About the Client

The client is a digital-first, life sciences commercialization company. It helps biopharmaceutical, emerging biotech, and medical device companies develop products, get them to the market, and grow their impact through the life cycle in a more effective, efficient, and modern way.

Problem

From the Cultural Lens- Culture plays an integral role in shaping organizational success. There’s no debate its effectiveness has only multiplied in the post-pandemic era.

During the pandemic, the organization underwent bouts of upheaval and transformation concerning resources, operations, systems, and more. To continue offering top-notch digital-first solutions and sustain growth in times of adversity, the client added resources (employees) from diverse cultural backgrounds across the globe. The team size doubled during this period. To effortlessly align all new joinees to its culture and values, a partnership was initiated with FocusU. The aim was to introduce and educate participants about the organization’s cultural credo; and familiarize them with behaviors that are encouraged.

However, the implementation was a challenge – primarily, the selection of a learning approach that not only teaches and familiarizes participants with the culture credo but does so in an engaging manner and; importantly, it also facilitates implementation of the newly-learned lessons immediately, while they are fresh in participants’ minds.

Solution

The client was very clear that the selected methodology be highly engaging. After much deliberation, it was decided to implement the same through a tech-based app, through which the content could be made available to employees in a gamified and story-based format. This approach encourages participants to think of solutions independently yet interact with other participants to implement the best solution promptly, making it engaging. A tech-based, scenario-driven gamified solution was also appropriate given the volume of competencies that needed to be covered and the intensity that was needed for a session such as this to be impactful. Further, to set the ball rolling and give all employees the right context, it was decided to initiate the process through virtual instructor-led training (VILT).

Other methodologies considered included self-paced courses and instructor-led training. However, both were discarded as those are time-heavy. Further, self-paced courses did not seem to elicit the right kind of engagement in this context. The organization was keen on a more efficient and effective approach.

Execution

The gamified solution was designed on an app with an interesting storyline called ‘The Awards Night.’ It involved participants nominating team members who have demonstrated the right behaviors, based on the organization’s culture, for an award. On the day of the VILT, participants were required to go through a video-based case study before putting up their nominations. They did this in groups, via breakout rooms of a virtual meeting platform, where they deliberated amongst themselves why they selected a particular employee over another. This discussion was key in facilitating an understanding of which behaviors are in line with the organization’s culture credo and which aren’t – that too, through examples of their own colleagues. The focus was not on the right answer but on the reasoning and thought process behind the nomination.

Audience

The program was designed for mid to senior-level employees. Roughly 2,000+ participants joined this program in groups of 50. Some snapshots from the web-enabled app