Touch transforms the culture at HC-One : New business deals with legacy of poor management and damaged morale

Purpose – Observes how a learning program helped a new business created following the collapse of UK care-home company Southern Cross to deal with a legacy of poor management and damaged morale and their inevitable consequences for service quality. Design/methodology/approach – Explains the reasons for the introduction of the Touch learning program, the form it takes and the results it has achieved. Findings – Reveals that 24 bespoke courses have been created for the 15,000-strong workforce. There have been 250,000 course completions, taking around 228,000 hours in total. Around £4 million has been saved on training in the first year of the program. Practical implications – Describes how an effective communication program helped to secure support for e-learning among a workforce that had previously been less tech-savvy than the average. Social implications – Highlights the particular advantages of the training program for a dispersed workforce where regulatory compliance is an important issue. Originality/value – Provides the inside story of how a training program helped to transform organizational culture and individual performance.