SPOTLIGHT ON COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
Creating bravery for member-led engagement: how Multiverse have created an engaged community Zahra Behzadi is the Online Community manager at Multiverse, an education and upskilling business which helps organizations develop apprenticeships and sources candidates to fill them – creating an ‘outstanding alternative to university and college’. By Emily Brounger Community as Competitive Advantage Founded by Euan Blair in 2016 (the son of Tony Blair, UK Prime Minister until 2007), Multiverse is more than a glorified recruitment consultant, it’s an ed-tech social enterprise putting diversity front and center – and one which is turning the traditional model of apprenticeships on its head, by building out apprenticeship programs for knowledge workers not just labor positions. The Multiverse community launched early in 2020 just as Covid was building, and has quickly grown to 5000 members. “Due to the climate at the time of launching with everyone working from home and the world migrating online a really interesting dynamic was created”. Zahra explains. With apprentices ranging from 16 to 65 serving the needs of this diverse and dynamic community has come with its own challenges. A key
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success factor has been bringing groups together - online at first, but increasingly in person, to attend fire-side chats, Q&As and apprenticeship workshops.” “Our community really showcases the apprentice experience. For businesses this is a great pull as they don’t have to worry about the additional support in-house, because they’ve got this whole network they’re plugging into, with events, networking, training and the curriculum. We know that for a lot of our clients, community is the main reason they chose us, because we’ve got such a well built out and substantial community offering”.
for a lot of our clients, community is the main reason they chose us
Community Metrics Member acquisition isn’t a key metric for Multiverse because successful apprentices automatically enroll in the community. Instead, North Star metrics revolve around engagement, active members and activity, defined as anybody that has had an interaction with the community, be it with their programs, events, someone who’s accessed their platform or redeemed a member benefit. They also track apprentice satisfaction and success. “We’ve clearly identified that apprentices that are more engaged with our community end up being more successful on their apprenticeship program, so get merits and distinctions, which is an amazing thing to be able to relay back to the business and a key reason for driving engagement in the community.” Further, as Multiverse’s alumni grows, apprentices benefit from seeing and hearing the experiences
