Case Study: Hall & Woodhouse
Digital L&D transformation strategy
Hall & Woodhouse are a British brewery established in 1777, with an annual turnover of £100 Million operating over 250 pubs (with over 50 of these managed and the remainder tenanted). They also sell their award-winning bottled ales in leading supermarkets and off-licences (nationally and internationally).
H&W contracted Learn Fox to be their digital L&D partner to develop a 3-year digital L&D transformation strategy.
Main challenges to be addressed:
Reducing the cost of face-to-face training by implementing blended learning solutions. (The managed pub training cost representing over £225k is lost labour costs alone).
Reducing team member turnover through more effective onboarding and induction pathways for front-of-house team members. (with over £550k being spent on training new recruits who leave within the first 90 days).
Increasing the speed to competency for new recruits by improving consistency of training and productivity. (Estimated speed to competency per front-of-house team member is estimated at 50+ hours).
Improving learner engagement contributing to a ‘culture for learning’ and making it an attractive place to develop a career in hospitality.
Improving consistency of service standards across venues to improve the guest experience contributing to guest loyalty and therefore business revenues.
Provide consistent and scaleable onboarding training to improve productivity (where individual pubs are recruiting 20 to 30 new team members a month) by introducing digital resources.
The process
Interviews were conducted with key stakeholders from the key areas of the business to ascertain the current provision, challenges, requirements and aspirations to identify opportunities and potential solutions. These were then prioritised on what would have the greatest and most immediate impact on the areas of reducing cost of face-to-face training, reducing team member turnover through more effective onboarding, improving learner engagement and improving consistency across managed houses.
Learner experience feedback was also gathered from spending days in trade having semi-structured interviews with team members and general managers. Discussions were had on what challenges the General Managers face, any barriers to the current training provision, opportunities and other methods of collaboration and learning in use.
This feedback gave a useful insight into the needs of the learners in the managed houses and identified common themes with the needs perceived by the business.
The key challenges were then identified (analysing the needs of the business alongside the expectations of the learners) and solutions were identified which could be broadly be categorised into tools (to improve delivery), learning design (where the existing format of training delivery should be reviewed), user experience design (strategies to improve the user journey to drive engagement) and consultancy and upskilling of internal teams (in skills like conducting learning needs analysis to learning design and content creation).
“The strategy Learn Fox created and presented to our Exec. Leadership team was considered, demonstrated a clear understanding of our business and gave us a clear direction of travel for the next three years. I appreciated Laura’s autonomy, ability to build relationships with potential suppliers and positive attitude.”
Melissa Hague | L&D Manager | Hall & Woodhouse
Outcomes
H&W now have a detailed 3-year strategy underpinned by a step by step transitional process that is achieved in stages and by layering change in order to achieve the desired outcome and overall transformation.
Within the strategy is a recommended approach to building a digital L&D ecosystem to achieve the aims of the cultural and digital L&D transformation, alongside a summary of resources, costs and clearly identified success measures.
H&W are now in an excellent position to begin implementing their digital L&D transformation and start to realise the benefits and huge potential cost savings outlined.
Get in touch to access support.
Need help designing a learning and development strategy for your organisation? Get in touch to find out how Learn Fox can support and guide you through the process.