How Does Your LMS Make Your Employees Feel?

Lan Tran, Head of L&D Governance, Technology, and Operations, Kraft Heinz

Lan Tran, Head of L&D Governance, Technology, and Operations, Kraft Heinz

Lan Tran is the Head of L&D Governance, Technology, and Operations at Kraft Heinz, where she sets the vision and direction for L&D governance, learner engagement, learning analytics, and Kraft Heinz’s Learning Ecosystem, which includes their corporate university platform, Ownerversity, which is custom built on Cornerstone Learning. Lan enjoys doing big things, making dreams and visions come true and making the impossible possible. Prior to joining Kraft Heinz, Lan was a Learning Design Director and the VP of Client Technology and Strategy at Socratic Arts, where she specialized in designing immersive learning experiences for large corporations that improved workforce performance and influenced behavior changes.

Here at Kraft Heinz, we are going through a transformation. We are transforming how we work to build a sustainable future for our business and people. We are transforming our culture to support our purpose, Let’s Make Life Delicious. And, in the learning space, we are transforming what learning means at Kraft Heinz to encourage employees to adopt a growth mindset and develop the capabilities necessary to drive the execution of our enterprise strategy; so, as one organization, we can write the next chapter in Kraft Heinz’s story together.

"While the Ownerversity platform is a great central place to find all learning at Kraft Heinz, this new approach made it okay for an employee to use LinkedIn Learning’s mobile app to take courses"

As employee experience and engagement continues to be a priority for most companies, what does that mean for the learning team? That means, our learning ecosystem needs to put the learner at the center: Who are our learners? What would the learner want to do? What words would they use to find learning? How can managers support their team member’s growth and learning? What data do our stakeholders want to see? What data do we, as a learning organization, need to drive continuous improvement for our learners?

When we approached the elevation of our Learning Management System (LMS), we asked ourselves the above questions. And, we asked ourselves: How did we want our employees to feel when they came to our site? The answer: We wanted them to feel motivated and inspired to learn, as well as a sense of belonging. We wanted them to have confidence that there was something for them in our corporate university platform, regardless of their role, level, location, etc. in the company.

This feeling to inspire learning and belonging and our learning value proposition to enable employees to live the Kraft Heinz value, We Dare to Do Better Every Day, and #LearnLikeAnOwner; so, they can execute with excellence in their current role, accelerate their learning curve, and grow a great career drove our design of the next evolution of our corporate university, which we call Ownerversity, as We Own It is one of our core values.

The Ownerversity platform is custom built on the Cornerstone LMS and was designed to provide a learner experience that:

• Motivates our employees to learn and inspires belonging

• Makes finding learning easy

• Provides quick access to thousands oflearning resources, both custom and curated

• Supports our employees to grow their capabilities so they can thrive in their functional areas

In addition, as we think about the future of learning at Kraft Heinz, we wanted to build a learning ecosystem that was scalable and flexible to change with emerging technology and learning approaches. Hence, we had to shift from a product-focused (LMS at the center) strategy to a learner-focused strategy. How can we leverage technology to enhance our learner experience? This is different than: How can we encourage employees to use the LMS?

This learner-focused approach enabled by technology, and not driven by the technology or LMS, allowed us to see our LMS as one source of learning within our larger learning ecosystem at Kraft Heinz. While the Ownerversity platform is a great central place to find all learning at Kraft Heinz, this new approach made it okay for an employee to use LinkedIn Learning’s mobile app to take courses. The LMS still getsall the progress data for reporting; however, the employee had more flexibility to learn how, where, and when that suited them.

We launched our new Ownerversity experience in December 2020, and since the launch have seen our visitor numbers to the platform grow. In a virtual retreat in March 2021, employees shared that they saw Ownerversity as the company’s investment in them, which reflects how our learning organizationhas helped to improve the employee experience at Kraft Heinz.

As we think about the next chapter of Kraft Heinz’s story and the role our culture of learning will play in this chapter and beyond, we know our LMS cannot be a static experience. We will continue to enhance the functionality, highlight new and relevant resources, and change images and messages in the Ownerversity platform to align with what is currently happening in the company and the world, so employees continue to feel supported in their development and connected to each other and Kraft Heinz.

So, let me ask you…How does your LMS make your employees feel?