How Schneider Electric delivers sticky learning experiences with Klaxoon x MS Teams

Schneider Electric is a multinational company providing energy and automation digital solutions for efficiency and sustainability. A very technology-oriented organization with operations in over 100 countries and employing +135,000 people, they entered 2020 intending to drastically accelerate digital learning across the organization. A focus that extended to all operations including employees, supply chain, and GTM with their customers.

In just 5 years, digital learning at Schneider Electric has grown from 16% to nearly 45% of all learning experiences. To further drive digital adoption, the goal was to focus on learning digitally rather than in classrooms. This was because it was complicated to get learners to move on site, and a large part of the budget was spent on transportation costs. But on the other hand, the team could not get enough impactful training remotely.

A major effort was then made to build the skills of trainers around the world who were previously delivering face-to-face sessions, and who were forced to go virtual. This shift to digital was facilitated by ensuring that learners had access to the right user-generated, easy-to-use content when they were available and willing to learn.

In addition, Klaxoon's ease of use and flexibility of operations helped Schneider Electric exceed its expectations by year's end, with over 80% of training delivered digitally. To maximize the benefits gained from going digital, an effort was also made to make learning more relevant and effective. Klaxoon has become the official platform for learning workshops, allowing for maximum learner engagement, whether they were are all together in the same room, at a distance or asynchronously. Workshops, rhythmic and participative hybrid training, gamified and intuitive modules, Quizzes, Surveys, Missions, Adventures,... In 1 year, more than 10,000 training activities have been completed. This represents twice as many sessions organized in virtual classrooms. And even an increase of 250% for the sessions concerning the sales teams alone.

How do you make learning sticky?

We chatted with Alban Jacquin, Learning Experience Global leader Schneider Electric, to better understand how they were able to make such a rapid and smooth transition to all-digital while still incorporating sticky learning experiences. Traditional learning experiences were good at getting people to complete modules without pinpointing if real long-term learning was being cultivated.

Alban and his team based their sticky learning experience on neuroscience and the AGES model (Attention, Generation, Emotion, Spacing). Adding changes like starting by asking the “why” in a more design thinking approach followed by the application of the AGES model to make experiences sticky and easier in measuring impact. The ability to empower the business side while still using an internal framework that was to the point, sticky, and allowed people to do it on their own helped reduce the time to availability. In the past, it would probably take 3-6 months to create an e-learning.

As the pace of change has increased it became paramount to deliver the most needed content quickly to avoid it becoming obsolete before it could be shipped. The need for speed in the new normal has led them naturally to increase the number of Klaxoon activities created, with over 10,000 designed and shipped by year’s end by users and trainers alike. Alban Jacquin explains the impact of these transformations: "In 5 weeks, we were able to train 200 people remotely in 7 languages, whereas before we were training 30 people per year." A scope that promotes the alignment of teams wherever they are.

As they were built for business impact they found meaningful ROI. Alban estimated the use of Klaxoon had an ROI of over $1.5 million for the year.

The ROI of using Klaxoon is obvious! It allows teams to work more effectively during meetings, helping to make better decisions, but also enabling them to create sticky learning experiences in a slick, intuitive, gamified, and mobile-friendly way. Alban Jacquin, Learning Experience Global Leader, Schneider Electric

How to fight the forgetting curve?

As part of our highly connected, always-on work-life the average worker is interrupted between 20-30 times per hour. In addition to hindering worker productivity, the constant stream of interruptions can be a huge obstacle when tied to a sticky learning experience model. How do you keep everyone's attention? Sticky learning is the opposite of just browsing at content in an unfocused blur or racing through a module by rapid-fire clicking of boxes in the hopes of getting to the end as quickly as possible.

Those bad habits are clear signs that very little learning is going on and the forgetting curve isn’t being addressed. Fighting the forgetting curve can be difficult to overcome especially as many learning experiences aren’t designed to battle the effects. As we forget 60% of what we learn in the first 9 hours and 80% after 5 days it becomes crucial to influence the forgetting effects by craft learning with stickiness and spacing to augment retention. Alban and his team maximize the retention of learners by designing experiences to be part of the natural flow of work and life.

Using Klaxoon and MS Teams together allows them to simplify the experience while building programs that are hyper-personalized. Greater personalization to make sure they have what they need when they are most ready to learn. By focusing on the persona journey they have gotten away from top-down personalizations to instead cater to what adds real value to each individual person helping them apply what they have learned.  

Use the following to fight the forgetting curve:

• Nudges reminders in MS Teams chat or Klaxoon Questions.
• Test the knowledge of learners with Klaxoon Adventures or Missions during and after the workshop.
• Use in Teams x Klaxoon Board to create social synchronous interaction to boost collaborative learning.
• Carve out time in everyone's busy schedule with calendar block-outs.

Using MS Teams and Klaxoon to boost learning impact and agility

To facilitate how they deliver learning internally, Alban’s team combined the use of MS Teams and Klaxoon together to effect change and drive impact. During the transition to all-virtual, trainers created channels in MS Teams to centralize communication and documents. They then incorporated highly engaging Klaxoon activities (Board, Quizzes, Capsules, Mission, Adventure) in communication channels. Connecting both in this way boosted collaboration, allowing interactivity to flourish both synchronous and asynchronously.

Klaxoon allows us to conduct both in-class and remote training workshops that have the same impact in terms of learning, but also asynchronous formats to anchor the messages.

Having the learning experience reside where work was naturally occurring reduced the time to spend searching for what learners needed, inciting greater learning opportunity frequency. Klaxoon and MS Team also become central parts of their project management. Doing so enabled a simple way to incorporate agile work methods into the life of projects. During a meeting or workshop, Klaxoon activities are done directly within MS Teams.

From running a Klaxoon icebreaker at the start of a session to concluding sprints or delivery of backlog of tasks with a Retrospective using a Klaxoon Template, Agile methods have permeated daily rituals. As a highly participative team, they'll look at what they want to do more or less of, what to improve or stop. This has led to continuous improvement within the team but also offered the project manager, workshop or meeting facilitator the possibility to pick if moments should be done synchronously and asynchronously when stakeholders are missing. 

MS Teams x Klaxoon together are my go-to tools to make my life easier. and make my life more playful as well.

Learn more about Alban and his use of Klaxoon by viewing his dedicated Klaxoon Live. To use Icebreaker and Retrospective Klaxoon templates, discover the Template library. And to make learning experiences sticky, try Klaxoon for free today!

The data provided in this testimonial was collected at the end of 2020.