Merger mania and the reality of deregulation are fueling employee training needs among today's energy companies. Many of the nation's largest utilities, including TXU, Southern Company, Duke, FPL, XcelEnergy and Key Span, are tapping Apogee Interactive's e-learning system to cost-effectively meet escalating training requirements during these transitional times.
With "customer electricity choice" mandated for January 2002 in Texas, TXU must prepare 5,500 employees for deregulation. "We're looking to Internet-based training to help increase our training offerings to employees without necessarily increasing their time away from their jobs or our training costs," said Fred Posey, manager of quality improvement and employee development for TXU. The utility has selected Apogee's "Study-Center.com" as its first source for Web-based courses. Subjects range from the fundamentals of electricity to economic decision making. "Our employees like having the freedom to choose when they sign on to take the course and the fact that they don't have to leave their work stations," Posey said.
For companies using e-learning, it's cheaper and faster than classroom training, and it's growing in popularity. One industry researcher states employees can accomplish five times the learning for one-third the cost. Merrill Lynch estimates that corporate investments in e-learning will leap from $1.1 billion in 1999 to $11.4 billion in 2003.
Apogee's Study-Center.com offers a comprehensive library of competency-based workforce development programs that utilize pre- and post-testing and provide supervisory reports of trainee activity. Course architecture utilizes techniques to maintain interest including interactive graphics, automatic bookmarks enabling easy log ons and log offs and the ability to jump ahead, re-read or test-out of subjects.
"Our courses are based upon years of industry experience and established instructional design. But more importantly our system has been proven to impact job performance," said MG Jones, Ph.D., dean of Apogee's Study-Center.com. "The economics of Study-Center.com also enable you to train employees in multiple subjects at a fraction of the cost of using classroom facilities and instructors," she added. Apogee courses include administrative and management development; marketing, sales and customer service; energy technology applications and distributed generation; power quality and power distribution; industry deregulation; and others.
Apogee's clients include all of the major U.S. investor-owned utilities and many of the country's cooperatives and municipal systems. Apogee is a leading provider of innovative e-business products and services including Study-Center.com, Web-site content and hosting, an Internet-based auction for peak load management, business simulations and consulting.
