Dawne Baker and her colleagues at Mercury Insurance run a 6-week training program for new hires, covering more than 100 topics. Their main goals are to improve knowledge retention and prepare employees to handle real claims. Kahoot! empowered them to develop a new, learner-centric approach that activates people’s various senses during the training process, resulting in better outcomes.

How Mercury Insurance facilitate training for new hires

To give newcomers the foundation they need to work with insurance claims, Dawne Baker and her fellow trainers run a 6-week, instructor-led, new hire program. It covers over 100 topics and facilitation activities, from introduction to company systems to claim handling process and communication training for challenging cases where claims may be rejected.

With large volumes of content and quite an intense schedule, they’re constantly looking for ways to improve instruction, increase engagement, and assess knowledge transfer efficiency. Their goal was to move away from a lecture-based to a learner-centric, interactive approach.

In their search for training tools and methods, Dawne and her colleagues needed to keep diverse demographics in mind, as their claims team members come from a variety of backgrounds, levels of education, and age groups. Looking for a solution that would work for everyone, they tried paper tests, slide-based jeopardy, and various other games. Trainees were engaged and had fun, but knowledge retention was lower than they anticipated, resulting in numerous topics having to be covered multiple times.

Using all senses in blended learning methods for maximum impact

Dawne believes that the reason previously used methods weren’t very efficient is that they only activated a couple of senses at a time. Integrating Kahoot! into their training program allowed them to tap into all senses by blending different learning methods into one training program. Here’s how Dawne describes it:

“When playing Kahoot!, trainees are using multiple senses, which is proven to help process and retain info at a higher level. They’re hearing the music and the facilitator reading the questions. They’re seeing it on the screen and on their phone. Colors grab their attention. They’re discussing questions and answers with each other. And last but not least, they’re using their hands to answer, thus learning kinesthetically. Combining auditory, visual and kinesthetic learning dramatically increases the ability for trainees to retain knowledge. Speaking and sharing knowledge with each other helps retain up to 90% of new material.”

Extra emphasis on training

Dawne knew from her own experience how dry and dense this content could be, so trainers began using Kahoot! to kick-off topics, review and reinforce content, and they even had trainees quiz each other to reinforce learning. As a result, they’ve been able to increase the participant engagement and adjust the program depending on Kahoot! results.

Busy trainers save time, new hires build up confidence

Dawne thinks that their new approach to training is a success for both trainers and trainees. It only takes a couple of minutes to prepare a kahoot that will help make knowledge stick.

“We sent out a post-training survey to attendees, and the answers we got were 5/5 that it was fun, they learned a lot and would absolutely recommend it to other classes. They said they felt confident and positive about taking tests. They feel good and driven thanks to the gameplay format.”

Other trainers at Mercury Insurance are also exploring new ways to improve training with Kahoot!. For example, as they typically have one trainer covering several states, they’re looking into adding Kahoot! to their remote training toolkit.