Quick facts about Ecolean:
- Industry: Packaging
- HQ: Helsingborg, Sweden
- Established: 1996
- Web: www.ecolean.com
Challenge
Ecolean manufactures filling machines and flexible lightweight packages for liquid food. The company must train 500 employees across the world, fulfilling strategic goals around developing people and sustainability.
The company wanted to create a global digital academy with an easy-to-use, comprehensive learning platform that could evolve to support a learning culture and be offered to customers.
“Learn365 has exceeded our expectations. It makes every working day easier for our employees, our experts and the learning team. It’s proving to be a smooth, efficient and cost-effective way to deliver training and share knowledge right across the company. And in the future, it will embed learning into the way we work.”
Katrin Bergmark, Manager
Solution
Ecolean carries out specialist manufacturing and is committed to investing in the development of its workforce.
Katrin Bergmark, Manager, Ecolean Academy explains,
“Our technical and sales staff are spread across the world and require specialist training. Our goal is to develop all employees and make them feel they really belong here. We needed a fully-featured, flexible modern learning platform that could evolve as we deliver digital learning to our employees and eventually to customers.”
The team started to research the market to find the right solution. Katrin Bergmark comments,
“The learning team is small, so we were looking for a platform that was very easy to administer and would save us time through automation. It needed to give us control and provide an overview of learning throughout Ecolean.”
Of the four products chosen to evaluate further, Learn365 emerged as the clear favorite. Katrin Bergmark explains,
“Learn365 has a great balance of strong features while also being very easy to use. We also have experience using SharePoint which was another major plus.”
Critically, using Learn365 meant that the team could get up and running quickly, and did not require any customization. Katrin Bergmark shares,
“Once we had learnt how to use Learn365, installing the platform was quick and straightforward. We launched the Ecolean Academy to 450 blue and white-collar employees in December 2019.”
Results
Today, Learn365 is being used extensively across the globe. Most employees access Learn365 directly through their browser, although more are starting to use the mobile app. There are now over 100 courses and recordings of learning events in multiple formats.
Katrin Bergmark happily reports,
“The flexibility of Learn365 allows us to test and mix different learning formats, from Microsoft Office files to videos to SCORM packages and even registrations for classroom training. We supported our sales staff’s use of Salesforce with a weekly learning webinar for 20 weeks. We then consolidated these into three large courses. Learn365 has worked really well!”
Learning within the Ecolean Academy covers multiple topics. Katrin Bergmark comments,
“Initially we focused on mandatory courses, but now we offer non-mandatory courses. We also establish a global onboarding program where new employees get access to courses on their first day. Learn365 has made onboarding so much smoother for everybody.”
Currently, almost all course material is produced internally with the learning team collaborating with a network of subject matter experts, focusing on those who have specialist technical knowledge relating to Ecolean’s machinery and core processes. Over time, the team plans to leverage Learn365’s ease of use so experts create courses themselves, allowing Learn365 to scale into a true knowledge-sharing platform with a democratized content strategy.
“Learn365 is allowing us to develop our employees in a much more structured way. They know which courses are available and our experts have a highly effective platform to quickly share knowledge right across Ecolean.”
Katrin Bergmark, Manager
Learn365 is proving to be more than just a learning platform, contributing to the company’s strategic objectives, and providing community support during COVID-19. Katrin Bergmark comments, “It was great that Learn365 was in place and being used before the pandemic showed up.”
Ecolean also has a strong sustainability focus and Learn365 is helping the company realize its sustainability goals. Katrin Bergmark explains,
“Training is an important part of our sustainability thinking. The savings we make through extending digital learning contribute to our sustainability reporting, both on our environmental commitments, as well as supporting people goals around work-life balance and development.”
Learn365 also supports ISO 9001 and 14001 quality accreditations where Ecolean must demonstrate clear training processes and tracking. Learn365’s integrated analytics and reporting tools also help to show compliance with legal and regulatory requirements around health and safety.
Katrin Bergmark attributes part of the success of the platform to a good relationship with the Learn365 team:
“We always get great support from the consultants. The online chat also works really well as we always get quick replies for more basic questions.”
Although the learning team regards it as still being early days for the Ecolean Academy, the team is seeing deeper changes in learner behavior.
“More and more people are starting to ask whether we have learning content on a particular topic or enrolling themselves on courses, which is a great advance.”
Katrin Bergmark, Manager
Future
Going forwards the learning team plans to extend the use of Learn365, adding more course material and continuing to unlock features such as certification.
“We have many courses still to launch, including some produced externally. We also want to extend the reporting on Learn365 by importing local internal and external course completions – this will give us a better overview of each employees’ learning development.”
Katrin Bergmark, Manager
Probably the most radical plan is to launch the Ecolean Academy externally. Katrin Bergmark confirms
“We are excited about using Learn365 directly with our customers to ensure they have the knowledge they need when working with our systems.”
One of the strengths of Learn365 is that it continues to evolve. Katrin Bergmark remarks
“It’s great we can send suggestions for improvements. Learn365 seems to listen to their customers! And for each release, I’m excited to read about what’s new”.
As Learn365 and the Ecolean Academy evolve, the team believes learning will become an everyday activity for employees. Karni Bergmark reports,
“Learn365 is starting to help us create a learning culture at Ecolean. We want every single employee to think ‘what can I learn today’ and actively go to the learning platform to develop, grow and share knowledge with others. We want learning to be a natural part of their work life.”
About
Ecolean manufactures filling machines and flexible lightweight packages for liquid food. The company employees 500 people with manufacturing and customer operations located around the world.