Famosa, elearning to build workforce

Success Story
Toy maker Famosa builds an effective
and happy workforce thanks to distance learning
Famosa is Spain’s leading toy company. It is a traditional toy company with worldrenowned
brands and products which it works hard to keep fresh and appealing through constant
innovation. Building on a history that dates back more than half a century, and having
acquired other sector players such as Feber and Play by Play, Famosa has gone from its
origins as a traditional local toy maker to become a major international company with a
presence in more than 95 countries.
Famosa is committed to international expansion and has embarked on an ambitious
growth strategy in the Americas. It has set up a factory in Mexico and has its sights trained
on the US market. Despite its big ambitions, Famosa does not employ thousands of people.
There are 750 employees in total. Of these 450 are in Spain and the remaining 300 are
spread around the globe.
offered high level content,” says
Antonio Fernandez Aguado,
Human Resources Director at
Famosa. The company deployed
CrossKnowledge Learning Suite,
as it found this was the best
solution to meet all its needs.
“We are not a very big company
in terms of numbers of employees
and we are very dispersed. We
needed structured training that
was easy to access and that
“When we evaluated potential
suppliers of e-Learning platforms,
CrossKnowledge was the only
platform that offered simple
access to high level content.
Other platforms did not have the
multilingual international support
that CrossKnowledge offers and
some of the competitor platforms
seemed overly complicated.
The CrossKnowledge content is
structured and dynamic – just
what we were looking for,” says
Fernandez Aguado. To meet all
their needs, Famosa’s e-Learning
solution is delivered in Spanish,
English, French and Chinese.
More information, videos and success stories on www.crossknowledge.com
Success Story
Global communications key.
Team building.
The learning and development
team invested a huge effort into
its communications strategy for
e–Learning so that employees
around the world were kept
informed about the learning
solution. Antonio Fernandez
Aguado realized early on that the
acceptance and uptake of the
solution in each country would
depend very much on getting the
buy-in of the individual general
manager or country manager.
He and his team invested extra
effort traveling the world to meet
and communicate the benefits of
the solution with each country
manager in person.
This focus on communication has
resulted in a successful global
deployment. “The solution has
been well accepted across the
world,” says Antonio Fernandez
Aguado. Famosa rolled out
CrossKnowledge Learning Suite
to 200 employees in the first
instance and planned to extend
this to 400 other employees
within a year. The e-Learning
solution would be available to all
employees that used a computer
in their day-to-day work.
In the first phase of the
project, the company focused
on training its employees in
eight competencies that it has
identified. Each competency
comprises a number of associated
behaviors that Famosa is keen to
see its employees display.
Team building is a particular
area of focus. Famosa has gone
through a number of structural
changes and changes of
ownership in the past decade.
This has led to a culture of topdown management. Now the
company wants to encourage
employees to focus on teamwork
within their own departments. It is
also concentrating on developing
customer-orientation and
encouraging employees to use
their initiative more.
In future, Famosa is looking
at how it might extend the
CrossKnowledge Learning
Suite to staff in shop floor
manufacturing roles, who don’t
have access to computers in
their job. At present, they receive
traditional classroom-based
training on the quality and health
and safety aspects of their role.
Famosa may also look to offer
shared PCs in the workplace that
would enable these workers to
access the e-Learning modules,
or it may make the modules
available for operators to access
from home, possibly via mobile
devices such as smartphones and
laptops.
The company plans to expand the
e-Learning content. Once it has
embedded the training to support
its competency model, in future
it would like to add modules
focusing on the technology,
marketing, finance and strategy
We expect to see
that over 90% of our
employees will have
improved their levels
of competency.
Antonio Fernandez AGUADO
HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR
FAMOSA
aspects of the business.
Famosa plans to carry out
a formal evaluation of the
effectiveness of its e-Learning
solution. “We expect to see that
over 90% of our employees
will have improved their levels
of competency,” says Antonio
Fernandez Aguado. “People are
happy with the content.”
Happiness is a vital commodity
at Famosa. The company’s motto
is that “When children play they
are happier”. It is proud to explain
on its website that “We have
been making happiness in the
form of toys for 55 years in over
90 countries which is why we are
specialist in distributing smiles”.
As it builds an effective and
happy workforce it looks set to
distribute many more smiles.
More information, videos and success stories on www.crossknowledge.com