Train and retain

Train and retain

Mark Anderson is expanding the reach of eLogic Learning to companies across the globe.

COMPANIES by Dave Szymanski | Tampa Bay Editor

Forklift operation. Warehouse safety. Food handling. Quickbooks updates. Diversity training. The list of employee learning topics is long and ever-changing.

Unless your company has an in-house training department and training materials, you may have to go outside to keep up with changing job skills, government regulations and legal needs.

eLogic Learning is carving out a niche to meet that demand.

Housed in a modest, one-story, white stone office building shaded behind a shopping center in north Tampa, the seven-year-old, privately held company sends its people out to offer online and in-person corporate training for employees of companies in various industries along the Gulf Coast and beyond.

Its logo is a red lowercase 'e' with a stem and leaf coming out the top, like an apple on a teacher's desk.

eLogic sets up the training into a series of self-directed, Web-based classes. It writes the content, partners with content developers, buys it or leases the content.

Under the eLogic application, called an LMS, or Learning Management System, employees get emails reminding them of the classes they need to take. Unlike off-the-shelf programs, eLogic tailor-makes each application for each client. And the firm's staff also do in-person corporate training classes with clients at local hotels or meeting facilities.

The company is run by Mark Anderson, a CPA at Pricewaterhouse, longtime Tampa executive, self-described "operations guy" and part of the original management group of the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey team.

But you won't find a hockey stick in the corner of his office. You'll find a lot of books, a Gateway computer monitor and a Stan Musial baseball bat signed by his son and the members of the championship little league team Anderson coached. On his top shelf is the Boston Red Sox cap from that team.

He sees his role at work somewhat the same: Coaching talented employees and smart clients. He is involved in all client update meetings.

"We change the lives of the people behind the companies through training and development," Anderson says. "Individuals prosper through personal and professional growth. Clients have 100% surety that all of their employees have been trained in the appropriate areas so they can do their jobs."

The company has about 50 clients across the world - on every continent except the North and South Poles - and classes in 52 languages. Anderson is happy with the company's size with 23 employees.

"We will add people if we need to, but we don't want to be a large, employee-based company," he says. "There are efficiencies in what we do."

Getting involved

Anderson was skiing in Breckenridge, Co. in 2000 when he read an article on learning management systems.

Shortly thereafter, back in Tampa, his friend and business associate, Mitch Diamond, founded eLogic in 2001. Diamond was a former telecommunications vendor for the Lightning. Anderson served as chief operating officer of eLogic for a couple of years before becoming CEO in 2007.

Anderson calls employee training, "an emerging industry."

Large companies, like Accenture and IBM have been involved in employee training and consulting for a long time. But like other services, people do business not just with well-known companies, but with those they trust, Anderson says.

What is driving the corporate-training trend? The value of human capital, for companies to have the most skilled employees they can, Anderson says.

And there are legal concerns. A company that trains an employee and keeps a record of it can keep that employee safe and prove that it taught the employee the proper way to handle equipment and do the job.

The Gulf Coast has seen some multimillion-dollar employee-company settlements, involving companies such as MetLife, that could have been avoided if the companies could have proved there was a track record of training employees in proper procedures, thereby shifting the legal burden from company to employee, Anderson says.

eLogic has programmers and sales people on staff and it also has an industrial psychologist. The psychologist helps clients screen job applicants and also uses her knowledge of adult learning techniques to develop compelling online training content.

Serving clients

eLogic takes a team approach with clients. It does a monthly strategy call with each customer. Anderson sits in on each one.

"Customers have in-depth relationships with many individuals here," Anderson says. "I make the time to talk to clients."

The training is online, seen as text, pictures and videos, with multiple-choice questions. It is also in person, at a local hotel. The reason: People learn differently.

"Learning occurs in a lot of ways," Anderson says.

The training needs depend on the client. For example, one client, PODS, the portable storage company, wanted to rapidly expand. It had 15 company-owned stores. But it did not have a comprehensive system for screening potential franchisees and training them.

So PODS worked with eLogic to develop a transportation safety curriculum of courses that covers Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Department of Transportation guidelines for transporting storage containers.

PODS now has 350 locations.

Other clients include Sage Software, Paramount Parks and OSI, parent company of Outback Steakhouse. A variety of OSI employees from cooks to servers to managers need individual training, called "learning paths," in eLogic vernacular.

For OSI, the breakdown on the courses even goes as far as zip codes with a town, because alcohol consumption rules vary in different zip codes. The restaurant industry must comply with Food and Drug Administration guidelines, which are written into training courses.

The eLogic software keeps track of who took what classes and how they scored and can send those to human resources. If they didn't score high enough, employees can get an email asking them to retake the class. Supervisors can go online and monitor who took what class. In some cases, eLogic applications are used to train corporate trainers.

eLogic also sends clients surveys after each class to see how that course helped them.

The logic in eLogic is that well-trained employees will perform better and stay at a company longer because the company is investing in them and keeping them safe. So the cycle is: Recruit, train and retain.

The work of helping clients appears to have rubbed off on eLogic.

"We have had virtually no turnover," Anderson says.

REVIEW SUMMARY

Company: eLogic Learning

Industry: Employee training

Key: Offer companies a mix of online and in-person training adjusted to their needs.