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Global | Retail

With a goal to produce five million hours of learning across five separate banner brands, the L&D team at Kingfisher plc needed an efficient way to produce online learning at seriously high scale. Jason Edwards, Global Digital Learning and Development Partner, shares how Elucidat helped them meet their goal to produce multi-brand employee learning efficiently. Saving costs and upping engagement as they went.

Kingfisher employee in a store
Banner brands
Hours of elearning to produce
Reduction in costs

Introduction

 

Kingfisher plc is home to five home improvement retail brands across Europe. With over 2,000 stores, and 80,000 employees, they need learning that can translate across their banner brands, roles and locations. But they also need to address the quality challenge and increase learner engagement, through more relevant and adaptable learning solutions.

 

Add to the mix a requirement to make five million hours of learning consumable at point of need, within five years, it’s not easy to see how the central L&D team can deliver. But deliver they do!

 

Jason Edwards, Global Digital Learning and Development Partner at Kingfisher, tells us about how Elucidat’s cloud-based authoring platform – and supporting services – have been key to their model, and driven a transformational impact on the business.

jason edwards Kingfisher
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“The ease of authoring, functionality and interactions made working at the scale we needed much quicker and easier. Additionally, it was Elucidat’s values and business ethos that shone out. They were human. They brought a partnership””

Jason Edwards

Global Digital Learning and Development Partner at Kingfisher

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The Challenge – A Need for Global Consistency

 

Up until mid 2019, Kingfisher’s L&D function had two dedicated members of staff, and each brand (B&Q, Screwfix, Castorama, Brico Dépôt and Koçtaş) had its own learning creation platform – or in some cases, didn’t!

 

Outside of this they used an external supplier to produce large elearning projects, where costs would regularly creep. There was little sharing or communication between the different business units when it came to what their online training looked like and sharing of best practice.

 

The learning that they did have was text-heavy and – in the words of some learners – “boring and dull”.

“It was linear, time-consuming… the feedback was poor, and engagement levels were low.” – Jason Edwards

 

In the second half of 2019, Kingfisher introduced its Skills for Life strategy and the five million hours goal was set at the Group level.

 

The team and their remit was expanded. This central team would be responsible for the OEB product training, compliance and leadership learning throughout the banner brands. The content would need to serve multiple purposes, while being more suited to the audiences – like shop-floor staff – who would be undertaking it.

 

It became apparent that the current multiple tools and external elearning provision wouldn’t be able to support a team that would need to sit at the center of multiple business units.

 

So, they started the journey to look for something new.

The Solution – An Elucidat Partnership

 

Kingfisher needed one, flexible authoring tool that would allow multiple areas of the organization to work both independently and together. It needed to give the banners the ability to control their elearning, but also work with the central L&D team to ensure it met with best practice and standards. Enter Elucidat!

 

Why was Elucidat their first choice of authoring platform?

 

“The ease of authoring, functionality and interactions made working at the scale we needed much quicker and easier. Additionally, it was Elucidat’s values and business ethos that shone out. They were human. They brought a partnership – a relationship – to the table, much more than a vendor who just sets you up and off you go.” – Jason Edwards

 

And that level of partnership and support continued through the implementation process. With multiple brands under the Kingfisher umbrella, and with the look and feel of elearning coming under critique previously, it was critical to get it right from the start with Elucidat. The Kingfisher team engaged Elucidat’s Learning Consultancy Team to create Brand Styles for each area of the business.

 

Jason felt that having fully designed and reusable Brand Styles for their elearning was very much worthwhile.

jason edwards Kingfisher
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It made it consistent. The learning looked so much better and learners remarked on liking the new look and feel”

Jason Edwards

Global Digital Learning and Development Partner at Kingfisher

Employee in Kingfisher banner brand Castorama

The Outcomes – Cost Savings and Increased Engagement

 

In just eight months, Jason and the team went from strength to strength with Elucidat.

 

After the release of their initial courses in January 2019, the improved design had an instant impact. Qualitative feedback from learners was overwhelmingly positive, with their first courses coming out with learner scores of an average of 8 out of 10.

 

In addition to learner engagement rising, the cost savings from their previous methods of production were very significant.

 

Previously, each course the team wanted to produce would cost them tens of thousands of pounds when using their external elearning supplier. Now, the only costs outside of their one Elucidat license were for translation (something which can now be automated in the platform). With Elucidat, Kingfisher had reduced their training costs by over 90%!

 

Plus it’s not just the learners and business who are benefitting.  Jason told us that there used to be a “wall” in the business between L&D and the business units, but that they’re now seeing the individual brands collaborating with each other.

 

 

In Summary

 

Instead of the central team being responsible for production and distribution of elearning across the whole of the group, Elucidat has empowered Kingfisher to distribute the creation of elearning, effect business change and – most importantly – put Learning and Development at the very heart of Kingfisher’s ongoing strategy.

 

  • Multi-brands: Converting central courses into five separate banner brand-styles was key to Kingfisher, but wasn’t an obstacle with Elucidat
  • Partnership: Enterprise organizations need more than a platform, they need a partner relationship. Learning Consultancy Services are a plus!
  • Collaboration: A cloud-based platform is key for any organisation where there’s multiple stakeholders or business units. Courses can be easily adapted.

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