Training while all at sea
Satellite technology will enable employees of cruise company Holland America Line to keep up to date with their training even when they are at sea and out of range of usual channels for gaining access to the internet.
The company – with 14,000 employees across its extended enterprise,including its Holland America Line, Windstar Cruises, Westmark Hotels and Gray Line divisions – faces the unusual challenge of thousands of personnel at any given time being at sea, with limited web access, making it more difficult to keep training data current and to satisfy compliance reporting requirements. To meet this challenge, technology and training company SumTotal will help Holland America Line to develop a unique interface enabling daily, ship-to-shore data synchronization via satellite from training taken offline by shipboard personnel.
SumTotal Enterprise Suite 7.0 will power the new online learning and compliance initiative reaching all Holland America Line employees. The company will use SumTotal’s TotalLMS, TotalLCMS and ToolBook content and simulation authoring solution to create its first-ever online learning program for corporate and field employees around the world. The system will tie Holland America Line’s training facilities in Indonesia, the Philippines and Holland, as well as all of its ships, to its Seattle headquarters, enabling it to manage centrally all learning activities across the world.
The company’s goals for its learning initiative include enhancing customer service and increasing customer satisfaction, developing employee skills and competencies, as well as addressing regulatory audits that require Holland America Line to have up-to-date training and certification data at its fingertips. Automating and streamlining the delivery, management and reporting of activities such as mandatory safety, security and environmental compliance training, for example, will help Holland America Line to reduce business expenses and time-to-readiness, and will enable management to identify and resolve gaps in training and certification.
“Skilled, motivated personnel have always been our greatest asset in setting Holland America Line apart from our competitors, which makes our initiative to deliver greater learning opportunities to our employees mission critical to our organization,” said Stein Kruse, president and chief executive. “By making training and certification easier, quicker and more efficient to access, complete and report, we are able to have employees focus on what is most important to us – providing our guests with the world-class service, amenities and programmes that have been part of the Holland America Line travel experience for 130 years.”
“Holland America Line’s success depends upon decreasing the costs of doing business while increasing revenues from repeat passenger business. Our solution does both – helping the company more smoothly to run a complex,global business, and seamlessly providing top-quality customer service that motivates guests to return again and again,” said Andrew Eckert, SumTotal chief executive. “We are proud of the unique solution we have helped Holland America Line to create, not only meeting its compliance challenges, but helping to transform the way it does business every day.”
Holland America Line’s fleet of 12 ships offers almost 500 cruises a year from 27 home ports, 17 of which are in north America.
