How Caylent reached 92% employee activation on upskilling
A fast-growing AWS consultancy gave every engineer a learning budget and an open marketplace, and got activation numbers nine times the industry norm. Client: Caylent. Industry: Cloud services / SaaS. Location: Irvine, CA.
Results by the numbers
- 92% — employee activation rate
- 60% — saved on total L&D program costs
- 90% — of employees report applying new skills to their jobs
- 2,320 — hours of administration time saved (estimated)
The challenge
Caylent is a cloud native services company that helps organizations bring the best out of their people and technology using AWS. Engineers account for 65% of the workforce, and they need frequent training and upskilling — especially on AWS certifications.
Meeting that demand across a global, fully remote team with diverse learning goals was beyond what a small L&D team could deliver on its own. Requests piled up, and the backlog put pressure on a core part of Caylent's growth plan: promoting junior engineers into senior and leadership roles.
- Small L&D team supporting a global, remote workforce
- Engineering talent requiring specialized, fast-moving certifications
- A stated goal of building an internal leadership pipeline
- Constant pressure to stay current with industry change
Why a traditional LMS did not fit
Caylent had already concluded that a standard LMS or learning experience platform could not satisfy its range of learning needs. One catalog, bought per seat, would cover a fraction of what its engineers actually asked for, and would still need a team to curate it.
What Caylent wanted was a way to combine internal training with on-demand external resources, without adding administrative load to a team that had none to spare.
The solution: OneRange Atlas
OneRange Atlas gave Caylent engineers access to the best AWS certification programs on the market, alongside books, subscriptions and conferences from thousands of providers. Peers and managers could recommend bundles of resources directly to their teams.
Caylent allocated an individual learning budget to every employee and switched the platform on for all current team members and new hires at once. Approvals moved from email threads and expense reports to one-click decisions inside Atlas.
The results
Within a few months, more than 90% of employees had logged into the platform at least once, against an industry standard of under 10% participation in learning and development activities. Activation settled at 92%.
Employees were not just signing in. After nine months, Caylent's 500 employees were on track to request 2,320 resources by year end — about five resources per person. Roughly 80% of the investment went to technical courses and AWS certifications, but employees also requested leadership and management books, and subscriptions such as Grammarly and Duolingo to sharpen communication with global teams and clients.
The behaviour change showed up in the work. When surveyed, 90% of Caylent employees said they were actively applying new skills to their jobs, against an industry average of roughly 12% who report that L&D programs are relevant to their careers. Across the year, Caylent engineers, managers and L&D leaders saved an estimated 2,320 hours of administrative time — around an hour of searching, approving, paying and expensing per resource requested — and total program costs came in 60% lower than the alternative.
As a fast-growing, tech-focused, fully remote and global company, engaging our entire employee base with relevant content was always challenging. Partnering with OneRange has allowed our limited L&D team to realize unparalleled results, at a rate much quicker than we could have ever imagined.
JP La Torre — CEO, Caylent
We are thrilled to continue our partnership with OneRange as we grow. An important part of our growth plan centers around building new skills within our current team, as well as delivering foundational training for new Cayliens. Our OneRange partnership has allowed us to roll out an L&D program with minimal overhead, while delivering an experience and benefit that our employees love.
JP La Torre — CEO, Caylent