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How do you train and engage a workforce that’s always on their feet? Nothing Bundt Cakes has cracked the recipe for success.
Deskless training is an entire L&D challenge in itself, and for customer-facing teams, it can be difficult to prioritise workplace learning while also getting the day-to-day job done.
Nothing Bundt Cakes, a fast-growing bakery brand with over 700 locations across North America, has successfully tackled this challenge by implementing Thrive. In our recent webinar How Nothing Bundt Cakes are cooking up learning & comms to engage 10,000 front-line workers, their team shared insights on how they’ve transformed training and communication for their frontline employees.
Josh Devanny (CGO at Thrive) was joined by Anna Marie Samson (VP of Learning, People & Culture at Nothing Bundt Cakes) and Eric Boenig (Director of L&D, Systems & Content at Nothing Bundt Cakes) to discuss what they’ve learned in the past year of working with Thrive.
Here are the four key ingredients that make up their learning strategy, and lessons that you can apply to your business in order to engage frontline workers effectively.
Before implementing their new platform – thanks to Anna Marie and Eric’s research – Nothing Bundt Cakes were relying on an outdated Learning Management System that was primarily used for communications between its owners. It hosted some training, but nothing that was comprehensive enough for NBC’s huge frontline workforce. They needed something that scaled with them, offered speedy, comprehensive onboarding, and fostered ongoing learning and development.
“[Our legacy LMS] wasn’t a system that was growing as we were growing.”
– Eric Boenig.
Lesson: Don’t fall back on the way things have always been done – especially for organisations with a great deal of frontline workers. If your existing training system isn’t agile enough to support frontline employees with accessible, engaging learning opportunities, it’s time to evaluate new solutions.
Recognising that change can be difficult, Nothing Bundt Cakes involved franchise owners in the transition early on. They launched a pilot group of engaged owners who tested the new platform, provided feedback, and helped shape the final experience.
Throughout implementation, they also collaborated with every department to ensure that they had a robust view of what needed to be migrated to their new platform.
“One thing that went really well was collaboration with all the different departments that had information, documents and content on the old LMS, and going through all that content to whittle it down to a manageable amount. [This resulted in] having only the newest, greatest, most up-to-date content when we launched.”
- Eric Boenig.
“[Our owners] gave us such rich feedback and were so helpful to us in really making it something that was going to be theirs.”
- Anna Marie Samson.
Lesson: Rolling out a new training platform? Engage key stakeholders from the start. Involving a pilot group helps refine the system and makes it as useful as it can possibly be before a full-scale launch.
Arguably the biggest challenge for frontline workers is actually finding time in the day for training while also keeping up with the fast-paced, customer-facing responsibilities that make up the bulk of their job.
The team at Nothing Bundt Cakes recognised this as a pain point and prioritised functionality that would directly address it, including the ability to host a variety of different content formats. Thanks to Thrive’s ability to host audio, PDF, quizzes and video, NBC was able to deliver the most relevant training to each of their frontline employees.
It’s so important that NBC’s iconic cakes are consistent and uniform across all their locations – and video tutorials that made use of the visual element of training allowed them to maintain this consistency.
Another method for on-the-job learning came in the form of integrating Thrive with their Point of Sale (POS) system. Employees are automatically assigned relevant training based on their roles when they clock in.
“Thrive allows us to do something that our previous system did not: Learning in the flow of work. The learning pathways and that technology capability lets us do learning on the job, and so our team members are just much more effective.”
- Anna Marie Samson.
Lesson: Make learning as accessible as possible, and embedded within daily workflows. Whether it’s through mobile-friendly platforms, integration with existing systems, or short, just-in-time training, reducing barriers should be Priority #1.
Rather than treating training and communication as separate functions, Nothing Bundt Cakes unified both within their learning platform. Alongside their already existing newsletter, The NBC Comms team has started uploading regular videos, including those recorded by the CEO, to help employees feel more connected to the daily operations of the company.
The ability to segment learning by audiences has also been hugely beneficial for NBC, who often roll out region-specific initiatives in certain branches. Audience-based learning lets the team deliver the relevant content to the people who need it most – instead of pushing it out to the entire company.
“One of the other things I just think is so wonderful about the Communications is … the way we're able to set up audiences. As you might imagine, sometimes in our business we have a group of bakeries who are doing something unique from the rest of the system; so for example, if we're testing a new flavour they may need access to a set of communications that we don't necessarily want the rest of the brand to get confused by.
We've even been leveraging the push notification option for the communication, so that they're alerted when there's something special just for them … and that's been really successful for us.”
- Eric Boenig.
Lesson: Find a platform that combines learning and communication, instead of the functions being spread out across multiple applications.
Having successfully implemented Thrive, Nothing Bundt Cakes is now focusing on increasing engagement and adoption. They’re introducing contests, incentives, and swag to encourage employees to interact with the platform more frequently.
For L&D professionals looking to engage frontline workers, Nothing Bundt Cakes provides a strong example of how technology can transform learning experiences – without sacrificing your employees’ valuable time.
Think this could be you? Book a Thrive demo today.
Explore what impact Thrive could make for your team and your learners today.
