Tesco -
an activated LMS for behaviour change in compliance.

Summary. 

Tesco, the UK's largest supermarket retailer, partnered with Sponge for innovative compliance learning solutions. Their proactive approach to engaging learning strategies has set them apart in the current era of shifting attitudes towards compliance training. Since 2014, through Sponge's LMS, Tesco has introduced award-winning micro-learning, enhancing engagement, improving data acquisition, and simplifying tracking for their Corporate Compliance Programme.

Sponge initially collaborated with Tesco on “Learning Leap”, achieving a 98% compliance completion rate, a 92% preference rate among learners, and winning a Learning Technologies award for Best Use of eLearning for Compliance. More recently, our partnership has focused on evolving compliance content into ‘flow-of-work' microlearning, whilst helping Tesco enhance the efficiency and scalability of their learning programmes and providing improved data visibility. As a result of this collaboration, Tesco has streamlined their learning management process, leading to improved learning data acquisition and analysis, alongside increased completion rates for mandatory compliance modules.

Three Strategic Challenges: Scale; Consolidation; Content Volume.

Tesco faced a variety of challenges in delivering compliance training at the scale that was needed:

Delivering learning to over 9,500 learners across 36 cohorts.

The scale of Tesco’s compliance learning operation, across such a large portfolio and such a target-rich environment was a key challenge. Tesco grappled with the complex task of overseeing compliance learning for a vast learner base across diverse management teams with an intricate web of compliance requirements.

Consolidating two learning campaigns into one continuous solution.

Secondly, they looked to streamline content distribution efficiently while maintaining its relevance and engaging nature. Their overarching aim was to unify multiple compliance campaigns into a single, year-long initiative, a process that demanded meticulous planning and execution.

Distributing a significant volume of content.

Finally, Tesco aimed to deliver more than 60 micro-learning modules to cater to the needs of their diverse audience. This required a precise strategy for content distribution and engagement that could accommodate this extensive curriculum.

Goals.

Through in-depth consultations and conversations, we understood Tesco’s focus to be to retain the relevancy and engagement of learning content, but to do so whilst reducing the significant manual effort of monitoring and distributing learning. In collaboration with Sponge, four key success areas were identified:

• Automation and distribution: The solution needed to automate content distribution, notifications, and reporting.

• Microlearning at scale: Tesco wanted to use micro-learning to deliver compliance content efficiently.

• Engagement beyond compliance: Engagement strategies were critical to prompt and motivate learners.

• Behavioural insights: The ability to collect and analyse data to identify behavioural trends and risks was vital.

Shifting to efficient, ‘in-the-flow-of-work' learning.

To encapsulate the large-scale compliance needs and streamline disparate learning campaigns, an evolved version of the pre-existing ‘Learning Leaps’ learning content strategy was envisioned. Through Sponge and Tesco’s continuing partnership, the potential of enhancing engagement and content accessibility was identified.

With insights gleaned from the progress thus far, Tesco pivoted towards a microlearning strategy, ensuring that learning was not only succinct and relevant but also precisely targeted, delivering compliance content efficiently, even ‘in the flow of work.’

‘Little Learning Leaps’ marked the next milestone in Tesco and Sponge’s collaboration. Using the flexibility inherent to Spark, the Sponge LMS, the existing compliance training system was upgraded to a dynamic, personalised approach. This meant learners engaged with microlearning modules at their convenience, while Spark, capturing data from these interactions, identified knowledge gaps and facilitated supplementary training as needed.

This strategic move also manifested as a refreshing departure from bulky training modules, instead presenting learning that could be seamlessly integrated into daily work. In this way, ‘Little Learning Leaps’ ensured improved engagement with compliance training while diminishing the impact of taking time out for learning on employees' workdays.

Launching Little Learning Leaps:

Sponge’s solution streamlined the way that compliance learning was carried out at Tesco. In place of a time-consuming, manual approach Sponge uploaded the Little Learning Leaps content directly to the Spark LMS.

The user-friendly interface and clear dashboarding meant that users could immediately see the state of their own training. No separate onboarding was required for Tesco employees both in terms of the accessing of the micro-learning content and the viewing of the various data visualisations. The dashboard and reporting functionality gave the Tesco team managing the program clear visibility of the state of training at a summary, team, and individual level. This allowed them to engage learners via targeted notifications, congratulating them for answering a set of questions correctly or nudging them if they had outstanding training.

Post-launch outcomes:

• United under 1 x cohesive compliance campaign.
• 2 reports every week for the duration of the campaign.
• Analytics data collected by Spark every 15 minutes.