Ashland

37% time savings every week on administrative work and reporting

What is your role at Ashland?

I am responsible for training for the entire company. That includes all disciplines: supply chain, production, projects, the mechanical department, the electrical department, environment, health & safety. When I started working here, there was only a legacy system and I discovered that only two people had access to it. This contained the qualifications of each employee. But no one had insight into the contents, so no one knew what their exact status was.

Why AG5?

Then I contacted AG5, because I wanted a new format where everyone could see their own profile. That serves to ensure they are responsible for the progress of their training certificates, keep their knowledge up to date, and also have insight into where they stand and what they need to grow within the company. This is such an open structure, it is very convenient for the users.

AG5 showed me in advance what the system looks like, and gave me names of companies already working with it. I called two of them to ask about their experiences and they were both positive.

How are things different now?

Our people can now independently check AG5 and see that soon one of their qualifications will expire. They’re pretty alert on that now, especially production people who have to fulfil certain qualifications such as a medical exam or a certificate for measuring gas if they are in our in-house fire control team. They are now taking action at their own initiative to register for training, because they get an email 3 months in advance when a qualification is about to expire. That email also contains the information of the training provider they need to contact for the training registration.

It saves a huge amount of work, both for me and for the employees. They can independently determine when to complete the training required to continue their certification.

Are you working with any other systems?

AG5 has created an LTI 1.3 link with eWorks, which has a very large library of standard e-learning modules. As a result, it is now a breeze for me to link such an eWorks e-learning module to a qualification in AG5.

In their AG5 skills passport, employees can see which e-learning they need to do, and clicking on it takes them directly to eWorks to get started. What is the most valuable feature?

If many employees completed the same training, say a whole team, then I can just select all these employees, or select an entire team, and then add that qualification for all of them in one go, instead of having to add the certification for each one individually like before. That was so easy! Bang, one second, and it’s registered for all of them.