Learning Pool have helped to deliver a multi-language approach for New Look's online learning portal - The Academy
Retail
From a single fashion store in Taunton in 1969, New Look has grown to become a leading fast-fashion brand, with over 590 stores in the UK and another 66 countries worldwide, supported from their website, newlook.com.
New Look has been a user of digital learning for some time and their first iteration of The Academy was a Totara based system from another provider. This system experienced many technical instabilities and they were getting poor levels of service from the supplier. It was for these reasons that they decided to invest in a new version of The Academy that would better serve the needs of the business.
The initial launch comprised the Learning Pool Totara Learn standard implementation, running existing New Look content; Day One Induction modules, soft skills and MS Office training.
The Day One Induction includes some internally developed soft skills training, health and safety, fire safety, IT induction etc, some of which is site specific depending on the role – field staff, retail, support, etc. Within the stores, there is an iPad which can be used for training and processing store card applications as well as a PC.
The system is available to around 15,000 staff members, 12,000 of which work in retail, 500 in the buying, merchandising and design team and the remainder in support and distribution roles.
The system was initially themed to the Academy’s original branding and integrated with their HR database, so that an employee training record was automatically created on their start date.
Many of the international territories needed multi-language support and New Look was particularly impressed by the ability of Learning Pool’s Totara Learn to switch languages at the touch of a button.
Two years after moving to Learning Pool’s Totara Learn, The Academy has relaunched with a new template created by Learning Pool. This is far more on brand than the original theme and the course pages are cleaner, with more graphical and icon-driven navigation and a consistent interface across the business. Also at this time, dozens of new courses have been added from Learning Pool’s Leadership Catalogue which has hugely enhanced New Look’s development offering.
“We are very excited for this next phase of the Academy. Having had to launch with our legacy Academy look and feel, we have now moved to a new template developed by Learning Pool and this has been really well received. The template is much more on brand and cleaner, with courses much easier to find. The navigation allows users to find learning that is suitable for a wider range of development needs, in addition to their mandatory and job-specific requirements.
Learning Pool pro-actively offered this to us and it is going to allow The Academy to make more of an impact within the business. Our Learning Consultant Dave Newbold knows his, and our, business well and the level of support we get allows us to keep growing the system and to keep being creative – it challenges us to do better. What he doesn’t know is not worth knowing!”
“We have a delivery roadmap planned which includes email notifications, welcome emails, social and forum blogs, one-click reporting, as well as user journeys. We have purchased an Adapt licence and plan to author new content in this. We think the LXP, Headstream looks fantastic and we are keen to work with this in the future, keeping the LMS for mandatory training. Using the power of AI seems to be where it is at, and we hope that this will help access learning more easily and to create a culture of learning within the business.”
“We have a delivery roadmap planned which includes email notifications, welcome emails, social and forum blogs, one-click reporting, as well as user journeys. We have purchased an Adapt licence and plan to author new content in this.
We think the LXP, Headstream looks fantastic and we are keen to work with this in the future, keeping the LMS for mandatory training. Using the power of AI seems to be where it is at, and we hope that this will help access learning more easily and to create a culture of learning within the business.”
Get started by telling us what you need and one of our team will be in touch very soon.
