Headquartered in Carmel, Indiana, KAR Global is a Fortune 1000 company that provides technology-driven remarketing solutions to sellers and buyers across the wholesale used vehicle industry.

Today, KAR Global is a driving force in automobile resale with 3.8 million vehicles sold in 2019 at a near $40 billion value. Its seamlessly integrated physical, online, and mobile marketplaces provide streamlined solutions for customers around the world.

As KAR’s footprint expanded, the company wanted to enhance its learning and development program to help employees reach their full potential. KAR desired more robust course offerings beyond just basic compliance training.

By adding the Cornerstone Content Anytime (CCA) subscription Professional Skills in January 2020, KAR’s breadth of content exponentially increased and resulted in more expansive professional development options as well as a high degree of voluntary employee engagement.

Creating an engaged learning community

Joseph Cunningham, the LMS administrator at KAR Global, has always believed in the importance of continuous learning to fuel employee engagement. And he was able to witness it firsthand when, in January 2020, he and his team posted notices on KAR’s intranet announcing a new library of digital learning content available through Cornerstone Content Anytime (CCA).

The response was immediate: Voluntary registrations for courses on the learning platform increased by 286 percent in February and by 105 percent in March when CCA officially launched. With access to thousands of new courses from dozens of vendors, Cunningham knew everyone would find something that piqued their interest — be it a TED Talk by Simon Sinek on why good leaders make you feel safe or professional skills focused tutorial on how to lead a focused brainstorm.

Not only could employees take advantage of courses tied to personal growth and general business skills, but they were also offered a greater selection of content in multiple languages. For example, there was a sizable jump to 500 Spanish-language options and 400 French-language options with CCA, an especially important advancement given the global nature of the business and KAR’s workforce.

Constant communication drives awareness

The next step was to build on that initial momentum with a 12-week promotional plan. But Cunningham did not want to bombard employees with generic emails from the learning management system. Instead, he planned to use a variety of channels from plugs in KAR’s weekly internal newsletter and featured articles on the company’s intranet to internal marketing emails targeting specific groups, like managers. This 12-week approach is ultimately set to become an ongoing promotional strategy (repeated two to three times per year) to remind employees of the fresh content at their fingertips — and to help KAR determine which courses, topics, and vendors are most in-demand based on registration and completion data and user satisfaction surveys.

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 crisis took off during week two, putting the initial roll-out on hold. But, within those first two weeks, registrations still spiked, with TED Talks registrations reaching 1,000. The company also quickly used CCA to share helpful COVID-related resources, like pre-configured playlists focused on remote work best practices and stress management.

Preparing employees for the next step

Beyond satisfying a thirst for knowledge, establishing a learning culture is critical to empowering employees to upskill and progress within the company. To help with that growth, Cunningham and his team will be mapping specific competencies to certain job titles and job skills (ideally, by the end of 2020). Employees will be able to build their competencies by completing a mix of broader CCA skillsbased courses and internal training.

At the end of the day, when you can move employees around and hire internally, you make the company a lot stronger, explains Cunningham.