The demographic shift to a part-time workforce in FY2014 resulted in an increase in newly hired employees and the need to provide Orientation for New Employees (O.N.E.) training for over 80,000 employees in a more efficient manner. Accordingly, more emphasis was placed on the use of blended learning curriculum and the usage of technology-based methods such as virtual classroom instructor-led training and eLearning.
In FY2014, the Postal Service trained more than 131,000 employees using the virtual classroom delivery method, an increase of 78 percent over the prior year. For eLearning, we nearly doubled from 1.1 million to 2.1 million total learning completion hours. The Postal Service’s use of technology-based learning at 33 percent was comparable to the industry best practice of 38.7 percent.
In addition to the orientation program, we provided position-specific training to over 31,000 city carriers; 17,000 rural carriers; 68,000 Postal Support Employees and 12,000 other part-time employees. In order to improve the customer retail experience, we redesigned, developed and delivered blended learning curricular to more than 5,600 sales and services associates. We also trained over 10,000 sales and services associates on the new Advancing the Retail Customer Experience and Performing Lobby Assistance courses.
We redesigned and implemented the Vehicle Maintenance training program and reduced the need for technicians to travel to the National Center for Employee Development in Norman, Oklahoma. This resident-based classroom training experience was streamlined from 27 days to 13 days onsite training. Vehicle Maintenance technicians received training at their local facility using virtual classroom, handheld mobile devices and “bug” boxes (diagnostic error simulators) to create effective experiential learning. This is a key innovation for the Postal Service to transition classroom training to the employees’ workplace at the moment of need.
All these redesigned training programs and the increased use of blended learning technology made training more accessible and more cost-effective and as a result empowered our employees to deliver more impactful business results.
