA colleagues were not familiar with using online learning apps or tools. His campaigns to drive engagement and promote learning through onboarding and other media sources have increased its success. This was particularly supportive during and after the pandemic restrictions, equipping GA to adapt quickly to change.

Alan regularly collaborates with internal subject matter experts to understand desired learning content outcomes. For example, Alan helped transition a ‘Sales It’s Happening’ classroom course to a fully blended learning experience, using social online sharing, assessments, and local peer trainers. Alan has proactively innovated our content away from a passive user experience (simply viewing and reading content) to an interactive user experience (whereby all GA colleagues can interact with the content to make decisions and see consequences of their decisions). Alan even taught himself HTML coding to experiment with ways to enhance interactive content.

Alan uses business acumen to produce regular reports to measure completion rates, engagement, cost-savings, and to monitor the % increase.

Platform content includes cartoon animations of GA’s brand and new fleet, enhancing a unique learner experience bespoke to GA! He creates short online games ahead of attending live events and ensures learning at your fingertips for varying communities set up on Fuse.

Alan is so willing to help GA learn and delivers proactive online learning taster ‘adverts’ to help! He lives our inclusive value as he engages colleagues from across GA to record voiceovers, shares customer phrases in popular languages, and ensures varying formats of online learning are accessible to all.

Each quarter, Alan can evidence around £100-300k cost efficiency in the transition from face-to-face workshops through time and release savings. He has enabled learning to grow and embed at the heart of GA’s culture. The Accessibility learning effectively met ORR requirements achieving 95% frontline completion in a short space of time. The tool also reduced HR business partner time, supporting managers with online alternatives.

Alan responds promptly to business need. He designed three developmental learning plans aimed at Customer Service colleagues with a DfT target of 5% completion. This target was exceeded by all three plans on day one of launch. Conflict Awareness training is now at 100%, and Passenger Announcements and Delay Repay at 78%!

Alan ensured that the tool embedded into the organisation’s culture. Since the pandemic, Fuse engagement rose from 69% to an impressive 88% exceeding expectation. This is outstanding given some of the challenges with frontline technology. In the last two years Fuse Health & Safety training reached 92%, the equivalent of 144 face to face sessions, which would have been impossible to deliver over the pandemic. New learning choices will continue to save GA time and release cost into the future whilst delivering personalised developmental support for all our colleagues. The story of GA’s Fuse Learn was shared by supplier Fuse Universal in a case study this year, highlighting how the rail industry can innovate learning technology. Thank you, Alan, for all that you bring to rail and GA.“

Laura Young

Said the following about Alan Godding:

“Alan has embedded our company-wide social learning platform ‘Fuse Learn’ driving engagement and ensuring that in the flow of work learning is enabled.

Continuously learning himself, he has learnt coding and has created innovative ways to ensure that the learning is suitable for our diverse audience.

Alan has solely created and delivered 27 bespoke learning plans to date and engagement on the platform is at its all-time highest thanks to his dedication and commitment.

Alan often works above and beyond the call of duty to ensure his learning is a success and often in his own time too during the evenings and at weekends.

Alan regularly reports on the cost efficiencies of the platform and encourages engagement by working collaboratively with other departments. Alan also ensures that learning in the flow of work is cost efficient and ensures productivity and performance is still being met enabling colleagues to continually grow and develop.

As a very valued member of the Greater Anglia team, we would like to recognise his achievements to date and nominate him for this award.“

Rebecca Richardson

Said the following about Alan Godding:

“I have nominated Alan for this learning development award as he has shown outstanding dedication and commitment to his role and the wider business objectives. Alan brings a softly spoken enthusiasm and a can do attitude to his role and even when under enormous pressure, never hesitates to offer his time and support to others.

Alan has helped me deliver on a number of projects where circumstances were conspiring against us. He designed and produced two high quality interactive learning plans for our Induction programme when it became clear that we were unable to deliver the full course within the time allocated. The learning plans were of such substantial quality that we have never sought to re-introduce those elements to classroom based learning, preferring the approach he established.

During the pandemic it became clear that we were not going to meet our targets for disability equality training unless we employed a new tactic for delivery. Despite the enormous pressure Covid placed on Alan's workload, he facilitated a companywide engagement programme to ensure that each business area was constantly kept up to date with their targets and successes and really worked hard to drive completion figures up beyond where we anticipated they'd get to. He has already been involved in ensuring that we can repeat this success for the next cycle.

Alan has a quiet thoughtfulness about him so when offering an opinion you can be confident that it comes from a considered place.“