Orion Engineered Carbons’s commitment to digital empowerment and inclusion has been a transformative force in its organizational journey that started with a resounding call for professional growth and development among its workforce.
In 2020, we took our maiden steps into the realm of digital learning, using Skillsoft as a foundational platform for both mandatory and on-demand training initiatives. While this marked the initial stride toward meeting the evolving global learning demands, it also illuminated the imperative for nurturing a robust learning and talent management culture across all facets of the organization.
In less than three years, Orion has orchestrated a multifaceted approach to propel its digital empowerment forward, pivoting around three central initiatives:
Launching global leadership programs
Recognizing the pivotal role of leadership development in shaping organizational excellence, we inaugurated not one, but three distinct leadership programs. These programs, meticulously designed to cater to varying levels of leadership proficiency, delve into a spectrum of essential soft skills, team dynamics and agile leadership strategies. By offering tailored pathways for growth, we ensure that leaders at every level are equipped with the requisite tools to navigate their developmental trajectories effectively.
Enhancing our digital support
In alignment with our broader global human resources information system strategy, we fortified our learning infrastructure through strategic enhancements to the SuccessFactors platform. This integration ushered in a new era of learning agility, furnishing our employees with swift access to bite-sized, on-demand learning modules. Consequently, the avenues for learning proliferated, encompassing a diverse array of modalities spanning from immersive on-the-job training experiences to interactive webinars, knowledge-sharing and mastermind sessions.
Fortifying our organizational culture
Guided by the overarching ethos of fostering a cohesive global organizational culture, we collaborated closely with our executive leadership team to delineate a unified leadership framework. This framework, intricately linked with our organization’s core values and strategic imperatives, serves as a compass for aligning individual behaviors with broader organizational objectives. Volunteers across our global footprint were involved as a pivotal role in this process to make the culture assimilation successful by identifying behaviors essential for both leaders and individual contributors. Moreover, in a bid to foster inclusivity and bridge linguistic divides, we embarked on the implementation of a comprehensive language platform, ensuring that all employees have equitable access to learning resources irrespective of linguistic proficiency.
Navigating digitalization was marked by its share of challenges, and the key learnings that continue to make our Orion’s digitalization successful include:
Cultivating psychological safety: By fostering a culture of open dialogue and receptivity to feedback, we are nurturing an environment of psychological safety conducive to experimentation and learning. Regular interactions with learning administrators provide a platform for employees to voice their concerns and share insights and best practices, facilitating iterative refinements to the digital learning processes and policies.
Empowering digital adoption: Acknowledging the diverse learning preferences within our workforce, we adopted a nuanced approach to promoting digital literacy. Hands-on demonstrations and personalized coaching sessions empowered employees to explore and harness the full potential of digital tools, fostering a culture of continuous learning and innovation.
Aligning digitalization with organizational goals: Ensuring digital initiatives align with organizational objectives is pivotal in our strategy. With leadership support and metrics tethered to strategic imperatives, we saw notable improvements in employee engagement and learning outcomes. This alignment led to significant achievements, with 80 percent of employees engaging in at least 40 hours of learning in 2023, signaling a further shift toward a culture of continuous learning and development.
Building on this success, we aim to integrate qualitative metrics into our digital learning approach. With a goal of 75 percent of the workforce having personalized development plans linked to targeted learning plans, we seek to foster holistic talent development aligned with organizational and sustainability goals. This approach not only empowers employees to excel but also equips them to navigate the evolving digital landscape with agility and foresight.
Looking ahead, our continued journey toward digital empowerment will be an ongoing odyssey characterized by relentless exploration and innovation. With ongoing initiatives aimed at harnessing the potential of immersive learning experiences and plans underway to integrate virtual reality simulations by 2025, we remain steadfast in our commitment to nurture a culture of collaboration, learning and growth, ensuring our workforce remains primed for success in an ever-evolving digital landscape.
