Challenge: How do you deliver learning to frontline staff spread over 100 locations?
Kennards Self Storage (KSS) is the largest self-storage operator in Australia and employs 350 staff. Still a family-owned business, the company offers storage facilities in 115 locations across Australia and New Zealand.
KSS was looking to introduce a platform that could successfully support the company’s strong commitment to investing in learning and development across a highly dispersed, frontline workforce.
Solution: Learn365 builds on Kennard Self Storage’s people-focused culture
Kennards Self Storage (KSS) has been serving Australian customers for over seventy years. Today it still remains a family-owned business, reflected in a strong people-oriented culture and a commitment to learning.
Wayne Brown, Learning & Development Manager, explains
“Our culture has a massive focus on team members and their ongoing learning and development. Our annual attrition rates are relatively low for the industry and a lot of people have been here for a long time which I think speaks to our culture.”
Despite having a frontline workforce spread over multiple sites, KSS did not have a learning platform in place. When Brown joined KSS in 2019, one of his first tasks was to find and implement a suitable solution.
“We have a geographically dispersed workforce so when we deliver learning we can’t just get everyone into a training room. We needed to be able to deliver content in modern ways. We wanted to heavily invest in people’s growth and a robust and modern LMS was critical in achieving that goal.”
Brown quickly got to work and started to research the market and scope requirements.
“We have a Microsoft ecosystem and one of the things that was very compelling about Learn365 was that it was Microsoft-friendly. We wanted an intuitive user interface but also the ability to customize the look and feel to our brand. We also needed reporting that was both granular and robust.”
The final decision to choose Learn365 was not just down to the product meeting all of these core requirements – the relationship with Zensai was also a significant factor.
“A strong vendor relationship is very important to us. We like to have ongoing, long-term partnerships with our vendors particularly in terms of them being willing to work with us for custom development and helping us get the most out of a platform. The Zensai team ticked all the boxes. Of course, pricing and how the licensing was packaged were also important but all in all, Zensai were the clear winners.”
With the decision made, the launch o fLearn365 was relatively quick.
“The implementation was very straightforward. Zensai worked with our local technology team and we didn’t experience any real roadblocks or significant issues. The launch was a smooth and pretty seamless process.”
In 2019, Learn365, branded internally as “Compass”, launched to all team members.
Results: Bite-sized learning that informs and engages
Six years later and Compass goes from strength to strength. Employees access Learn365 through single sign-on via the company’s SharePoint-based intranet. Wayne Brown comments
“It’s a very integrated and smooth experience. We always wanted a solution that had the same look and feel as the ecosystem.”
Courses cover a range of compliance topics including health and safety and cybersecurity, as well as industry- and role-specific learning. Here, there is a strong emphasis on content that is engaging, on-brand and relevant.
“We curate and develop all our content in house, so learning is on-brand and aligned to our communication strategy. All our material reflects the way we work and our culture and is presented in a way to get maximum engagement.”
To drive this engagement the team focuses on shorter pieces of learning which are easy to digest and fit into the busy working day.
“We’re mindful that our end users are customer facing so we don’t ever create content that takes an hour to consume uninterrupted. We’ve gone with a bite-sized approach so no one individual piece of content will take more than 10 to 15 minutes to consume.”
Training plans that support career advancement
Within Learn365, the team make extensive use of training plans to support employees from the time they join the company through to any potential promotions or role changes. There is an onboarding training plan for new starters, but also a range of role-specific plans.
“We do training plans for team members to complete at certain intervals in their tenure when they are required to complete a number of modules covering what they need to know. We also have different learning and development pathways to help team members progress within the company, for example to operations manager.”
The use of training plans has been partly automated through a small customization within the platform.
“We wanted team members to be automatically enrolled into training plans at various points in their time at the company. That wasn’t available out of the box, so we worked with our customer success manager as well as Zensai’s technical team to get that introduced. It was straightforward to make it happen. “
Brown emphasizes the value that having a dedicated customer success manager has brought.
“It’s been really great having a dedicated point of contact in terms of getting the best out of Learn365 and implementing the additional developments that we wanted.”
Brown also appreciates that customer ideas and feedback heavily influence Zensai’s product roadmap.
“When we make suggestions, there’s always been an avenue for our requests and ideas. Not everything gets implemented, but overall, that’s been fruitful in terms of extra requirements that we want to deliver on the platform.”
High levels of adoption and strong course ratings
The success of Compass is reflected in high course completion rates, all achieved relatively quickly.
“When we deploy a new piece of learning for our frontline team members, we usually give them a time frame to compete it, say two or three weeks. We usually achieve an 80% to 90% completion rate within that window. That’s helped by Learn365’s automated reminders to team members as well as the reporting which shows if team members that haven’t completed it on time.”
Of course, having engaging and useful content is also a factor. Indeed, staff are giving the thumbs up to the course content.
“We use Learn365’s star rating feature. Some courses are getting 4.5 out of 5 stars off around 60 ratings. Engagement with the platform is strong!”
Future: Extending reporting and continuing to innovate
Looking forward, the team will continue to evolve and expand the courses on Learn365 as business needs emerge – for example, the team are about to launch a module to help spot customers signing up with fraudulent information.
Brown is also currently working to develop a custom reporting dashboard. Here, Learn365’s seamless integration with Microsoft 365 is again proving useful.
“We’re in the process of trying to get some more robust reporting out of the platform through what we’re calling a competency score for different parts of the business. It’s not finalized, but it will give us a lot of more nuanced information about where the business sits from an L&D perspective. We’re planning to plug the numbers into a Power BI dashboard. We’re working with the Zensai team around which data we need to surface in a way that is impactful.”
Beyond this, Brown is sure there will be more innovation to come.
“Once we have the dashboard running and robust enough for what we want, we’ll undoubtedly be doing more with the platform. I’m not sure exactly what will come next. We’ll see what inspiration strikes!”
Overall, reflecting back on the progress made using Learn365, Brown feels a real sense of achievement.
“Over time we’ve built a great site that has developed over time and is still growing. I’m proud that we have a resource where team members can review learning when they need it. Having that access sets people up for success.”
About Kennards Self-storage
Kennards Self Storage (KSS) is the largest self-storage operator in Australia and employs 350 staff. Still a family-owned business, it offers storage facilities across 115 locations in Australia and New Zealand.
Overall quote
“Learn365 is definitely a platform that I would recommend. It’s reasonably priced, has a good user interface and is very reliable with zero downtime. I like the customer success framework with one single point of contact. The Zensai team are always willing to work with us to meet our needs and get the best out of the platform. I’m very happy with it!”
