Serving the electric and heating needs of more than 60 percent of Michigan residents, a major utilities provider and its 7,500 employees have an essential daily mission to fulfill. To better meet the training needs of its employee base, the company approached the learning solutions experts at Innovative Learning Group (ILG) for assistance in creating a comprehensive e-learning strategy. This strategy would give the company the ability to consistently improve employee performance while reducing training costs.
Situation
The company was buying course development software and hiring people, in an unplanned and decentralized fashion, to create e-learning. Rather than continue down that path, the company’s 12-member Training Council stepped back and decided to create an overarching plan to make the most of its resources. The council knew its first step was to create a common strategy, homogenized across the entire company, to meet three essential goals:
- Improve consistency of training efforts across the large organization
- Reduce duplication of efforts
- Increase shared resources across groups, departments, and profit centers
Solution
ILG encouraged its client to take a comprehensive view of the business and its learning needs. To do this, ILG guided the Training Council through the steps of the learning strategy development process.
The first step was to establish a vision for learning throughout the organization and to validate the governance of the learning process. ILG then helped the company design an internal approach to develop and distribute e-learning.
ILG also drafted a technology architecture the future state for hardware and software requirements which is critical to successful deployment and maintenance of e-learning. Then, ILG suggested a broad range of delivery and performance support options to help the company achieve a more holistic training approach and enable it to move forward efficiently.
And throughout, as in any project where the needs of many constituents must be met, the key to this success was skillful, objective facilitation a core strength of ILG consultants.
Results
ILG helped the Training Council reach its three essential goals while staying on budget and on schedule. At the end of the project, the company received at 76-page document detailing all findings and recommendations. However, the real testament to ILG’s forward-thinking approach is that the client continues to use the training strategy ILG helped create. And by continually instilling a culture of lifelong learning within the organization, the client ensures its skilled, well-trained employees keep customers powered up.
To learn more about how Innovative Learning Group can create custom learning solutions to help improve business results, contact us at info@innovativeLG.com.