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How B&Q
Changed the Game of Challenge-25

Leading the way in home improvement and garden living retail is UK giant, B&Q. With their famous slogan, ‘You can do it, when you B&Q it’, a staple in UK households, B&Q wanted to make sure their store teams felt they could ‘do it’ when it came to their Challenge-25 policy.

What is Challenge-25?

Challenge-25 (CH25) is simply a compliance policy that requires staff members to request ID from anyone they believe to be under 25, usually when purchasing age-restricted items such as power tools or solvents.

Giving Challenge-25 real-world context

When B&Q approached Attensi, they were looking for a way to give this familiar policy a real-world edge. They explained their existing training covered the ‘what’ and the ‘why’, but not the ‘how’. Teams were struggling to apply what they’d learnt to their day-to-day responsibilities, especially when it came to particularly persuasive or confrontational customers.

In other words, the policy was in desperate need of real-world context. How could teams apply what they’d learned to a busy shop floor when they’re under pressure? And how could they make sure they could scale this new training to their 25,000-strong workforce across over 300 stores throughout the UK?

Combining B&Q’s knowledge with Attensi gaming mechanics

What followed has been an incredible collaboration between B&Q and Attensi.

“We know that stores that train and develop their colleagues are better-performing stores. Training is at the heart of what we do. Our colleagues are everything and they are at the forefront so we want to develop them. What’s different about Attensi is that it is fun and it really embeds learning in a really great way.”

Yellow Challenge 25 age-verification sign on a shelf edge in a store aisle, with a second sign beyond

We’ve co-designed a hybrid learning journey that combines all the foundations of CH25 with immersive, gamified practice.

Now, teams complete their initial, foundational e-learning before being directed to Attensi Skills. This is where they can put that knowledge to the test in realistic, simulated scenarios, including handling difficult conversations.

Reconnecting compliance training to the front-line

To bring this training to life, there were four main elements we had to think about:

Engagement

The training needed to be relevant and compelling for a diverse workforce with varying levels of digital literacy. It also needs to accommodate different learning preferences and job roles.

Application

Learners needed to be able to easily bridge the gap between learning the content and applying it consistently in real-life situations.

Scalability

The solution presented needed to be easily distributed on a national scale.

Impact

And finally, it had to make a real impact within the business. The training had to prove that it created tangible improvements.

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Key features for B&Q

When thinking about the key features of this training, we directly addressed the four main elements required by using:

A smartphone displaying a virtual training app with an animated male avatar wearing an orange apron, greeting the user as 'Mike, the manager'.

Hyper-realistic scenarios

The simulation training is designed to emulate what front-line teams come up against in their day-to-day roles. This includes responding to difficult conversations, making tricky judgement calls and handling pressure from customers.

Game mechanics

Gamifying compliance training can quickly take it from a ‘forced-to-do’ to a ‘want-to-do’ situation. By adding familiar gaming mechanics (leaderboards, stars, sound effects etc), we’ve been able to add a new level of engagement that hadn’t been seen before.

Personalized learning

Attensi Creator allows you to be more flexible when it comes to the kind of personalized content your learners need. But the mobile-first and gamified nature of the training means participants can repeat and complete the training in their own time, as many times as they need to feel confident with the material.

Data-driven insights

The insights taken from this type of training give you greater visibility of the performance of each learner. Managers and leaders are then able to personalize feedback and future learning to help learners build their confidence and get exactly what they need from the training.

  • “It felt really natural to go through it rather than just reading facts and figures about Challenge 25. It made it a lot more impactful and easy to remember.”

    B&Q employee

  • “It made me really competitive. When you see someone doing better than you, you want to go back in and beat them!”

    B&Q employee

  • “You can get things wrong the first time in a safe environment. That’s what makes it different.”

    B&Q employee

  • “We used the data to identify where support was needed. It wasn’t just training—it was insight.”

    Jacy StanhopeLeadership and Learning Lead, B&Q
Seven people on stage, one holding a glass trophy, beneath a screen reading “Learning & Development Award – Larger Employer”

B&Q: An Award-Winning Learning & Development Solution

B&Q’s partnership with Attensi delivered measurable improvements in training outcomes. Beyond these results, the collaboration was recognized by Personnel Today’s panel of judges, securing the Learning & Development Award for larger employers.

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We’re so excited to see what the future of this partnership has in store. It’s already created a tangible impact on compliance, attitudes towards training and ultimately, business outcomes.

This is only the beginning. We hope that together with the B&Q team, we can set a new benchmark for how compliance training can be delivered and executed in a retail setting.

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