Whether you’ve been following us for a while, or are new around here, one of the first things you’ll notice about 5app is that we love Playlists. But if the playlists you’re used to are typically found on Spotify or YouTube, you may be wondering what a 5app Playlist is.
Playlists sit at the heart of the 5app platform (Hub). They empower learning teams and content creators to curate and manage learning experiences from any content they own or have access to (such as through a third-party content library). This flexibility makes Playlists a powerful tool for delivering targeted, impactful learning and communication experiences to your audience.
In this blog, we explore the benefits of Playlists, their use cases and real-life customer examples.
In the context of the employee lifecycle, Playlists serve as an impactful tool for delivering the right content at the right time to the right audience. Here are a few specific use cases where our customers reap the benefits of Playlists:
Getting new employees up to speed is critical for productivity and engagement. Onboarding Playlists can include essential information such as company policies, team introductions and role-specific training. This structured approach ensures that new hires feel supported and confident as they settle into their roles.
When building a Playlist, sections can be used to group similar content assets. With our recent product advances, sections can also be locked to allow Playlists to be completed systematically.
Regulatory and mandatory compliance training is a non-negotiable part of any business, ensuring the safeguarding of employees and the organisation. Playlists offer a simple way to group compliance-based training, such as health and safety, data protection, GDPR and industry-specific regulations, into one place.
5app’s real-time reporting allows admins and managers to understand employee completion rates globally and locally.
Our Nudges functionality allows admins to set and forget notification sequences based on a goal - such as completing the mandatory training by a set date. Once established, the employee will be automatically reminded to complete the content by the due date.
When employees transition into new roles, role-specific Playlists can provide curated resources to help them develop the necessary skills. Whether it's leadership training for first-time managers or technical skills for a specialised position, Playlists streamline the reskilling process.
With Smart Teams, employees are placed into groups based on their credentials, allowing personalised Playlists related to the learner’s role within the business appear front and centre when they log into the Hub.
Transparent and regular internal comms are the backbone of any successful organisation, allowing employees to remain connected with the company vision and daily news. Playlists can consolidate these internal comms and resources into a news feed that employees can access in a single click.
Whether it's a monthly update from the CEO, an update to a new policy or a team sharing details of the next social event, Playlists help reduce email overload and support content in any media format that best engages with your people.
Ascent Flight Training exemplifies the potential of role-specific Playlists. With over 90 individual roles across their 500+ employee organisation, Ascent leverages Playlists to map and support the unique skill sets required for each position with a comprehensive competency framework. Whether it's training for flight instructors or administrative staff, these tailored Playlists ensure that employees have access to the exact resources they need to excel.
This means that when employees access the Hub, they are met with the content and resources needed to support their role at Ascent. Want to know more? Read the full Ascent case study here.
For online mind-health platform Problem Shared, the Hub was their first foray into owning a learning management system (LMS). Initially used for onboarding new employees, ProblemShared now has dedicated Playlists for new starters, mandatory training and internal communications. Specifically for onboarding, the Problem Shared team has developed a streamlined blended programme that allows new employees access to the Hub on day one, instantly connecting them with the business.
Hemsley Fraser, a leader in L&D content and services, uses Playlists internally to deliver authentic comms to its 300-strong workforce spread across multiple geographies. With a dispersed workforce, CEO Lynsey Whitmarsh leans on the Hub daily to stay connected within her teams and deliver company-wide updates while on the move.
Want to know more about Hemsley's success and how the Hub has become the linchpin of their business? Then read all about it here.
Although Hemsley Fraser uses the Hub as its dedicated all-in-one learning and communications platform, its thriving content business relies on the 5app platform to deliver courses to its customers.
This is delivered through what we term ‘distributed Playlists’, allowing the Hemsley team to centrally curate and manage all of their content and Playlists in a parent Hub (or store) and instantly broadcast Playlists to their customers. This feature allows content partners like Hemsley to:
1. Centrally manage their content, version control and language variants, allowing for consistent high-grade content and branding to be delivered from one source
2. Deliver content at pace, with ‘child Hubs’ having access to content within seconds
3. Provide localised support - once the content is in the child Hub, access can be customised to the individuals, teams or the entire business
Although Playlists remain core to the 5app experience, introducing an AI layer elevates how employees discover content and curators build their next learning experience.
Late last year, we introduced Vee, our AI tutor agent, to the platform. Vee allows employees to intelligently discover content through natural language prompts. Vee will find knowledge from within your organisation and surface the asset or Playlist that best supports the user's question.
And we're not stopping there. Later this year, we're bringing content authoring to the Hub to support content curators in elevating their content delivery. Hear from 5app CEO Philip Huthwaite on what to expect.