Center for Business, Industry & Labor

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IBM client training will be hosted at our DEC Computer Training Lab.  Nationwide Training Alliance has selected CBIL DEC lab as their St. Louis based training site.

GlaxoSmithKline – Developing Long Term Employee Talent

Many employers offer training programs to help their employees develop new work skills. At GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) the company takes a broader view of employee development, looking for ways to provide their employees with skills they can use in both their work and personal lives.

GSK’s St. Louis pharmaceutical manufacturing plant “is committed to educating its employees,” according to Becky Darron, the Training and Development Team Leader.  A recent combination of changes to the way employee benefit information could be accessed and managed caused GSK to put this axiom to the test. Instead of providing a tutorial on how to access their benefit information on the Company’s Intranet, GSK-St. Louis took it one step further. They offered all 230 employees at their downtown St. Louis location the opportunity to learn more about a variety of computer applications.

Broadening the training reflected the balance GSK promotes between family and work life. “It gave us the opportunity to help our associates do tasks at home with their families, too,” stated Darron.

With GSK’s goal in mind, the Downtown Education Center’s (DEC) Judy Koenig worked with GSK to come up with a training schedule to meet their needs and constraints. The resulting training schedule revolved around GSK’s production schedule. A total of five courses were held every Tuesday and Thursday, starting at 7:00 AM for the first shift and ending with a 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM class for second shift employees.

Offering such a flexible schedule resulted in some unexpected benefits. It created goodwill among the second shift associates, according to Darron, because they didn’t have to come in early to participate in these sessions. Another equally important benefit was maintaining production schedules by limiting the length of the classes. “We couldn’t let folks off the line for four hours. Judy gave us exactly what we needed. She accommodated us so we could continue to be productive,” stated Darron.

This type of collaborative approach made it easier for supervisors to free up their employees to attend the sessions and made it attractive to the employees to attend this voluntary training. Accommodations like this one, plus instructors who were knowledgeable and made the training fun, helped create a successful training experience. Not only was attendance high for the sessions, but participants were willing to explore a variety of applications from how to navigate the Internet and how to access the company’s Intranet (My GSK), to Microsoft Windows, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

The classes coincided with the October 1st debut of the My GSK kiosks. Two kiosks were located outside the cafeteria at the plant. Using these kiosks employees can now access their benefit information, submit changes in address, update their dependent information, review their 401K contributions, and self-manage their benefit plans.

This kind of employee centered, hands-on instant access program is a great example of the kind of forward thinking that recently earned GSK the Mayor’s Business of the Year Award. It also illustrates the kinds of successful collaborative efforts that make working with the Center for Business, Industry and Labor beneficial for St. Louis organizations.