Industry: Home Improvement Retailer
Scope of Services and Products: Retailer for over 40,000 home improvement items targeted to the do-it-yourself and professional markets
Estimated Number of Employees: 290,000
Year e-Learning Introduced: 2001
Offices and Locations: 1500+ stores in U.S., Canada, and Mexico
Actual 2001 Revenues: US $53.6 billion
Website: www.homedepot.com
Number of e-Learning Programs in Entire Curriculum: 14
The Home Depot is the world’s largest home improvement retailer and second largest retailer in the United States. HomeDepot targets the do-it-yourself, and professional markets with a wide range of products, including lumber, building materials, floor and wall coverings, plumbing, gardening supplies, hardware, paint, and appliances. In addition to over 40,000 commercial products, The Home Depot also owns over 50EXPO Design Center stores with showrooms featuring bath, kitchen, and lighting products.
With over 290,000 employees in 1,500+ stores throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico, a new Home Depot opens every 43 hours. This massive expansion coupled with a forever challenging, retail employee turnover rate, forced The Home Depot to re-evaluate its traditional instructor-led training model. Also because of the high turnover rate, The Home Deport needed to ensure that its sales floors continued to be safe environments for associates and customers.
Additionally, The Home Depot is required to adhere to several safety and hazard regulations set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) as part of its daily safety and operations. One OSHA regulation with which The Home Depot has to comply relates to safe forklift operations. The Home Depot has trained over 90,000 store forklift operators in safety regulations. Then, every year, The Home Depot chooses to re-certify its forklift operators.
The Home Depot selected an e-learning approach to:
Quickly train new sales associates on store safety and operations
Provide a safe work environment for associates and customers
Allow for flexible scheduling of sales associates on the floor in order to maintain high utilization
Standardize training content for 290,000 associates in over 1,500 stores.
The Home Depot’s response to these challenges is an eight-hour blended learning program for initial certification and a three-hour blended re-certification learning program. In both cases, the e-learning portion of the program can be completed at the learner’s own pace without interfering with their sales floor utilization.
The Home Depot faced several challenges in complying with the OSHA safety standard using its former instructor-led training model. The most immediate issues were cost and quality of training.
A subject matter expert from the field typically conducted the training. This meant that the company incurred an instructor cost as well as lost revenue because the instructor and associates were not working with customers. Also, the large associate population needing training, coupled with the high employee turnover rate, meant scheduling a substantial number of training sessions throughout the year. However, they were training and re-training 90,000 employees with a nonstandardized curriculum. Therefore, learning largely depended on store subject matter experts’ knowledge of standards and their teaching style.
The solution to these challenges was the Forklift Safety Course, a blended learning program. This approach allowed The Home Depot to standardize course content and delivery for each of its employees in all 1,500 stores. It also allowed them to maintain coverage on the sales floor by having the store human resources manager plan training times around employee’s schedules when possible.
With the e-learning solution, The Home Depot cut its dependence on instructors in half. Therefore, they lowered expenses due to instructor cost and increased coverage on the sales floor. In addition, since the training was available at all times, new employees had on-demand access to the same training as veteran staff.
Essentially, this blended learning approach reduced costs and increased quality and accessibility.
Deliver OSHA forklift safety requirements to over 90,000 associates with 100 percent compliance
Lower cost of training by decreasing the number of total instructor hours, while maintaining coverage on the sales floor.
Train and certify new associates in forklift safety in a cost-effective and timely manner while facing high employee turn over rates.
The Home Depot set high standards to introduce e-learning to their associates. They invested hundreds of development hours for each finished hour because they wanted to make the initial e-learning experience positive for a large audience and spark enthusiasm for future e-learning. To meet the objective of developing on-demand, standardized training, the forklift safety program contains two learning components—self-paced e-learning and hands-on coaching.
The first component is a four hour e-learning course that media production and programming staff from the information systems department designed in Macromedia Flash and 3D Max. By using 3D technology, the designers had complete control over the environment and could easily make virtual adjustments to create a uniform store environment. In addition, it allowed The Home Depot to start a virtual store library that could be re-used for other training. Instructional designers from the human resources organization developed the course content, which covers:
Safety inspection of a forklift
Types of forklifts and selection criteria
Setting up barriers
General education about operating a forklift safely
Subject matter experts from the field and safety department then reviewed and approved all content.
To complete the e-learning component, the learners take an assessment on the course content. During this phase if learners answer a question incorrectly, they are taken back to the topic in the courseware. After reviewing the course topic, they are returned to the assessment where they can answer a similar question again. Once they successfully complete this assessment, they can move on to the second part of the program.
