Direct Line Group Case Study

Client: Direct Line Group
Event Location: Southwark, London
Event Theme: Learning & Development

THE BRIEF:

As part of a graduate intake program, we worked with Direct Line Group (DLG) to create an interactive and experiential event to help 10 teams of graduates, build up a toolkit to help transition into modern working life. It was imperative that DLG’s core company values were centre stage and each challenge and activity reinforced the company’s overarching values, whilst also being fun, engaging and practical.

THE SOLUTION:

Our dedicated Operations team and Learning and Development facilitator immersed themselves in the culture of DLG to gain insight into the kind of activities that would be required. Based on these objective learning outcomes, we knew that The Leadership Challenge would form an excellent base to build upon, so we created bespoke tasks and challenges to enhance the experience. Together with The Leadership Challenge, each activity incorporated one or more of DLG’s company values. These included: aim higher, bring all of yourself to work, say it like it is, take ownership, do the right thing and work together.

The client was eager for the graduates to understand that modern working life is not plain-sailing and often comes with a range of challenges. To provide examples and help the graduates learn how to deal with these situations, key theoretical studies were presented, underpinned by the quote from author Steve Peters in The Chimp Paradox, which maintains that ‘life is unfair’. The graduates were encouraged to be conscious of this during the activity and to then remain aware of this mindset in their personal and professional lives moving forward.

An experiential learning approach was key to the success of the day; this was achieved through a combination of classroom sessions and practical gameplay. As the graduates completed The Leadership Challenge – they were presented with curveball challenges delivered through our app in the form of video pop-ups and in-app messaging. Examples include:

Unexpected Leadership role changes – Halfway through the day, after teams had nominated project managers and set about creating their ethical product of choice, our event facilitators announced that all project managers must rotate around the room and join another team. This a deliberate way to illustrate the paradox that ‘life is unfair’ and was initially met with some resistance. It gave the graduates an insight into the ‘victim’ ‘chooser’ analogy, which had been discussed earlier in the day.

Financial Forecast demanded sooner than expected – this curveball helped to demonstrate two of DLG’s company values: ‘say it how it is’ and ‘take ownership’ Each team was forced to present their financials in their current state or explain why they were not ready – a valuable lesson in managing expectations.
Eleventh hour product recall – our event facilitator was on hand throughout the day and able to monitor each teams product development. This enabled them to oversee which materials were being used more than others. With several teams using cardboard, it was decided that this element would be recalled, resulting in various groups having to redesign their product from scratch. This not only gave the delegates a taste of what problems a working day can present, but also encouraged them to develop and improve their product under pressure.

THE RESULT:

The client was able to observe the new graduates in real-time and gain insightful knowledge into their behaviour in the face of adversity, through practical observations together with stats provided with the activity through the Wildgoose app. The graduates were also provided with valuable learning outcomes to take away, to help them deal with challenges in their future working life.

I wanted to say a HUGE THANK YOU!! To you and your entire team! The event was a HUGE success and I cannot fault any of the organisation from yourselves and your team. The game was such a fantastic contribution to the conference and will be spoken about for a long time. Please extend my thanks to all!

Jessica Sherry - Event Producer

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Direct Line Group Case Study

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