Article: How Welspun is building a culture of learning with its ‘Freedom2Learn’ campaign

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How Welspun is building a culture of learning with its ‘Freedom2Learn’ campaign

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A 21-day campaign on learning helped the company build a continuous habit of learning in the flow of work.
How Welspun is building a culture of learning with its ‘Freedom2Learn’ campaign

 

As workplaces return to the normal and office spaces open up for employees, the Welspun group, which recently accelerated its learning journey launched a new campaign focused on building habits. The goal of the 'Freedom2Learn' campaign was to show employees how to embed learning on a day-to-day basis that is on-going and continuous.

Why a habits campaign?

“A new learning platform can be challenge to navigate,” said Bidisha Banerjee, Group VP – Learning, Culture and Employer Branding – Welspun. “With over 80,000 learning assets on the platform, it can be intimidating for the learner. It was important to associate learning with the concept of freedom,” she noted.

The purpose of the habits campaign was two-fold:

-       Over 21 days, employees would have to complete micro-sized learning courses including books, audio summaries focused on developing the learning habit.

-       To help employees familiarize themselves with the platform, and courses available

The daily learning module or the 21 days were curated for the employee’s level and could be accessed over a dedicated website. The employee only had to click on a day – and they would be redirected to a course designed for them.

“If you want learning to happen on a day-to-day basis, there has to be hand holding, funnelling and curating of learning programs, rather than expect employees to navigate an ocean of courses,” she said.

Driving the campaign

The campaign was launched with teaser mailers which ultimately led to a road show that gave employees the context for the learning drive.“It is really important to articulate and rearticulate ‘What’s in it for me?’” Bidisha said.

The road show, which was executed virtually to enable the global teams across the world to join in, helped in articulating the company’s vision and goals and emphasised the need to grow. “Start with making the employee the focus, and end with them too,” she added.

Personalizing the message was a key feature of the communication campaign. The company designed different communication messages depending on the level of employees – whether it’s a management trainee, middle manager or a senior executive.

“Tell a story to the audience,” Bidisha said.

Recognition – a key driver

One of the key drivers for the campaign was the digital badges that the employees could showcase at the end of the course as they complete the assignment.

Apart from the standard badges, the L&D team also created two more levels of recognition:

  1. Personalized certificated with the name and picture – that employees could print out and showcase.
  2. Separate communication mailer that is sent out to the entire organization, recognizing employees on the leader dashboard.

Speaking about the initiative, Mihir Desai, Manager Planning & Contracts at Welspun Tubular LLC noted that (he) liked the combination of reading and audio/video. And getting a certificate after completion was a plus. “Overall, it strengthened my soft skills and competencies which will help in my professional career,” he said.

Another employee, Shruti Rao, Dy. Manager, Welspun India Limited said that the platform and initiative “was a superb and systematic experience. It was very convenient, easy to complete the courses without much thinking which course to be done, and the challenge made it extremely exciting.”

It was also important to go beyond appreciating just the learners – and involve the stakeholders who are driving the campaign. In line with this focus area, the company also recognized the L&D Spocs leading the campaign across the different business groups.

Impact measures

The habits campaign saw a phenomenal response. And analysing data was a catalyst to driving the program. “In L&D, we tend not to project data as powerfully, but it’s very important to measure and track right from day one,”

The campaign showed a number of interesting insights – right from a demographics and learning modes perspective to courses most popular, time spent on site, all of which showed valuable insights for the L&D team.

On finding the right partner

Speaking about the need to find the right learning partner in the journey, customer-centricity was a critical focus area for the L&D team at Welspun.

While a number of learning platforms already deliver great content, what made Skillsoft stand out was their service to the customer. Bidisha noted that the updates on learning trends, active support of the learning campaigns and the data and insight that is important to the learning function were some of the key selling points for choosing Skillsoft.

“You have to be able to operate with the customer in mind. One needs to understand how to serve the customer and, in turn, how the is platform enabling the success of employees.”

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Topics: Learning & Development, Talent Management, #GetSetLearn

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