Pep Boys' Bryan Hoppe Wins a 2014 Retail Innovator Award
Like other retailers, Pep Boys had always focused their Associate training and
awareness efforts on store level initiatives that included posters in the break
room, monthly manager-led meetings, as well as a learning management system that
pushed out content in large sit-down sessions once a month – but for Bryan
Hoppe, the results weren’t good enough.
Pep Boys found that although they were doing a variety of things around
awareness training, they weren’t seeing the results of the learning sticking and
being applied. In particular, their inventory shrink and safety incidents were
not at acceptable levels.
The team at Pep Boys hypothesized that their lack of sustainable success was
largely due to the fact that their 19,000 employees were not retaining and
operationalizing their learning – no matter what they seemed to do. Associates
would get the message and shortly thereafter return to their prior habits with
no long-term change in behavior.
In 2009, Pep Boys felt that there had to be a better way and searched high and
low for an online eLearning solution that delivered bite-sized learning on a
daily basis to Associates via their POS system. They wanted something that
measured and drove knowledge in a way that was both fun, quick and rewarding for
Associates. They couldn’t find such a system (because no such system existed in
2009), which didn’t stop the team at Pep Boys. They decided to turn to the firm
that created their awareness posters and asked them to build a system to meet
their needs, which they did. Once rolled out, the results were astounding.
Developed around the Pep Boys unique vision, the system became a game-changer
and the communications firm spun off the solution into what is now called
Axonify who has had considerable success taking it to market.
With Bryan Hoppe’s vision and leadership at Pep Boys (first as VP of LP and now
VP of Store Operations), the Axonify platform has grown and developed into THE
most effective way to deliver learning to Associates and is now being used by
other retail powerhouses like Walmart and Toys”R”Us. It has also expanded beyond
retail into other areas like professional sales training at Ethicon (a Johnson &
Johnson company), accountant development at Crowe MacKay and admin training at
Capital BlueCross. The application for this unique approach to learning is
limitless.
For more information on the award,
visit Retail Touchpoints.