“We work with Corpedia to get advice on best practices and how other companies do things – based both on our industry and in general.”
– Anthony M. Tocco,
Chief Compliance Officer

Maintaining and Tracking 100% Training Completion with a Custom LMS and Courseware

Overview

Our client’s utility subsidiaries, Detroit Edison and MichCon, provide electric and gas utility services to more than three million residential, business, and industrial customers throughout Michigan. Together, DTE Energy and Corpedia developed a custom code of conduct training course to align with DTE Energy’s values and objectives. Corpedia then created a custom LMS to help DTE Energy monitor and track completion of training initiatives among their employees and unionized workforce.

Problem

In the highly-regulated energy industry, DTE Energy wanted to improve their efficiency and effectiveness in implementing, monitoring, and tracking of employee participation in their enterprise-wide, training program. It was important to the company that they establish a strong ‘tone from the top’ to communicate the importance of their code of conduct through efficient and complete ethics and compliance training.

Resolution

In 2005, Tocco was appointed to establish and lead DTE Energy’s newly formed compliance office. After a thorough review of the company’s current policies and procedures and industry best practices, Tocco decided to start from scratch and engaged Corpedia for direction and implementation. Corpedia created a custom LMS to help DTE Energy monitor and track completion of training initiatives. According to Tocco, “the learning management system is hosted by Corpedia but we have the ability to monitor internally. Our analyst monitors activity and performs appropriate follow-up when we are within the Code of Conduct training time period. This information is then reported to senior management and respective Board committees.”

Outcome

DTE Energy has maintained 100% training completion every year since implementation due to their ability to monitor and track completion through the custom LMS. Additionally, Corpedia’s custom courseware development process ensures that content and learning-aids are specific to their organization which received positive feedback from the DTE Energy board members.

Additional outcomes of DTE Energy’s implementation and training initiatives include:

• Conflicts of Interest and Disclosure Statement segues into training
• Relevant corporate policies are linked to throughout the course
• Better employee engagement through inclusion of case scenarios as a means to reinforce desired behaviors
• Employee and facility images give further ownership to employees

A Union Workforce Success Story

DTE Energy employs approximately five-thousand union workers who, prior to 2009, did not participate in mandatory code of conduct training. According to Tocco, the workers had a collective bargaining agreement and other employment standards and felt they were not under the auspice of DTE Energy’s Code of Conduct. Tocco felt differently, and after learning that other utility companies in the energy industry required their union workforce to undergo mandatory training, he pitched the notion of mandatory code of conduct training for union workers to his CEO and upper management who agreed.

Tocco, along with representatives from Legal, Ethics and HR, then engaged in a conversation with union leadership, focusing on the importance of educating all employees and the details of a mandatory training process. Tocco further explained, “we gave [union leadership] the opportunity to tell us if there was anything in the training that was inconsistent with their collective bargaining agreement. We mutually came to an agreement and have since successfully trained 100% of our union and non-union workers.”