Case Study: Find out how a national electricals retailer created a culture of proactive, continuous learning across a 3,000-person business
With the help of inrehearsal, a dynamic video-led content library, AO has transformed its workforce’s approach to learning, and inspired employees to proactively engage with L&D
Case Study
● Company: Online electronics retailer, AO
● Employees: 3,000+
● Industry: Retail
The challenge: engaging a 3,000-strong workforce with meaningful digital learning
Starting his new role as Digital Learning Team Leader for AO, Stephen Holderness inherited a learning platform that was only being used for mandatory training, despite housing around 4,000 pieces of content.
This presented him with a range of awareness and engagement challenges, and some big skills gaps to fill.
But a survey found that employees wanted more opportunities to learn. Some departments had even brought in their own training material without consulting the L&D team.
Clearly, the appetite to learn was there. But AO needed learning content that was more purposeful, dynamic, and more easily marketable to employees.
The previous platform was purely e-learning-based, which employees didn’t like. When asked their ideal format for learning, around 50% of employees said their preference for learning outside of work was video, and 29% preferred audio.
So, AO needed to find a new learning content partner with a more impactful, video-led library.
The solution: finding the right provider to facilitate authentic and impactful learning
Stephen’s team went looking for a new learning content partner, evaluating all the leading providers in the market. But those were unable to offer the flexibility and quality AO needed.
AO soon decided inrehearsal’s video-led learning library would provide exactly what their workforce wanted to support personal development.
“We found inrehearsal, and it just absolutely hit the mark,” said Stephen. “Our team knew straight away, from the first video we watched, that it was the right choice.”
Among the many features and capabilities that helped them make that decision were:
Impactful doses of learning
Stephen explained, “What our workforce wanted was videos where they could get the answer to a specific problem or question about their personal development in three to five minutes. That’s what people were telling us felt comfortable for them, and that’s absolutely what inrehearsal does.”
Authenticity and expertise
Another key requirement was authenticity.
“With everything we've done historically, there has to be authenticity to it,” said Stephen.
“What employees don't like is the same person talking about 100 different subjects. That was something we wanted to avoid, and another reason why we chose inrehearsal.”
The inrehearsal library contains thousands of expert-led video masterclasses on dozens of topics.
“Thanks to inrehearsal, we're now able to put a highly credible expert in front of every employee at the point of need. That’s something we didn't have before.”
Multi-lingual content
A large percentage of AO employees don’t speak English as their first language, so offering an inclusive learning experience was another priority. The inrehearsal library is available in over 20 languages.
Seamless onboarding and adoption
Introducing inrehearsal into AO’s infrastructure was a seamless process. AO easily integrated inrehearsal’s content within Thrive, their existing learning management system (LMS), applying some customisation and branding it internally as AO-Play.
All inrehearsal content can be integrated into any LMS or learning experience platform (LXP).
You’re provided with all supporting files and technology to host and promote the library, eLearning, and events on your own systems.
Stephen said, “With inrehearsal, everything's there, and that makes it so easy. You don't always get that with other providers.”
The impact: content that creates a culture of proactive learning
AO has since seen a cultural shift to more proactive learning throughout the business, with the help of inrehearsal.
Granted, the appetite was always there. But the workforce has really embraced the responsibility of proactive personal development in their spare time.
“The inrehearsal content library has changed the dynamic and attitude towards learning in our business,” said Stephen. “Our previous platform was only used in work hours, only for mandatory training. Now, our biggest traffic on the platform is during commuting times, or when people are at home in the evenings. So, inrehearsal has created a real culture of proactive learning that we didn’t have before.”
Turning employees into L&D advocates
inrehearsal’s actionable, engaging content has driven employees at all levels of the organisation to proactively share content with their peers company-wide.
The inrehearsal library has socialised learning, creating a culture where employees are recommending courses to each other without the L&D team asking them to.
This makes the L&D teams lives Stephen’s role much easier, as people are now actively promoting learning internally at scale. Some content is essentially reaching viral status among the employees themselves.
That’s a dream outcome for any L&D team.
Stephen said, “A head of a key department found a piece of learning content recently, then got in touch with our team, expressing desire to share it with their whole department. That behaviour just didn't exist in our business before.”
Engaging all areas of the organisation
The inrehearsal content library has also helped the L&D team reach parts of the business that were previously considered near-impossible to engage with learning programmes.
“inrehearsal’s content has opened up areas of the business that have never engaged with us before,” said Stephen. “But now they’re reaching out to us and asking us to build learning pathways for their teams to develop new skills.”
This is because inrehearsal’s library has transformed the perception of what L&D means to AO employees. People across all departments now actively want to learn for themselves, rather than something they only do when it’s mandatory.
These benefits have begun to improve ROI, and enabled the L&D team to begin delivering greater outcomes for AO across all lines of business.
“Our CEO has always talked about providing learning opportunities, mostly in the context of learning on the job, but not in an L&D sense. But since becoming an inrehearsal member, our CEO has promoted the inrehearsal content library as being the best L&D solution he's ever been presented with. He said it’s got anything you could ever want from an L&D perspective.”
Want to explore the inrehearsal library for free? If your organisation is looking to expand your content library to be more impactful for your people, then we here at LD MENA are here to help.
inrehearsal have been kind enough to give us our own account for their library and allowing us to give access to others who want to see and experience their content. If you are interested, just complete the form and we’ll add you to the platform.