SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation Podcast Transcript #38 Interview with Kevin Lange of ServiceMaster Clean. (Transcript)
Print
[music]
Announcer: SyberWorks podcast. Learn any time, any place.
Mary Kay Lofurno: Welcome to the next edition of the SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation Podcast Series, where we look at real-world Learning Management System, LMS, implementations and e-learning program roll-outs. SyberWorks specializes in custom e-learning solutions, learning management systems, and e-learning development, for corporations, governments, and non-profit institutions.
My name is Mary Kay Lofurno. I’m Marketing Director at SyberWorks and your host today. Today we're going to be catching up with Kevin Lange, Director of Training for ServiceMaster Clean, to learn more about training programs for franchise organizations.
[music]
Mary Kay: Good afternoon, Kevin. Thanks for coming to talk with us today.
Kevin Lange: Hi, Mary Kay. It is great to be here.
Mary Kay: It’s good to have you back, Kevin. Just so the audience knows, Kevin Lange, and ServiceMaster Clean, was our very first podcast here on the SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation Podcast. So I thought it might be nice to have him back on the show and catch up with him. So, Kevin, without any further ado, for the people who may not have heard our first podcast together, tell us about yourself and what you do for ServiceMaster Clean.
Kevin: Certainly, Mary Kay. Currently, I am the Training Director for ServiceMaster Clean. And my main focus, at this point, is really managing and directing the learning management system, which we use, in this case, SyberWorks. ServiceMaster Clean is a subsidiary of the ServiceMaster company, which has other brands such as Terminix, TruGreen, American Home Shield, Merry Maids, and Furniture Medic.
Currently, ServiceMaster Clean and the Furniture Medic are using the SyberWorks LMS, and currently my main function is really directing, managing, and administrating the ServiceMaster University, or LMS, which is the SyberWorks program.
ServiceMaster Clean is really divided up into three different, distinct, companies: Disaster Restoration, Janitorial, Residential. And with our University, we’re also supporting the Furniture Medic brand. Currently, we have about 4, 700 active users on the University, which is quite a difference from the last time we talked, when we had about 300.
And our main focus, for our University now, has changed from in the past we were training just staff members who support franchisees, and now we actually use the University to train franchisees and the employees of the franchisees.
Mary Kay: Well, wow, Kevin, that sounds great. So you went from 300 users to 4, 700 users. Is that right?
Kevin: That’s correct. And we’re actually growing every month. It’s just amazing to watch the numbers grow, because it’s really catching on with our franchisees.
Mary Kay: Well, that sounds great. So, maybe you could tell the audience a little bit about the type of training that you developed for franchisees? So they just get an idea, you know, to kind of fill out the picture a little.
Kevin: Well, we do a couple different things with our training. First of all, we use it to really train our franchisees, to help bring them into our system. We do some pre-training, before they actually become business owners, and then some post-training, after they've actually attended our in-house classroom university. And we do some post-training on the University, as well.
Once they get in the field, we do do quite a bit of train-the-trainer type online courses, where it will actually train the franchisee how to train his employees. Because a lot of our franchisees, their employees; a good example is in our janitorial business, they have a lot of people who clean buildings at night. They just don't have access to a computer.
So having them go live onto the University is just not a possibility for them. So what we do is we use the University to train the franchisee. When they’re done training, they download all the materials, any videos they would need for the training, and train their employees that way.
Another thing that we do is we’re building a library of webinars that we house on the University. And these would be short 15, 20-minute type webinar trainings that we do live, but then we record them and house them there. And we will do subjects anywhere from computer-based training like Outlook, Excel-type training, to actual production-type techniques, to time-management skills. Anything that employees in a business might be in need of.
Mary Kay: OK, Kevin that makes a lot of sense. So what tools are you using to develop these courses? And are you doing any video? I know you said webinars, but I didn’t hear video.
Kevin: Well, obviously we do use Web Author, which is a SyberWorks product, but we also use things like Captivate, Sony Sound Forge. Our video, a lot of the video we're using is video that we already had, that we're just adapting to online courses. And we're using things like Sony Vegas to help edit those videos to make them more appropriate for the online use...
Mary Kay: OK.
Kevin: ...and we’re just starting to use, to get into, more Flash stuff.
Mary Kay: All right, well, that’s sounds great. All right, so I understand that you’re going to be updating your system with our brand new, configurable, dashboard. How do you think you’re going to be using the dashboard? Will it be configured for administrators, or learners, or for both? How are you going to that?
Kevin: Well, we eventually hope to configure it for both. Our main focus is the dashboard for our franchisees, so that they can really look at the dashboard, and see how their employees are doing, what they need to work with, with their employees.
But it’s also a key piece for our administrators and our administrators here are at the home office. And so that we can keep tabs, or track. We can actually track what our franchisees are doing, what their employees are doing.
So we can really focus our efforts. And it actually will help us decide what types of projects we need to work on, and what we need to abandon [laughs] , because they are just not working.
Mary Kay: OK. Well, it’s been great, Kevin, to have you back on the show to catch up. I know you’re a busy guy, so I’m going to let you go. Thanks for joining us today, and you have a good afternoon, too.
Kevin: Thanks, Mary Kay. It was a pleasure.
Mary Kay: This is Mary Kay Lofurno, Marketing Director at SyberWorks. Thanks for listening to our interview with Kevin Lange, of ServiceMaster Clean, on the SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation Podcast Series. Talk to you next month.
Announcer: SyberWorks Podcast - Learn anytime, any place.
[music]
