Digitalizing Corporate Training Programs

Augie Schulke, EVP & CHRO, Veolia North America

Augie Schulke, EVP & CHRO, Veolia North America

A team of visionary human resources leaders at the Veolia group is bringing educational and training services into the 21st Century for a company that employs more than 169,000 people in locations across the globe, recognizing that bringing the company’s workforce together means tossing out the ways things have been done in the past.

“We realized that in a society that is rapidly changing, where the baby boomer generation is giving way to digitally-minded millennial, we needed to develop a system that operates in real time and gives our employees the ability to learn and grow anywhere, anytime,” said Augie Schulke, EVP & CHRO for Veolia North America (VNA), the U.S.-based division for the international environmental services provider. “In a company like ours with multiple divisions and locations, we can’t afford to continue operating in silos where each location has their own way of doing things. We need to maintain consistent company communication and system coordination.”

With an eye toward attracting and retaining young talent that will position the company for continued growth in an increasingly competitive recruiting environment, Veolia has launched a leading-edge learning management system (LMS) that will bring its employees the latest digital-platform educational coursework. The system will allow employees to grow professionally while eliminating the shortcomings in traditional HR learning systems.

The LMS being implemented by Veolia is one of the most advanced in the market today, with digital options for training programs on mobile and social media platforms, as well as machine learning applications that will allow the system to adjust and adapt to changing realities within the company’s employee base.

The system will allow employees to grow professionally while eliminating the shortcomings in traditional HR learning systems

The LMS provides software for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting and delivery of educational courses for training programs. “At Veolia, it will serve as the ’hub’ for users to access all training content from vendors,” said Matt Chamberlain, Vice President of Talent Acquisition and Onboarding.

“The vision is for the system to provide a ‘one-stop shopping’ experience for employees,” Chamberlain said.

The system also provides tools that will allow the company to grow by eliminating inefficiencies in scheduling and tracking, as well as other benefits, including:

• Notification features that notify an employee when a certification is about to lapse, or an option for automatic registration for recertification

• Virtual classroom and virtual training options

• Content evaluations to assess actual learning and application for time and money invested in training

• Customer training tools

• Compliance reporting, both internal and external

• A job-specific training curriculum that would auto-register an employee for a series of job specific online classes upon hire or promotion

The system can also be used to support broader goals and objectives across the company, including a recently launched HR campaign to build employee engagement and enthusiasm behind the core mission of developing renewable resources. “The campaign, called #WeAreResourcers, is something that can be seamlessly integrated into the new LMS,” said Karri Konitzer, VNA Senior Director, Talent Development & Campus Veolia.

“We are providing our HR leaders, and all of our employees, with the world-class tools they need to change the narrative for their future, our future, and the future of our customers,” she said.