Upduo Webinar Recap: Peer Learning and Performance Data to Upskill Your Workforce

Upduo, the peer-to-peer coaching platform that has partnered with iQmetrix, shared the secrets of the platform’s success at a recent webinar. For those who missed it — or want some reminders of the great insights given by Ben Chang, Upduo’s CEO — here’s a brief recap of the five key takeaways. Plus, scroll down to click through to the full webinar recording.

Upduo Leverages Top Performers to Coach Others

Rather than using the old-style passive method of employee training, such as training videos, Upduo uses a unique method of peer-to-peer learning. The platform examines the performance data of top employees in particular areas of focus, and pairs those top performers with staff members who need to learn that skill. Those trainees may be new hires, or existing employees who need to upskill in a certain topic. Every employee can be paired with different peer-mentors for different areas, depending on those mentors’ skills and strengths, for a unique learning journey for each trainee. 

Chang told webinar attendees that there are many use cases for Upduo, but it is particularly effective in sectors such as wireless retail, where store associates may be spread across a wide geographic area but training needs to be consistent across the brand.

Bite-Sized, Face-to-Face Training Sessions Are More Effective

Instead of passively watching a webinar or training video, the trainee gets a live, face-to-face video chat on the Upduo platform with their trainer for a given topic. These sessions are short — usually no more than five minutes — but frequent. This allows learner to absorb the lesson more easily and reinforces it more effectively. 

Chang explained, ​“The insight is that regular 1:1 learning enables personalized learning that necessarily doesn’t want to just be a single track. Science tells us there’s a forgetting curve, and there’s a reinforcement curve as well.”

Peer-to-Peer Coaching Helps the Trainer, Too

Not only does the learning employee get more out of this kind of training, but it also benefits the mentors who are doing the coaching. Often, as trainees graduate to become trainers themselves, giving coaching to others reinforces the best practices they have learned and keeps their own training fresh. And the five-minute nature of the lessons means that taking on peer coaching is never onerous. In fact, as top performers coach B-level performers, who then coach C-level performers, who coach new hires, it creates a cascade of knowledge sharing that takes the pressure off any given employee or team. Chang added, ​“In this way, peer learning is incredibly effective.”

iQmetrix Integration Captures Upduo’s ROI

Wondering how all this translates to the bottom line? With the integration of Upduo into the iQmetrix suite of solutions, all the data you’ll need comes automatically. When an employee has been trained in a particular area of focus — for example, upselling device protection — their sales data from before and after training is all captured in iQmetrix’s data and analytics module, and flows through the Upduo reporting module. You’ll be able to see exactly how much the training has improved any given employee’s performance, or that of a team or a certain store. 

Upduo’s Algorithms Help Improve Training Further

All peer-to-peer coaching sessions can be recorded and stored in Upduo, along with a transcript of the audio from each conversation. It can be tough for training leads to review all those, as they will become numerous very quickly! But with the algorithms built into Upduo, retail operators can be alerted to any anomalies or areas of concern. And if you’re looking to improve performance in a specific area, it’s easy to search for the recordings you need to see where coaching can be refined.

To find out more and see the full recording of the Upduo webinar., go to Upduo’s iQmetrix partner page.