TXU Europe has embarked on a full-scale e-learning strategy to
ensure that the core skills of its 2,100 staff are ready to meet
the challenges of tomorrow.Lindsay Nicolle reports.
One of the greatest challenges for companies today is to equip
their staff with the core competencies and specific skills needed
to meet constantly evolving business goals and new standards in
customer service.
How can you create a structure and culture that supports
continuous learning, which is exactly focused on the latest
corporate vision and practical strategy, while not impacting on the
smooth running of the business?
TXU Europe is on course to achieve this seemingly impossible
goal, having adopted a multi-faceted and measured approach to
training its thousands of staff across Europe.
The company's medium to long-term aim is to ensure that the
skills of all its staff evolve with the business and are ready for
its next move, rather than being just able to match yesterday's
needs.
"We believe that equipping staff with core competencies and
specific soft and technical skills that are closely matched to our
business goals is one of the last remaining differentiators between
competing companies, and the key to long-term business success,"
says Lance Spraggons, TXU Europe's head of human resource
technology.
"Staff are a corporate asset and we can make better use of that
asset if we train people more appropriately and instil a culture of
continuous learning. It's essential that training is closely
aligned with our business needs and strategy, and that we provide
many approaches to learning so that staff can do so anytime,
anywhere. What e-learning gives you is the ability to support
chunks of learning, so that staff can access when and where they
need it, and only that part of the courseware that they need.
"Training has traditionally been seen as a cost, involving time
away from work, whereas it needn't be.
That's where our decision to adopt a wide-ranging approach to
learning media comes in. We want to give staff the choice on how
they learn as well as what and when they learn," Spraggons
explains.
Investing in re-skilling its workforce in this way will enable
the European energy giant to meet its business needs more
effectively. Time and money will be spent more efficiently because
training content is more closely aligned with the business vision.
This will highlight skills gaps before they can have an impact on
the business. And providing easy ways to learn - if necessary in
bite-sized chunks at the greatest time of need - will encourage
more staff to seek training without disrupting their daily
workload.
Most importantly, staff motivation and career prospects are
being improved with the introduction of computerised, self-help,
personal development plans that put staff in equal charge of their
own destiny, and open up a wealth of lifelong learning
opportunities.
TXU Europe's move to broaden its attitude and approach to
training is a tangible commitment to improving employee performance
that can only boost staff recruitment and retention in the
long-term.
In practice, the company's learning strategy enables staff to
mix and match traditional classroom-based courses and teaching
methods with self-managed e-learning, using content from a wide
range of suppliers of Web-based packages and CD-Rom courseware.
TXU Europe went live with the Saba Learning Network, the
backbone infrastructure to its online learning initiative, in
December 1999. Since then, the company has been growing its already
established portfolio of 1,800 learning offerings provided via
traditional, classroom-based training and CD-Rom e-learning, to
embrace online learning.
It is essential that this three-pronged approach to training
should operate smoothly as one overall service to the company's
employees. Eventually, the courses will cover a whole raft of
technical, business management and interpersonal skills. The
technical courseware will teach basic desktop computing such as
Word word-processing, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations,
e-mail and office administration software, including calendars and
address databases. The business management and interpersonal skills
courseware will cover subjects including project and time
management, leadership, team working, decision-making, influencing
and rigorous analysis. There will also be language training to get
the company's whole European workforce to a level where they can
enjoy cross-border collaborative working and knowledge
transfer.
All the courses will be chosen to complement the needs of TXU's
new performance management framework, which consists of 16 core
competencies across four different levels. These competencies are
the cornerstones of all jobs within TXU Europe whatever the
discipline, and cover management and interpersonal skills that the
company has identified as being key drivers for business success.
Indeed, it was TXU's new performance management framework that
drove the company to look for an infrastructure capable of
delivering training online.
"E-learning complements the way we want our staff to develop in
the future, and it offers another way for them to become skilled in
our chosen core competencies," says Kevan Skelton, TXU Europe's HR
technology consultant. "We wanted to tie all our training and
development courses into our new performance management framework
and its core competencies, and also offer another way for staff to
catch up on their learning," he points out. "There's a lot more
pressure on people's time these days and it's harder for staff to
take half days out of the office to attend a course. E-learning
enables a more flexible approach."
Just like all businesses today, TXU Europe is in a constant
state of evolution and it must find ways of adapting its staff to
the changing needs of the business. One way it's achieving this
goal is to transform employees' careers by empowering them with
computerised personal development plans that they maintain
themselves. Crucially, this is also exposing skills gaps so that
they can be acted upon before they can have a detrimental impact on
the business.
