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January 7, 2022
|
4 mins to read

Four companies that use social learning perfectly

Uncover how these brilliant businesses have used Thrive to help build a social learning culture where learners love collaborating and communicating.
Cassie Gasson
Chief Marketing Officer

In this blog, we'll explore the concept of social learning - and four companies that we think use it perfectly.

Today, we learn more by watching, engaging, storytelling and listening. That’s because the world of social media, TikTok and technology has impacted our learning habits. We’re finally starting to make waves by supporting new and organic social learning behaviours in the workplace.

But we’re not there yet. According to McKinsey, one in three respondents said their organisations don’t have a collaborative system in place to share learning amongst employees.

It’s a mystery to us. That’s why we’re showing you why these four big brands use social learning perfectly, and why you need to too.

What is social learning theory? And why does it matter?

Social learning is all about learning from one another.

In learning technology, it’s that and way more. A Learning Platform like Thrive is a social environment where people can seamlessly interact, communicate, share and consume content as well as ask questions and share answers. Gone are the days of real-life watercooler chat… we’re thriving in a connected, digital world.

Adopting social learning is the best way to capture and formalise the knowledge your people have and share it right across your organisation. So, how’s your company embracing social learning? Here are some examples to get you inspired.

Ted Baker

Read the case study

Luxury fashion brand Ted Baker is all about togetherness, so connectivity and social learning had to be at the heart of their learning platform.


Their platform, Thrive at Ted, embodies all things social learning and gives every employee a voice. This happens by harnessing social features like commenting, sharing and tagging.

A really successful and relatable example of this happened last year, when retail stores were gearing to open back up. During this time Ted ran a Retail Revival campaign, which outlined how teams were going to kickstart their store. This helped teams access the training they needed before reopening and share how each of them was preparing to reopen too.

For Ted Baker, this campaign wasn’t just about taking part in training, it was about reconnecting and helping dispersed teams feel part of the wider business. The success of this was shown in the campaign statistics, racking up 532 comments and 13,612 views.

Overall, their social learning strategy has been so successful their learning platform also has more UGC (57%), than it does content from the L&D team (43%).

Sumo Digital

Read the case study

Games developer and creators of Little Big Planet, Sumo Digital Group, have user-generated content and social learning at the heart of their learning strategy.

They know their people are the experts, especially when it comes to the technical subjects at hand, so they get their teams involved in sharing and consuming content posted by peers for peers.

One of the recent campaigns Sumo Group ran was all about unconscious bias, a topic relevant to every business and individual. They gathered a focus group of 12 different people across the organisation to contribute to creating more diverse learning resources with a variety of perspectives, which wouldn’t have been possible if learning was restricted and dedicated by the L&D team only.

After racking up 800+ views, the impact was considerable, and together with other focussed initiatives in this important campaign, it played a direct role in reducing Sumo’s gender pay gap by 7%.

This is just one example of how learning from each other works. So much so for Sumo Group, 77% of the content on their Thrive Learning Platform (DOJO) is user-generated knowledge.

DECIEM The abnormal beauty company

Read the case study

In the beginning, abnormal beauty company DECIEM’s mission was to create a self-directed and co-constructed culture of learning and engagement.

Now with thousands of resources at their fingertips from TikToks to education cards, videos and broadcasts, the employees at DECIEM are embedded in a culture of sharing tips, tricks and inside knowledge on the best product knowledge, updates, social initiatives and more.

To mix it up, one of the most creative ways we’ve seen DECIEM use user-generated content is through leveraging the creation and editing tools in TikTok and embedding them straight into Thrive. It’s the perfect way to harness the tools and technology your people are used to outside of works and bring them into the workplace to support those everyday learning habits.

@deciem
Happy KNOWvember!✨ Check out our YouTube channel (YouTube.com/DECIEM) to learn how to target signs of aging. Psst.., 23% off everything (still) 👀.
original sound - DECIEM

Tip to get started: Why not ease your people into it by empowering them to share third party created Youtube, Tiktoks, blog content first?

DECIEM’s ‘learners as teachers’ approach has been so successful that their Learning Platform is now made up of 53% user-generated content, 23% content from the L&D team and the rest a series of curated resources.

Yopa Property

Read case study

Yopa has over 350 people dispersed across the UK, from self employed, field-based local estate agents as well as two office locations for customer service and support staff. They wanted to harness all this knowledge in one place, supercharge engagement and create a sense of community, especially amongst their remote people.

Utilising social learning on their Learning Platform, their content views skyrocketed 3,900% from their previous platform and the feedback from their learners has been immense. By empowering learners to learn from each other and eliminating knowledge silos, their staff can share knowledge with each other, keep in touch with what others are doing and what’s working well for them out in the field. All the knowledge they need when they start their day is at their fingertips.

Angela Toghill, Yopa’s Director of L&D, even hosted this awesome webinar with us where she shared Yopa’s successes with social learning and how you can get started on the journey, too.

Ready to follow in the footsteps of these brilliant businesses and harness social learning in your organisation? Try Thrive Learning Platform for yourself now and explore how you can transform your learning culture, supercharge collaboration and build a community.

More Stories

See all

See Thrive in action

Explore what impact Thrive could make for your team and your learners today.

