Brakes unites its nationwide workforce, connecting employees everywhere.

Social learning for 10,000 learners

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The L&D team at Brakes needed a more engaging platform that was accessible to everyone, from drivers and warehouse employees to their commercial teams. It had to be able to foster a social learning experience, align with the way people learn in their personal lives and support the delivery of a blended learning strategy.

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Why Thrive instead of a traditional LMS?

When searching for a learning solution, Brakes wanted something that was both engaging and intuitive, while encouraging continuous personal development. It needed to be powerfully simple to use, so learners could pick it up straight away and want to return every day.  

Thrive ticked all the boxes, and was quickly branded Athena after the goddess of wisdom. Laura House, Senior L&D Partner at Brakes commented:

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“We were overwhelmed with how easily people picked up the functionality and started sharing content.”

Supporting employee's remote working

Brakes soon launched Thrive to their contact centres in a phased rollout to maximise buy-in. Word quickly spread due to its success and impressive feedback, and the commercial team also wanted to get involved. The L&D team agreed to a wider roll out to commercial teams just as the COVID-19 global pandemic started. With the majority of their employees working from home for the first time, Brakes had to be reactive. They decided to fast track roll out to all 10,000 learners, including operational and frontline employees.

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The team was able to quickly curate content and build learning pathways that supported their people and helped them navigate their way through the uncertain time. Using a range of different content including videos, live coaching sessions, micro-learning, articles and more, they could quickly provide training on relevant topics such as mental health, managing teams remotely and effective communication.

Results and impact

Brakes experienced an impressive 75% engagement in their first week after launch. Throughout lockdown and while many of their teams were furloughed, the L&D team managed to maintain engagement as Athena became the natural go-to destination for useful content. Looking to the future, the team plans to use Athena to continue supporting their remote workers.

They're also digitising their leadership training so they can deliver it virtually to employees, wherever they happen to be working. Due to the success of their partnership with Thrive, Brakes' parent company Sysco undertook a global rollout of the Learning Platform for 80,000 users.