Telenor’s leaders create their own self-directed learning expeditions

Telenor Group is a leading telecommunications company across the Nordics and Asia with 186 million customers and annual sales of around USD 12 billion (2019). Telenor has a leading Nordic position in mobile, broadband and TV services, as well as substantial activities in subsidiaries and joint venture operations, including mobile financial services and online classifieds in the Asia region. Worldwide, Telenor Group and operations’ teams are more than 20,000 people strong.

The Challenge

Back in 2016, Telenor started to think about digital transformation, and what it takes to become a digital services provider. They quickly realized that this required a rethink of their existing business model, markets and customers.

Along with this, the telecoms industry continues to change dramatically, and Telenor recognized the need to foster this changing culture. But with thousands of leaders across multiple geographies, they knew that they needed a scalable, user-friendly, digital-first solution.

The Solution

Telenor already had a relationship with Deloitte, and reached out to them to discuss this project. They discovered that Deloitte already had a platform with personalized learning journeys, which would support a Netflix style of learning that would empower leaders to build their own tailored learning programmes.

Typically, Telenor’s senior leaders don’t like being faced with new systems and interfaces, but they recognized that the customisability and flexibility of Totara Learn would be ideal for supporting this migration.

It took Telenor and Deloitte just a few months to build and launch the new learning management system, starting development in late August 2019 and launching the platform to the first cohort in mid-November.

One of the most important elements of the platform is the ability to create personalized learning journeys. Telenor used a travel metaphor to encourage learners to create their own ‘expedition’. There are four tracks of the expedition, which are introduced via a map. Learners must then complete four exercises and some demos in each track, which they choose themselves from two categories – ‘tools’ and ‘knowledge’. This gave the organisation’s leaders the ability to try out the changes in leadership practices for themselves and create a programme that resonated with them.

There is a huge amount of content on Telenor’s platform, including content by their own SMEs, programmes by Deloitte, LinkedIn Learning courses, case studies, articles and videos. This gives learners the ability to pick and choose what most appeals to them, rather than requiring them to complete specific tasks.

The Results

Despite the initial concern that the senior leaders wouldn’t get on with a new system and the personalized learning approach, Telenor found that leaders started picking up on key takeaways from the learning relatively quickly without being told what to do.

Within the first eight weeks of the platform launching, 57% of enrolled learners had already completed all four expedition paths, with some business units seeing closer to 80% completion rates. In business units with the highest completion rates, the learning was endorsed by top managers and there was obvious buy-in from senior leaders, showing that this is a key factor in the success of the solution.

And the learners are delighted with the platform too. In fact, 86% of learners would recommend the programme to others, and on a 1-4 scale, the platform was rated 3.5 in terms of relevance to learners’ day-to-day jobs.

Telenor is very happy with their partnership with Deloitte and their decision to use Totara Learn. They are looking forward to launching this programme to future cohorts, and plan to scale the platform to accommodate thousands of leaders across the organisation. They also found Deloitte very easy to work with, providing clear timelines for deliverables and transparency throughout the project, even during the natural challenges that come with changing learning platforms. They hope to maintain this great working relationship going forward as they further develop a platform they will use for years to come.

“We deliberately went for a relatively simple setup initially, but I know there is a lot more functionality available, and I’m curious to explore this in the future and add to what is already proving itself as a very successful programme.”