- Global specialist recruitment leader, Hays has piloted Synthesia’s Roleplay Sessions to explore practical, AI-enhanced skills practice and personalised feedback
- The pilot achieved an engagement rate of over 70% through voluntary participation with users experiencing a 29% uplift on core sales skills measured within the same period
- More than 60% of participants said they would use Roleplay Sessions regularly going forward
Today, we are announcing a partnership with Synthesia, to build and roll out Roleplay Sessions, a new product designed to transform employee training from passive watching into active, measurable skills development.
During the first Roleplay Sessions pilot, Hays explored how interactive practice and personalised feedback could complement its existing learning and development approach, experiencing first-hand a measured uplift on its core skills via the engaged user cohort.
“At Hays, we’re committed to helping our people continuously develop their skills and adapt in a rapidly changing world of work. Synthesia’s Roleplay Sessions is helping us explore new ways of delivering practical, engaging learning experiences that enable our colleagues to practice, receive feedback and continue building their capabilities,” said Tom Way, Hays CEO, UK & Ireland.
“As part of our broader learning and development approach,” he continued, “it gives us a valuable way to understand capability, coach more effectively and help our people develop the skills needed to have better conversations with clients and candidates.”
Solving a problem every enterprise faces
Training traditionally stops at informing people. Companies excel at creating decks, guidance, and playbooks. And thanks to Synthesia Studio, these can be turned into engaging videos in just a few clicks.
But knowing what to do and being able to do it are two different things. A sales consultant can study frameworks all day and still struggle to apply them in a discovery call, and a manager can read conflict-resolution playbooks and still freeze in a difficult conversation.
The only way to close that gap is through practical application. Until now, that needed a human in the loop: a coach, a manager, someone willing to run the scenario until it sticks. That approach might work for very small groups coached by a subject matter expert, but it doesn’t work for most businesses at scale. Roleplay Sessions helps scale access to expertise and applied learning, giving people a single place to find the information they need, use it in a roleplay and receive personalised feedback.
The numbers from the pilot
- An engagement rate of over 70%, achieved with no mandate and through voluntary participation
- A measured 29% average skill uplift across the cohort during the piloted period
- More than 60% of participants said they would use Roleplay Sessions regularly going forward
For Hays, the pilot offered a way for participants to practice key conversations, receive feedback and build their skills as part of a single, AI-enhanced learning experience.
Synthesia’s Roleplay Sessions
Roleplay Sessions lets employees practice critical conversations with lifelike avatars and receive real-time coaching based on role-specific skills. Managers can see skills proficiency across teams, while learning and development teams can see skills levels across the whole business.
Unlike traditional training platforms that inform but can’t coach at scale, Synthesia’s Roleplay Sessions delivers interactive, on-demand practice with personalised coaching available 24/7 in multiple languages.