In 2017, Lance Sinclair, VP of Learning and Development at Success Academy, was leading their franchisees down a road to success by overseeing their brand’s ongoing training programs through their training model, known as Success Academy. This year, Lance is back with more innovative training modules that are proving to be more successful for their franchisees.
Note: To read previous article about Direct Energy please click here.
“In the last two years, our training has evolved dramatically,” Lance said. “By offering a blended learning approach, the results of our training are soaring and making a difference.”
Success Academy trains their franchisees by using the following educational approaches, such as:
- Classroom Training- they have logged over 17,472 hours of instruction and offer this method in 23+ states with 65 classes to choose from
- Webinar Training- they have logged over 6,250 hours and this is offered freely due to being online
- Online Training- they have logged over 34,425 course completions, which breaks down to around 11,475 hours and is often self-paced for flexibility
Additionally, they have almost 5,000 active students and their yearly participation rates have steadily increased since 2014. Last year, they had 75.6% of their students participate, this year they hope to raise that number to 81%. Keep in mind, this training is provided at no cost and participation is voluntary for their independently owned and operated franchisees.
However, since their training is free and voluntary, it is critical to make all their training modules compelling. The other side to their growing accomplishments is understanding what they are measuring at a corporate level. Lance emphasized that these three areas were important for them to measure to determine how well their updated training was performing, which include the following areas:
- Measuring Reach- by making their training free and offering a range of subjects, they have gained more voluntary participation annually
- Kirkpatrick’s Levels- having surveys available to measure reaction and commitment after classroom courses and has over 90% for their NPS (Net Promoter Score)
- Pre and Post Assessments- over 90% of their students are completing their pre and post assessments, along with seeing a 20-40-point change (depending on classes subject matter)
To showcase their findings and results further, Lance will be sending their franchisees surveys and checklists to measure behavioral change at 30/90-day intervals, which should provide insight to financial impact as well. Their goal is to publish all their results during the first quarter of 2020.
Lance also emphasized the difference in their training curriculum from two years ago, such as offering both soft and technical skills. There are currently 336 students enrolled in a two-year program for technical training, which is self-paced. In 2018, they had 21 graduates of this technical program and the program has already accumulated 1,323 hours of online instruction and completed over 2,400 modules in its first year alone – and Lance predicts these numbers will continue to increase over time.
A lot of their success in participation rates is a result of their marketing efforts. They have someone on their marketing team who advertises their training through email campaigns, social media channels, webinars and more. The other significant difference in comparison to other brands is that Success Academy offers these courses and training for free rather than charging money for them.
The other success marker that stands out to Lance was implementing a blended learning approach. While they launched their Success Academy Online in 2014, they had 75% of their training in a classroom and the other 25% offered in webinars. Today, that has flipped, so now they have over 75% of their training online and only about 20% in a classroom. Despite that flip, their classroom attendance has increased by 15.4% and their number of classes has almost doubled since 2015. Self-paced online learning is key to making programs like this work.
As far tracking and comparing performance, Lance is on top of it. Their LMS is decentralized, which means their students can self-register with management approval and locations can run a variety of reports, such as course completions or progress on certifications. All training is recorded in the LMS including classroom completion, online course completion, online training and third-party programs. From a corporate standpoint, Lance can measure active students, course completion, webinar attendance, online activity, surveys and more so they can continue to grow this program.
For other training managers contemplating on switching things up for their training programs, Lance provided some great advice:
- Don’t put your eggs in one basket- it’s okay to diversify, and you should, and use a blended learning approach
- Get an LMS (Learning Management System)- such as getting an LMS from Latitude Learning, it’s free for under 100 users, so you have no excuse to not take advantage of a central platform
- Reach out to others- learn what others did and ask them what lessons they learned, Lance would be happy to share details on what worked and didn’t work for Success Academy with those interested
Overall, Lance has worked diligently in Success Academy and his metrics do an excellent job in showing how making changes can make a significant impact to your company or brand. Latitude Learning is excited to see their additional reporting and metrics in early 2020 and are confident they will reach their participation rate of 81% of active students during 2019.
About Latitude CG
Latitude CG, home of LatitudeLearning, the platform LMS and base to LatitudeConnect the software that drives channel performance. Over 3 million people across 10,000 organizations have used LatitudeLearning to manage training.
The Platform That Delivers: LatitudeLearning, an industry leader that drives performance through training, communication, measurement, incentives and consumer engagement, is a technology first company striving to ensure that customers get the full benefit of the underlying systems and solutions that they are investing in. With the continuous change in platform capabilities and emerging trends such as mobile it is important that organizations have a solid foundation to operate from.
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