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BF Joy Career Enhancement Center: a WIN-WIN for Employees and Company Leaders

BF Joy, LLC specializes in installation and maintenance of underground infrastructure. The company has been in existence for over 100 years and has a history of implementing innovative solutions in the construction industry. The BF Joy core values state, “We consider learning, growing and developing as requirements to work at BF Joy”.

The Challenge

In the construction industry there is not enough skilled labor to meet all the job openings. Competition for skilled labor is fierce and employee turnover is very expensive for companies.

In the past employees had to come in on weekends and evenings to receive necessary safety training. One of the important OSHA trainings is 30 hours long.

Some vendors required that everyone on a job had certain safety training in order to be awarded the job. Limited reporting made this difficult to verify that everyone had completed the training.

Previously the company had tried to use Moodle as their Learning Management System, but it was not meeting their needs due to poor reporting and the inability to automate many routine tasks.

The Solution

CEO, Melissa Koehler, wanted to create a program that would offer employees a career path that would help them towards promotion.

The company created career pathways using the Totara Content Marketplace. These pathways align to the NCCER Curriculum (National Center for Construction Education and Research) and are based on specific roles in the company. BF Joy has created five distinct roles based on NCCER curriculum, plus the unique needs of their clients. The learning pathways provide a way to test out and assess everyone’s master skill sets. The LMS courses supplement on-the-job training. The gas crews utilize it the most to study for industry exams needed for certifications.

Totara gave employees freedom of choice from multiple learning pathways. Employees can opt to come in for face-to-face training or complete online coursework on their own schedule. The goal of the program is to promote from within and allows employees to work toward aspirational positions.

The company provided iPads for employees in the field to use. If there is a rain delay, employees can fill their time with online learning.

In the past, during bad weather employees would do large group face-to-face training. This still occurs, but now attendance is taken in the Totara seminar and quizzes are done online. The system also makes it easier to push out frequent microlearning to help keep safety at the forefront.

The Results
  • When the apprenticeship program was presented at a companywide meeting 100% of employees opted in.
  • At the writing of this case study, over 5,000 badges have been awarded. Employees report that this helps with intrinsic motivation and they like the recognition.

Below are additional Totara features the organization utilizes:

  • SSO (Single Sign On) with Office 365
  • Position and organizational hierarchies were created and utilized to automate multiple learning paths based on position and an employee’s chosen career path.
  • Course completion badges
  • Totara advanced reporting and analytics for the leadership team
  • Totara seminars to track face-to-face training
  • Totara quizzes to replace grading paper quizzes

 

“Totara has helped change the entire culture around learning”, Emily Huesman, Training Manager, BF Joy.

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