Introducing a new reward system to ‘Power Up’ learning at Kia Motors UK

Challenge

Kia Motors UK Ltd are a subsidiary of one of the leading Automotive manufacturers in the world, selling over 90,000 vehicles in the UK on an annual basis with a network of 197 franchised dealers.

Previously, Kia had been using our glo™ enterprise system (named Kia Academy) to deliver their ‘People Programme’, where employees went through training courses to earn Bronze, Silver and Gold accreditation levels. However, whilst this was effective, it didn’t give employees much flexibility or choice over their learning.

Therefore, someone who was new to the Automotive Industry and someone who had been in the industry for 20+ years had to complete the same training when they had very different levels of experience. This meant that those more experienced employees weren’t necessarily seeing the benefits of learning for them and couldn’t create their own learning pathways.

Consequently, Kia wanted to design a solution that gave employees the flexibility to control their own learning development, but also encouraged people to continuously learn. This was particularly important as Kia had noticed a pattern of employees doing the training they needed to achieve the minimum bronze level and afterwards not having any incentives to maintain their skills and knowledge.

Solution

Together with Digits, Kia designed a new credit system to incentivise learning and repeatedly drive learners to the Kia academy.

Using this new credit system, learners are presented with a mandatory learning journey on first login to the LMS that requires them to complete an assessment to identify their current skills level. If they’re able to demonstrate they have prior knowledge, it allows them to bypass the Bronze level courses.

Still working with the same level system, Kia have now assigned a number of credits to each learning activity, whether it’s an eLearning module, online workbook or face-to-face training workshop. In this new programme, employees who were already at a certain level began with 0 credits and have the target of earning 100 credits to maintain that level by the end of the 12-month maintenance period. At the end of the 12-month maintenance period, the employee’s credits then reset to 0 and they have to earn 100 credits again in the following 12-months to maintain their training level.

To inspire Kia employees to continually learn, they also have the opportunity to ‘Power Up’ to the next level by earning an additional 100 credits. So, an employee might have earned their Bronze level by completing eLearning modules, watching videos and attending workshops and get to 200 for their Bronze level, but they then complete another workshop taking them to 300 credits and letting them ‘Power Up’ to Silver. They can then earn an additional 100 credits to ‘Power Up’ to Gold and in the following 12 months earn the necessary credits to stay at this level.

So, rather than completing learning to a Bronze level and never having to revisit their learning, employees now have to continuously earn credits to remain at Bronze, Silver or Gold otherwise their credits will expire and they’ll lose their level.

In addition to introducing the brand-new credit system, Kia also wanted to focus on increasing engagement by utilising glo™ learn’s gamified features as part of ‘Power Up’. To make the process more gamified, Digits designed a bespoke dashboard to show the number of credits achieved and what’s needed for maintenance, as well as using badges to reward learning completion.

Digits also designed a new theme to co-inside with the ‘Power Up’ project. For many years, Kia had been using their ‘Kia people’ dashboard design to demonstrate the different accreditation levels achieved and wanted to continue using this to reflect achievement levels but with new people to highlight their new gamified processes!

Kia announced the launch of the ‘Power Up’ project at the dealer conference in February with phase 1 going live in April.

Results

Although still in the initial phase of their new credit system, Kia have already begun seeing positive results throughout their dealer network. In the 4 months they’ve been live, there’s been a 19% reduction in inactive users, showing that more employees are regularly logging into Kia Academy to complete learning. With this new initiative, Kia set out to increase engagement and statistics show a 6% rise in engagement from 2018 to 2019, predicting further engagement towards the end of the maintenance period.

Not only that, their mailbox support issues have reduced by 39% since 2018, demonstrating the user-friendliness of the system and freeing up more time amongst the learning team.

They’ve also had very positive responses from their employees and dealerships to their introduction video that launches on first login. Created with the Digits design team, Kia made a video to explain the ‘Power Up’ project and provide users with a clear understanding of what they need to do from the get-go!

Feedback from the different dealerships and regional managers also showed that they loved the ease of the new reporting suite that gives a clear, visual overview of compliance.

Furthermore, this new solution is ideal for the Automotive Industry as many dealerships are multi-franchised meaning sales executives are often forced to sit through multiple sales courses per manufacturer. However, Kia’s new system identifies an employee’s existing skills and gives them the choice to do more suitable courses to aid development. So, a dealership employee might be confident in their sales techniques but need more help with time-management, therefore they can use their time more efficiently to enhance their skills. Saving time and expenses when having employees out of the office!