HEB Construction Ltd is known for building great civil infrastructures that last, they “strive to set the benchmark of respect in construction and be the partner of choice for their customers in a changing world”. It’s a lofty goal and it is no surprise that this sits very nicely with another HEB goal to “have staff think of working for HEB, as the best job they have ever had.” To achieve this HEB prioritise learning as part of their internal culture’s infrastructure.
Like many hands-on industries, the COVID-19 lockdown period presented a challenge, but true to their innovative approach to solving unforeseen problems, HEB saw this as an opportunity to grow the careers of their people, and improve the lives of their families and whānau. With the uncertainty of timeframes as we entered lockdown, HEB understood the benefit of developing their learning mindset with practical elearning that was available where and when their people needed it, to benefit not only the business, but also the wellbeing of its people.
They wanted training for their staff that would help them navigate the balance between working remotely and attending to everyday pressures of lockdown to enable them to stay emotionally well, productive, and ready to hit the ground running when back on site. The modules needed to help staff establish a productive framework for their day. They needed to cover everything from setting up a workstation, to prioritising their ongoing work schedules, to maintaining team morale and focus, as well as the equally important issues of making time for themselves, their families and whānau.
We at Smartwork Creative relish a challenge and this one presented some interesting ones. It needed to be fit for purpose by appealing to a company of people more used to working on site than from an office let alone the spare bedroom, but even more importantly, it needed to be delivered almost immediately. There was no time to write something from scratch with the usual rounds of consultation and waiting. While we had plenty of great content in our Skillpod elearning library, HEB was looking for a more customised approach.
So what do you do when the usual avenues are blocked? You collaborate.
HEB’s Learning & Development Manager, Lesley Southwick, provided the key points, along with material she had written, and we took the most relevant information from a selection of Skillpod modules and re-engineer them to meet the unique needs of HEB’s people.
Within a day we combined aspects of our ‘Workstation Set up’, ‘Working with Remote Teams’ and ‘Communication at Work’ modules, rewritten the interactives and scenarios to better reflect the realities HEB teams were facing, and wove in the new materials Lesley had provided.
The beauty of this process was that it had a nice reconstructive feeling for Erica, our Instructional Designer, as she had originally worked on the excellent leadership material provided by The NZ Marine Industry Association to build the Skillpod modules used in this project. We knew we were on to a winner – who better to provide the raw learning material than the ITO that oversees the apprenticeship training of hundreds of people in the boat-building industries across New Zealand?
Once Lesley and Erica had the appropriate learning cemented in place, the design was handed over to JJ, one of our designers, to work her magic with images, graphics and the branding guidelines provided by HEB. We recommend this approach to tailoring our modules, as it helps contextualise the learning to your staff, adds authenticity, and creates much greater buy-in.
By tailoring the existing selected Skillpod module learnings and bridging it with the bespoke material, Smartwork Creative was able to deliver the finished product in a fraction of the time it would take to build from scratch.
The quick turnaround from initial consultation to the module going live on their learning management system, meant HEB teams stayed productive across the country as the alert levels shifted. As always, HEB stayed ahead of the game. They were so pleased with the process and finished product, we are now following it up with a module for increasing one’s effectiveness at work as a people leader, and another on working effectively together as a team because for HEB the road to success is always under construction.
Get in touch to see how we can help you to bring a culture of learning to life at your place of work. Book a meeting with one of the friendly ‘Smarties’ on the Skillpod team.