The challenge
One of the main challenges for companies and their teams during the COVID-19 pandemic was to adapt to a remote work modality. For months, strategies were constantly changing to meet the needs of their employees and the market’s new trends. For this reason, many companies had to enhance their training plans —and, in many cases, create them—, so as to prepare their employees for customers’ new needs.
This was the case for Constructora Bolívar, a Colombian company from the real estate sector that has fulfilled the dreams of investment, development and house ownership for more than 198.000 families nationwide. They decided to explore new markets during the pandemic and, keeping in mind that English is the world’s language for business, they focused primarily on strengthening their employees’ communication skills in this language. To meet this goal, they created the B.R.O. (Born to Rise to the Top) program, which would develop and implement a transversal training strategy for the whole company.
Firstly, the Human Resources team was looking for a program that would adapt to the company’s different areas and, above all, one that everyone could make use of, regardless of their role or responsibilities. Additionally, they needed a fully-remote method that would conform to their new work modality. This way, Constructora Bolívar found Slang and chose its solution for the B.R.O. program.
The solution
Constructora Bolívar considered Slang the best option because its English learning program goes beyond traditional methods by focusing on specific objectives and aligning to the company’s interests and the learning paths required for every role. Thus, the learning experience is not only customized, but much more efficient. This fit in with the B.R.O. program perfectly because the platform’s flexibility makes it possible to cover the different areas of the company and satisfy the specific needs of every employee.
“In this context, we seek to learn English so that we can use it in a working environment. With Slang, I learn vocabulary and sentences that I use frequently in my role. It’s very useful.”
Alba Yaneth Bolaños,
Finance professional
Here’s where Slang steps in. With the biggest course catalog for professional English in more than 20 different industries, we created specific goals that were in sync with the B.R.O. program’s objectives to successfully achieve the professional development of their collaborators.
Full access
The B.R.O. program was created for the employees to learn English according to their interests, and that is why all Slang courses were made available for them. Each user was able to choose freely any course that would fit in with their needs. However, to ensure the learning paths were effective, when the program was first implemented, Diagnostic tests were taken by the users to determine which specific abilities they needed to develop.
Customized support
For Slang, it’s important to closely follow up each of the students during the program’s implementation. For this reason, we performed periodical evaluations on how B.R.O. was fulfilling its objectives. This way, decisions were made about how we would communicate with users to lead them to accomplishing their goals.
Alliances with educational institutions
Constructora Bolívar has an alliance with Institución Universitaria Colombo Americana (ÚNICA), and they decided to complement their Slang experience with individual sessions with English teachers from this institution. This was due to the fact that, thanks to the pandemic, instructors started to look for new opportunities since few students were enrolling in their classes.
Results
The users from Constructora Bolívar started to study during the COVID-19 pandemic and, in spite of all the challenges they faced, their results were satisfactory. To date, they have stayed with Slang for more than a year and have completely surpassed the expectations for the B.R.O. program.
The results speak for themselves: the students have used the platform constantly and in an effective way to follow the path towards English proficiency. Nevertheless, these weren’t the only results of the program.
Satisfaction survey
Constructora Bolívar conducted a survey to measure satisfaction in all Slang users of the company. Strikingly, more than 85% of the employees assured that Slang positively impacts the way they study the English language.
Award winners
Within a short time of its implementation, the B.R.O. program was nominated as one of the best programs for the company’s human talent. They went up against the whole Grupo Bolívar conglomerate (Davivienda, Seguros Bolívar, and others), and B.R.O made it to the top 10 of 2020’s best projects!
Follow Constructora Bolívar’s example and join forces with Slang to train your collaborators with the professional English their roles require. Reach out to us here!
