What if you could deliver genuinely personalised learning without an army of L&D specialists?
That’s exactly what Erik James Dubuc, Global Learning & Development Partner at citizenM, has pulled off. In our recent Death of Generic Training webinar, Erik shared how his tiny team is scaling learning across 37 hotels without losing the personal touch that makes citizenM’s culture so distinctive.
Their story proves that personalisation isn’t about having a big budget. It’s about being intentional, agile, and, above all, human.
citizenM’s mantra is “affordable luxury for the people.” But that philosophy extends beyond its guests. It’s how they think about learning too.
“We have very lean teams, both in our hotels and in our support office. That contributes to a lack of time and resources,” says Erik.
When you can’t pull people off the floor for long training sessions, creativity becomes survival.
“We have to prioritise. There’s not a lot of flexibility to just pull everyone off the floor for training. We have to be creative.”
Scaling globally while keeping learning relevant across 37 hotels? That’s no small feat.
“Scalability was a huge challenge about 3 years ago when we knew we were doubling in size. How do we scale learning globally while keeping consistency but allowing for local flavour?”
Erik’s team cracked the code with a blended approach that combines structured digital learning (built with HowNow) and immersive in-person experiences.
“We’ve designed a hybrid onboarding approach. We partner with HowNow to create learning pathways for each milestone.”
“This is combined with an in-person immersive onboarding program for 3 days, focusing on culture, ways of working, and history, followed by hard skills training.”
The result? New hires get the best of both worlds: digital direction when they need structure, and human connection when they’re ready to immerse themselves in the citizenM culture.
“We hire nice people that love to connect with others. We can teach them the hard skills.”
citizenM’s approach to personalisation is refreshingly simple and deeply human.
“The manager is more directive at the beginning. Then, when the employee is immersed and performing, we start to empower them.”
After the first three months, employees “unlock” access to self-directed learning, from Blinkist for bite-sized reading to Duolingo for multilingual engagement.
“To empower people, they need to put in the work and contribute to their learning to unlock the next stage.”
This model creates a genuine sense of ownership and progression (not another tick-box training journey).
Erik and his team have found a clever way to scale without scaling headcount: by turning subject matter experts into content creators.
“We can now create autonomy with learning champions. For example, our tech team needed a new e-learning on cybersecurity. We can hand them the tool and say, ‘You build this.’”
But L&D still plays a crucial role (just not as the bottleneck).
“L&D’s role then becomes the guardian and caretaker of the learning experience. Our expertise is in how people learn best, narrative, and flow.”
They coach SMEs on storytelling, structure, and alignment with citizenM’s brand and culture.
“We prepare learning champions to use the tooling, and we act as a mentor or coach in reviewing the content, suggesting approaches like adding a story to make it more memorable.”
If there’s one takeaway from Erik’s approach, it’s this: your learning has to feel human.
“Your learning needs to be human. Every organisation is human because you work with people and deliver to people.”
That philosophy sits at the heart of their ERA framework — making every experience Engaging, Relevant, and Accessible.
“The tendency is to design for everybody, and in turn, we design for nobody.”
It’s a gentle reminder for all of us: the more we design with the learner in mind, the more impact we make.
When time and resources are tight, perfection is the enemy of progress. Erik’s team embraces an agile mindset — testing, learning, and iterating as they go.
“Being agile gives us the opportunity to put things out before the final product is finished. It helps us not work across silos.”
That “minimum viable learning” approach means people get value fast, and the team can continuously improve based on feedback.
“The benefit is our people get that info immediately, and we get real-time feedback to apply to the next part of what we’re designing.”
citizenM’s story is a blueprint for every L&D leader who’s short on resources but big on ambition.
By keeping learning human, empowering others to contribute, and adopting an agile mindset, Erik’s team proves that personalisation doesn’t require a massive L&D department (just the right mindset and a few smart frameworks).
Or as Erik puts it:
“How does your learning offer talk like a human, feel like a human, relate to you as a human?”
That’s the future of learning and it’s already happening at citizenM.
For more on building a human-centric L&D strategy, listen to our podcast with citizenM's Raquel Gonzalez Caseira on facilitating knowledge sharing and driving a learning culture.
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