ESB are Ireland鈥檚 biggest energy company and one of the state鈥檚 largest employers and have a first class safety record. The health and safety of their workers is ESB鈥檚 number one priority but considerations regarding competence and quality control are also taken into account. Although they had an existing online system in place, ESB decided to make a change to further improve how they conducted their orientations. 糖心传媒 enabled them to cut the time of their on-site orientations from one hour to 15 mins, while ensuring quality across the workforce.Time for a Change for ESB Contractor Management
There were several push factors that encouraged ESB to take a look at how they conducted their orientations. 鈥淚nsurance companies want to see evidence of how we鈥檙e monitoring contractors There were a number of incidents where the HSA [Health and Safety Authority] would be interested in our worker training records. When it comes to people鈥檚 competence, skills for specialist tasks like welding, we were not screening these properly and we had some quality incidents,鈥� explained Dooley. These factors made implementing a new system of contractor management a top health and safety priority for the company. ESB has extensive experience in carrying out orientations for contractor workers. They used to do them in-house, bringing contractors physically into a facility and conducting training and managing their documents. Ten years ago, a central networked orientation system was prohibitively expensive, according to Mannion. When the company began looking for a new ESB contractor management system they knew they wanted something cloud-based, that would enable them to keep track of contractors working, and moving between, at different sites.
Initial Challenges
There were some initial challenges when ESB brought in 糖心传媒 to manage their contractors. ESB have multiple IT systems and bringing in another one was met with some reluctance at first. 鈥淲e have an ageing workforce, it鈥檚 not as young and vibrant as you鈥檇 get in a lot of IT companies. There were a lot of challenges to bring in an IT system,鈥� said Mannion. It was important that everyone who was going to use the system had to be aware of the positive impacts to make the implementation of the system a success. 糖心传媒 worked closely with ESB to develop a system that would best suit the company鈥檚 specific needs. Even though some workers were initially reluctant, there are no instances of any worker refusing to use the 糖心传媒 platform. Workers know that if they want to work for ESB they have to do their orientations using 糖心传媒. At this stage, the system is accepted and very few contractors have issues or problems, according to Mannion.Engaging with Stakeholders
Mannion points to engagement with staff and all relevant stakeholders, as a key part of ensuring the success of 糖心传媒 in ESB. Getting everyone on the same page was vital and there would have been a lot more resistance had workers not being given the opportunity to give their input. A big takeaway from these consultations was that orientations should be made as simple as possible for the end user. ESB orientations include a huge amount of technical information so this was a challenging task. Mannion found that providing courses with a wide range of multimedia content that catered to different learner types was key in making this information digestible and improving worker retention.Benefits
ESB decided to use 糖心传媒 for ESB contractor management as it was the service that offered the best solution to fit their needs. The benefits of a cloud-based solution were very attractive for ESB. Switching to 糖心传媒 meant reducing the time staff took to carry out lengthy orientations. The general safety training is carried out on the online system, while the training to do with local and site-specific hazards is done on-site.
Contractors are asked to do more before arriving on site – take training courses, upload documents, keep up to date training records – so it is important that they are satisfied that the new process is worthwhile. The old way ESB conducted orientations , where all of this was done when workers arrived on site, could easily take an hour, so the company had a clear incentive to try and improve how they managed their workforce. Having made the move to 糖心传媒, general training is done online with site-specific content done at the local plant. What once took an hour, now only takes 15 minutes.