Combatting Rapid Growth
Project Details
Key Takeaways
- Geotab was experiencing major headcount growth in key departments (41% in 2018 alone)
- Original subject matter experts delivered onboarding training but found it disruptive to their regular tasks
- Head office was still developing a company-wide learning plan and couldn’t yet address urgent needs at the Science Data department level
- VP of Data and Analytics reached out for Enable Education’s help to bottle the knowledge of the department team leads
- Geotab’s team collaborated with Enable Education to identify key learning objectives and produce skill-specific videos for staff onboarding
- After the initial. roll-out, Geotab sought out to collaborate with Enable once more on creating a broader training pathway for extended learning
- Together, Geotab and Enable designed hand-on experiences and learning materials for a boot camp style event for all staff
Geotab’s “wonderful problem”: rapid growth
Geotab is a growing company based in Oakville, Ontario, that offers fleet tracking solutions to help other businesses leverage data through their connected vehicle platform.
Business was so good, Geotab increased their headcount by over 40% in 2018, again in 2019, and expect a 20-30% increase year-after-year for the foreseeable future, meaning several new hires needed onboarding. Plus, existing employees needed additional training to keep up with the blossoming demands of their clients. Traditionally, employees would have to wait for in-person workshops with long, text-heavy PowerPoint decks to cover complex concepts. Not only was this difficult to schedule, but inefficient. Geotab needed a more engaging way to integrate new staff and upgrade skills across their workforce—and they needed it fast.
Challenges
Training at Geotab used to mean team leads had to set time aside to deliver in-person presentations that were hundreds of slides long. Their main challenges included:
- How to deliver complex content without glossing over important details or overwhelming their employees?
- How to break down hours of training into easily consumed lessons?
- How to maximize onboarding while also serving the training needs of existing employees?
Solution
The Data Science department at Geotab met with the Learning Experience Designers at Enable Education to define learning objectives and review existing training materials. Geotab already had lots of great content, but it was long, text-heavy, and too broad to ensure knowledge retention. Together, the teams were able to break large topics down into progressive, focused lessons that lasted 5 – 15 minutes instead of hours.
This had multiple benefits:
- Subject experts got specific feedback on their individual presentations to optimize the experience
- It was easier for a subject matter expert to deliver a short presentation and maintain energy and focus without physical fatigue
- Geotab presenters were coached on. their performance by Enable’s production experts
- The new videos allow learners to absorb information in shorter lessons instead of getting overloaded by too much information all at once
- Learners could return to and replay these onboarding videos as often as needed saving team leads and trainers time and energy
Results
- Geotab produced 2 1/2 hours of employee training by recording at Enable’s Training Studio for 4 hours.
- All videos were branded with Geotab colours, fonts and logos.
- Geotab deployed the videos to much success and appreciation from the Data Science division.
- The team has since come back to Enable Education to design a more robust learning pathway for their staff to include interactive materials and trackable progress reports.
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