With around £13 billion in annual revenues, 21 million customers and 48,000 employees, BT Retail is undeniably big - a major force in the UK communications market. A company committed to promoting equality and diversity within the workplace, BT Retail wants its employees to appreciate and respect the diversity of its customer base.

As part of an equality and diversity initiative, BT Retail wanted to provide training for its workforce – starting with an initial 8000 employees.

The problem? Classroom training simply could be done within any sensible timescales. The solution? E-learning.

Transition was asked by BT Retail to develop an on-line course to demonstrate the benefits of valuing diversity - including topics such as racial, sexual and age discrimination, harassment, bullying and disabilities. Difficult topics, sure - but important ones, and something BT Retail wanted to get right.

Some work had already been undertaken in developing a classroom course, so rather than scrap this, it was used as the basis for the e-learning programme. This course couldn't just be 'repurposed' (or copied and pasted, as we say in plain English) - it required substantial adaptation to work successfully within the e-learning medium, and to condense the half-day course into around 45 minutes of on-line training. Particular emphasis was given to the content: the original course required a great deal of role-playing and discussion to help explore the difficult subject matter.

The on-line course was developed using Macromedia Flash. To make it as engaging as possible, the course incorporated interactivity, quizzes, case studies - all designed to challenge people’s perceptions and treat this difficult topic creatively.

The course was delivered, on schedule, to the initial 8000 employees via the established BT Academy. Following the success of the initial pilot, the course was then rolled out to BT Retail’s 48,000-strong workforce.