Never stop learning - why it's easier with digital

Despite its commitment to continuous training, the energy industry has often struggled to offer its teams longer-term skill development opportunities.  

With the need for operational and regulatory requirements to take priority, companies have tended to focus their attention on closing immediate capability gaps - usually with short term training that can add up to little more than a tick-box exercise.

Now, e-learning is providing an effective solution, delivering a full suite of upstream training that spans the entire lifecycle. Users learn faster and remember more, while managers gain granular  insights enabling them to create highly tailored programmes to optimize performance.    

Better for learners

A career in the energy sector has always involved an element of uncertainty. Oil prices fluctuate, businesses adapt and today, a global energy transition is already evolving the projects and skillsets that industry needs.

Offering learners a platform to take control of their own learning has huge benefits for both the individual and the employer.

Accessible 24 hours a day from any device, learners can manage their training around operational imperatives, while the latest digital training techniques provide bite-sized, blended learning meaning a shorter, more frequent study period – allowing greater flexibility.

Some specialist e-learning companies have developed technology that enables the learner rather than the employer to own their training portfolio. This ensures that it stays with them as they move throughout their career – even when they move to a new employer. This provides an auditable record of their certified learning and access to a wealth of reference materials.

By exploring transferrable knowledge and skills that may be applied to future renewables or decommissioning projects, or deepening understanding with more complex courses, learners can advance their learning in a manner that is mutually beneficial with their employer.

Of course, before starting any training, learners and their employer want to know that it will be effective. Retention rates of classroom-based training are as low as 8-10%, while digital training methods increase retention by up to 60%. When it comes to the where and when of learning, individual learning preferences will always vary – that’s why a flexible model is needed to provide the maximum growth opportunity for every learner.

As well as providing training that allows learning at the optimal time and place, it is also important that training reflects how learners want to learn. Watching online videos is now the preferred method of learning among those aged 16-54 in the UK – and effective digital training platforms will feature a range of media including video to reinforce learning and engage users.

Better for Employers

Training used to be expensive and inefficient.

A reliance on classroom based-training and a one-and-done mindset to ensuring workers comply with the relevant regulations overlooked one important aspect. The need to measure and evaluate the training’s effectiveness on day-to-day operations.

Instead of building programmes that are built around tick-box exercises that meet the minimum standard to reduce risk, the central goal of all training must be measurable knowledge improvement and skill advancement.

The granular insights into individual development that digital training platforms provide has created a new level of planning capability for training. Combining these capabilities with easy-to-use interfaces, employers can now build drag and drop programmes [link to for employers page] built around team-wide and individual competency gaps while having constant access to training progress and assessment performance data.

This approach allows for a smart approach to both the planning and measurement of effective training programmes – not least by vastly improving efficiency.

Learners learn best when courses are made up of smaller, bite-sized pieces of content – in contrast, operational pressures mean that classroom-based training usually requires as much material as possible to be squeezed into sessions. Because digital training gives learners the flexibility to squeeze in smaller chunks while also naturally reinforcing information through feedback, the time to learn information is significantly less than traditional courses. In fact, real hands-on training time is 30-50% less which makes for a huge financial and time saving for operators.

Digital training’s potential to increase the scope of learning is also perfectly aligned to the necessary widening of safety-critical knowledge across oil and gas teams. Tailor-made upstream training platforms like Norwell EDGE provide teams with access to a wider range of material that can expand operational understanding beyond job role. When multi-disciplinary teams have an understanding across roles, the right decisions can be made faster and risk is mitigated.

As the findings from the Deepwater Horizon disaster highlighted, when someone is only competent in their specific area, critical safety discussions and decisions become much more difficult and crucial time is wasted.

Want to learn more?

Norwell EDGE is the digital training platform for the oil and gas industry. For a simple and flexible implementation, our modules can even be integrated with operators’ own internal training platforms. Request a demo today – or why not get in touch to request a free trial for your teams?