What are organizations with front line employees offering for learning and development? Aside from cross-training? I am asking from the perspective of an environment of corporate workers having easier access to e-learning offerings through work computers versus front line workers day-to-day being on a production floor with little to no access to computers. I understand culture plays a big role here but looking for ideas of how to customize offerings.
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Hi,
On some sites we have a digital or training room with computers available. Operators can come there to do e.g. e-learnings.
Furthermore we try to see when there are stops in the production (e.g for maintenance or cleaning) and use these hours for training so that we don't have to stop the line. Or we try to schedule trainings in periods that are less busy if possible.
A lot of micro learnings are given during the hand-over (e.g monthly Safety toolbox by Team Leaders) and of course we have a lot of on-the-job trainings.
I work in food manufacturing. There is certainly a challenge in ensuring we are developing our front line employees, and its critical to our business that we find ways to do so.
We recently added in person trainings at our plants, this ensures employees don't have the burden of traveling to other locations. This includes making those in person training offerings available on 2nd, 3rd, weekend shifts as needed.
This past year we also launched "kiosk centers" at 2 different locations, as a pilot program to test out. These have a set number of tablets and computer kiosks set up so that employees can access them as needed. When they are open they can go in use the computers to log in and take on demand courses, look up benefit information, Look up internal company communication or internal job boards, sign up for courses etc.
Front-line employees, who often work in environments with limited computer access, can benefit from various learning and development initiatives tailored to their needs.
Some effective approaches include:
On-site Training Sessions: Conducting on-site training sessions for specific topics such as new product launches, safety protocols, and leadership development
Tailored Learning Management Systems (LMS): Utilizing LMS platforms designed for front-line workers, which offer features like gamification, adaptive learning paths, and social learning elements
Experiential Learning with AR Technology: Integrating augmented reality (AR) technology to provide immersive and interactive learning experiences within the work environment, leading to increased engagement and improved performance
Microlearning: Implementing microlearning, which delivers content in small, easily consumable chunks, often in a rich media format and designed for on-the-job application
Training starts by identifying specific business needs or addressing pertinent problem statements. Frontline workers, busy in production tasks, can access training from various applications designed to nudge them of upcoming training modules through games, self learning, messages etc. In addition to this, quarterly outbound training initiatives foster team collaboration, and deliver key messages through interactive games.
E-Learning yes, but also access to a coaching platform for those that demonstrate an interest in growing their roles, and we use tools like SDI and Insights to give a language to discuss team and individual approaches to situations.