Train 4 times more people by going hybrid

The challenge: find more efficient ways to run training sessions in remote work

Lloyd’s mission is to create training courses, workshops and learning opportunities for Xylem talents, all focused on continuous improvement. He chose Klaxoon to reduce the time spent traveling for training at first, and then turned it into his daily tool of choice to run workshops, meetings, and even his personal agenda.

Continuous improvement is obviously a key program at Xylem, addressing all senior leadership to focus on how to implement a continuous improvement culture within the organization, at every level. 

Prior to the pandemic, Lloyd Sese, Continuous Improvement Director in charge of global training, had to run 6 continuous improvement workshops in person. He therefore flew from country to country, with important logistics and travel costs to organize such training. 

When the time came to stay at home and reduce the business trips, Lloyd decided to switch to an interactive platform that could recreate some sense of proximity and interactions, while allowing for the training to continue smoothly. The results went beyond the original agenda, and this is why continuous improvement training at Xylem is still run on Klaxoon to this day, in a hybrid format.

At the start, you might be afraid of Klaxoon, but when you start using it, you get so excited by the possibilities. The tool is limitless, there are limitless ways of using Klaxoon, it’s flexible and the space is unlimited.

The solution: from sit-down meetings to interactive workshops

With Klaxoon, Lloyd hosts 5-day workshops with 10 senior leaders each time. People can join remotely or in person, for a perfectly blended experience. 

The main goal is to upskill management on continuous improvement, and see how they can implement it in their respective departments in order to boost productivity and efficiency. 

To that intent, Lloyd designs a custom-made session to enhance the training experience: 

Before the workshops: asynchronous preparation

Lloyd prepares the workshops in advance, asynchronously, using some time ahead of the actual training day to customize the experience through Memos. Memos are an interactive content-sharing feature of Klaxoon, through which one can send documents, files, information, as well as open questions and other quizzes options to collect feedback from the teams. 

Thanks to this initiative, Lloyd is able to adapt the workshop to the participants’ profiles and expectations.

During the training: more interactivity than ever

Warming up the group with an icebreaker

Lloyd kicks off his training sessions with a quick icebreaker, so that all the participants can meet and get to know each other. 

The One, Two, Three icebreaker is the perfect way for groups of this size to create a bond between colleagues, which results in better teamwork. This is especially true in hybrid environments and distributed teams. 

This particular icebreaker is structured as follows: every participant shares three elements, one being a picture of their ideal destination, second the travel buddy of their dreams, and lastly one item they’d definitely bring along with them. 

This fun and participative moment has the ability to ignite team creativity and create a positive group dynamic, which is exactly what Lloyd needs for the training to be successful.

Sharing content and creating interactions

Lloyd’s training includes some videos and documents that can all be shared on the Board. Thanks to Board’s interactive features, participants can react to what has been shared through the use of direct Questions, votes or the display of icons/pictures/drawings on the Board. 

Building on what was shared, Lloyd launches a Value Stream Mapping session, using Klaxoon’s ready-to-use Template. 

This part of the workshop encourages participants to discuss and to be creative, in order to develop processes. They agree on the next steps, identify the pain points, the risks and the contributors for each process. Everyone becomes an active participant in the decision-making process.

After the workshops: quick and easy reporting

Upon every workshop, Lloyd instantly collects the information that has just been shared thanks to the PDF capture tool of the Board. 

Rather than having to take screenshots, collect post-its and minutes, merge documents and so on, everything remains accessible on the Board at any time.

This also means that participants can jump back to the session and look for further information, or look back at a document whenever they need it.

The result: huge savings, efficient trainings

Thanks to Klaxoon, Lloyd offers efficient and participative training opportunities for teams at Xylem, while saving on costs and preparation time. 

By turning to Board and its hybrid environment, Lloyd also spares himself the regular business trips from country to country, saving time to spend on more workshops. 

Indeed, he went from 6 in-person workshops to 24 hybrid workshops in South East Asia, thanks to the savings on time and traveling. This also means that more teams can be trained, which strongly benefits the company.

We've multiplied by 4 the number of workshops, so we’ve earned money on human resources and we didn’t spend any money on traveling. So the savings are huge!

Lloyd now uses Klaxoon in many aspects of his day-to-day activities, organizing his workload on a Kanban Board. 

This is a shared Board with his managers, providing a clear overview of the work in progress, as well as the priorities and accomplishments. 

Added bonus: Lloyd managed to drastically reduce his use of emails or PowerPoint presentations. Everything is now shared in real-time, with access from anywhere.

Klaxoon has made our workshops much easier. Now that we are getting to hybrid environments, we are definitely going to keep using Klaxoon.