Sky captivates 25,000 learners from day one.

Time to transform L&D

Sky is Europe’s largest media company, with an impressive 23 million customers. When COVID-19 hit in March 2020, Sky had to close 60 retail stores and adopt remote working across all functions. But the leading company chose not to furlough employees, and instead approached the unprecedented time as a unique opportunity to prioritise and transform learning and development.

They needed a way to upskill, engage and deliver learning to 800+ retail staff and share leadership training with managers, supporting them through the transition and helping their teams adapt to change.

Their previous LMS didn’t allow Sky to be agile, encourage user engagement or associate learning with communication. So, they defined the requirement for a new learning platform to guarantee usage, engage their teams and share important updates about COVID-19 - fast.
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Fast track to Thrive

Sky was midway through a pilot with Thrive when the pandemic hit, and all stakeholders made the decision to fast-track roll-out early with the following objectives:

- Create one single place for learning
- Keep retail staff busy while stores across the country were closed
- Upskill customer service group leaders with training to support their teams
- Provide a platform where people can collaborate from home and stay connected

Thrive was launched across their retail teams within 2 weeks, and to business leaders within 6 weeks. The Sky team saved a huge amount of time on content curation by harnessing auto-curation tools within Thrive, as well as their microlearning content. By integrating this with their own content, they created blended learning pathways that supported end users through the ‘new normal’ of working from home.

Results and impact at Sky

Implementing Thrive has helped Sky achieve its objectives, and then some. Success lies in the reactivity of their L&D team, instant uptake from learners and the ability to streamline their platforms around the business.

Due to its success, Sky has now extended the roll-out to all contact centres and engineer front-line staff. By the end of June, Sky’s user count was 22,000+ employees from a standing start of 20 pilot users in mid-March.