Chief Learning Officer - December 2007 - (Page 75) As director of TenarisUniversity, Fabio Tonolini is charged with developing learning solutions to the critical challenges facing the university’s parent company, Tenaris, as it expands globally. Tenaris is a manufacturer and supplier of products and services used in the oil and gas industry. In the last five years, the company has evolved from a group of affiliated companies based in Italy, Argentina and Mexico to a single corporation with manufacturing centers and commercial offices spanning four continents. Recent expansions, including acquisitions in the United States, Romania and China, have increased the Tenaris presence to 20 countries, with more than 21,000 employees. To address the challenges of this growth and ensure uniform quality and processes, TenarisUniversity created the Industrial School in early 2006. The goals of the Industrial School are to support and diffuse a solid industrial culture within Tenaris, to build corporate identity by bringing students together to learn and network, and to teach the company’s propriety knowledge to a diverse population of students from all over the world in a uniform, systematic and consistent manner. “The diversity of the Tenaris workforce in terms of culture, language and work location is not only one of our greatest assets, it is also one of our greatest challenges,” Tonolini said. “We continue to struggle with finding the right mix between training at the global level and training offered at the regional level. Global training events help employees to see the big picture, learn from their colleagues in other countries and improve cross-cultural communication. However, regional events involve less time and travel, can be given in the participants’ home language and can deal with questions which are specific to the regional context.” The school has evolved a comprehensive academic program for meeting the training needs of the engineers Tenaris employs. The Industrial School is also in the process of defining training plans for each of the job tracks within the company, which will guide employees to the courses required as the individual gains expertise and responsibility on the job. All new hires are hired into a two-year Global Trainee program for their first job assignments. For engineers, this assignment is in one of the mills and also includes an Induction Camp, which brings together 60 young Tenaris professionals from around the world for a monthlong intensive company induction. Once an engineer completes the Global Trainee program, the Industrial School becomes responsible for his or her specialized training. He or she will begin at Level I with the Alignment Program, designed to align the basic knowledge of all engineers across the company, whether they work in Canada, Argentina, Romania, Japan, Italy or Mexico. The alignment program consists of an e-learning program that must be completed during work time, and one full week of Gold, Division 2 Fabio Tonolini, Director, TenarisUniversity tutorial classes containing case study discussions. The classroom portion is held at the TenarisUniversity Campus in Campana, Argentina. The Level II curriculum, taught between the third and sixth year after completing the Global Trainee program, is geared toward individuals with greater supervisory responsibility. Level III includes courses, seminars, lab assignments and external master’s or doctoral programs. Much of the training offered through the school is proprietary and taught by internal experts. “The modern-day steel industry is complex, specialized and requires knowledge that cannot be easily found,” Tonolini said. “We have had to develop our own programs from scratch and teach our own engineers to be instructors. This has been an extremely exhilarating and worthwhile process which has helped Tenaris to value its own knowledge assets and focus clearly on best practices.” TenarisUniversity’s Industrial School has made significant progress in a short span of time. As of September 2007, 100 percent of e-learning courses were set to be available. From September 2006 to June 2007, the Industrial School held its first four global events, drawing engineers from around the world. Feedback from each course has been strong, with overwhelmingly positive responses from students on the content and applicability. “Given our youth, we are still learning and carefully watching our indicators to measure results,” Tonolini said. “So far, we have focused on ensuring that our training content, both elearning and classroom, is high quality, that we have clear communication with company employees about training expectations, and that management values training and training is reflected and rewarded through the performance appraisal process. In the near future, our mechanisms to incorporate feedback from participants, supervisors and management on training effectiveness will be the key to continuously improve the results of our efforts.” – Mike Prokopeak, mikep@clomedia.com 75 December 2007 I www.clomedia.com I Chief Learning Officer http://www.clomedia.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.