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How do you train and engage a workforce that’s always on their feet? Nothing Bundt Cakes has cracked the recipe for success.
Deskless training is an entire L&D challenge in itself, and for customer-facing teams, it can be difficult to prioritise workplace learning while also getting the day-to-day job done.
Nothing Bundt Cakes, a fast-growing bakery brand with over 700 locations across North America, has successfully tackled this challenge by implementing Thrive. In our recent webinar How Nothing Bundt Cakes are cooking up learning & comms to engage 10,000 front-line workers, their team shared insights on how they’ve transformed training and communication for their frontline employees.
Josh Devanny (CGO at Thrive) was joined by Anna Marie Samson (VP of Learning, People & Culture at Nothing Bundt Cakes) and Eric Boenig (Director of L&D, Systems & Content at Nothing Bundt Cakes) to discuss what they’ve learned in the past year of working with Thrive.
Here are the four key ingredients that make up their learning strategy, and lessons that you can apply to your business in order to engage frontline workers effectively.
Before implementing their new platform – thanks to Anna Marie and Eric’s research – Nothing Bundt Cakes were relying on an outdated Learning Management System that was primarily used for communications between its owners. It hosted some training, but nothing that was comprehensive enough for NBC’s huge frontline workforce. They needed something that scaled with them, offered speedy, comprehensive onboarding, and fostered ongoing learning and development.
“[Our legacy LMS] wasn’t a system that was growing as we were growing.”
– Eric Boenig.
Lesson: Don’t fall back on the way things have always been done – especially for organisations with a great deal of frontline workers. If your existing training system isn’t agile enough to support frontline employees with accessible, engaging learning opportunities, it’s time to evaluate new solutions.
Recognising that change can be difficult, Nothing Bundt Cakes involved franchise owners in the transition early on. They launched a pilot group of engaged owners who tested the new platform, provided feedback, and helped shape the final experience.
Throughout implementation, they also collaborated with every department to ensure that they had a robust view of what needed to be migrated to their new platform.
“One thing that went really well was collaboration with all the different departments that had information, documents and content on the old LMS, and going through all that content to whittle it down to a manageable amount. [This resulted in] having only the newest, greatest, most up-to-date content when we launched.”
- Eric Boenig.
“[Our owners] gave us such rich feedback and were so helpful to us in really making it something that was going to be theirs.”
- Anna Marie Samson.
Lesson: Rolling out a new training platform? Engage key stakeholders from the start. Involving a pilot group helps refine the system and makes it as useful as it can possibly be before a full-scale launch.
Arguably the biggest challenge for frontline workers is actually finding time in the day for training while also keeping up with the fast-paced, customer-facing responsibilities that make up the bulk of their job.
The team at Nothing Bundt Cakes recognised this as a pain point and prioritised functionality that would directly address it, including the ability to host a variety of different content formats. Thanks to Thrive’s ability to host audio, PDF, quizzes and video, NBC was able to deliver the most relevant training to each of their frontline employees.
It’s so important that NBC’s iconic cakes are consistent and uniform across all their locations – and video tutorials that made use of the visual element of training allowed them to maintain this consistency.
Another method for on-the-job learning came in the form of integrating Thrive with their Point of Sale (POS) system. Employees are automatically assigned relevant training based on their roles when they clock in.
“Thrive allows us to do something that our previous system did not: Learning in the flow of work. The learning pathways and that technology capability lets us do learning on the job, and so our team members are just much more effective.”
- Anna Marie Samson.
Lesson: Make learning as accessible as possible, and embedded within daily workflows. Whether it’s through mobile-friendly platforms, integration with existing systems, or short, just-in-time training, reducing barriers should be Priority #1.
Rather than treating training and communication as separate functions, Nothing Bundt Cakes unified both within their learning platform. Alongside their already existing newsletter, The NBC Comms team has started uploading regular videos, including those recorded by the CEO, to help employees feel more connected to the daily operations of the company.
The ability to segment learning by audiences has also been hugely beneficial for NBC, who often roll out region-specific initiatives in certain branches. Audience-based learning lets the team deliver the relevant content to the people who need it most – instead of pushing it out to the entire company.
“One of the other things I just think is so wonderful about the Communications is … the way we're able to set up audiences. As you might imagine, sometimes in our business we have a group of bakeries who are doing something unique from the rest of the system; so for example, if we're testing a new flavour they may need access to a set of communications that we don't necessarily want the rest of the brand to get confused by.
We've even been leveraging the push notification option for the communication, so that they're alerted when there's something special just for them … and that's been really successful for us.”
- Eric Boenig.
Lesson: Find a platform that combines learning and communication, instead of the functions being spread out across multiple applications.
Having successfully implemented Thrive, Nothing Bundt Cakes is now focusing on increasing engagement and adoption. They’re introducing contests, incentives, and swag to encourage employees to interact with the platform more frequently.
For L&D professionals looking to engage frontline workers, Nothing Bundt Cakes provides a strong example of how technology can transform learning experiences – without sacrificing your employees’ valuable time.
Think this could be you? Book a Thrive demo today.
Explore what impact Thrive could make for your team and your learners today.
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