In the second component, learners complete a four-hour hands-on coaching course. They work with subject matter experts on the floor applying safety theory to practical scenarios.
A custom-developed, Java-based, learning management system tracks completion results. The human resources manager then pulls status reports from the system to track the progress of individual associates and to allot more training time as needed. These reports can be used for competency verification during OSHA inspections.
Macromedia Flash
3D Max
Java-based learning management system
As a condition of their employment, any associate who will operate a forklift is required to take this course. The store human resources managers monitor completion of the role-based curriculum. They work with the store scheduler to arrange specific times for associates to complete the training program.
All training is completed on-site. Though initially each store was annually scheduled to receive one computer dedicated to e-learning over the next two to three years, demand for, and the success of e-learning courses, sped deployment. Within the first year, The Home Depot issued each store up to three PCs dedicated to learning.
Within each store, the course is downloaded from the WAN to each store LAN using a proprietary caching mechanism. Using this controlled LAN-based learning environment allows The Home Depot to use higher end production value media and to easily update course content. Therefore, if content is revised and posted to the WAN, each store LAN will automatically be updated the next time a user launches the course. Associates then work through the four-hour e-learning course at their own pace. In addition, book marking functionality allows learners to leave the course at any time and pick up where they left off when they begin their next training session.
Once the course is completed, the human resources manager pulls a report that states which associates have met compliance regulations by completing the course. Another report provides information on those associates who still need to be scheduled to complete the course.
To promote e-learning, The Home Depot plans to broadcast short commercials on their internal video channel to make all associates aware of e-learning opportunities. This would encourage associates to take steps toward their professional development and be proactive in meeting OSHA standards for compliance.
All sales associates are assigned a role-based curriculum that requires them to complete specific courses within a specified timeframe.
Each store has a full-time human resources manager who monitors associates’ professional development and coordinates training sessions with the store scheduler.
The Home Depot delivered forklift training to more than 90,000 forklift operators, achieving 100 percent compliance with OSHA regulations in a little over one year. With their blended learning training program, The Home Depot made sales floors safer for employees and customers, as well as saving over 60,000 instructor hours and creating tens of millions of dollars in top line revenue opportunity. Since instituting the program, they have maintained annual compliance with lift truck certification, exceeding OSHA’s requirement that forklift operators complete this training every two years.
In addition, an unanticipated benefit of the program is that its popularity has lead to improvements in the stores’ operations processes. At the time that The Home Depot was implementing this new courseware, it was also working towards another goal— moving most inventory management tasks to the evening. By instituting the e-learning program, The Home Depot can offer convenient training times that align with the associates’ evening work schedule, saving trainers valuable sales hours when stores are open to customers. In addition, the training program has enabled The Home Depot to limit most of its forklift operations to nighttime hours, so each morning stores look as if they are ready for a “grand opening.”
Learners tackle complex subjects at their own pace during regular work hours, day or night.
"…they should provide more training classes like this one."
"…it makes getting a forklift license more efficient…no more waiting for a trainer and a class to be scheduled."
"…the course has given me the confidence to carry out the necessary forklift operation and serve the customer better."
Purpose:
To train and certify 90,000 associates on forklift operations and OSHA forklift safety procedures in a cost- effective and timely manner
To standardize course content and course delivery so that it is available for new hires and for re-certification
Program Structure: Program is structured as a two-part blended learning experience with four hours of self-paced e-learning on in-store PCs. Then after successfully completing an assessment, learners work with subject matter experts for four-hour, hands-on instruction to apply safety theory to practical scenarios.
Number of Learning Hours per Learner: 8
Total Number of Hours of Learning in the Program: 8
Number of Learners:
90,000
Completion Requirements:
Complete four hours of self-paced e-learning about forklift safety operations and OSHA standards
Successfully complete assessment
Complete four hours of hands-on instruction with a coach
A learning management system tracks progress on individual associates so that reports can be used for competency verification during OSHA inspections
Media and Tools:
Macromedia Flash
3D Max
Deployment Mechanism:
Store PCs dedicated to learning
Java-based learning management system
Build Executive Support
The Home Depot e-Learning Team rapidly built support for e-learning among senior management by using video tapes to capture the e-learning experience and provide concrete examples in a user-friendly format.
Using Versatile Technology
Creation of a virtual 3D store rather than using photography established accurate and consistent store settings that were easily developed into bandwidth friendly courseware using Macromedia Flash.
Create Audience Acceptance
The Forklift Safety Course gained profound audience acceptance because The Home Depot set the initial production mark high by allocating ample funds and devoting hundreds of production hours to the project.