Learning app supporting uniform training quality in system catering
inside • Learning platform also suitable as a source of reference
The company L'Osteria is an international and expanding restaurant chain with more than 120 locations in Germany, Austria, Switzerland England, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, France, and Luxembourg. It places an emphasis on cooperation between suppliers and partners, as well as on employees and their development.
L'Osteria's key aim is to offer its guests uniform quality standards in terms of products, service and processes across the system. A flexible, localisable and quickly scalable e-learning solution was to be developed for this purpose. This will help promote L’Osteria’s international expansion strategy and facilitate workforce training across the company. L'Osteria brought the training company inside onboard to support this.
inside is a leading provider of digital solutions for company-based training in Germany. For 25 years, the company has been successfully implementing innovative training and continuing education concepts for companies. The company specialises in the areas of e-learning, blended learning, workplace learning, and performance support and training.
Simplified onboarding
When developing the learning solution for L'Osteria, the key objective was to create uniform training quality and uniform standards in all L'Osteria restaurants. All learners should be taught the same quality standards regardless of their place of employment, their language, culture, training and prior knowledge. A multilingual solution was to be implemented to support the catering company's expansion plans and to facilitate efficient "onboarding" as well as ongoing training. The aim was also to reduce training cost and time to competency.
Since the restaurant employees generally do not have a PC at a workstation, the goal was also for them to be able to learn flexibly at any time and in any place using their own private mobile devices. One of the company's key requirements was also the storage of the learning status and progress along with a full range of options for evaluating the current progress of training.
"Bring your own device" and "mobile first"
In order to support the expansion strategy and to create a level of knowledge required uniformly throughout the company, a standardised, online knowledge transfer system was introduced which is also scalable in terms of users, restaurants, countries and languages. The concept is based on two basic approaches: "bring your own device" and "mobile first". This means that all employees learn via an app using their personal end devices (smartphone, tablet, notebook), and that all learning media has primarily been developed in order to optimise use with the smartphone. A learning world has been implemented for this purpose. This gives employees the opportunity to independently and efficiently learn something new based on interactive learning media and tests, or to use the learning world as a source of reference for any knowledge about recipes, product information, standards, corporate culture and innovations.
Depending on the intention of the learners, the learning world can be accessed in two different ways. If learning content needs to be found and looked up quickly for the purpose of "performance support", the "My Info World" category is selected. A full-text search integrated in the learning world, a favourites function and an individual media history mean that all content can be found efficiently. The "My Learning World" category is selected if a specific workstation needs certification for the purposes of employee training. This category provides the learners, for example, with interactive learning maps which they can use to learn independently, efficiently and at any time or place, as well as online tests for certification of the stations.
Focus on the current certification level
The statuses of all learners in terms of learning and work completed is stored centrally. As part of this, learners can see their current level of certification at all times both on the individual station pages as well as in the “My Trophies” central area. The learner receives a virtual trophy for each successfully completed station. Selected groups of people such as area managers and franchise consultants are able to access management dashboards and reports. This provides them with an overall summary as well as detailed information about the training status of the employees.
The learning world is currently available in German and English and ensures uniform training of the workforce across the system. In 2019, L'Osteria and inside received the eLearning Award in the category "Getting started in e-learning" for the implementation of this project. Additional access courses are planned such as "Language learning". This is aimed specifically at, and intended to support, employees with German language skills which are limited or need improving.
Michael Frötschl, Head of Academy and People Development at FR L'Osteria SE, is delighted with the new learning solution. "The L'Osteria learning world has been received very well by learners. We are offering a comprehensive learning platform which enables efficient, varied and sustainable learning. It also enables you to find information quickly in the workplace. For me, however, the solution is worth a whole lot more than just in terms of learning. We are managing to integrate the employees within the much bigger overall business— L'Osteria La Famiglia."
The L'Osteria learning world has been received very well by learners. We are offering a comprehensive learning platform which enables efficient, varied and sustainable learning.
Michael Frötschl, Head of Academy and People Development
