Kerry Group was responsible for a large recall that cost them upwards of $120 million. Worse still, this setback damaged their reputation with their client, a cereal manufacturer with a wide portfolio of products. Suddenly, Kerry’s revenue from R&D was scaled back, removing their access to a huge range of potential business – such as protein bars, fruit snacks, crackers, chips, crisps, and even beverages.
Kerry’s reaction was to completely transform their food-safety culture, in order to rebuild consumer confidence and demonstrate that they had a world-class culture of quality and dependability.
Part of that journey obviously includes creating this culture, so they sought out the best consultants to help develop it. They hired multiple firms, including one of the Big Five, to offer culture-building solutions that would transform their workforce.
Unfortunately, they only received canned, conservative responses. Some of the c-suite executives had worked with Sage Media before and recommended us. Our solution was anything but conservative.
Project
“Hush” – An interactive training film.
Client
Kerry Foods
What We Did
Cultural S.W.O.T. Analysis
Full-Scale Video Production
Virtual Reality (VR) Development
Instructional Design
Trained Trainers for International Facilitation
Designed Learning Analytics
The Solution
Sage Media identified the goal of the organization as to engage the hearts and minds of Kerry employees. Core to our philosophy, one of the most effective ways to engage emotions is through storytelling. Sage created a narrative scenario that was close-enough to home to get Kerry employees to think differently (and more regularly) about the impacts of their food-safety choices – regardless of their job function at the company – but not so close that it felt like an attack on past performance shortcomings.
We also built a training that corresponded to this story, so that the material and the fictional narrative were intertwined and relevant to their work lives. This movie-watching/training hybrid was taught to key facilitators so that they could guide busy executives to come up with clear, actionable, and measurable strategies for success. The final benefit was that leaders at the top walked away with absolute clarity for three of the most immediate things to do next within their own departments, but without losing connection to other divisions.
We even created a movie trailer and posters to marketing the training program internally. It was mysterious, but intriguing. This had the added benefit of learners walking into training excited and looking forward to what they would learn – rather than viewing their soft-skills development as an inconvenient chore. The resulting employee satisfaction scores have been unanimously positive.