Case Study

Leadership Development. Entain.Elevate Leadership Development Programme. The challenge. Entain’s journey to building a thriving learning culture began with a realisation: while previous training investments were substantial, they were not translating into sustainable, everyday practices. Leadership recognised the need to create an environment where learning happened naturally during daily work. Additionally, faced with a complex acquisition, the need for adaptable, emotionally intelligent leaders became urgent. PeopleUnboxed partnered with Entain to design the Elevate Leadership Development Programme, focused on emotional intelligence, adaptability, and psychological safety. It emphasised making learning an everyday practice and ensuring inclusivity through participation, so all employees, from area managers to store-level staff, had opportunities to grow and apply learnings in real-time, but also inspire their teams to do the same. 100+ HQ based The solution. An early key decision was the hands-on, personalised approach to designing the programme. PeopleUnboxed conducted a ‘Day in the Life of’ activity by visiting Entain stores and engaging directly with staff. Participants were divided into regional cohorts to help localise the learning while fostering strong team dynamics. The Senior Leadership Team (SLT) completed the same training as regional managers, first, to gain an understanding of the programme content and demonstrate their commitment to fostering a learning culture. Each session required reflection and presenting how previous learnings were applied, ensuring that they put theory into action within their daily roles and reinforced continuous learning. One of the innovative strategies was the introduction of action learning sets, which are peer-led groups that facilitate ongoing reflection and collaboration among employees.  The ProfilesUnboxed tool was utilised to shape project groups based on individual strengths, ensuring diverse perspectives and approaches to projects. . The programme also placed a strong emphasis on psychological safety, encouraging leaders to create an environment where employees felt comfortable sharing ideas and expressing concerns. Key areas of focus included emotional intelligence, adaptability, psychological safety, and effective communication. Training also covered various leadership styles, communication techniques, and stakeholder management, enabling leaders to influence and engage their teams effectively.  The programme integrated real-world scenarios and challenges faced by participants, allowing them to apply their learning immediately and reinforce knowledge retention.  The results. “The Elevate leadership programme has been a game-changer for our retail operations field teams. Over the past year, the face-to-face, experiential sessions delivered by PeopleUnboxed have significantly impacted our business. We’ve seen a 12% decrease in labour turnover and a noticeable boost in team engagement, with an increase of 10 points for those who received the training and 13 to 17 points for the teams they lead. The programme’s focus on interactive learning has ensured strong knowledge retention, covering crucial topics such as leadership styles, communication, influence, and stakeholder management. Our leaders have reported that the training has helped them perform at a higher level, lead their teams more effectively, and tackle challenges that may have previously held them back. Understanding themselves and their teams better has enhanced their ability to confidently lead and drive meaningful results.” Senior Learning & Development Business Partner The Elevate programme has helped give the team a common language – if you joined our team meetings the training comes out in how we speak. In turn that has helped the entire team have a deeper personal and group understanding which has seen everyone be more open to growth. There have been some massive light bulb moments where people have finally understood why they do and feel what they do. The biggest overall way or working change has been producing the Game Guide – this is a home for all of the different elements of the Elevate programme, so everything is in one place. It’s more than just a reference point, it’s a practical structure for ‘how we play’ in our region. The ProfilesUnboxed colours are used when we need people to work on a group project – we use them to make sure we have a mix of colours and thinking in the group, so each topic is approached from different viewpoints/angles to get to a better overall outcome. Saboteurs have been invaluable in exploring how people are feeling and reacting in real life practical situations. This helped the team either step back from emotion or empathise more – so we become more rounded in our decision making and importantly understood why we’re thinking and feeling what we were. Overall, we’ve become more self-aware which has driven greater psychological safety. The Elevate programme acts like a compass – it helps point everyone in the same direction. Regional Director Previous Next How can we support you with leadership development? Click here to find out more

