In this success story, Emily Zachariasen shares how Guild Mortgage transitioned to a 100% virtual training program, improved learning outcomes, and optimized training costs after they started using Kahoot!

Balancing time constraints, content, team geography, and diverse backgrounds

Emily manages a team responsible for new hire training for salespeople at Guild Mortgage. With limited time and a lot of content to cover, she described it as “a bit of a “drinking from the firehose” situation both for trainers and trainees. To add to the complexity, they teach these classes virtually using video conferencing tools.

According to Emily, the audience in classes is very diverse in terms of roles and backgrounds – some are new to the business, while others are very experienced. So, it’s a challenge for the trainer to teach content in a way that serves everyone. To solve this, they were looking for new training tools that would cater to people of different roles, backgrounds and learning habits.

Retrieval practice in training

Emily and her colleagues thought that game-based learning was an easy way to assess the students’ retention:

“The trainer instantly knows what students understand and what needs more clarification, helping us improve the learning for everyone. Kahoot! quizzing provides a great opportunity to encourage students to discuss the content, as well as teach and encourage one another.”

Improved trainee engagement throughout the course

Guild’s new way of running virtual training has significantly improved trainee engagement. Here’s Emily sharing more details:

“We do everything we can to put energy into the classroom, so that people attend the next session not because they have to but because they’d love to.

Kahoot! brings a fun positive energy into the classroom. Kahoot! wakes everyone up, gets them laughing and joking, and since students can participate on their phones, they can stand or move around the room. Kahoots can convey a good sense of your organizational culture, and you can always add to the fun by sprinkling in humorous questions and pictures, or awarding prizes.”

The first time Emily and the team ever used Kahoot! was during a huge rollout to a new CRM system. To train staff across several locations, 30 trainers were on the road for three weeks. This rollout was quite tough to teach as learners were reluctant to give up their old CRM – but Kahoot! helped them get over the initial skepticism and make the audience interested! It helped them keep the team together in times of change, and became a part of their strategy later.

Virtual training delivers $200k cost savings

Emily’s team went virtual in April last year. Every once in a while they teach live classes but right now it’s 95% virtual. They play Kahoot! almost exclusively over video conferencing, and it’s been efficient for many reasons.

For example, it let them consolidate into bigger classes, which makes staffing easier for Emily. It optimized the schedule, too – instead of two long days they can do shorter sessions over 4-5 days. So, people can get some work done during their training week, keep up with their emails and follow up with clients.

“For me as a trainer, it became easier to report to leadership on the training progress. And, last but not least, by switching to virtual training we saved our company $200,000 in travel costs per year,” Emily concluded.