Howden s use of creative flair to ensure elearning leads to business success.

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1 Howden s use of creative flair to ensure elearning leads to business success. Interactive virtual learning environments can help reduce the length of time needed to train new engineering graduates. The use of innovative animation and video techniques help ensure that all new cohorts go through the same induction process and reduce the time and cost of reaching job competency. If you are looking to deploy an engaging, cost-effective induction programme across a global business, ecom Scotland can offer some creative ideas, and Howden is a useful case study of this. Organisational Background Howden is an inspiring Scottish success story, and the company s reputation for innovation and design has been built upon the cutting edge work of its founder James Howden, who revolutionised marine engineering in the 19 th Century. Today, Howden s reach extends far beyond Scotland, and now operates in 20 countries, employing 4500 staff worldwide. Its core business is the design, engineering and manufacturing of industrial fans, compressors and rotary heat exchangers. The Business Challenge The business challenge facing Howden was both positive and of a significant size. Thanks to both organic business growth and an acquisitions programme, in 2008, Howden projected a need to recruit some 350 additional graduate-level engineers over a five year period. However, how would it ensure that it would attract and retain the best engineering talent around? Furthermore, how would Howden train these graduates so that they would quickly assimilate into the organisation and become productive? In 2008, Howden introduced The Howden Academy in partnership with Glasgow Caledonian University to assist newly arrived graduate engineers to develop more rapidly

2 into their new job roles. The Howden Academy offered a number of modules over a three week period, or cohort. However, despite the high success enjoyed by the Academy, Howden had always been aware that a significant portion of each new cohort was devoted to non job-related and less technical topics, especially in the first and second weeks. This need to adjust the training focus was also highlighted through student feedback. The challenge that Howden faced was to modify and re-platform their training offer to graduates that would: Improve the capability of Howden to develop graduate engineers recruited by the business. Further enable their newly recruited graduate engineers to be more effective more quickly. The Learning Solution With this in mind Howden wanted to develop a suite of elearning sessions that would allow students to undertake modules before attending the programme in Glasgow. This would enable them to concentrate more on the technical aspects during the three weeks spent at the Academy. The other by-product of this approach would be to reduce the duration of the face-to-face delivery of the programme, and cut cost. To achieve this Howden turned to ecom Scotland. Howden asked them to take their traditional course learning plans and turn them into 39 on-line learning modules for their Developing Engineering Excellence programme. Innovation and design have always been defining features of Howden, and these characteristics have now been incorporated into the very fabric of their elearning strategy. There can be little doubt that creativity and a variety of teaching methods have been responsible for the positive feedback that has been received for Howden s first elearning trial. Their innovative approach to elearning has not only ensured that students complete all 39 modules before attending the Howden Academy, but also that many of the modules are now used as part of the Howden Global induction programme and pre-course material before all training courses.

3 So how did Howden and ecom Scotland do it? Working with Authors ecom Scotland worked closely with Howden to ensure that the knowledge and expertise of their engineers was fully captured in the elearning content. Howden s subject matter experts, or authors, were helped by project managers to design and create training materials that included many essential components, such as objective setting, and how to write content for the Instructional Designers at ecom. Howden s authors and the designers from ecom worked closely together in the production of draft story boards, where the training, technical content and design were checked and verified. It was by this methodical approach that the elearning modules were kept accurate and designed in such a way that would guarantee a great learning experience. Examples of learning techniques involved Video: By adding video to the content Howden brought alive complex instructions and allowed them to include already established material such as the Vibration module. The vibration module included a video clip to explain the effects of vibration in engineering, as demonstrated by the infamous Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse. This would not have been explained so effectively in any other media. Animation: One stand-out feature of the Howden Academy elearning was the avatar that was created of the Head of Howden Academy, Ron Mulholland. In the Introduction to Howden Academy module, Ron was created to explain to international students what would happen in their three weeks at Howden Academy. He also took his students virtually on his golf cart round Glasgow and other Howden locations. Ron is involved in various training events over the three weeks. Animation was also used extensively to great effect to explain many engineering principles, where still pictures on their own would have struggled to effectively convey a concept.

4 Ron became a friendly larger-than-life person that would help the transition between the elearning and the face-toface learning. Interactivity: In the Introduction to Lean module ecom employed some clever use of interactivity that started off by getting the learner to draw a pig. The idea of this was to represent that everyone has a different idea of how to draw a pig, and that you should employ some sort of Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to ensure conformity in your engineering product. Assessment: An important part of every module was to include an assessment. Engineers as a type are keen to be precise and like to be offered an assessment to verify their knowledge. Business Benefits The business benefits that have been realised by Howden Academy have been impressive: 1) Evaluation feedback from line managers has been very positive with: Over 90% stating that their new engineers had become more effective more quickly. 2) Howden also measured the engineers knowledge and performance before and after attending each cohort: Improvement in knowledge 44%, Improvement in knowledge 23%. 3) Howden discovered that new graduate engineers reached job competence three months faster than using their traditional graduate recruitment programme. 4) The elearning has also contributed to a significant reduction in staff turnover rates from 7% to 2.5%.

5 5) The new-style training also freed up 30% of students time. 6) 79% of line managers agreed that student performance had increased following the Academy. Impacting Company Culture For many students, Howden Academy was the experience of a lifetime, helping them to realise that they are part of the global Howden family and inspiring some to develop and deliver spin-off training projects in their local business unit. The elearning modules have been able to encapsulate Howden s engineering expertise and have ensured that this will be passed on to the next generation of Howden engineers. There have been two other beneficial outcomes to the elearning at Howden: The Howden Academy helps the company to satisfy ISO requirements that engineers are given technical training to make sure they are competent at their job and a copy of Academy training certificates are placed in each student s personnel file. The culture of global communication across Howden s business units has been enriched. The Howden Academy has established strong professional networks and has encouraged more effective collaboration amongst Howden engineers and cemented close working relationships between colleagues from around the world. For instance, an engineer specialising in Cooling Fans from the Netherlands is now better able to discuss problems with their Howden Academy colleague in India, and knows them to be able to discuss issues and problems. Staff or learner impact Comments from Howden Academy students It was an extraordinary experience during the entire three weeks of Howden Academy. It was so enjoyable that it passed in like a flash. The well organised and carefully executed programs enriched all attendants The greatest success is that Howden Academy has made intensive and effective learning to be very enjoyable at the same time.

6 Top Tips for implementing effective elearning From the outset, set for yourself clear objectives and check your elearning outcomes against them. Be prepared to evaluate the effectiveness of your current training. Listen to the feedback of your staff exclude their input at your peril! Support your subject matter experts. They may know their stuff but they may not know how to create training material! Make sure to use a creative, interactive design to your elearning. Use varied content to your teaching make it interesting. Integrate assessment into the learning content to verify learners knowledge Animation will touch the learning parts that other formats cannot reach! If done well it can create a fun environment to learn. Establish internal professional networks to encourage effective collaboration.