Scaling skills and careers: Building a global learning platform

The discussion therefore focused on what makes global learning platforms genuinely effective – and how they can support both organisational capability and individual progression.

Exploring the challenge

Our provocateur was Becky Gardner, Associate Director, Organisational Capability at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP), who shared her organisation’s approach to building a global learning platform designed to support learning for all.

By operating across multiple markets and employee populations, CCEP needed to create a more connected and accessible learning experience, while at the same time minimizing fragmentation across systems and processes.

A central theme of the presentation and the discussion that followed was the challenge of balancing consistency and scale with a feeling of relevance and personal ownership for every employee. Rather than increasing content availability for all, the aim had to be to create a platform that employees would keep coming back to, because it felt useful, intuitive and connected to their growth.

Creating a single learning experience

At the centre of CCEP’s approach is Career Hub Learning, a single global platform designed to provide employees with personalised learning journeys and a unified learning record. The platform brings together required learning, recommended learning, career-focused learning history and development and the role of academies into one place.

The ambition behind the platform was to offer skills-based learning recommendations and a simpler and more engaging experience for employees, managers and HR teams alike. Key features included:

• Personalised learning journeys for everyone
• An individual learning record on a single platform
• Greater visibility for managers on their team’s learning progress
• World class back-end operations, through simplified admin and processes

The platform was designed to address several longstanding frustrations within traditional learning systems. For example, employees often struggle to locate relevant learning or experienced platforms as outdated and disconnected from career growth. Managers lack visibility of team learning activity, while HR teams faced higher levels of manual administration across multiple systems.

Improving engagement and adoption

Career Hub Learning sought to simplify the overall experience while strengthening engagement. Features such as badges, points and leaderboards increased interactivity, while the “My Team” functionality enabled managers to support development and track progress across teams.

A strong theme was that learning platforms are most effective when employees can clearly see how learning connects to future opportunities. At CCEP, this meant positioning learning not simply as mandatory activity, but as something linked to growth, capability and progression.

The platform is now live across multiple countries, supporting around 20,000 employees. Adoption levels have been strong, with more than 80 percent of employees accessing the platform within its first year.

Building learning that feels closer to employees

Significant emphasis was placed on local engagement and advocacy. A network of learning ambassadors helped to bring learning closer to employees, guide colleagues towards the right tools and opportunities, and share feedback to improve the overall experience. These ambassadors have played a vital role in reinforcing learning culture locally while supporting global consistency.

The discussion also highlighted the importance of continuous evolution, rather than treating platform implementation as a finished project. Future priorities include completing the transition away from multiple legacy platforms, introducing additional AI-enabled functionality and expanding the operating model to support a significantly larger employee population over time.

A clear message emerged from this Roundtable: successful learning platforms do far more than organise content. They help employees understand where learning could take them and create stronger links between skills, development and opportunity.

Our view: from obligation to opportunity

From The Career Innovation Company’s perspective, one of the most important aspects of the discussion was the shift from obligation to opportunity. Many learning platforms are primarily experienced as systems for completing required training. What stood out in the presentation and discussion from Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP) was the effort to position learning as part of a broader career and growth conversation.

This distinction matters, because employees are far more likely to engage in learning when they can see how it connects to future possibilities. Platforms become more valuable when they answer not only “What do I need to complete?” but also “Where could this take me?”

Three themes stood out particularly strongly:

• Connecting learning to moves, by showing how skills link to roles, projects and opportunities
• Positioning essential learning as part of a wider growth story, not a compliance exercise
• Creating reasons for employees to return by reinforcing career agency and relevance, rather than simply expanding content libraries

Learning platforms are becoming increasingly important career infrastructure. As organisations place greater emphasis on adaptability and internal mobility, the connection between learning, opportunity and career visibility becomes more significant. Those that gain the greatest value are likely to be those that help employees see learning not as an obligation, but as a route to opportunity.