We have exciting news! This year, two of the projects we developed alongside our partners received Gold Awards from the Brandon Hall Group.

What are Brandon Hall Awards?

Brandon Hall is a research and analyst firm that specializes in learning, development, and management. Each year, they accept submissions for the Brandon Hall Awards, which are designed to recognize work from companies across the globe who have developed technology that is both innovative and has achieved measurable results.

Technology that wins a Brandon Hall Award must address the business needs of a client or provide a solution for a problem in an industry. All of this must be accomplished while ensuring that the product is innovative, creative, and stands out from its competition.

Fortunately, we are committed to creating engaging solutions that are crafted to help our clients exceed the high standards and complex problems they face. Thanks to our dedication to our partnerships and the service mindset we foster at Maestro, we were lucky enough to take home two Gold Awards in the Excellence in Technology Program!

Why does it matter?

Bragging rights aren’t the reason we decided to submit our work to the Brandon Hall Awards. We believe that entering the products we’ve created with our partners in competitions like this is important for building our relationships with the companies we work with. Not only does winning awards help our partners get recognized for their innovation and achievements within their industries, but it allows both the hardworking teams at Maestro and at our partner organizations to share in each other’s success.

An up-close look at the winning projects

Learning technology with a different approach

The Cocktail Mixer Training Simulation we designed alongside our partner, Royal Caribbean, earned the Gold Award for the Best Advance in Gaming or Simulation Technology from the Brandon Hall Awards. We developed this product to help Royal Caribbean find a more effective way to train their employees. 

One learning challenge they faced was figuring out how to train their bartenders; providing adequate training for bartenders can be very costly, as practicing mixing drinks can cost the company an expensive amount of resources. At the same time, this training is incredibly important—mixing drinks incorrectly does not only hurt their taste, but may result in health risks if an incorrect amount of alcohol is poured. 

Together we were able to devise a solution: our Cocktail Mixer Training Simulation provides a risk-free digital platform through which bartenders can practice mixing drinks. This gamified approach to training creates a more engaging and experiential way for bartenders to learn, which results in improved employee retention.

Even more, our Simulation offers a learning strategy that is effective for a global workforce. Royal Caribbean’s employees hail from across the world, enriching their workforce with cultural and linguistic diversity. Because of this diversity, an ordinary, one-size-fits-all approach to learning would be problematic for our partner. That’s why our Cocktail Mixer Training Simulation was designed to work for a global audience; by combining an intuitive UI with the use of graphics instead of text, the Simulation is accessible for learners of all backgrounds.

Compliance training refreshed

On top of receiving recognition for our Cocktail Mixer Training Simulation, our Healthcare Compliance Policy Handbook, which we adapted for our partner Celgene, won the Gold Award for the Best Advance in Learning Management Technology for Compliance Training from the Brandon Hall Awards—a mouthful of a title!

Prior to coming to us to work together on a learning solution, Celgene organized all of their compliance material in various PDFs across multiple platforms. This meant that when employees had a question about Celgene’s compliance policies, they had to navigate a vast amount of information that was scattered in many different places.

As many of us have experienced when trying to cook from a recipe we’ve lost, or when trying to assemble a child’s Christmas present using a lengthy instruction book, when we can’t locate information quickly we tend to give up searching and act based on our best guess. While in these examples the consequences of this behavior would be small, in the medical field, “guessing” could result in serious consequences for our partner. 

Our Healthcare Compliance Policy Handbook helped Celgene compile all of its compliance policy information into a single, more accessible Handbook. Combined with an impeccable UX and UI, our Handbook reduced the time it took for Celgene’s employees to locate compliance policies to just seconds. Because of this, the Handbook became a risk-management tool for our partner, as it helped Celgene increase the likelihood that its employees were informed of the compliance regulations they faced, reducing their risk of legal penalties.

What this means for you

We’re honored to have been recognized for our hard work and innovative learning solutions with two Brandon Hall Awards, and even more grateful to share this win with our partners. We believe that this success demonstrates what is possible when you collaborate with a partner who can harness cutting-edge technology and design to create learning solutions that are the right fit.