Madison is Australian owned and is comprised of businesses specialising in the design, development and distribution of leading connectivity products and technologies. Their businesses provide connectivity solutions across a broad range of communications, audio visual, wireless and networking disciplines.
Being part of the fast-moving tech space means this business has many moving parts. Innovating to create customised product solution, meeting tight supply deadlines and engaging in consultative selling with clients are all part of the day-to-day activities of the business.
Since its founding in 1991, Madison has maintained a strong commitment to its people and aims to abide by its mantras of being ‘Well Connected’ and ‘Making it Happen.’
Staff desire to improve was the catalyst for online learning
The results of one of the organisation’s frequent employee engagement surveys suggested that role-specific training and professional development was something that the organisation’s staff had a strong desire to pursue.
Upon receiving this feedback, Madison’s leadership team committed to meet its staff requests for more training and development opportunities.
Madison does not have a formal learning and development or training function. As such, the Human Resources team picked up the initiative to create and roll out the new training initiative across the organisation.
Nothing fitted the bill
Madison knew that delivering comprehensive training across the organisation would require an online learning solution. Due to a heavy workload and resource limitations, the business could not dedicate hours and hours to face-to-face training.
When the team started looking for a technology solution, they began to hit roadblocks. Most solutions they investigated came with a high price point, required specialist instructional design skills and were pitched more towards enterprise organisations with large budgets and dedicated learning and development staff.
Madison came across Tribal Habits at the AHRI conference and were immediately impressed. The ability for anyone in the organisation to create customised training content was something that stood from the initial discussions.
“From the first time we spoke, I could see that Tribal Habits were offering something different, something that would fit a business of our size.”
Kate Arnold, Manager People and Change
Start small and grow
While the end goal for Madison was to be creating role-specific customised content, the organisation needed to get runs on the board quickly. To make an immediate impact, it rolled out the Tribal Habits Compliance and Development Libraries. These ready-made content libraries provided the team with compliance training that was approved by Australian lawyers and professional development topics such as ‘confident business networking’ and ‘coaching and developing staff’. This training was rolled out to staff in a matter of days.
As well as providing the team with great learning opportunities, this rapid roll-out gave staff their first exposure to the Tribal Habits platform and the concept of delivering training online.
“The training, and the platform itself, received great feedback from our staff. Starting with the ready-made libraries was a fantastic jumping-off point on our journey into online learning.”
Kate Arnold, Manager People and Change
Perhaps the biggest win was the fact that the training content was available at any time, on any device. This meant that staff could access training where and when it was needed. With staff working different rosters and distributed across multiple locations, warehouses and offices, this 24/7 availability solved a lot of challenges when it came to delivering training.
Creating custom online training content
With the libraries place, the team shifted its focus to creating learning experiences that were customised to its operations.
The ability to easily create training was one of the things that stood out about the platform. The team followed Tribal Habits’ AI guide (Sage) who provides constant updates throughout the training creation process.
“Sage is amazing, not having a background in instructional design. I was uncertain if the training I created would hit the mark, but Sage guided us through each step of the process. She let us know if the training was too long, too short, where we could leverage videos or images and lots of other tips and techniques. It’s an amazing feature.”
Hailey Myatt, Employee Experience Officer
Combining the directions from Sage with the easy to use drag-and-drop training creator has made the task of creating training possible for Madison employees who do not have previous experience in designing training.
Our teams are now building customised online training
The HR team created the first custom training modules. Then, over a short period, the HR team were able to introduce different subject matter experts across the business to the platform and show them how easy it is to create training in Tribal Habits. These experts, and their teams, are now creating their own customised online training. Some business units are doing this work entirely on their own, while others are working together with the HR team to create training collaboratively.
“It’s very powerful to have different functions in our business creating training that is relevant to what they do. They know their own space best, so they are the perfect people to be creating the training. We sometimes jump in and help, but ultimately it’s the subject matter experts sharing what they know.”
Hailey Myatt, Employee Experience Officer
What the future holds
Madison is committed to rolling Tribal Habits out across more parts of the business. The organisation will increase the amount of compliance training its offering and will be complementing its face-to-face leadership training with online training elements in Tribal Habits. Tribal Habits is also being written into formal performance improvement and personal development plans.
“In the short time we’ve been working together we’ve delivered some big results. Our experience with Tribal Habits has been great. The task for us now is to get the training to more people more regularly.”
Kate Arnold, Manager People and Change