Challenges
Survey fatigue and engagement
Solutions
Bespoke eLearning
Business Result
Reinforced the six Leadership Attributes and evaluated impact of the attributes on the company's culture
DHL Group, a global leader in logistics headquartered in Bonn, Germany, employs over 600,000 people across 220 countries. To enhance productivity, employee engagement, and customer experience, DHL Group introduced six Leadership Attributes designed to guide employee development and reflect the company’s culture.
Before Kallidus
To effectively embed these Leadership Attributes across its diverse and international workforce, DHL Group needed a comprehensive learning experience. After years of embedding the Leadership Attributes into trainings, processes, and practices, Katja Heintzen, from the organization’s Group Certified and Learning Innovation team, sought out new ways of measuring the impact of the initial roll-out and infusion of the Leadership Attributes. Katja envisioned a pioneering gamified solution that combined questions with learning in a fun and immersive way to overcome the organization’s challenge with ‘survey fatigue’.
The solution had to be accessible, innovative, engaging, and scalable, while also collecting rich data to measure the impact of the attributes.
The solution: Elemental Escapes
DHL Group partnered with Kallidus to create “Elemental Escapes,” a gamified learning experience designed to reinforce the six Leadership Attributes. This game aimed to overcome survey fatigue by embedding survey-like questions within competitive, game-like challenges.
The design of the game intended to embed survey-like questions within competitive, game-like challenges for a twofold result:
- supplying a continuous flow of data provided by employees about Leadership Attribute perceptions in a voluntary way, and
- Creating a deeper understanding of the Leadership Attributes through simple and effective examples that can be applied daily.
This alignment is evident in the game’s ability to generate rich data within the application while deepening the understanding of these attributes among employees, thus addressing a key performance need.
Key Features
- Alignment with Performance Needs:
- The game reinforced the Leadership Attributes through DHL’s HR initiatives: diversity, sustainability, engagement, and enablement.
- It provided continuous data on employee perceptions of the Leadership Attributes and deepened their understanding through practical examples.
- Use of Multimedia Elements:
- The game included an escape experience, mini-games, and learning nuggets.
- Elements like animals representing DHL’s diverse workforce, rewarding, leader boards, and sustainability ideals were integrated into mini-games.
- Interactivity:
- The game encouraged active participation through questions, mini-games, and learning nuggets.
- Learners navigated through different zones, each representing dimensions of the Leadership Attributes, and collected rewards like digital certificates and learning gifts.
- Innovation and Originality:
- The game collected data without direct surveys, maintaining authenticity and focus.
- It used animal imagery instead of human avatars to avoid biases and align attributes with animal strengths.
“We could have easily used avatars, but avatars have human characteristics and human characteristics would cause participants to make assumptions about their behaviors. With animals, we look at them more factually for what they contribute to nature. We could then make alignments between an animal and a leadership attribute,” said Katja. “And the participants loved it.”
Implementation and Results
During the pilot phase, 25,000 participants from all divisions and organizational levels completed the game. The positive feedback led to approval for a full rollout to all 600,000 employees worldwide in 23 languages.
It was important for DHL to make the game accessible for all and to respect the identities and opinions of learners. The questions included in the design are not positioned like a traditional survey where someone knows they are being asked for an opinion or preference. Instead, these questions are part of the games’ adventures.
Developed in collaboration with the Department of People Analytics and Reporting Team, Felix Benninghoff-Lühl, People Business Intelligence, data collected through the game is anonymous and adheres to data protection as well as workers council requirements. Power BI aggregates the feedback and generates reports and insights by grouping: division, region, country, language, role (leader / non-leader). For example, when a group of participants weighed in on how the leadership attributes shaped their behaviors and communication styles, 30.5% believed the attributes had an impact.
To understand the impact of the attributes on the company culture, they needed to consider another KPI about the observed behaviour in the respective teams. 75% of the participants told the Group Certified and Learning Innovation team that they already know the expected behaviour along the 6 Leadership Attributes in their teams, and more than 81% of the participants agree that they feel a strong sense of belonging to the company.
As DHL Group has such a vast group of employees, it is inevitable that the feedback provided would not represent all employees at DHL. However, with 81% of participants witnessing a strong company culture, the progress that the team at DHL Group has made, and will continue to make, is outstanding.
With Power BI, DHL was able to dissect that percentage to find which regions were most impacted by the attributes. Within regions, they could determine if operational roles or office-based roles were more impacted. A final drill-down allowed the team to see which leading or non-leading roles felt the greatest impact and ultimately, where more learning was needed.
Positive Reception
Employees praised the game for its educational and fun nature, its reinforcement of the Leadership Attributes, and its sustainability and diversity themes. Comments highlighted the game’s effectiveness in making learning engaging and memorable:
“I finished the course like I was playing a game and I was so excited about it, it helped me understand more about the Leadership Attributes.”
“‘The game is perfect. The animation and interactivity make this training the best I’ve ever had.”
“The e-learning was very interesting and helped me to refresh the attributes very easily because of the great examples with the animals.”
“‘Hope I can have a tree planted. This is a very nice learning game combined with a sustainability purpose. Effective and fun! Great initiative. Thank you!”
Elemental Escapes is a testament to DHL and Kallidus’ collaboration and commitment to excellence in learning design, culture, and innovation. The game not only reinforced the Leadership Attributes but also provided valuable data to guide future learning investments. With its full rollout, DHL expects to further embed these attributes across its global workforce, enhancing both employee development and organizational performance.
Want to know how our team can create a bespoke, immersive learning experience for your employees? Speak to a Kallidus expert today.
