Over 65 Years of Innovation.
That’s Weber’s claim on the company’s ‘about’ page. Their promise of quality and innovation lives on in everything they do, and when it comes to unlocking their teams’ potential, this is no exception.
“We know that getting our trainees to smell, taste, and cook empowers them to sell through storytelling… and it comes from a genuine place.”
Jane Calleja — Director of Talent, Capability & Development, APAC
For them, it’s about empowering their team to experience cooking on a Weber so they can have more genuine interactions with customers.
For years, Weber APAC has run annual product programmes that provide teams with the latest essential features and benefits and a flavour experience. These were all conducted in a one-day, face-to-face workshop run in each store.
The challenge
With travel restrictions locked in place at the height of their busiest season, the Talent and Capability team looked to RedSeed for support with developing an alternative solution. They needed a way to deliver training that offered teams essential knowledge of features and benefits while also giving them the full flavour experience.
“How do we upskill over 200 retail stores on how to use the latest Weber BBQ in a way that gives us confidence that they’ve actually had hands-on experience?”
That’s the question Weber posed to the RedSeed team.
Weber already has a well-established online portal for delivering webinars for this type of training. However, training engagement became a challenge because these often ran live during retail hours.
The webinar environment also didn’t offer a way for the team to verify that attendees then went on to try out the new range for themselves - which was key to the whole Weber sales experience; the ability to disarm through storytelling, a skill that Calleja believes comes through lived experience.
The solution
The answer? RedSeed SkillsCheck.
Skills verification is an important part of driving behaviour change in a business. In a traditional training environment, this is done in a face-to-face setting.
“SkillsCheck meant we could utilise managers to form an integral part of the coaching-feedback loop and took a lot of pressure off our relatively agile Talent and Capability team.”
Even RedSeed’s own coaching feedback loop has historically required some face-to-face interaction for a coach or manager to observe and provide feedback to their team.
With RedSeed’s SkillsCheck tool, the Weber team could deliver key product knowledge training online and drive adoption of the flavour experience by setting a challenge for trainees to film examples of their cooking on the Weber Barbecue at key steps within the recipe provided. Videos were then uploaded to RedSeed for verification by a coach or manager who could provide feedback.
Collaborating with RedSeed to develop SkillsCheck meant that Weber was able to scale up their training without adding pressure to their L&D team. It also removed many barriers to training, and teams could engage more fully in their learning.
The results
- Greater than 2x engagement increase between year one and year two.
- Ability to report on and easily analyse engagement.
