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News and Background Information on the Conference | |||
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Online Educa Berlin 2007 Focuses on Corporate E-Learning
© pressmaster, Fotolia.com At this year’s Online Educa Berlin, there has been a significant growth in the level of input from large companies coming to talk about how they are using technology-enhanced or e-learning as part of their organisation’s training offer. Featured at this year’s conference will be retailers like Ikea and real; from the banking sector Swedbank in Sweden and Crédit Agricole S.A. Group in France, in the oil and energy sector StatoilHydro in Norway and Schlumberger in France, as well as household names like Ericsson, Volkswagen and Air France. In the corporate context, the main challenges in the future are to build a learning and knowledge-acquisition system that reconciles five requirements:
Olaf Bursian, real,- SB Warenhaus GmbH, Member of MetroGroup, Germany, will describe the challenges of tailoring their e-learning programmes to a wide variety of trainees who are mostly retail staff in their large network of shops. Because the target group is very heterogeneous, a decentralised network makes the logistics of establishing e-learning in almost 300 stores with over 40,000 employees very difficult. Alex Cullum, StatoilHydro, Norway will talk about how StatOil is using high- resolution 3D graphics to create a Virtual World project that is being used for training their profession staff in Future Integrated Operations solutions. They are also using such advances to create DIMMORGs (Deeply Immersive Massively Multiplayer Online Role-player Games) for specific applications to establish and support recruitment communities and networks; provide health, environmental and safety scenario arenas for teaching and practice; and solve the current demand problems on e-learning and new-hire induction faculties. Fabrizio Cardinali, President of the European Learning Industry Group, eLIG, will be in the company of Paul Landers, Ericsson, Sweden, Kristian Åsberg, Ikea, Sweden, Francesco Turchetti, Schlumberger and Laura Apostoli, Volkswagen, Germany. The focus of their input will be on how emerging developments related to the advent of ubiquitous, mobile and virtual communication tools can be used by large companies to their advantage in innovative learning practices. They will talk about their experience of putting learning at the fingertips of every employee, even when they are away from the office. Their presentations will look at the current set of problems they face in providing just-in-time and just-enough training to their employees. Staffan Ivarsson, Swedbank, Sweden will talk about the firm’s experience in putting large-scale training solutions supported by technology in place. Swedbank has nine million retail customers and 473,000 corporate customers in Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Russia and Ukraine. In common with many large corporate entities, Swedbank’s approach is based on a competency strategy. It began in 2001, when the bank realised it would need to align specific employee skills to the demands of particular customer segments in order to improve customer retention and loyalty. It also uses a blended training model, providing managers the flexibility to select the right channels to train staff according to the type of competency to be acquired. The whole effort is based on a comprehensive learning management platform that supports a systematic and holistic approach toward learning and competency management, while reducing risks of increased costs. Eric de Dreuzy, from Air France, France, presents his company’s e-learning strategy designed to maintain the qualifications required by the competition in all transport sectors: flight safety, aircraft fleet development, IT evolutions, as well as internal organisational changes. Like most leading airlines, Air France implemented new technologies in training early on to ensure maximum efficiency and reduce costs. The Learning Management System has been used as a change- management tool and provides an effective method for tracking of learning during ramp-up prior to software roll-out. In addition to these ”top-down” actions, new training opportunities were offered to employees through self-training formulas, and they were successful very quickly.
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By Sally Reynolds & Nina Wittrock
