When BT looked to re-imagine the internal learning offering it provides employees, the emphasis was put on colleague experience and business impact. To bring this to life, BT chose to make Centrical one of the pillars of the initiative. This was the result of a test & learn program which enabled the business to connect engagement, learning, and performance in one, real-time tool.
“BT changed what was a fragmented learning landscape into a single, coherent ecosystem. The aim is to improve the learning experience of our 150,000 employees and contractors across the organization globally,” said Lisa Blewitt, BT’s Director of Learning & Capability. “The intent of this multi-year effort is to improve learning efficiency and effectiveness to boost performance.”
Prior programs fell short of that goal for two reasons. First, engagement with learning activities was low, due, in part, to a lack of intrinsic motivation to prompt involvement. Second, employees didn’t apply learning to their work. Along with that was the realization that delivery of learning content had to be done faster to let employees more easily connect with the learning to absorb, adopt, and apply it.
“We saw maintaining the status quo would not adequately advance the knowledge and skills of our colleagues or, more importantly, their on-the-job performance. We were looking to connect learning to the bottom line,” said Asi DeGani, BT’s Senior Manager, Digital Design, Platforms & Transformation. “A complete reimagining of BT’s approach to employee learning and development – especially in the midst of a pandemic – was necessary and Centrical made the difference.”
As with many organizations, the shift of employees from operating in offices to working from home (WFH) accelerated BT’s use of digital training mechanisms, notably Centrical’s personalized microlearning. The method of delivering bite-sized learning to the right people, in the right way, at the right time has already shown its value in the test & learn program and should make an impact on overall training at BT.
BT employees involved early in the learning transformation were motivated to habitually go through the learning and then repeat activities aimed at increasing their mastery and know-how. Centrical’s advanced gamification brings an element of competition to the learning experience which serves to heighten engagement and completion of activities as well as to improve knowledge application to work performance. With the pandemic physically separating employees, this social competition helped to make them feel connected, part of a virtual team, and able to handle WFH more productively.
“In this era of working from home, employees need to be accountable for their growth and impact,” said Gal Rimon, Centrical’s Founder & CEO. “As such, their organization needs to provide an exceptional, personalized user experience that supports their growth and makes them the center of their business’ success.
“The Centrical platform helps BT promote performance and a support a learning culture by engaging employees with learning that’s relevant to their individual goals for growth, through a guided and personalized experience. Centrical is proud to join with its partner, SAP®, to work with BT on this vitally important initiative,” Rimon said.
Centrical technology easily integrates with leading enterprise systems, including SAP® SuccessFactors® Learning, where its gamified learning capabilities raises engagement with their learning management system. Centrical captures and analyzes a wide array of data streams to provide a 360-degree view of employees so they know in real-time, as do their managers, how they are doing and what needs to be done to get to the next level – including knowledge gaps that need to be closed with training so learning and performance KPIs can be achieved.
