How Gamification Is Helping Procter & Gamble Boost Employee Learning

Peek into just about any living room, kitchen, laundry room, or bathroom around the world and you’re bound to see a product made by Procter & Gamble (P&G). Customer loyalty to brands like Tide, Bounty, and Charmin is passed down from generation to generation. That was clear this past year when households stocked up on those brands to help them get through the pandemic.

The 181-year-old company has achieved its success by challenging convention, leading innovation, and shaping culture. As the company focuses on accelerating its digital transformation, they understand speed, agility, and collaboration are critical to achieving success, so they partnered with us as they focus on helping ensure their employees are prepared. Part of P&G’s strategy? Upskilling their people via gamified learning.

Focusing on employees

While you might think it’s the product ingredients, processes, or even marketing that makes P&G successful, the company’s workforce plays a critical role. Their 99,000 employees embody P&G’s purpose, values, and principles, and need to continue learning new knowledge and skills to accelerate digital transformation. So P&G looked for ways to harness technology to encourage professional development.

The company started using Trailhead, Salesforce’s free, gamified, online learning platform, in 2018. They realized its potential to advance employee capabilities through onboarding, ongoing training, and development as they grow within the company.

Testing IT training trails

P&G’s IT teams were the first to learn through Trailhead. The learning modules helped the IT team work on industry-lead endeavors and design cutting-edge frameworks. They welcomed the engaging gamified experience, the ease of access, and the personalized content. The team could jump into learning from any device, work in bite-sized increments, and celebrate their achievements as a group. The company developed certifications and guided team members to the appropriate courses.

Expanding training to new lines of business

The IT department’s experience with Trailhead was successful, so P&G expanded its use across other select business units. Teams added skills through the engaging, accessible-anywhere content. The shared learning experience across the company enables better collaboration since everyone speaks the same technical language. Learning plans and materials are being created for each role type. This way, each group grows functional knowledge and needed skills.

By early-2021, the growing Trailhead community of over 200 P&G employees had earned more than 4,400 badges and nearly 90 certifications through Trailhead. They put this knowledge to use on dozens of projects serving tens of thousands of colleagues.

Unlocking performance data

With Trailhead’s data, P&G can form actionable insights. They can look at correlations between learning and business impact, observe engagement trends, and pivot training strategies when necessary. This data can also identify top learners and align possible career growth opportunities.

Making training accessible from anywhere

P&G can use Trailhead to enable and scale talent development from anywhere in the world. Online training allows the company to empower its workforce in markets where demand — and the P&G team — is growing. In fact, P&G is looking for IT professionals: these architects, product managers, DevOps engineers, and developers will collaborate with technical and business teams across regions. They’ll also have countless opportunities to learn and grow through Trailhead, helping them fast-track their own careers and P&G’s digital transformation.