Case Study: Home Décor Retailer Thrives After Makeover Leverages Gamified Microlearning

Several years ago, the home décor retailer nowknown as At Home was undergoing a massivetransformation. Everything required rehabilitation—from employee training andcorporate policies to the actual restrooms in stores.

Originally founded as Garden Ridge Potteryin 1979, the company had grown swiftly, gone public, and experienced challengeswith overexpansion, and it had to go through bankruptcy proceedings in theearly 2000s. In 2012, new owners and a new CEO set their sights on reinventingthe company to target the $170 billion home furnishings market. The Plano,Texas–based organization is now thriving, thanks to a comprehensive makeoverthat included gamified microlearning.

Business challenge

In the past, training at the company was relegatedto a handbook that simply required an electronic sign-off that the salesassociate had received it. As the professional charged with building At Home’straining program from the ground up, I knew we needed to provide our staff witha more thorough program. But being in an early-growth stage meant we had additionalconsiderations:

• Lean—We needed an easy-to-implement solutionthat wouldn’t be reliant on an army of trainers to roll it out
• Scalable—We needed a solution that wouldhelp us align more than 3,000 employees, across 100 stores, in 28 states, asfast as possible—all while we continued to expand
• Simple—The solution needed to beintuitive and easy for the workforce to adopt
• Seamless—Since our store leaders wouldnot be readily available to train their teams, the solution had to be seamless

Solution design

Although a lot of retailers use learning managementsystems (LMSs), we were seeking a training solution that would not pull oursales associates off the floor and require them to sit through long courses.

Axonifysuccessfully met our needs. With their platform, we’re able to break content intomicro-sized chunks. Associates can take three to five minutes of trainingduring every shift. Our associates are consistently exposed to the knowledgethey need to do their jobs—without feeling overwhelmed. Plus, the platform’sadaptive algorithm continually closes knowledge gaps by automaticallyreinforcing the topics that individual associates may require help with.

Implementation

As part of a six-month pilot in July 2014,we implemented Axonify in eight stores. The Axonify team helped pass bestpractices on to our implementation group. When we were ready for a widerroll-out the following February, we could pretty much handle everythingourselves.

Axonify is now the backbone of our entiretraining process—from onboarding through leadership training. We regularly pushout training around safety, customer service, and even compliance issues.Because the platform is a daily experience that takes just minutes, it’s nolonger a big ask to have associates use it.

Figure 1: Bubble Shooter,which integrates questions into casual gameplay, is a favorite of At Homeassociates

Figure 2: Each learner’sdigital Axonify coach provides explanations for both correct and incorrectanswers. Even incorrect answers award some points, helping to relieve testanxiety, and emphasize that questions are opportunities for learning.

Results

We have found that the gamified elements ofthe Axonify platform (leaderboards, rewards, etc.) establish intrinsicmotivation and drive high participation (Figures 1 and 2). In addition, theplatform gives store managers the ability to view knowledge levels forindividual employees and learn who might need some extra coaching or mentorship(Figure 3). It’s an unprecedented level of insight that has given our storemanagers the tools they need to truly support their teams.

Figure 3: Store managerscan view each learner’s individual knowledge map, which details knowledge andconfidence levels in every topic 

• So far, we’ve identified a 14percent average increase in employee knowledge for critical safety topics. Thishas contributed to a 36 percent drop in safety incidents among associates whoare active on the platform.
• We’re now able to train 2,500associates—with no field support—in four weeks instead of six months.
• Within two weeks of pushing theannual Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance training required by almost allretailers, 78 percent of our 3,200 associates had completed thecertification—an incredible turnaround rate.
• Overall, we’ve seen a 90percent reduction in onboarding time.

Other key takeaways

The platform has completely transformed ouronboarding process: Training is no longer a one-and-done deal, but ongoingthroughout our associates’ tenure.