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William Grant & Sons Corporate Induction
Setting the Scene
William Grant & Sons is a family-owned luxury spirits company with a portfolio of award-winning brands. They aspire to be the most coveted branded spirits company in the world while staying true to their heritage. It is recognised that this can only be achieved with the full contribution and commitment of all employees and they want teams and individuals to be performing at their full potential. William Grant & Sons have 6 distilleries across Scotland and a network of global offices which manage the production, sales, marketing and distribution in 180 food and drink markets. Due to international acquisitions, overseas staff numbers have grown significantly in recent years.
The Challenge
In 2014 William Grant & Sons commissioned eCom to develop an eLearning module for the company corporate induction programme. The existing corporate induction was being delivered face-to-face by local staff or HR people visiting overseas offices. William Grant wanted to make new staff feel more connected to the company, its heritage and brands, particularly those away from HQ and abroad. eLearning was seen as a cost-effective method for consistently delivering a highly branded message. The eLearning had to cover orientation on company policies, history and brands, in a way that reflected the heritage of the organisation. While taking into account that for some learners English is not their first language.
The Solution
eCom worked with William Grant & Sons’ HR and L&D team to capture the requirements for the eLearning. Several design concepts were considered initially, with a book theme selected for the desktop version to give it a heritage feel. The eLearning was a bespoke development by the eCom creative team. Pages turn as learners progress through the content and it was a significant design challenge to ensure the effect worked equally well on all browsers.
The eLearning is presented as 5 books in a library - History and heritage; Vision, Strategy and structure; Core brands; Values; and Performance management. In the Core Brands module the styling, colours and imagery change to reflect the strong identity and individual designs of each core brand.
In addition to the desktop eLearning, there is a responsive version to work on a range of devices. Allowing staff to easily access the learning while on the move or from home. The team at William Grant need detailed reporting to understand how inductees are progressing. The modules report back to the learning management system at the page level. This also enables learners to go away and return to the page they left.
Following the delivery of the desktop and responsive modules, 5 foreign language versions have been developed in Russian, Korean, traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese and Latin American Spanish. Designs were adapted to work for more text and longer words in some languages. eCom worked with a translation partner and content was then reviewed and signed off by local language speakers in William Grant.
The Benefits
The corporate induction eLearning programme modules have been an effective way of immersing a dispersed workforce in the brand and company story. While it has been designed for the induction programme it’s also a useful resource for refresher training. By translating the content and offering a responsive version William Grant have increased access to the resource, enhancing the value from the project.
