How Sealed Air Is Transforming Its Employee Learning Experience

Recently, employee experience has been dominating headlines and solution roadmaps across human capital management (HCM). While much of the discussion has been about the need to transform employee experience on a macro level through measuring and analyzing experience data, there continues to be significant development and focus on improving employee experience in other ways, including learning management.

Learning Experience Platforms Have the Potential to Drive Learning Management Growth

When asked in a recent SAPinsider survey — for the “State of The Market How the Cloud Is Transforming HR”research report — to identify the HCM functions in which they dedicate the most time and resources, 22% of respondents in the leader category chose learning management, a response that ranked third in overall investment behind core HR (41%) and payroll (26%) applications. As interest and investment in learning solutions rises, learning experience platforms (LXPs) that focus on employee experience by transforming traditional top down learning processes are offering new ways to engage and develop employees.

LXPs have the potential to change both the way learners engage and the way learning is delivered by offering employees a more personal, tailored learning experience. As a platform, LXPs like Skillsoft’s Percipio leverage different channels, content sources, and delivery methods to curate, aggregate, and recommend content that is specific to an employee’s current role or career development path.

For employees who are accustomed to user-friendly applications like Netflix or Spotify that recommend content based on machine learning and algorithms, LXPs can provide a similar experience. Employees can receive recommendations based on their past training, their roles, or their interests. Content in LXPs is often organized by channels, tags, or skills and competencies, and many offer the learner the ability to share and recommend content. The emphasis on a more personalized user experience helps increase the overall effectiveness of the learning process.

Transforming Learning at Sealed Air

Sealed Air Corporation, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based provider of protective packaging solutions with 15,000 employees globally, implemented SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central as its core HCM solution in 2018. Since then, Sealed Air has continued to expand its HR technology transformation by implementing additional SAP SuccessFactors solutions, including SAP SuccessFactors Learning, in 2019.

Learning at Sealed Air is fairly decentralized, with corporate HR providing learning for “soft skills” content such as leadership and career development training that is accessible to all employees, while training that is specific to individual divisions or functions — such as sales training or safety training — is managed by the business functions themselves.

When Sealed Air went live with SAP SuccessFactors Learning as its learning management system (LMS) platform, it also launched Skillsoft’s Percipio learning experience platform at the same time. For Sealed Air, the simultaneous rollout of SAP SuccessFactors Learning with the Percipio platform and its content library meant that learners immediately had access to a significant number of learning assets in Percipio while the company worked with its LMS administrators and its existing training providers to incorporate additional content into the new system.

Creating a More Modern Learning Experience

Sealed Air’s previous LMS platform lacked the modern user experience, the level and accessibility of content, and the tight integration with its core HCM solution that Percipio provides. In the past, learning that was completed outside of the core system was not automatically updated, meaning managers didn’t always have complete visibility into the learning activities of their employees. Now, employees access learning through the “My Sealed Air” site that includes SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and integration with the Percipio platform. Employees can check the site for any learning assignments or browse learning content that aligns with their developmental goals. The early feedback indicates that the LXP has led to a significant improvement in user experience.

Sealed Air discovered that the experience of finding content and accessing learning through Percipio was very much in line with modern user experiences employees are used to having online. As a result, they have not had to spend time creating job aids to instruct employees how to use the system.

The more intuitive learning experience has led to fewer questions from employees and a much smoother process overall. This has enabled Sealed Air to focus less on tactical details and more on overall strategic enhancements to employee learning and development. “Going forward, we can be more thoughtful and strategic about how we assign, recommend, and encourage learning within the organization,” says Cary Anderson, Sealed Air’s Global Learning and Development Manager.

What Does This Mean for SAPinsiders?

The biggest benefits of an LXP are the overall user experience — the modern way in which learning is sourced and executed — and the way in which content is organized, presented, and accessed. When used properly, LXPs can improve employee engagement, increase the effectiveness of learning, and reduce the time organizations spend creating and curating learning content. To elevate the employee experience and deliver more engaging learning content, SAPinsiders considering implementing an LXP should:

• Emphasize user experience. The effectiveness of an LXP like Skillsoft’s Percipio is directly related to user experience. Outside of the workplace, employees have become accustomed to the experience of streaming, gaming, and social media platforms. As Sealed Air discovered, by choosing a learning platform that is as intuitive for your employees, you can increase engagement and the amount of learning consumed.

• Harness the power of content curation and contextualization. LXPs curate content from multiple sources and offer it in searchable content channels and playlists. Employees can set content preferences and recommend learning to their peers and LXPs can also leverage machine learning to provide contextualized learning recommendations based on an employee’s past learning, role, or even recent actions. Customers looking at LXPs should think beyond traditional catalog learning and consider the intelligent ways their content can be accessed and delivered.

• Make mobile access a priority. Online learning is no longer limited to the desktop. Most employees expect content like learning to be accessible from mobile devices. By adding more mobile-friendly learning content like video, customers can improve the results of key learning metrics around engagement and course completion.

• Analyze the results of learning. Most LXPs offer business intelligence and analysis capabilities that can be used to track usage and gather feedback on learning activities. This same data can also be used to track the value of learning by analyzing the impact of learning on productivity or performance. Customers should identify the metrics that will enable them to most accurately track the value created by the LXP and use the embedded analysis capabilities to monitor them.

Following this strategic guidance should help SAP customers take advantage of the capabilities offered by LXPs to enhance skills development and improve the overall effectiveness of learning processes.