An Oil and Gas Leader Modernized and Scaled Field Training Through Managed Learning Services

An Oil and Gas Leader Modernized and Scaled Field Training Through Managed Learning Services

With so much riding on high-risk technician training, an energy giant turns to Clarity Consultants to design and develop highly impactful and engaging learning programs that expedite competency and prioritize safety.

“When you can take training from six hours down to three hours, and have it be more effective and engaging, that is significant savings across a company of our size. The quality of the training has gone up, while the cost of delivery has gone down.” -Training and Competency Advisor at a large oil and gas company

The Problem to Solve

Outdated content from three different business lines needed to be harmonized and modernized. This required a significant overhaul to improve engagement and retention, ensuring rapid proficiency and a safer workplace through an engaging global training program.

Employee competence can mean the difference between someone heading home after a shift or heading to a hospital. When the stakes are so high, proven competency training is paramount. That’s all too clear for one oil and gas giant, whose integrated operations and facilities support the entire oil and gas value chain, from extraction to refining to sales. The training and competency advisor supports up to 20,000 technicians. It’s a high-stakes job, as a failure at one of these facilities can result in a catastrophic outcome.

“Our commitment is to make sure our people go home the way they came into work that day,” the advisor said. “That starts with making sure folks have the competencies to do their job safely and effectively.”

Training that didn’t engage today’s learners

Providing highly technical training to a global workforce is a complex and time-consuming process. The learning experiences of the company’s engineering leaders heavily influenced their training approach. As one of the organization’s key experts on learning and development (L&D), the advisor’s first hurdle was to update the organization’s mindset to recognize the latest in learning science.

Another factor was the company’s size. Because of its scale, the same material was being taught in at least three different ways across the organization. At the same time, the company attempted a “one-size-fits-all” training approach, delivering identical programs to both engineers and technicians despite their different roles and learning needs.

“In some places they overlapped, in other places there were gaps,” the advisor said. “There was also a lot of wasted energy and effort maintaining the different systems.”

In addition to consistency, they also had to contend with the industry-wide problem of dated training. Most of the organization’s training modules were 10 15 years old and lacked the instructional design to engage today’s learners, who are accustomed to instant, interactive communication.

“With this elevated level of interactivity, our training now delivers a truly world class experience” the advisor said.

Finding a top-tier team for a global enterprise

The organization required an enterprise-wide training program that was effective across multiple regions and languages. Buying an off-the-shelf solution was neither practical nor cost-effective at the scale of thousands of technicians per year, so the organization sought an alternative.

“We wanted to bring in somebody to develop training with sound instructional design that was interactive, spoke to today’s learner, and wasn’t tied to the past,” the advisor said.

The first step was to engage Clarity Consultants to determine what would be considered world-class for today’s technicians. Those discussions and their proof of concept snowballed into Clarity’s winning bid to help the organization harmonize and modernize its technician training.

Why Clarity? The team’s extensive experience across the service, consumer goods, energy, and oil and gas industries set them apart. Their Managed Learning Services, spanning instructional design through full development and delivery, are highly customized rather than off-the-shelf. The advisor ultimately selected Clarity Consultants for the exceptional expertise and depth of knowledge of its consultants.

One of those experts was brought in as Clarity’s Program Director (PD) for the project. Not only did Clarity’s PD bring a solid understanding of training that engages digital natives, but she is also a Certified Competency Assessor with a wealth of experience in managing large projects for this industry, as well as for this particular organization and its trainees.

The governance structure Clarity brings to the partnership helps [the organization] manage its budget. Since August of 2023, due to a track record of being on time and on budget, 20% of the budget has been spent to produce 20% of the program. Spending is under control.

A step-by-step guide to new learning deliverables

The oil and gas industry is heavily regulated, so the company is responsible to governing bodies, shareholders, as well as employees and communities. Meeting all regulatory requirements necessitated a complex set of competencies.

Clarity helped the organization overcome these challenges through a close collaborative relationship based on a shared understanding of success, expectations, and a clearly defined governance process.

They started with an in-depth analysis of the company’s existing programs and learning needs. For each piece of equipment or type of process, the Clarity team then followed a sequence of deliverables:

1. An independently verifiable competency framework based on their initial analysis.
2. A storyboard explaining the facts and concepts the learner will absorb and how they will understand them.
3. Highly engaging, media rich e-learning courses packaged for the company’s proprietary learning management system (LMS).
4. Finished Level 3.5 e-learning that significantly increased the learner’s engagement and retention.

Each stage in the process included collaboration with SMEs to ensure alignment before the Clarity team progressed to the next step.

Improving course effectiveness, for less

Clarity Consultants has developed over 50 e-learning courses as part of this multi-year project, with an additional 100 in the pipeline. The estimated scope of the enterprise training program will encompass approximately 500 courses.

The organization realized immediate benefits, including a 20% reduction in training time for the pilot course on pump fundamentals. At enterprise scale, this reduction in time spent on equipment fundamentals training translates into more than $2M in annual cost savings while improving learning effectiveness. Plus another $1M in savings across other curricula.

The advisor is also encouraged by early feedback from technicians. “This training is better than what we got at the sit-down school, because it focused on what I need to know as a technician,” they said.

Company leadership is also eager to move ahead, telling the advisor: “This is what we need. When can we get this done? Can we do it faster?” The answer from Clarity was “YES”!

Partnership begins and ends with a shared vision of success

When considering any kind of managed learning service approach to training, the advisor emphasizes the importance of individual efforts.

“This is a people business,” they said. “We’re in the business of raising the competency of our people. You need to have the right people engaged in the project to do that.”

That dedication is reflected on the other side of the table. Getting the organization’s teams aligned on the course methodology was a win in itself, and

Clarity continues to contribute multiple types of L&D expertise to this project, from the technical aspects of e-learning to engaging and interactive illustrations to ensuring each course maintains the correct tone.

“Whatever the initiative where we’ve engaged them, we’ve had great success with the people Clarity brought us.”

The organization also challenges the Clarity team to bring their best and to show “what’s possible” at every turn.

“Working with [the organization] is always exciting,” the Program Director said. “They are a high-performing culture, and it’s always a reminder to be on the top of our game in this partnership.”

When it comes to instructional design, the oil and gas giant is glad they called Clarity first.