Global | Retail
What does it take to win the prestigious Princess Royal Training Award? Ask the Pret Academy team and they’ll tell you it takes a passionate team dedicated to understanding the needs of all employees and providing a learning academy that supports them all to grow. And with measurable business impact to prove it, it’s no wonder their pride is palpable.
Watch the video to hear all about it.
Introduction
Global retail food brand Pret a Manger prides itself on creating a workplace where everyone can truly grow and thrive. At the heart of everything they do is the Pret Academy. With its blend of face-to-face and online learning, created in Elucidat, the Academy supports employees at every level to achieve great things.
So great, in fact, it won the prestigious Princess Royal Training Award in 2023. From increased employee engagement and retention to improved customer experience and sales, the Academy has delivered measurable results that any learning team would be overjoyed with. We wanted to find out all about it.
“When I got the email. I was like, ‘Oh my god!’ I was literally over the moon. I shared it with all of our senior stakeholders, with the team, and was really ecstatic to get the award.”
Daksha Stancilas
Talent & Development Partner
What did Pret win the award for?
Packed full of learning, the award-winning Pret Academy supports the development of knowledge and skills that every Pret employee across the globe needs to progress in their career. It does this through three key elements:
- Library: A knowledge bank of resources that is easily searchable to meet an immediate learning need.
- Curriculums: Blended learning journeys using a combination of face-to-face workshops, elearning created with Elucidat, and on-the-job activity.
- Community: A forum for colleagues to interact and share best practice.
Over five years, the Academy has delivered a tangible positive impact on the business, from engagement rates to turnovers, to KPIs like sales quotas. And it’s this impact that the prestigious Princess Royal Training Award has recognized.
“The Academy has a tremendous positive impact. We have seen an improvement in the engagement rate … in turnovers … in our KPIs. Our sales quota has improved throughout the years, and so has the customer experience. ”
David Catoni
Head of Operations
What part did Elucidat play?
As a key part of the blend, The Academy’s digital learning had to be engaging, up-to-date and inclusive. The in-house team at Pret used Elucidat to create and deliver elearning for employees across all roles and throughout Europe – from 2000+ leaders and managers to around 100 apprentices.
They used templates to help make this process seamless, those that come with Elucidat as well as creating their own. And since they are a global company, they used the translation features to provide content in multi-languages.
Collaboration was also key. The partner teams needed to be able to take and adapt the elearning easily; the designers needed to be able to work closely and efficiently with subject matter experts. They all had access to see and review the modules.
What did they have to do to achieve the award?
During the award submission process, the Learning & Development team and learners were interviewed about the Academy’s design and impact. They had to provide evidence in three areas:
- Business strategy: What did the training set out to achieve, and how did it meet business needs?
- Learning delivery: How efficient and scalable was the model for learning delivery?
- Impact: Did it have the impact it set out to achieve, and what is the evidence that backs that up?
Daskha Stancilas, the Talent & Development Partner at Pret, who led the award application, pulled together data from Elucidat analytics and their LMS around learning numbers and completions and combined it with KPI data to demonstrate the impact. This included how the shops met their revenue targets, the safety visit scores, the mystery shopper KPIs, and more. The evidence collected showed clear, positive trends.
Their dedication to driving real results and tracking those key measures tirelessly enabled them to not only apply but win.
“The analytics and reporting function allow us to analyze the effectiveness of our learning. Which is great because we don’t just measure business performance, we also measure the learning performance.”
Najiba Mehmet
Learning & Development Manager
What the future holds
Now the impact the Academy is having is clear, Pret is looking to take their learning to the next level.
Luciano Di Pace, the UK Senior Talent & Development Manager, Pret a Manger, can see a future where learning is much more personalized, bite-size and much more accessible. If employees want to refresh their learning about a particular topic, they can do so on any device, there and then.
In summary
Providing impactful learning that touches and supports every employee is the dream of any L&D team. The Pret team set a precedent in the way they measure and prove the business impact of what they do. But, of course, the Academy wouldn’t have the desired impact if it weren’t for their dedication to employee needs and good learning design. The Academy Team won an award because of:
- Recognizing the power of a blend: From online to on-the-job, the Pret Academy makes use of a variety of learning resources and approaches to meet the broad needs of a diverse group of learners.
- Uplifting the online learning experience: Using Elucidat, they’ve created engaging, up-to-date, and inclusive online learning that complements their other learning resources.
- Measuring their impact: By setting out with clear objectives, the Talent & Development team was able to identify and track key measures that demonstrate the real-world impact of the Pret Academy.
Drive impact for learning
Create award-winning elearning with Elucidat, and drive impact for your business.