Organisational Culture. Riverstone.Respecting Individuality. The challenge. At Riverstone bringing their beliefs to life, is the key to ensuring they make sure people can live the life they want to live. One part of this, is their mission of ‘Respecting Individuality’, which covers: Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Unconscious Bias, Cultural Intelligence, challenging ourselves and others and creating an inclusive work environment. They wanted to increase the focus internally on EDI, specifically with training sessions, helping the team to explore their unconscious biases and learn how to work effectively and be comfortable in diversity. The sessions were to be split into 2: Goal for the Leadership team: To establish their biases and be able to self-check and hold each other, and their teams, accountable if their biases are impacting decisions or conversations. Goal for the wider team: To increase self-awareness of own biases and be able to hold other colleagues accountable. We were tasked with bringing their objective of ‘Respecting Individuality’ to life. 100+ Nationwide The solution. Design and delivery of two courses focussed on unconscious bias and EDI, with an aim to enable team members to make decisions and hold conversations, with their own biases or those of others recognised, appreciated and/or mitigated to truly respect individuality. These courses were aligned with the key messaging and branding of Riverstone. The first people who attended the training were the members of the Exec Team, as to fully impact the culture, the leadership team need to pave the way for business success. Each course was interactive throughout, utilising breakout sessions and polls, and centred around thought provoking discussion and facilitation to maximise learner engagement. To support the embedding of this training and maximise the behavioural change, supporting pre and post work was provided. Part of the training was built into the recruitment and onboarding of staff, to establish the correct culture and behaviour early in the journey. The results. “PeopleUnboxed have delivered Respecting Individuality workshops for the entire organisation at Riverstone, their ability to create psychological safety within the training space and act as a catalyst enabling our teams to openly discuss their differences and unconscious biases then translate these into everyday change, set us up for success. As an entire organisation we are now having challenging conversations about our behaviours, processes and systems, identifying strengths and opportunities for change that contribute to a culture that is truly inclusive – had we not had support from PeopleUnboxed, these conversations would not have been as easy or as productive as they have, they have helped us understand the collective responsibility we all have to speaking up and taking ownership for EDI – that is a true testament to their impact as a training company being felt beyond the four walls of the training room.” Learning Manager “Our trainer was great, kind, and knowledgeable. Topics were relevant and introduced respectfully but in a way that got the team talking. Love what your organization does and the impactful knowledge you’re sharing with businesses!” Learner Previous Next How can we support you with organisational culture? Click here to find out more

Organisational Culture. McDonald’s.Digital Gurus. The challenge. Modern-day customers want easy, convenient, and personalised experiences. So, McDonald’s created their ‘MyMcDonald’s Rewards’ customer app to drive digital adoption, build brand trust and help create lifetime customer loyalty. Technology is changing the way we do things and the way we want to do things; learning should be no different.  To support the national launch of the app, their Technology Adoption Consultant approached PeopleUnboxed to develop and deliver a series of webinars to engage their UK teams to help drive restaurant advocacy for the app, with a view to educate and excite too. Ultimately, we were tasked to upskill key employees to become ‘Digital Gurus’, who championed the digital experience for the customer in their restaurants. 3,000 Nationwide The solution. The webinars integrated into the existing learning journey, taking into account the eLearning that formed their initial training, and built upon that. With a class size of 30 learners, it meant we could positively impact the engagement levels and maximise the opportunities for learners to interact and learn from each other. In the 10-week period leading up to the app launch, 4 webinars were run per day (across the UK estate) offering a variety of times for employees to choose the most convenient. We made full use of all virtual learning tools, to maximise engagement and learner experience. The journey was broken down into 3 paths: Excite, Engage and Embed. We ended each webinar by asking individuals to make some commitments to becoming a Digital Guru in their restaurant. To make sure these were delivered and upheld, we created a post-session one-pager for them to write down those commitments and display them in their manager’s office to keep front of mind. The results. “MyMcDonald’s Rewards has been one of the most successful deployments ever. Customers have responded well to the loyalty program, and we are already seeing a sharp uplift in customer transactions per day that surpasses that seen in other markets.” Technology Adoption Consultant UK & Ireland How can we support you with organisational culture? Click here to find out more

