Third-Largest Energy Company in the United States
Situation
An international, integrated energy company headquartered in Houston, Texas, needed an outside training resource. Operating in more than 40 countries, it is the third-largest energy company in the United States with approximately 38,400 employees worldwide. It is known worldwide for its technological expertise in deepwater exploration and production, reservoir management and exploitation and 3-D seismic technology.
The Houston based legal department, which serves their business services division boasts more than 150 employees and supports the business service sectors of finance, IT and administration within the global company. With several employees who had varying degrees of skills with their computer and technical knowledge, a comprehensive program needed to be created to address each person’s experience level and increase their performance. The energy company had looked for an outside training resource and found Solo Learning to be the most professional and experienced.
Analysis
Since attorneys generally do not have time to sit in a classroom, their legal assistants need to be experts in all essential software programs to help simplify the attorney’s duties. Since being skilled with certain software types is crucial, the organization wanted to give each employee the crucial tools necessary to do their job most proficiently.
It was determined that the class schedule would include Microsoft products like Excel, Word and PowerPoint. The attorney’s personal assistants needed to be able to use Excel to create graphs and charts, generate PowerPoint presentations and use Word to generate letters and other documents. All classes were offered to the legal assistants, as well as the additional support staff. The sessions were targeted at more than 35 legal assistants for specific software training classes.
Results
In less than three months, Solo Learning was able to customize a learning plan to take the varying levels of knowledge from each staff and fill in skills gaps, as they needed. After completing the courses, the legal assistants became more effective for the attorneys while court was in session. A significant benefit was the new abilities of the legal assistants to create PowerPoint presentations for the attorneys used during their presentations in the courtroom. Several employees benefited from the beginners and intermediate Excel classes offered. Equally beneficial to an executive was the subscription to DigitalQRCSM, for help using pivot tables in Excel. The fast and practical web-based tool designed by Solo Learning allows users to customize the content by creating step-by-step instructions, learn shortcuts and gather tips in a quick reference card (QRC) format. The learning sessions resulted in each staff member getting up to the same level of expertise as their co-workers, thus increasing productivity, motivation and raising morale.
