BP HEALTH, SAFETY AND THE ENVIRONMENT – CHALLENGE FOR LINE COMMUNICATIONS

Within the realms of Training and Development, a blended approach to learning has become the preferred route in many large organisations. A well-thought out blend of e-learning and face-to-face delivery gives maximum effectiveness, as well as tackling issues such as accessibility, scalability and cost effectiveness.

When reviewing their provision of Health, Safety and Environment training to some 10,000 future leaders across more than 40 countries, BP was faced with exactly these kinds of issues. Having quickly decided on a blended approach they commissioned London-based specialists LINE to develop the online elements.

The course is delivered in two streams. The first is the First Level Leader programme where learners go on a two-day face-to-face leadership session (which also has a leadership e-learning component). The second is for managers in the Health and Safety community where the Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) e-learning course provides a foundation element before employees attend two one-day sessions on Risk Assessment and Root Cause Analysis.

The e-learning element provides behavioural as well as procedural training covering BP's rigorous HSE policy. "At BP we want people to live safety every day and our target is to have zero incidents" says Aidan Hayes, Group Safety Director. "The reason we decided to deliver this training online is that it is an effective way of learning and also economical given the scale of what we are trying to do."

The course covers HSE policies as well as highlighting potential pitfalls by using case studies and aims to ensure the continuity of BP's industry leading record in HSE. Another member of BP's Safety Community declared the result "an example of compelling content…..we have met all of the objectives we originally intended and offered a new way to share lessons learned. It is better than I imagined it could be."

This approach to blended learning is starting to deliver on its promise. While the concept of blended learning started out as a bit of a reaction to the "e-is everything" mentality of a few years ago it is now being used to deliver a range of mission critical training.
Piers Lea, LINE's CEO, explains "the e-learning industry is maturing. In the past, the focus was admin-centred enterprise infrastructure. Having put this in place, businesses now realise they need to create learner-centric training that delivers real business results - high quality custom content is proven time and again the best way to address this.

"We have also seen a considerable growth in demand for custom learning solutions to deliver the HSE and induction training programmes, for example. As organisations understand the value of using a blend of styles and techniques to achieve learning aims and objectives I expect e-Learning to be increasingly used for these types of applications."

In contrast to early attempts at "blended" learning where the non-class based elements were very often haphazardly bolted on to existing courses, complete training needs are being addressed with a truly integrated approach to the learner's experience.

In support of this claim, LINE has recently delivered custom content in areas like HSE and Employee Induction for a number of global organisations, recently completing extensive induction courses for Volvo Cars and Reed Elsevier.

LINE's Piers Lea concludes, "It’s great to see all the talk about putting the learner first beginning to manifest itself in increasing demand for specific and bespoke content. Companies like BP understand the increased effectiveness of this blend of learning material for Business-Critical learning - the BP HSE course is a perfect example of global organisations hitting key business issues in a blended format which is aligned to their corporate strategy. The benefits are clear."

ENDS