Learning Technology. The Bread Factory.Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) Guides. The challenge. The Bread Factory (TBF) approached PeopleUnboxed for learning technology ideas around transitioning from a paper-based, disjointed training system into a scalable, visual, and easily maintained digital solution for their factories. With 1,000 employees spread across nine business units, 92% of whom had English as a second language, the existing training lacked consistency, was confusing for learners and was challenging to maintain and update by TBF. There was also no central reporting, to provide an at-a-glance overview of company-wide training completion, which was a risk to the business regarding industry compliance. 1,000 9 business units The solution. We utilised an eLearning authoring tool to pull the information together, creating a single digital learning card for each piece of equipment. We created a re-useable master template, meaning we could build each learning card quickly and at scale. The template was highly visual, utilising simple icons for easy navigation and supporting videos and images to show operational and cleaning steps. We created a web microsite for the project, designed for TBF to be able to maintain themselves with no coding knowledge required going forward. There were more than 40 training cards, each with sections for Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), cleaning, safety information, risk assessments, step-by-step instructions and how-to videos. The design focussed on the simplicity of layout to cater for those with limited English using explainer videos and step-by-step guides. We worked on a reporting solution that allowed the training to be tracked via an interactive webform that would be able to be imported into their new LMS. The results. “I introduced the SOP navigation website to the business yesterday during our operations meeting. Everyone was thrilled with this massive piece of work, and the feedback from all the unit managers was very positive. The solution is way more than we expected, since introducing digital SOPs, 40% of the training delivered to a new team member is by the leadership team in their department. I want to thank you for helping me put this together.” Training LeadCentral Craft Bakery (The Bread Factory) “This is market-leading technology. I have not seen this done in any other food manufacturing facility to this standard or at this scale.” British Retail Consortium Auditor Previous Next How can we support you with learning technology? Click here to find out more

Organisational Culture. Rentokil Initial.Mental Wellbeing and Resilience. The challenge. Rentokil Initial had seen significant absences due to mental illness, with an increase year on year in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Absences due to depression, stress or anxiety equated to about a quarter of all absences. The true number of cases was estimated to be far higher than the figures suggested too, with people not having the confidence to report their absence as mental illness. Additionally, this figure didn’t take into account the elements such as impact on managers’ time dealing with the cases, or the knock-on impact of absence on other team members. We were tasked with reducing these costs, not just for 2022 but creating an organisational culture shift that kept the figure lower for years to come. 3,500 7 global markets + UK operations The solution. We developed a bespoke and tailored ‘Mental Wellbeing and Resilience Programme’ specific to RI and its culture, delivered across 2 half-days. We designed and delivered three strands of virtual courses, customised to the different employee levels it was being rolled out to (team leaders, managers, senior leadership team). It was imperative our programme gave people the voice to talk more openly about mental wellbeing and the confidence to support colleagues, so our sessions were very interactive. The challenges of supporting the wellbeing of remote teams was a huge factor weaved throughout. We provided a post course workbook that included pertinent information to reference, as well as a series of post course activities to ensure transfer of learning and subsequent action/commitments back in role. Two short eLearning modules were also provided, to help embed the learning from the virtual sessions. The results. “It has been a pleasure working with People Unboxed as they were very committed to ensuring the programmes met the needs of our colleagues and were happy to adjust delivery methods as required. The programme gave our managers the confidence to support and have conversations with colleagues that previously may have been difficult to broach.” HR Manager “This session really helped me to recognise the signs for someone who might be struggling, and also it made me realise that everyone has mental health and we need to proactively look after that.” Course Delegate “I found the ‘5 Levels of Listening’ a real insight. I did not realise but I use 4 of these listening methods frequently but never touch on one of the most important ones, Empathic listening, so I am off to practice some of that!” Course Delegate “Thank you again to Jo for giving me the opportunity to learn more about mental health and the tools to help colleagues in my branch and also family and friends.” Course Delegate “The role play was really good, it made me realise that I need to listen rather than jump to fix and solve straight away, and it gave me the confidence to talk to my people about mental health.” Course Delegate Previous Next How can we support you with organisational culture? Click here to find out more