The company De Lijn obviously needs no further introduction. But what you may not know is that some 7,600 people work at De Lijn. Most of them are drivers, but there are also planners, dispatchers and inspectors as well as 800 people responsible for fleet maintenance. What you almost certainly didn’t know however is that De Lijn also has five driving schools of its very own. One for every Flemish province. You do not need to have a category D driving licence to get started as a driver at De Lijn. You get that driving licence on the job.
Eighty instructors provide basic training, training in articulated (so-called ‘bendy’) buses, training in professional skills, etc. In other words, quite a few staff members that need ongoing training and retraining. The four-person Development Team, of which Steve DeKoning is a member, monitors the training needs and requirements of all employees and organises all their training except driver training. ‘We also strive to maintain a uniform, professional approach, we train internal trainers and we ensure that knowledge within the organisation remains up to date,’ he says.
In 2017, De Lijn realised that a trainee driver was not profitable. ‘The training therefore needed to be shortened and focused more on practice than on theory,’ says Steve. ‘We have reduced the theoretical training from nine days to seven days without adversely affecting the results. I believe that this is thanks to FLOWSPARKS. Of course, extra theoretical support was still necessary. But we wondered whether that might be possible via e-Learning. We had no experience of it, but the idea was that we would produce and manage all the content ourselves. This was a decisive argument in favour of FLOWSPARKS.’
‘The templates were an important reason for choosing FLOWSPARKS rather than any other suppliers we contacted.’ According to Steve, the choice of template in FLOWSPARKS depends mainly on your target group. At De Lijn, FLASHCARDS are found to be very useful for training the drivers. ‘The interactive SMARTPAGES, on the other hand, are very accessible for the user, which means that the content is remembered better. Even though you work with templates, the possibilities are extensive.’
De Lijn has been trying out FLOWSPARKS for a year. ‘But after a month, we were already very positive about the accessibility and ease of use of FLOWSPARKS,’ says Steve. ‘You absolutely don’t have to be an IT specialist to produce your own e-Learning modules. A creative spirit is enough. The speed with which we make e-Learning modules with FLOWSPARKS is particularly impressive. It’s very easy to add videos, and it certainly doesn’t all have to be done with professional recording material. You can get a lot of nice things made and displayed just using your smartphone. It’s all very intuitive, too.’
De Lijn is also very pleased with the good introductory guidance it received from the FLOWSPARKS team. ‘After about three hours, you will actually have become pretty good at it. And because they had preset the skins, everything can easily be adapted to De Lijn’s house style,’ Steve says. ‘In any case, every module we make displays the required consistency in style.’
The flawless connection with the LMS system (Success factors) used by De Lijn is another important asset of FLOWSPARKS. The FLOWSPARKS team provided us with excellent guidance in importing our FLOWSPARKS data into the LMS system.
You absolutely don’t have to be an IT specialist to produce your own e-Learning modules. A creative spirit is enough. The speed with which we make e-Learning modules with FLOWSPARKS is particularly impressive. It’s very easy to add videos, and it certainly doesn’t all have to be done with professional recording material.
It wasn’t long before De Lijn had completed its first online training modules. The drivers get them in their mailbox so that they can become familiar with the company and with De Lijn’s values at their own pace, and they can prepare for their category D driving test in advance with a test on the highway code. The module runs over several days, and at the end of each day, there is a review of what they have learned and a preview of the next day.
De Lijn is gradually producing more e-Learning modules in FLOWSPARKS. Steve says: ‘We now also use it for hearing protection training for example. It comes with a downloadable toolbox that can be read at your own pace, exercises and a test to see if the knowledge has been learned well. We are also going to use FLOWSPARKS to produce other toolboxes. I am thinking of work instructions, digital training for the preparation of order forms, a module about our intranet, and so on. During a reorganisation in 2019, an onboarding module was developed for every new employee. Not only do they receive practical information in the module, but they can also upload documents that we need from them.
Steve and his team are also very pleased with the reporting capabilities within FLOWSPARKS. ‘We can now easily demonstrate that we comply with the number of mandatory training days that we have to provide for our employees. And the evaluation forms give a good picture of how employees experience using our modules. With an average score of 8.8 out of 10, we can certainly be satisfied,’ he concludes.
