Deliveroo is a brand that needs very little introduction. Since launching in 2013, the company has stormed the food delivery market in 10 countries globally, including Hong Kong, Singapore, and the UAE.
Following a successful IPO in March 2021, Deliveroo has seen rapid growth over its decade of operation. But while this growth has enabled millions of happy diners to dig into piping hot meals delivered to their door, it’s also brought new challenges internally that were simmering just below the surface.
Headcount expanded quickly to around 4,000 employees, but L&D processes were still playing catch up. Training across the organization was ad hoc and managed at a team level. And with a growing cohort of first-time managers, the Deliveroo team knew that a centralized manager programme was a strategic priority if they wanted to maintain their employee experience and culture at scale.
“We no longer see management develop as a problem. Maynard Leigh has helped us move the dial to get people up to speed. It’s integral to how we train managers at Deliveroo.” – Keith McDougall, Director of Learning and Development, Deliveroo explains why it was the perfect partnership.
Key Results:
- Maintained 80%+ uptake over two years since programme alunch
- Experienced an increase in employee tenure of 6 months
- Training maintained an employee satisfaction score of 9.5/10
Recognising the need for high-quality, centralized manager training
“We’d just gone through an IPO, and we were becoming more established and mature as a business” Keith begins. “We were still in startup mode, and didn’t have a dedicated L&D team. We knew we needed a centralized approach to L&D. When we put together a strategy highlighting our key goals and deliverables for what learning should look like at Deliveroo, manager training came up as a key priority.”
With an average employee age of 32, many of Deliveroo’s 500+ people managers were leading teams for the first time. They didn’t have the experience or training to help them engage or motivate their teams.
When training did happen, it was usually organised by a team or department, making it hard to ensure that managers were getting a consistent level of skills and knowledge development across the board. There was one self service e-learning platform in place, but user uptake was low, especially among managers.
“At Deliveroo, people are still relatively early on in their careers, meaning our people managers are, too,” Keith says. “Many of our managers just didn’t have the depth of experience needed to lead their teams effectively. But there was no global consistency in how they were trained. Team would often decide to run their own training, but had very little understanding of what they needed or the quality of their provider.”
The lack of consistency le to a lack of results. And worse – it meant managers weren’t able to support their teams effectively.
Keith knew over time that this training shortfall could split into other areas. Deliveroo’s average tenure was already short at 18 months. The higher turnover placed an added stressor on first-time managers. Plus, engagement surveys were already starting to hint at the fact that managers needed more support.
“In our monthly pulse surveys, employees cited a lack of development opportunities,” Keith Explains. “In areas where managers could have a key impact, they weren’t having as much of an impact as they could. We knew that if we could get the management training right, it would have the greatest impact on our organisation.”
Find a flexible, culturally aligned partner to deliver trainers at a scale
When Deliveroo started looking for a new L&D partner, they had a few key criteria going into their RFP process:
In-person delivery that could scale across all markets: Manager training needed to deliver a hands-on, engaging learning experience across a multi-region workforce.
Increase managers’ core skills: Improve fundamental people management skills, including team engagement, goal setting, and employee development ability in approach:
Flexibility in approach: Create a bespoke manager training programme that responds to Deliveroo’s key objectives.
Maynard Leigh’s collaborative, flexible approach to building and delivering training content was what sealed the deal.
“Maynard Leigh was the right culture match for us. We knew the training could scale in a way that other providers couldn’t.”
“We knew we needed to improve the quality of people management across the board,” Keith explains. “But neither of our existing training providers we having the impact they needed to – and we were still building a centralized L&D function we had the data to guide what we needed to do, we just needed a provider who could be flexible with our needs, and parter with us to build the right approach that aligned with our culture.”
Deliveroo didn’t want a cookier-cutter course, or an off-the-shelf learning platform that would gather dust. They wanted to create an engaging experience that improved their managers’ capabilities and offered greater consistency across the whole organization. They wanted an approach that could flex to fit their culture. And most importantly of all, they wanted a partner, not a provider.
“Once our partnership with Maynard Leigh started to roll, collaboration became a key component of how we work together,” Keith says. “We bounce ideas around with the team regularly, and we know that if we come to them with tweaks, or changes, the team will always be receptive, proactive, and easy to work with.”
“Maynard Leigh was the right culture match for us,” Keith adds. “The training model was extremely adaptable, and is helping us solve one of our key L&D challenges The facilitation of training is as impactful, high quality, and strong as I’ve seen delivered anywhere. We knew their training could scale in a way that other providers couldn’t.”
Boosting engagement, tenure, and long-term skills development
Two years down the line, Deliveroo’s manager training programme has become a valued part of the company’s learning culture. In fact, Keith ad the team have added new modules and programmes to encourage long-term skills development.
“When we implemented the manager training from Maynard Leigh, we had one specific goal: We needed 80% of the target audience to complete the training within the first 12 to 18 months,” Keith says. “We hit 82% of that target – and the programme continues to deliver value today. Sign-ups are still high. Peer feedback has been positive – people are recommending it across the business to other managers. Our employee training satisfaction score is sitting at 9.47 out of 10.”
But its not just existing managers that are benefiting from the training – it’s also becoming part of Deliveroo’s succession planning for training future people leaders.
“We have a greater demand for non-managers to join our manager training,” Keith says. “Managers are recognising the potential for their employees to become future people managers, and are proactively recommending them to join the course and learn management skills ahead of time”
“People really recognise the value of this programme. It’s an opportunity for development, not a tickbox. That, to me, is a great sign of its success.”
“We no longer see management development as a problem. Maynard Leigh has helped us move the dial and get people up to speed. It’s integral to how we train managers at Deliveroo.”
These results are trickling down into the larger business, too. As Deliveroo has found its past IPO wings and growth has stabilised, the manager training among other factors has contributed to an overall upward trend in employee engagement and tenure.
“People are rating their manager more highly on engagement surveys – and our managers are more engaged too,” Keith explains. “When we compare managers who completed the management programme to those who have not attended, we see higher score for every engagement driver, particularly across factors including recognition, management support, and freedom of opinions.”
“Our average employee tenure is not 24 months. We no longer see management develooment as a problem. Maynard Leigh has helped us to move the dial and get people up to speed. It’s integral to how we train managers at Deliveroo.”
For Keith, the strength of these results is down to the strength and mutual trust of the working partnership.
“Working with Maynard Leigh is very much a partnership – the team adds so much value beyond just delivering our training programmes.” Keith says. “Event when developing our own training content in-house, we knew we could trust Maynard Leigh to facilitate it and deliver the content.”
“Working with Maynard Leigh on L&D feels like working with friends. There’s never any second guessing in terms of quality or consistency – we trust the team to deliver a high quality, engaging training programme at scale that moves our culture forward.“
