The BUPA Code
The Brief
Help 87,000 people live by a code of conduct. Not just click through it.
A code of conduct only protects a healthcare company if people carry it into the clinic, the call centre and the care home. At Bupa it lived in a policy document and a mandatory module: the kind people get through rather than take in. That gap is where failures start. Bupa wanted it woven into everyday life. Not filed away.
The Solution
Stop teaching the Code. Campaign it, one principle a month.
A twelve-month campaign built around Bupa’s twelve core principles, putting experience ahead of top-down teaching. One principle a month, each around five minutes on a phone: animations, real Bupa colleagues on film and interactive dilemmas. Built in six languages, inside Bupa’s own LMS. Mandatory training that didn’t feel like it.
20+ countries. A regulator in every market. In healthcare, a conduct failure costs more than a fine.
Bupa is a global healthcare company: health insurance, hospitals and clinics, dental and aged care. Its people hold medical records, make claims decisions and look after residents. Conduct isn’t an abstract value. It’s the job.
That makes the Code of Conduct commercially critical. A conduct failure in a single care home or claims team can mean sanctions, lost licences and headlines that undo years of trust. A Code nobody remembers protects nobody.
Compliance training rarely changes behaviour. People complete it because they must, then forget it. Bupa brought Tilt in as strategic and creative partners to change that: to make the Code part of how 87,000 colleagues work, every day.
Our Approach
Listen first. Then make every principle a five-minute experience.
We started by listening. User research across nine countries, in person and online, told us how colleagues worked, what the Code meant to them and what they’d never sit through. Those sessions became our design principles. The first: nobody has an hour. Everybody has five minutes.
So we treated the Code as a campaign, not a course. Twelve core principles became twelve monthly releases. Experience over top-down teaching: micro-interactions built around dilemmas and stories, asking what you’d do, not what the policy says.
Animations made each principle memorable. Short films from real Bupa colleagues made it theirs. Every principle was culturally tailored to its region, not just translated, and integrated with Bupa’s Saba LMS so engagement could be tracked principle by principle. Rich, but light enough to fit a busy shift.
Key Project Assets
Twelve-Month Principle Campaign
A campaign architecture that gave each of Bupa’s twelve core principles its own month, keeping the Code visible for a full year rather than one afternoon.
Nine-Country User Research
In-person and digital feedback sessions across nine countries that shaped the design principles and strategy, so the experience fitted the realities of a hospital shift, a claims desk or a care home.
Five-Minute Principles
Animations, short films from real Bupa colleagues and interactive dilemmas that asked what you’d do, compressed into around five minutes per principle, easy to fit into a working day. Used in stand-up meetings to facilitate discussion amongst team members.
Multilingual Saba LMS Integration
A mobile-friendly build in six languages, culturally tailored by region and integrated with Bupa’s Saba LMS, giving the business engagement data across 20+ countries and four business types.
Impact
Mandatory training normally gets done, not talked about. This got both: completion well beyond what Bupa would typically expect, and colleagues volunteering praise for a compliance programme.
Project Insights
From mandatory to wanted
Most codes of conduct fail at the point of delivery: sound content, squeezed into one module that people race through. We did the opposite. A year, not a sitting. Five minutes at a time. Questions about what you’d do, not instructions on what to think.
It worked because we listened before we built. Nine countries told us how much of a busy day a colleague will give to a screen, and we designed to that. The best conduct training doesn’t feel like training. It feels like Tuesday.
After just a couple of meetings, Tilt really got what we were trying to achieve, which was to turn mandatory, risk-related training on its head and make it fun, accessible and relevant – something people want to do because it helps them do their jobs.
Ryan Steer, Global Learning Product Owner — Bupa
