FordDirect Owns Working Together with Litmos for Online Training
FordDirect firmly believes that good culture equals good work. Their people relationships are crucial as they work as trusted advisors to Ford Motor Company and Ford and Lincoln Dealers. Within FordDirect’s strategic organization, “Own working together” is one of their core values; so, if they’re good at working together, they’re going to have better outcomes.
FordDirect has experienced a lot of change and growth in the past eighteen months. Previously, their organization had no digital learning and all training was instructor-led and delivered in-person. Their learning records were tracked on paper, and all reporting was done manually – this was particularly challenging for their compliance needs.
When searching for a digital solution, the L&D team at FordDirect wanted a cloud-based training platform that would be easy to implement and would gain stakeholder support in its adoption. They found Litmos Training offered the right solution for this and through their research and selection process, had additional appealing functionality, such as checklists and the ability to configure learning.
Initially, their L&D team needed to influence the wider organization that a digital learning program was an appropriate solution; culturally, employees were used to training being delivered live, in the classroom. They found that compliance training was the easiest way to break through these expectations. Because compliance training is mandatory and requires meticulous record-keeping, digital learning was appealing in that they could keep a digital record versus paper, automatically send notifications and reminders, and run quick reports as needed. Not to mention, the flexibility of a digital format made it easier for employees to complete their requirements according to their schedule and pace. Despite the change in format, FordDirect still attained one hundred percent compliance in their first year adopting digital learning for required training.
Following this success, other teams began to see the possibilities. FordDirect’s L&D team was able to implement the next phase of their digital learning strategy: to transition the L&D team into a learning services provider within their organization. This meant that employees from other areas of the organization, having seen the ease, effectiveness, and eager adoption of digital learning, were now providing them with learning requests to develop different kinds of training.
With 300+ employees, some of FordDirect’s workforce is regionally based and operate remotely across the USA; transitioning to offering digital learning was a necessary step and put them way ahead of the curve when the unexpected happened. The implementation and adoption of an online learning platform prepared them to support the transition to a fully remote workforce at the onset of the pandemic. Litmos Training enabled them to communicate COVID-19 policies, procedures, and best practices easily and effectively. This made all the difference in an already difficult and uncertain time.
We had extremely high adoption of professional development programs during our first year, with over 5,000 course completions in Litmos. This trend has continued through 2021. The transformation from in-person to digital learning was extremely timely and set us up for success in the era of COVID-19.”
~ Tara Rase, Director, Organization Learning at FordDirect
Read the full FordDirect case study.
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