Carglass France feels benefit of employee knowledge sharing

Carglass France, part of glass repair business Belron International, claims to have improved the speed that employees find information by a fifth, after rolling out knowledge-sharing technology.

The company, which is known in the UK for its Autoglass brand, has invested in a collaboration tool that allows workers to share knowledge and information in real time, and can automatically match people who need information with those who can offer it.

According to Carglass, this has instantly broadened its pool of available knowledge. Within two weeks of setting up the platform, staff placed requests for help with more than 100 skills and volunteered to share more than 200 skills with colleagues.

With a workforce of more than 3,000 spread across more than 400 centres in France, Carglass has a distributed and diverse range of staff and was finding it hard to find the expertise it needed.

The platform, supplied by Talking Circles, works by matching co-workers based on the skills, knowledge and expertise each individual can teach and wants to develop.

Head of training for Carglass, Patricia Millet, speaking at the HR Tech World (Unleash) conference in Amsterdam, said she chose the technology for its intuitive approach to knowledge sharing.

“The collaboration the platform has enabled is already ensuring teams are able to achieve their goals more efficiently and productively,” she said.

The roll-out was made easier because management bought into the project from the beginning, reflecting the need for a change of approach in the business.

To ensure wider staff support, Carglass and Talking Circles worked together to introduce an element of gaming to the platform to encourage employees to participate.

Some 92% of staff have completed their profiles, and participants estimate that the platform is helping them find the right resources 20% more quickly.

Staff have given the technology a net promoter score of 90, well above the industry average of 50 for software as a service (SaaS).

Employees using the technology include technicians, call centre agents, sales staff and operations team members.

One Carglass branch manager said sharing management best practices with other brand managers has benefited their day-to-day work, while a call centre agent said they now understand sales key performance indicators (KPIs) after talking with a colleague.

Eric Girard, chief executive of Carglass, said the tool had helped staff in different parts of the organisation communicate more effectively, which has led to improved customer service.

“It was the modern collaboration tool we were looking for. Breaking silos is important for us – it helps us deliver a better service for our customers,” he said.

Dimple Lalwani, chief executive at Talking Circles, said: “Workplace learning is no longer the remit of HR [human resources]. In fact, it’s not the remit of any one function any more – it’s HR, operations, IT, and it’s at the core business sustainability.”

“People need people to share and build knowledge and make decisions in the workplace – from the best way to solve a problem, to the direction of their career,” she said.