Employee engagement
Digital Marketing Executive, Natalie King, joined Kallidus’ Bespoke Digital Content crew as they filmed scenarios for one of Britain’s favourite supermarkets. These videos and content pieces will be collated to create custom training programmes for new inductees to the store, preparing them for their career in retail.
“Filming began very early at 5am, before the store opened – this was so the ‘drunken and disorderly customer’ scene could be wrapped up before real-life customers entered the store!”
Kallidus works with many mainstream brands and sometimes has to be discrete in its filming to ensure that the business’s trade remains unaffected.
Collaborating with video production agency, Skylark Media, with a director formerly from the BBC in control, every scene has the upmost professionalism and attention to detail. In this instance, new employees for this supermarket will enjoy watching the videos, followed by situational quizzes to test their knowledge as part of their blended induction programme.
Kallidus’ award-winning instructional designers write realistic scripts and go through a vigorous process of choosing the best professional actors for the job, to ensure that the scenes are as true to life as possible.
“This sometimes means that the scenes may not be entirely ‘PG’ – hence some filming occurring before the store is open to the public! However, the realism is aimed at preparing new employees for all eventualities.”
Once opened, the store bore minimum disruption despite the mock ‘disgruntled customer’ scene – in fact, some customers approached the film crew in excitement to find out if the store would be featured in a TV programme (unfortunately not – it will only be seen by new recruits of the supermarket!).
The aim of filming in a real store is to provide relatable visual processes for induction purposes: by using a real store, new joiners will be able to immediately associate what is on the training screen to what they should expect in their new employment. With managers and employees contributing their thoughts to the filming throughout the day, all aspects of an induction are included to ensure well-rounded practical training for all parties.
Kallidus and Skylark Media ensured that every step of the induction process was covered; from meeting and greeting at the door to till training; from collecting a uniform to health and safety procedures, the video content captured the entire process to guide managers in their methods and reassure new joiners.
By preparing new joiners for all eventualities with consistent induction training regardless of their location, staff feel reassured and organisations can ensure that their staff have received the same, high-level standard of training nationally.
Mara has a passion for promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion across global workplaces and hopes to inspire learners to focus on their own careers with self-directed learning content.
