Lehigh Valley Restaurant Group, 21-unit franchisee

Knowledge
Dramatically increased knowledge within management ranks leveraging exams in a question bank
Engagement
Improved engagement from general managers company-wide using competitive gamification
Development
Created development paths across all levels of the organization, from hourly employees to multi-unit leader

CHALLENGES

  • Manual processes and paper training documents made accountability a challenge
  • In-person training activities costs thousands of dollars in travel, hotel fees, and time
  • Had difficulty calibrating manager knowledge of recipes, standards, HR practices, accounting, marketing, and training materials

SOLUTIONS

  • Adopted e-learning to train 130 managers in a way that was cost effective and easy to update
  • Deployed “Knowledge Knockout” competition to improve manager knowledge with weekly tracking
  • Created development paths from hourly employee through multi-unit leader

HOW WE DID IT

Lehigh Valley Restaurant Group (LVRG) is Red Robin’s largest franchisee group, owning and operating 21 Red Robin locations in Eastern and Central Pennsylvania. We initially started working with LVRG to deploy sexual harassment prevention training to their managers. After this initial success, LVRG decided to adopt e-learning across its training programs company-wide.

After fully implementing DiscoverLink Talent, LVRG created the “Knowledge Knockout” competition to improve manager knowledge of recipes, standards, HR practices, accounting, marketing, and training materials. Modeled after a typical sports season, the competition required restaurants to face off against each other each week, followed by bracket-style playoffs. Using the exam builder in DiscoverLink Talent, LVRG created a substantial question bank with more than 500 questions, providing the ability to automatically create and deploy weekly tests for its management teams. Administrators set specific time to complete tests, number of questions, and passing score parameters.

By tracking each manager’s weekly score (and subsequent average) as well as a roll up of each store’s weekly score, LVRG was able to gamify the results. At the end of the 10-week season, the top 12 teams entered the Knowledge Knockout playoffs, a single elimination tournament with a winner-take-all cash prize and the title of Knowledge Knockout Champions!

What you think it should be able to do, it does, and you don’t have to think hard about it. It is set up logically and makes creation of programs very easy.

Dave Burrington Human Resource Busineses Partner, Lehigh Valley Restaurant Group - Red Robin

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