Case Study: New York-Based Union Creates Training Lottery with Help from LMS

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) uses a learning management system (LMS) to run a lottery. Winning the lottery wont land you a $1 million. But if youre a member of the union, the lottery will help you get a seat in one of the more than 1,000 course sections the unions Local 32BJ Thomas Shortman Training, Scholarship and Safety Fund runs each year for 85,000 eligible members.

Challenge

With a pool of tens of thousands of potential trainees to draw from, simply registering members of Local 32BJ for training was a full-scale effort each training trimester. The unions members range from doormen to window cleaners. They work in both residential and commercial settings. Some are native-born Americans, others are newly arrived immigrants. As a group, the memberships computer skills vary greatly. And since 2006, Local 32BJ has grown from a mostly New York- and New Jersey-based organization to one with sites in Connecticut, Florida, Virginia and Washington, D.C. All these factors made for a complicated training situation.

Unlike most unions, we represent a really diverse membership, says Linda G. Nelson, director for the Local 32BJ Thomas Shortman Training, Scholarship and Safety Fund. We have thousands of employers and tens of thousands of locations. Its not as if we have workers at one location or factory.

When it comes to delivering and registering people for training, we have to come up with a way to treat everyone equally, adds Nelson. Because of the number of members we have, we cant register people on a first-come first-served basis and expect everyone to get the training they deserve.

Solution

To create a streamlined and equitable approach to training, Nelson and her colleagues began exploring learning technologies that could automate training registration and reporting. In 2010, Local 32BJ Thomas Shortman Training, Scholarship and Safety Fund purchased an LMS software for delivering and tracking training made by Meridian Knowledge Solutions. According to Nelson, the administrative features of the LMS were what first attracted her group to the system. Prior to purchasing the LMS, Nelson says her organization didnt have a training system that offered much more than a computer screen showing members that they were eligible for a training class. There were no real reporting capabilities to speak of, either.

The training fund says its first goal was to put in place registration and reporting features, which their newly acquired LMS offered.

As a first step, Nelson and her colleagues created a system for getting members into classes in an efficient way. To do that, the unions training team developed a pre-registration lottery process by customizing the LMS.

Heres how the lottery works: the training team set up a training-class request period of two weeks. Members then call or email Nelsons group to pick the classes they would like to take. The LMS checks to see if the member is qualified to take the class. At the end of the two weeks, the LMS closes registration and begins the lottery. Each member who either doesnt request a class or is ineligible during the two-week registration period is excluded from the lottery pool of candidates. Next, Meridians learning-management software using an algorithm developed by Local 32BJ randomly slots each eligible member into a class based on their training preferences. At the end of the request period, the LMS shows Nelsons team how many members want to take classes and how many courses the union should run.

Since training resources are limited at Local 32BJ, the LMS-powered lottery gives Nelson a way to equitably assign members to classes, especially popular classes like plumbing or electricity basics. Eighty-five thousand members of Local 32BJ are eligible to take training and, on average, 6,500 members fill 10,000 seats per year. Nelson expects the LMS to not only streamline the process for registering members but also boost the amount of training that happens through better managing their available resources.

Beyond managing the training lottery and automating registration, the LMS also offers online collaboration centers for discussing training. Local 32BJ is looking at creating an online community for its instructors with the LMS. The unions instructors are tradespeople. Many are unfamiliar with learning technology. But Nelson and her team have made great strides in getting instructors to use other features of the LMS for automating attendance and organizing class rosters. So she hopes the instructors will explore the online collaboration rooms, too.

Eighty percent of our instructors are now using the LMS to automate and manage attendance, says Nelson. We have over 200 instructors in the LMS at this point, and we trained them to use the learning management system through monetary incentives, training courses, WebEx sessions, conference calls and in-person coaching, all in a positive way. Given the right incentives, we think theyll use online collaboration.

According to Nelson, investing in an LMS to streamline training operations is benefiting union members. Its simple for them to sign up for classes, improve their professional skills and keep tabs on their progress, certifications and diplomas. And thats a lottery that makes everyone a winner.