A small team at Regis Corp leans on video to build a more diverse and impactful soft-skills training program
When Tara Aiken and her team set out to rebuild Regis Corp’s all-digital soft skills training program, they knew they needed to offer a wider variety of engaging learning opportunities for salon owners and the thousands of people those owners employ.
This is a lot to ask of any L&D team, let alone a team of three. Find out how they rose to the challenge with the help of video and Biteable.
“There are only three people in our L&D department, but we needed to deliver the results of a 60+ person team.”
- Tara Aiken, Regis Corporation
The situation
Delivering first-hand, peer-to-peer lessons with limited resources
Tara Aiken is Associate Vice President and Head of Learning, Employee Experience and Culture at Regis Corp, a network of salon brands with franchises across the US and Canada.
As a seasoned L&D professional with over 14 years of experience in instructional design and technologies, she understands if you want learners to be successful, you need to offer a diverse selection of materials.
She also knows that hearing directly from peers in the field is a powerful learning tool, especially for teaching real-world interpersonal and operational skills.
But this is easier said than done when your entire training program is asynchronous and digital, serving thousands of learners at hundreds of locations.
“The people in the field — franchisees, salon leaders, stylists — are the real experts. By sharing their stories through video, we can highlight the ‘why’ behind the soft skills we teach, and we can do it in a way that really brings those skills to life.”
- Tara Aiken, Regis Corporation
Regis Corp is committed to helping its franchise salons be as successful as possible. To that end, the company’s goal is to offer the best-in-class onboarding and training in the industry.
This goes beyond training stylists in the latest salon techniques (a task accomplished by a separate technical training team at Regis). Tara’s team trains owners and salon leaders on less technical, but equally important, soft skills — skills like dealing with difficult customers and managing time as a busy franchise owner.
In the past, Tara’s team relied solely on static learning materials for this soft skills training. But, she says, “there’s a limit to what we can do with static assets.”
For their training program to make the most impact, they needed to gather first-hand experiences of salon owners and leaders. But it wasn’t feasible for her team to fly around the country filming them as they shared their expertise. Not to mention the time commitment required to turn raw footage into new training materials.
She wasn’t sure how her relatively small team could pull off such a huge task.
“My team is small, so we have to be more creative. We look for tools that allow us to work quickly but still create high-quality, engaging content.”
- Tara Aiken, Regis Corporation
The problem
“We have to be resourceful and creative, because there are only three of us.”
Regis’ learners aren’t new to video. The technical training team uses it to teach hands-on salon skills. In fact, it was a colleague on that team who convinced Tara to try video.
“Our learners react positively to video,” says Tara. “Adding video allows us to meet them where they’re at and in the way they prefer.”
This is especially true for peer-to-peer learning. When it comes to the day-to-day business of a salon, says Tara, “the people in the field — franchisees, salon leaders, stylists — are the real experts.”
“By sharing their stories through video, we can highlight the ‘why’ behind the soft skills we teach, and we can do it in a way that really brings those skills to life.”
Static learning materials
- Limits the ways in which information can be presented.
- Not ideal for illustrating peer-to-peer learning.
- Does a poor job of leveraging stories from the field.
Video
- Creates a more diverse learning experience.
- Easily consumed. A preferred medium for many learners.
- A dynamic format. Brings to life stories from the field.
But unlike Regis’ technical team, which shoots their segments in a studio and requires a robust production process, Tara’s L&D team needed a far less resource-intensive way to create videos.
“Our learners react positively to videos. It’s the preferred medium today. Adding video allows us to meet them where they’re at and in the way they prefer.”
- Tara Aiken, Regis Corporation
The solution
“Biteable gives us the speed and quality to play at the level of a much larger team.”
Tara stays up to speed on the latest instructional technologies. She does her research — and she’s picky.
“We knew we wanted to play in the video space,” she says. “But we needed to do it in a way that works for our team size and the way we’re structured.”
Their tool of choice had to offer them a low-barrier way to gather footage and turn that footage into polished video segments. It also had to be:
- Quick enough for a small team to make a lot of content.
- Clean and professional, with a high production value.
- Varied, with a wide selection of animations, stock footage, and icons.
“Video has been a big game changer for us, and Biteable was the tool that unlocked it.”
- Tara Aiken, Regis Corporation
After looking at all the available options, Tara decided to give Biteable a try.
“The first time we used Biteable, we loved it,” Tara says. “After our trial, we really wanted to go all in.”
As they roll out their new soft-skills training program, the videos they create within Biteable are a big part of their success. They use Biteable’s Record feature to gather video clips of salon pros sharing their expertise. With the help of Biteable’s branded templates and smart editing tools, they easily turn these clips into polished videos.
They also use video as a dynamic way to present industry data to learners, drawing on Biteable’s robust library of scenes, animations, and icons to bring the numbers to life on screen.
Tara’s team currently uses video in their training segments for franchise owners and salon leaders. They soon plan to scale up, incorporating video into soft-skills training for stylists as well.
At its full capacity, the program will use video to train a total of 15,000 salon employees. It’s an ambitious goal, but Tara is confident her team can accomplish it.
“So far,” Tara says, “we’re seeing great feedback in terms of the quality and what we can do. Video has been a big game changer for us.”
Favorite features
- Record
- Templates
- Animation library
Communicating with video beyond L&D
The L&D team is so pleased with how Biteable can communicate a message, they convinced HR, communications, and employee engagement at Regis to use it as well.
But at the end of the day, it’s the transformation in her own team’s workflow that Tara is most proud of. Biteable allows them to deliver on a new and improved digital training program, one that meets their learners where they’re at, gives them a more diverse experience, and brings their lessons to life
The results
How Tara accomplished her goal
Tara’s team uses templates like this to create their learning assets.
Biteable’s Record feature allows Tara’s team to capture interviews virtually
The team emails salon pros a link to record themselves on their smartphones or laptops. That footage automatically uploads into Biteable, where they incorporate it into their videos.
Video templates cut down the workload — from hours to minutes
“Anything that can be taken off our plates is a win for us. The templates available in Biteable are great because they’re easy to use. We were able to quickly start creating videos.”
A robust library of animations helps learners digest messages
Animated text, characters, and icons help Regis learners more easily digest their lessons. “With Biteable, it looks like we have a motion graphic designer helping us with our videos.”