Google's gTech Ads team focuses on relationship-led partnerships, customers and stakeholder management. They were looking for an immersive, engaging way to help their employees objectively benchmark their proficiency against the professional skills their roles demanded and to use that data to drive personalised skills development. The team wanted a solution that could prove the ROI of developing skills, delivered flexibly in learners' own time. In practice, the partnership ended up centred on two related needs, giving the team a new learning modality, and a credible way to measure Human Skills improvement.

The four modules were mapped directly onto Google's internal gTech Ads Groundings Framework i.e. skills that are globally transferable and immediately applicable to Googlers' day-to-day roles. Due to gTech Ads' being a front facing department, the programme was designed around workplace simulations personalised to the job roles and functions of the Googlers, giving learners a safe space to rehearse high-stakes conversations before they mattered.