How three enterprises tackled budget restraints & increased training requests

T-Mobile (now called Odido, after a merger with another telecom company)

T-Mobile is the mobile brand of the German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom AG. T-Mobile is active in many countries, including Germany, the UK, Austria, the Netherlands, Poland, and the United States. Currently, T-Mobile—now rebranded as Odido following a merger—has over 44,000 employees.

T-Mobile’s L&D department struggled to meet the high demand for training requests. The telecom industry requires regular product launch training, compliance, and regulations. Traditional L&D practices could not meet the demand, so their L&D team looked into a solution to scale training while being forced to reduce spending.

Challenge

In 2017, T-Mobile’s situation was very common in the learning and development field. Budget cuts reduced the L&D team from 14 trainers to four while the demand for training continued to increase.

Training requests were accelerating because new products were being launched rapidly, the amount of regulation (such as GDPR) increased, and consumers expected better customer service. Staff cuts forced the L&D team to reject training requests.

They needed to find a way to scale training output while using only 25% of their previous resources.

Solution

Instead of creating training, the L&D department’s main responsibility was to empower employees to produce their own learning materials. They offer guidance on questions such as:

1. Is there a large enough audience to create a training resource?
2. Does the training resource address a learning goal?
3. Is the training output didactically sound?

The responsibility for fulfilling training requests shifted from the L&D department to the business units. L&D became responsible for quality assurance and guidance, moving away from content creation.

After a year of using Easygenerator company-wide, 100% of training requests are fulfilled. Training is created 12 times faster in Easygenerator than by having a training specialist create a course using difficult, specialized e-learning solutions. Since T-Mobile adopted Easygenerator, the number of training resources created has increased fivefold.

Electrolux

Founded in Sweden in 1919, Electrolux has grown during its first 100 years to become the world’s second-largest manufacturer of home and commercial appliances. Today, iconic Electrolux products—ranging from refrigerators to vacuum cleaners to washing machines—are used and loved in homes and businesses in virtually every country.

With subsidiaries and branches in every region, Electrolux employs over 55,000 people. It also provides extensive product and support training to the tens of thousands of employees of its sales and service partners.

Challenge

As the company’s business grows, its training needs also expand. Instead of continuing to provide face-to-face training sessions for thousands of its resellers’ sales and support personnel, Electrolux recently turned to Easygenerator to help launch a highly successful blended learning program.

Solution

Electrolux turned to Easygenerator to introduce the cost-effective, highly agile, and scalable blended learning strategy that it uses today. “Easygenerator was the kick-off for going digital,” explains Eva Eriksson.

“If we hadn’t started with Easygenerator, we wouldn’t be able to produce as much content to train our customers and service providers as we are now.”

While Electrolux still uses face-to-face training for some topics, it takes a blended approach. The knowledge part is covered in courses created by the trainers with Easygenerator, which are combined with a face-to-face training session focusing on applying that knowledge. Using Easygenerator has enabled Electrolux to significantly increase the reach and effectiveness of its training operations.

According to Eva Eriksson and Cecilie Tystad, Easygenerator has brought many benefits to the training program at Electrolux.

Despite intense competition from other brands, Electrolux is now confident that its blended learning model is helping it stand out among retailers in the European region by improving retailer knowledge, delivering training faster, and enhancing overall engagement. There’s no greater asset to a manufacturer than well-educated, loyal retailers.

Easygenerator is making a difference for the Electrolux brand and business model. Cecilie explains: “The interactivity in Easygenerator is what gets people coming back for more training.”

As a result, Electrolux’s training managers are proud to say that they can now start measuring the correlation between retailer training and sales performance throughout their region. With Easygenerator, Electrolux can look forward to even greater successes as it enters its second century.

Nielsen

Nielsen, a global data measurement company with over 40,000 employees in more than 100 countries, began using Easygenerator in 2016 to help its Talent Engagement & Development (TED) team find new solutions to address many learning requests.

In March 2021, Nielsen completed the sale of its Global Connect business (known as NielsenIQ) to Advent International, effectively turning Nielsen into a pure-play media audience measurement and analytics firm.

Despite these structural changes, Nielsen continues to leverage Easygenerator to empower subject-matter experts to generate learning content themselves.

Challenge

Nielsen’s TED team focuses on global projects aligned with strategic business priorities. However, due to shifts across the business, ad hoc training requests increased, often falling outside of TED priorities.

The team needed a way to help meet those training needs without being solely responsible for content creation. “We needed to empower subject matter experts to build training themselves,” said TED Director Kevin Claus. “We needed an easy-to-use platform that was intuitive and not intimidating.”

Solution

In just over one year, Nielsen engaged a new audience of employees to create training for internal and external audiences.

Over 100 Nielsen employees actively use Easygenerator, and over 400 associates contribute to developing training and establishing a new peer-to-peer training model.

The effects range from faster-than-ever availability of materials for learners to new training available in e-learning that would have been limited to other modalities in the past.

What we learned from these cases

These case studies show that e-learning solutions and Employee-generated Learning greatly benefit multinational companies. The key to reaping these benefits is providing an easy-to-use content authoring tool like Easygenerator.

This ensures a smooth launch and rapid scalability. As a result, companies can enjoy better training outcomes, often at a fraction of the cost.