Sonepar's challenge
Founded in France in 1969, Sonepar is today the global market leader in B2B electrical distribution, with activities in 44 countries and an annual turnover of €21 billion. Staying on top takes the best professionals, so the company trains its people constantly and all over the world, especially in soft skills such as leadership and team management.
The catch: training such a large, widely dispersed workforce had always meant high costs and a lot of effort. This time Sonepar wanted something flexible that could reach managers in several countries at the same time, offer practical tools instead of abstract theory, and smash the stereotype of boring, bureaucratic HR training.
- Train a large workforce spread across 16 countries, all at the same time
- Offer a practical leadership course with tools for everyday work, not theory
- Surprise employees with a different kind of training that boosts engagement
The solution
Sonepar chose Pacific, Game Strategies' serious game on leadership and team management. It's a graphic adventure: employees are stranded on a desert island and only get off it alive if they put leadership principles into practice.
Pacific covered all three fronts. First, training without borders: on the Game Strategies platform, all you need is an Internet connection, so each employee plays anytime and anywhere, with no cap on learners and none of the costs of classroom training (travel, staff salaries, opportunity cost). Second, practice from the very first minute: its simulator makes players take decisions in situations based on real life, which makes it easy to bring what they learn back to work. Third, engagement: rankings, points, peer competition and storytelling kept staff hooked, which helped them retain more. Leadership training you play, not endure.
The games they played
In their own words
There is no distance between what they learn in the game and what they have to do practically in their day-to-day activities.
It's new, profound and playful all rolled into one. It generates a surprise effect. And so far nobody has even come close to achieving that.
We first thought of Millennials and people coming from the world of video games, but we then realized that everyone, regardless of age, loves playing.
The results
Sonepar rates the experience very positively: it met all three challenges and provided leadership training to hundreds of employees worldwide. 88.9% would recommend the course and 75% completed it, figures well above most online training programs.
The number that matters most: 100% of the employees who finished Pacific say they can apply what they learned in their job. In other words, the course built new habits and delivered useful tools, exactly what the company needed to keep leading its sector.
More industry & automotive case studies
40%savings in training costs per employeeBombardier improves productivity with time management training in video game format
87.5%recommend the trainingDometic attracts and retains talent with training video games that 87.5% of employees recommend
99%find the training useful in their daily livesFord Mexico trains 8,000 people across its distributor network in soft skills with serious games
Shall we play?
Tell us what your team needs to practice and, in a personalized demo, we'll show you the solution that will make the biggest impact on your organization.