How we helped Bahlsen to educate its employees more effectively?

About the client:

Bahlsen is one of the largest biscuit manufacturers in Europe, known in Poland because of brands such as LEIBNIZ, Krakuski and HIT.

Size of the organisation:

World – 2600 employees

Company departments involved in the project:

Communications Department, Operational Excellence Department, Supply Chain Department.

Challenge:

Bahlsen was in the process of introducing a global operational excellence programme called B.Excellent. Thanks to this programme the company’s factories began to operate in a unified way, sharing knowledge and experiences.

The challenge was translating abstract concepts such as digitalisation, employee development, safety, quality obsession and food safety into concrete visual examples so that employees would understand the premises of the programme.

The animation was to be used across all Bahlsen teams worldwide, so it had to be understandable across countries. This meant, it had to be consulted and signed off with the headquarters located in Hanover.

Objective:

Help employees understand what the B.Excellent programme means for them, and how it impacts their day-to-day.

Solution:

Our work started with an deep dive into the presentation on the B.Excellent Programme. We needed to have a thorough understanding of the overall content of the presentation and understand the key points to be able to convey them in a simple but effective way.

We then moved on to structure our knowledge by having multiple discussions and alignment sessions with the client.

After researching Bahlsen’s needs, we proposed 3 forms of support:

1. Graphic facilitation by our very own Klaudia Tolman.

Klaudia, in a meeting with the Bahlsen team, helped to structure the vision of the project using Graphic Recording (more about Graphic Recoding – here).

2. An animation introducing the B.Excellent programme in Polish, English and German.

a) In the animation, we explained the principles in an easy and visually appealing way. The animation was shown on the company intranet, on LCD monitors in factories, in internal presentations, as well as on Bahlsen’s LinkedIn profile.

b) Because, the video was created in 3 key languages it is still being used in employee on-boarding sessions, customer meetings as well as during visits from external parties, whether it be in Germany, Poland, or anywhere else in the world.

3. Poster summarising highlights.

a) We developed a poster that contains key elements of the B.Excellent programme, and that could be used in physical locations. For example, it was hung in all Bahlsen factories, as a way to remind employees of the premises of B.Excellent.

The company shared the animation in social media, e.g. on Linkedin.

Client comment:

The visualisation used contributed significantly to a better understanding of the elements of Bahlsen’s B.Excellent continuous improvement system.

The old rule is that a picture is worth more than a thousand words – the use of simplicity and minimalism in the video allows us to simply and clearly present B.Excellent to any audience.