Maui Jim’s account executives learn on the go

Spending the entire day in the field? That’s the reality for 285+ Maui Jim account executives.

Maui Jim, a global eyewear brand, stands behind every pair of sunglasses they make. And part of that commitment to quality and service means connecting with every customer, one on one, on a regular basis. “Our account executives literally go from appointment to appointment,” said Ashley Cole, training and development specialist at Maui Jim. “But as training was desktop based, they had to train after hours on their own time, which created a lot of frustration.”

Maui Jim needed a solution that would allow employees to take compliance courses, product training, and soft skills courses at any time and from any location. Managers also needed increased visibility into training completions to drive accountability.

After successfully launching Cornerstone Learning, Maui Jim rolled out the Cornerstone Learn App to meet the on-the-go reality of remote workers, a logical and cost-effective next step. “There was no additional administrative burden, either: We just checked a box on trainings we already had in Cornerstone Learning to make them automatically available to mobile users,” said Cole.

Maui Jim empowered every account executive to train on the road by implementing the Cornerstone Learn app. “The Cornerstone Learn App has been a positive experience for our employees and helped Maui Jim foster a culture of learning,” said Cole. The app lets account executives listen and learn while driving, a feature that employees call “a game changer” for training. For Evan Sharp, an account executive in Nashville, learning via the app “adds flexibility and convenience to our schedule. Finding 5-10 minutes to watch a training is much easier than trying to attend a webinar or conference call, but we are still getting the information we need.”

Cornerstone Learning and the Learn App use the same content database, allowing every employee access to the same training. This standardization has been especially crucial for compliance training. Maui Jim’s culture and policies are unique, so compliance training was primarily built in-house and added to Cornerstone. “We can confidently send out a compliance training knowing that every user can easily complete it, no matter where they are or what device they use,” said Alysse Emken, training and LMS coordinator.

With the Learn App, Maui Jim account executives finally have training that fits the remote and mobile nature of their day-to-day work. Training completions have nearly tripled from 319 monthly courses completed to a staggering 935. “It wasn’t that employees didn’t want to take training. They just didn’t like the current way that they had to consume training,” said Cole. “After we launched the Learn App, we received so many emails from people saying, ‘Thank you for investing in this. This is so great.’ To have people thank you for providing training, that’s a training department’s dream.”

Employees have access to hundreds of soft and hard skills as well as career development courses, via both the desktop and app versions of Cornerstone Learning. “With both Cornerstone Learning and the Learn App, Maui Jim employees have the opportunity to drive their own learning,” said Emken. “They don’t have to wait for someone to assign them a course.”

Newly hired account executives get access to the Learn App on the first day of employment. This approach has reduced Maui Jim’s need for basic skills and general product training during high-intensity, in-person onboarding sessions. “We just had our first training class that had gone through our full curriculum on what we call ‘Online Kula’, prior to coming into our in-person onboarding training. We were amazed at the difference in skill and knowledge of this group,” said Cole. “We can now use our in-person training focus on higher level, scenario-based training, which is exactly what we want it to be.”