January 7, 2022
|
4 mins to read

Four companies that use social learning perfectly

Uncover how these brilliant businesses have used Thrive to help build a social learning culture where learners love collaborating and communicating.
Cassie Gasson
Chief Marketing Officer

In this blog, we'll explore the concept of social learning - and four companies that we think use it perfectly.

Today, we learn more by watching, engaging, storytelling and listening. That’s because the world of social media, TikTok and technology has impacted our learning habits. We’re finally starting to make waves by supporting new and organic social learning behaviours in the workplace.

But we’re not there yet. According to McKinsey, one in three respondents said their organisations don’t have a collaborative system in place to share learning amongst employees.

It’s a mystery to us. That’s why we’re showing you why these four big brands use social learning perfectly, and why you need to too.

What is social learning theory? And why does it matter?

Social learning is all about learning from one another.

In learning technology, it’s that and way more. A Learning Platform like Thrive is a social environment where people can seamlessly interact, communicate, share and consume content as well as ask questions and share answers. Gone are the days of real-life watercooler chat… we’re thriving in a connected, digital world.

Adopting social learning is the best way to capture and formalise the knowledge your people have and share it right across your organisation. So, how’s your company embracing social learning? Here are some examples to get you inspired.

Ted Baker

Read the case study

Luxury fashion brand Ted Baker is all about togetherness, so connectivity and social learning had to be at the heart of their learning platform.


Their platform, Thrive at Ted, embodies all things social learning and gives every employee a voice. This happens by harnessing social features like commenting, sharing and tagging.

A really successful and relatable example of this happened last year, when retail stores were gearing to open back up. During this time Ted ran a Retail Revival campaign, which outlined how teams were going to kickstart their store. This helped teams access the training they needed before reopening and share how each of them was preparing to reopen too.

For Ted Baker, this campaign wasn’t just about taking part in training, it was about reconnecting and helping dispersed teams feel part of the wider business. The success of this was shown in the campaign statistics, racking up 532 comments and 13,612 views.

Overall, their social learning strategy has been so successful their learning platform also has more UGC (57%), than it does content from the L&D team (43%).

Sumo Digital

Read the case study

Games developer and creators of Little Big Planet, Sumo Digital Group, have user-generated content and social learning at the heart of their learning strategy.

They know their people are the experts, especially when it comes to the technical subjects at hand, so they get their teams involved in sharing and consuming content posted by peers for peers.

One of the recent campaigns Sumo Group ran was all about unconscious bias, a topic relevant to every business and individual. They gathered a focus group of 12 different people across the organisation to contribute to creating more diverse learning resources with a variety of perspectives, which wouldn’t have been possible if learning was restricted and dedicated by the L&D team only.

After racking up 800+ views, the impact was considerable, and together with other focussed initiatives in this important campaign, it played a direct role in reducing Sumo’s gender pay gap by 7%.

This is just one example of how learning from each other works. So much so for Sumo Group, 77% of the content on their Thrive Learning Platform (DOJO) is user-generated knowledge.

DECIEM The abnormal beauty company

Read the case study

In the beginning, abnormal beauty company DECIEM’s mission was to create a self-directed and co-constructed culture of learning and engagement.

Now with thousands of resources at their fingertips from TikToks to education cards, videos and broadcasts, the employees at DECIEM are embedded in a culture of sharing tips, tricks and inside knowledge on the best product knowledge, updates, social initiatives and more.

To mix it up, one of the most creative ways we’ve seen DECIEM use user-generated content is through leveraging the creation and editing tools in TikTok and embedding them straight into Thrive. It’s the perfect way to harness the tools and technology your people are used to outside of works and bring them into the workplace to support those everyday learning habits.

@deciem
Happy KNOWvember!✨ Check out our YouTube channel (YouTube.com/DECIEM) to learn how to target signs of aging. Psst.., 23% off everything (still) 👀.
original sound - DECIEM

Tip to get started: Why not ease your people into it by empowering them to share third party created Youtube, Tiktoks, blog content first?

DECIEM’s ‘learners as teachers’ approach has been so successful that their Learning Platform is now made up of 53% user-generated content, 23% content from the L&D team and the rest a series of curated resources.

Yopa Property

Read case study

Yopa has over 350 people dispersed across the UK, from self employed, field-based local estate agents as well as two office locations for customer service and support staff. They wanted to harness all this knowledge in one place, supercharge engagement and create a sense of community, especially amongst their remote people.

Utilising social learning on their Learning Platform, their content views skyrocketed 3,900% from their previous platform and the feedback from their learners has been immense. By empowering learners to learn from each other and eliminating knowledge silos, their staff can share knowledge with each other, keep in touch with what others are doing and what’s working well for them out in the field. All the knowledge they need when they start their day is at their fingertips.

Angela Toghill, Yopa’s Director of L&D, even hosted this awesome webinar with us where she shared Yopa’s successes with social learning and how you can get started on the journey, too.

Ready to follow in the footsteps of these brilliant businesses and harness social learning in your organisation? Try Thrive Learning Platform for yourself now and explore how you can transform your learning culture, supercharge collaboration and build a community.

More Stories

See all

See Thrive in action

Explore what impact Thrive could make for your team and your learners today.