TXU Europe will soon have a company-wide picture of its current
and possible skills needs in real-time, enabling management to be
proactive in mapping training onto business goals - however quickly
they evolve.
"We're at the stage where we can take our business plans and
cascade them down to staff to input into their training, which
helps us keep ahead of skills gaps that otherwise might constrain
the business," says Spraggons.
The company is already exploring how to introduce online
learning in "soft" skills, and include, where it is appropriate,
some form of e-learning in its training packages to effect more
efficiencies in time, money and delivery.
"Using e-learning for some pre-course work and post-course
assessment could shorten the length of time taken to complete
courses, and also make them more focused," says Skelton.
In the past, open learning opportunities were detailed in
physical catalogues held in personal development centres scattered
around the UK. Staff had to visit a centre to research and access
open learning, and these were not cross-referenced with the
company's skills needs in any way.
Today, the catalogue is held online and is accessible from
everyone's desktop machine. Most crucially, the catalogue is tied
into TXU's performance management framework, so anyone can request
a skills gap analysis that can be matched against assessments of
training needs carried out by line managers, staff themselves, or
through 360 degree feedback, and see immediately if they are
meeting the needs of the performance management framework.
Staff work with their line managers to agree annual objectives
that match the company's business plans, thus identifying learning
needs. Progress meetings every six months ensure that training is
kept on track and that no new skills gaps go unnoticed.
"The personal development plans have certainly been a training
motivator for staff," says Skelton. "The amount of open-learning
being undertaken has quadrupled since December and it's better
targeted learning, helping to save money and make the company more
effective. Also, more people new to training are trying it out,
which is encouraging. Staff are also assessing themselves against
the skills needs of jobs they aspire to, so they can plot a
training path towards their goal. It's an incentive for them to
stay with the company."
Recruitment of staff has also benefited from the application of
technology.
"Interviews are conducted using questions stored online which
are geared towards identifying candidates that have the core
competencies we've identified as key to our success as a business,"
says Skelton. "This makes for more structured interviews and also
enables us to provide good feedback to all candidates."
Skelton is confident that e-learning will continue to deliver
business benefits in the future.
"The business is in a constant state of evolution and it's a
challenge to keep ahead of deregulation in mainland Europe, but
e-learning can only help us meet the skills needs of our business
in the future," he says.
TXU Europe's training strategy will, over time, help to change
traditional cultural attitudes towards training held by everyone in
the company - from top management down to the frontline workers,
according to Spraggons.
"There is a tendency to see training as a cost, as there is in
other companies, and to see it as somehow an exercise that's
separate to the business," he says. "But with e-learning, in
particular, we can show how training staff in the right skills can
bring knowledge and cost benefits to the business, and how it can
be integrated into everyday jobs. We're making it easier for
managers to manage their workforces through their training
programmes, and we can show them how individuals are developing as
a result," he points out.
The impact of e-learning is such that Skelton is already
beginning to evaluate the possibility of establishing a "corporate
university" within TXU Europe, along US lines. These type of
entities are largely built around e-learning and have proved hugely
successful elsewhere, re-energising whole workforces and cutting
staff recruitment and retention costs in half.
"We have great hopes for our new approach to training in the
future and the way in which we can harness the opportunities that
technology can bring to training. Of course, there are still
challenges to overcome in terms of acceptance by everyone, and it's
early days yet. But there is a shift in attitudes towards training
which can only benefit the business. I think it will make a big
difference when take-up is 100% because we'll be improving people's
performance and we'll have a better trained workforce - and that
has to have a positive effect on our bottom line," Spraggons
concludes.
A strategy for learning
TXU Europe is the European arm of Texas Utilities (TXU), one of
the world's top 10 energy service companies, with assets of $40bn
and over nine million customers. The subsidiary is one of the
leading integrated energy companies in continental Europe, owning
Eastern Electricity and Eastern Natural Gas in the UK, which
between them serve over 3.75 million customers.
Project details:
- E-learning to deliver technical, business management, and
interpersonal skills to the company's 2,100 employees across many
European countries
- Clear strategy to use staff training and eventually e-learning
to differentiate the business from its rivals through improved
workforce skills and customer service
- Employers empowered with self-managed personal development
plans
- Skills gaps are being exposed and mapped into available
courseware before they can have an impact on the business
- E-learning is enabling training to be more closely targeted to
evolving business needs, anticipating corporate developments and
saving time and money
- Staff recruitment has been enhanced and retention improvements
are anticipated
- Real investment and commitment to improving employee
performance and career prospects