Case Studies

2 "Work quickly and get things done. Value simplicity and cut red tape." These tenets make up another key value for Nikola, and delivering on employee demand for more training would be held to the same standards. "But we don't have a learning and development team—I'm really it," explains Robin. "So that meant focusing on who needs what and when; identifying and mapping exactly what the needs were for our different employees. Looking at the process of getting started, Makena, my Customer Success Manager (CSM) at OpenSesame, was wonderful in helping us get everything integrated." Doing more with less As Robin sees it, there's no one-size-fits-all approach to training that would make sense for Nikola. Yes, there are the essential requirements: "I oversee our compliance programs, so, of course it's important we have all the proper titles for compliance training. And we also have a lot of first-time managers, and they all need fundamental training and development." Wide-ranging learning needs Having a CSM that would work with our subject matter experts and not only myself to select trainings, that's key and critical." Robin Deibis, Nikola's Director of Employee Relations The added capacity of a customer success manager greatly improved the ability to get things done. "Having a CSM that would work with our subject matter experts and not only myself to select trainings, that's key and critical," recalls Robin. "It's easier for the safety specialist to work directly with an OpenSesame partner, or quality specialist, or subject matter expert, so they can get the answers they need quickly from a reliable source. That flexibility was huge." Implementing a new program is one thing, but scaling it is another. "Of course, refreshing training is a critical component of learning and development," says Robin. "You have to make sure you're going in and measuring what matters; seeing which courses have a high rate of completion and therefore might be due for a refresh, or looking at those courses that have a high rate of people vacating the training and making sure they're relevant for the people to which they're assigned." And it doesn't stop at just looking at the courses in isolation, Robin is quick to point out. "That's one other thing that I always look at: How do you create a curriculum and tie those trainings together so you have a cohesive program? Having our trainees give feedback here is really helpful, even if they're just giving a thumbs up or thumbs down. And it's great that every learner has a dashboard so they know exactly where they're at. That one-stop-shop is really critical for engagement." That last point has been especially underscored by recent economic turbulence. "With the latest supply chain disruptions," explains Robin, "our elearning platform and content has allowed us to repurpose idle time, investing it in training and development programs. We logged more than 20,000 training events for our employees in only 12 months—that's more than 10 training courses per employee, on average. Through our analytics, we've seen this translate into a 2-point increase in our employee engagement and experience scores! And we all know that those have a direct correlation to retention and engagement." But Nikola's learning and development opportunities need to account for tremendous diversity, too. "About half of our employees are dedicated to corporate services and about half to manufacturing," Robin explains. "The needs of a PhD and the needs of somebody doing a lot of work on the manufacturing floor are quite different. And about 60% of our workforce is ethnically diverse, often preferring to take training in their native language instead of just English. Finally, it turns out about a quarter of our critical learners are only doing their training on a personal mobile device. So flexibility was really key for us when it came to an elearning content provider." OpenSesame's expansive library of courses fit the bill, offering materials in a variety of formats and languages, covering topics from safety and compliance to leadership and mentoring. "Having the right courses was really critical to us," adds Robin. "Looking at the content, making sure it was relevant and appropriate for our learning population—we felt that OpenSesame had just a plethora of information and trainings that we could employ."

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