The flexibility and production values of Gomo help organizations of all sizes to transform their learning. In this enterprise learning case study, we look at how one of the UK’s largest employers brought potentially drab content to life, thanks to the power of an authoring tool.
For an organization as large as the Royal Mail Group, creating enterprise learning to articulate the role of individual employees in the business can be a challenge.
Although Royal Mail Group’s employees are motivated to know more about the company they work in, taking time out of their busy schedules to complete modules isn’t a core part of their day-to-day activities, and the value of doing so might not always be immediately obvious.
So when the team at our sister company LEO, world leaders in learning content and technologies, worked with the Group on their ‘Know the Business’ eLearning program, they positioned the content with a strong message: the value it could offer each learner. One of the key issues highlighted was how people’s actions can impact their colleagues and the wider business, no matter where they are based.
Royal Mail Group has a rich history and strong brand, but its L&D team felt that learning within the organization had traditionally been perceived as rather dry. They had already worked with LEO on a successful health and safety learning offering for new first-line managers. This capitalized on Gomo’s production qualities to transform hours of outdated content into enterprise learning in a much shorter, more effective format.
Know the company, deliver success
“We created an engaging, illustrative, and colorful look and feel which closely matches Royal Mail Group's recent brand refresh,” says Paul Newcombe, LEO’s Art Director on the project, describing the fast-paced, character-based user journey.
“The learning centers around a Journey Map, presented in a continuous infographic style which follows a journey represented by a road.”
The enterprise learning module, built in Gomo, is split across two main topics focusing on the Royal Mail business units and their support network. These topics provide the learner with everything they need to know about the different areas of the business.
The business units are laid out on a vertically scrolling menu that acts as a visual metaphor for the journey of a letter. This menu is brought to life in the two-minute introductory, motion graphic animation that outlines Royal Mail’s values and why knowing the business is important.
Each business unit topic ends with formative “best-case” scenario questions.
“Each step in the journey represents a different function in the Royal Mail Group and how they all work together,” says Paul.
“The learner explores each section in turn to learn what their colleagues do throughout the business and to better understand how they can play their part.”
Creating ‘Know the Business’ was an enjoyable process for the teams at LEO and Royal Mail Group, made easier by the simplicity of Gomo’s interface and features. As the program is fully illustrated, LEO’s directors, graphic designers and animators collaborated to ensure that the style of the course was clean and consistent, working closely with Royal Mail Group’s project manager, who has in-depth knowledge of the business’s digital brand.
Improving engagement in enterprise learning
A key ambition was to actively engage the learner at all times, and one of the ways this was accomplished was through small, bite-sized chunks of learning.
This approach produces better results than the consecutive pages of text associated with conventional eLearning. Additionally, previous courses with Royal Mail Group also demonstrated the power and effectiveness of microlearning.
LEO used short, attention-grabbing titles and illustrations to present the information in an easily digestible, interactive format.
Making the most of continuous scrolling
Continuous scrolling is a key feature available in Gomo, one that’s often found on websites and social media timelines. People are now accustomed to long, scrolling screens of copy and use it in a wide range of settings, such as online shopping apps and blogs. This makes continuous scrolling the ideal way to deliver online learning that looks fresh and appeals to learners.
“Scrolling is a natural navigation device that users are familiar with through the use of smartphone content,” says Paul. “Although smartphones were not a prerequisite for the course, the learning is fully responsive and fills the screen, whatever the size.
“Continuous scrolling allows us to present small, bite-sized chunks of learning rather than page after page of text as with conventional eLearning.
“We used short, attention-grabbing titles and illustrations to present the information in an easy to digest and interactive format.”
A horizontal-style learner journey traditionally give learners the option to continue by clicking a button to continue, whereas scrolling creates a smoother way of progressing through courses with a mouse or touchscreen.
This doesn’t mean that learners can fly through the course without taking the learning content in, though: Royal Mail Group’s L&D team was able to limit the amount learners can see before they have to engage with the course, as well as adding prompt buttons to continue scrolling and quizzes and questions before each new topic.
Other features, such as the animated effects provided by parallax scrolling, are easily implementable with the HTML5 capabilities of Gomo.
Innovative training with results
‘Know the Business’ is a great example of how Gomo can be used to help create fresh, exciting enterprise learning programs at scale for a large and dispersed learner group.
LEO and Royal Mail Group’s aim was to enable learners to recognize their part in the business and how to access support. As with all Gomo courses, the course is fully responsive and adaptive, so it looks great and works perfectly on any screen.
We are proud to have helped Royal Mail Group take such an imaginative approach to teaching people about a core competence. Ultimately, this partnership has resulted in a course that will contribute to more mail reaching its destination on time.