In 2016, The Entertainer realised that there needed to be a more efficient and effective approach taken to learning across the business to continue to grow both the company and their colleague’s careers. Following a full market review, they selected Learning Pool on the basis of our track record in providing blended learning solutions which would meet their current needs but which also offered plenty of scopes to expand into additional learning opportunities in the future.

As well as choosing Learning Pool’s Totara Learn as the company’s new Learning Management System (LMS), The Entertainer’s evaluation team invested in Learning Pool’s Foundation Skills Catalogue to pre-populate the LMS with more than a hundred pre-built workplace learning titles. Adding access to Learning Pool’s Adapt Builder tool allows the L&D department to simply and cost-effectively build their own learning content from scratch and enhance the standard catalogue titles as needed.

Branding the new platform internally as “The EnterTrainer”, the L&D team designed an award-winning launch plan; including a teaser campaign in which each store received an Entertainer goody-box containing postcards with login details and treats for the staff ensured that a sense of both awareness and anticipation was created across the store estate. The resulting engagement levels are impressive with around 30,000 mandatory and 70,000 discretionary course completions recorded in the first 18 months of platform availability.

Ongoing engagement tactics deployed by the team include regular new content promotions, L&D campaigns on specific topics of interest, hidden badge awards and a special training advent calendar during the Christmas period. Their efforts result in the learning platform achieving around 95% engagement with the total available audience. Even The Entertainer’s suppliers are being offered sponsorships to re-brand the LMS for a limited period to significantly raises awareness of their product range across the store estate.

The previous Module offering has evolved significantly. New starters are given access to an Onboarding Hub with specific induction courses, then auto-enrolled onto their first Module and subsequently allocated specific Foundation Skills Catalogue courses to make sure they achieve competence by role type as quickly as possible. The Modules have also been copied and quickly converted into non-assessed versions which continue to engage longer-serving employees and Line Managers responsible for driving engagement in their respective stores.

Using online learning for the first time, the team were able to move away from purely verbal testing and increase user engagement with a series of fun picture quizzes and high-graphic content. For example, a short verbal test on which products should typically be located at the counter became a 30-second speed quiz using the standard Yes / No component in the Adapt Builder.

The quality of learning and assessment across all levels is now fully consistent and measurable and, once completed, ongoing access to the courses provides a permanent reference tool for the learner as and when they need it.

The Entertainer have further used the new solution to create and distribute step by step process guides for core business processes. For example, using the Narrative component in Adapt Builder to train out the stages of cashing up at each store at the end of the day. The company is finally able to ensure that the same process is fully communicated to all staff and that process changes can be quickly and consistently re-trained on demand.

Finally, to drive engagement and achievement, eight of the eleven available Modules continue to come with an hourly pay increase upon a pass being achieved along with a Certificate of Retail Excellence personally signed by the company Founder & Executive Chairman. These incentives have the effect of both rewarding those who engage in their own personal development and encourages teams to be ambitious – one of the company’s core values.