Feature

Dow Chemical: The World's Biggest Classroom

Dow's Web-based training system serves a cast of thousands.

February 01, 2002 — CIO — In 2000, Dow Chemical fired 61 employees and took lesser disciplinary measures against another 540 for sending offensive e-mail over company servers. Not convinced that simply monitoring future employee e-mail was an appropriate response to the situation, then CEO Bill Stavropoulos (now chairman) mandated that all 40,000 Dow employees across 70 countries receive six hours of training on workplace respect and responsibility. This comprehensive response to a pervasive workplace problem would be prohibitively expensive for most global organizations. But Dow was able to do it by delivering the training through a Web-based training system, Learn@dow.now, launched a year prior.

Between October 2000 and February 2001, more than 40,000 employees took and passed the course?a two-hour overview and a four-hour class in their native language?and Dow saved nearly $2.7 million in the process. It saved $162,000 on manual record-keeping of class completions, $300,000 on classroom facilities and trainers, $1 million on course handouts and $1.2 million in salary savings, thanks to shorter training time. "What we’ve found is that it’s more effective and cheaper in many cases to deliver this kind of learning online," says Larry Washington, corporate vice president of environment, health and safety, human resources and public affairs and a 32-year veteran of Dow.

The system also delivers a tremendous payback in mergers and acquisitions, because rapid assimilation of new employees is key to unlocking the value in acquisitions. Manufacturing-site employees joining Dow must complete a three-part operations discipline course. By taking the training online, 11,000 employees so far have completed their course work in 30 percent of the time normally required in traditional classroom settings, and Dow has saved $2 million in training costs. Learn@dow.now has also been the platform for 27,000 employees completing the company’s environmental health and safety work processes courses, saving $6 million. Safety incidents have declined as a result, even as the number of Dow employees has grown 25 percent.

Dow spent $1.3 million on the e-learning system. In the first full year of operation, the company estimates the total cost benefits of Learn@dow.now at $30 million?$844,279 saved on manual record-keeping, $3.1 million on training delivery costs, $5.2 million in reduced class materials and $20.8 million on salaries (with Web-based training requiring 40 percent to 60 percent less time than its classroom equivalent).

But it wasn’t simply cost savings or convenience that wowed CIO’s Enterprise Value Awards judges enough to unanimously declare Learn@dow.now a winner. It was the strength of Dow’s commitment to its e-learning venture. When it was launched, Learn@dow.now offered 15 course titles. By the end of its first year, the company was delivering 98 course titles and had recorded 24,492 course completions. In 2000, the system was offering 426 course options and boasted 208,464 completions. "What won them the award was the scale of the system," explains judge John Glaser, vice president and CIO of Partners HealthCare System in Boston. "The sheer number of classes that they’ve offered and the number of people that have been trained are remarkable. This award reflected a significant focus and organizational commitment on the part of Dow to move this out to a very diverse and global workforce."