Online Training and Digital Adoption with Susan Brattberg

Andrea

Hi sis and welcome to the Digital Construction podcast. How are you?

Susan Brattberg

I'm great. Thank you for having me as a guest.

Andrea

Thank you. So today in this episode of the Digital Construction Podcast, we sit down with Susan Brandberg. She is the founder of Global E Train and we will explore the role of virtual training in the construction industry. We'll discuss the evolution of online training and the impact that it has on technology adoptions.

Andrea

But before we start, Susan, can you share with us a little bit of your journey? And now a weird career. And while you're. Today.

Susan Brattberg

Sure. Thank you. It seems like it's been a long career so far in this exciting industry in the architecture, engineering and construction industry. Globally, training started 16 1/2 years ago. We launched at Autodesk University and has still been our our biggest conference and our our biggest area of business.

Susan Brattberg

Is in the Autodesk industry, and we've certainly expanded quite a lot. When we 1st launched 16 years ago, we had one course which was AutoCAD. Now we have over 450 courses in counting. And and our technology, we've migrated from just an online course.

Susan Brattberg

Company to a full technology company where we're part of architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing companies, tech stack and helping them drive technology adoption. So we've seen a lot of changes over the years and it's been pretty exciting and I've been with wobbly training since day one as one of the founders.

Andrea

That's amazing. Thanks, Susan. I'm sure you are the right person to talk with us about training and online training in particular. So we know that over the last few years, training has evolved. We had a global pandemic. People started working from home. Lots of things have changed.

Andrea

But from your point of view, from your point of view, how? How is this? How is that evolved with the last few years? Training.

Susan Brattberg

Yeah, it it is really interesting. You know, we've seen a big change over like, let's just even rewind 16 years ago. The idea of anything online was mind boggling to a lot of people like, you know, we'd be doing webinars and it was the first webinar anyone had been on and then they'd be scratching their head saying, you mean to say you're going to learn.

Susan Brattberg

On the Internet, you know, it was just a wild concept at the time. And So what really happened with the pandemic is that shifted and and we're no longer having conversations about the idea of. Working and learning remotely. I think it just proved that people can do pretty much anything online, so that's really exciting.

Susan Brattberg

So online training is not a crazy concept, it's just a a normal way of working now and and a normal way of learning. And now what we're seeing. Now that is so widely accepted is we're seeing. Higher, more elevated levels of an organization like the CIO and CTO and directors of digital delivery taking a real interest.

Susan Brattberg

Understanding that training is the number one to number one way to drive technology adoption. Also organizations are seeing you know training is not a nice to have it, so must have if they want to attract. The teen top talent. So we're seeing a very senior level get involved compared to in the old days saying, oh, we trained people, went every two to five years like that.

Susan Brattberg

We don't have those conversations anymore.

Andrea

Yeah, that's.

Susan Brattberg

It's a. It's a. It's a new culture. Continuous learning people know like it. They things are changing faster than they ever have. Right. So you you need a. Way to keep up to date.

Andrea

Yeah, I really should. I really agree with you. Like we need to continue learning. It's very important. It's an important investment that we do for ourselves and yeah and businesses to have. To do that, but.

Andrea

What I what I see is so I understand we this is a big opportunity but you start you start the company so you must be very proud of of this journey and very passionate about this. About what is what is this party to to create globally training and what gaps were you having to?

Andrea

00:04:07 Yes.

Susan Brattberg

Yeah. Well, I I co-founded it. It's actually family business. So I co-founded it with my sister and my brother-in-law and and we're still all very active in the in the business. So I am the CEO, chief customer officer. So I'm not a lot more customer fake facing and focused on customer delight.

Susan Brattberg

And then making sure they have an amazing. My sister is CSO, Chief Strategy Officer and then Steve is CTO, Chief Technology officer. So between us, we're the board and we're and we have an amazing team. But the real catalyst for us launching Global E training as we also run an Autodesk authorized Training Centre, so it's called digital school, it's the.

Susan Brattberg

Reduced Autodesk authorized Training Centre in Canada and and it's over 40 years old. So we we have a a very deep background in training and technical training and our program. In the back in the day we had a a College in Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Susan Brattberg

It was formally the Alberta School of Drafting and then changed its name to digital school and people wanted to take our program that they didn't want to go to Edmonton and don't know if you've ever been to. Edmonton, but it's very cold there.

Andrea

One day, one. Day one day.

Susan Brattberg

I I recommend. Going to Edmonton in the summer, it's very cold in the winter and so our program in that we were hosting in our our college like a sit down brick and mortar college classroom training.

Susan Brattberg

On these in accelerated programs, you could get an architecture engineering technology diploma in one year or less, whereas if you compared it to Polytechnic colleges, it was two years typically or more. So was it it was a lot of the same content, in fact, much more technical than a lot of the polytechnics.

Susan Brattberg

It was just accelerated summer semester. So that was the the real difference. And. And so we said, let's put the program online because we have people from all over the world trying to reach out and take the program. So that was the start of it is putting digital school online.

Susan Brattberg

We went to Autodesk and said. License some of your some training content so we can put it online and they said never in a million years you're ever going to train Autodesk software online. And so it's funny because now 16 years later, we're their largest online training partner.

Susan Brattberg

So it is, it is kind of interesting but that. How was the start of it? And we had a problem and that was how we solved it. We put the programs online, we became the first College in Canada to get license to deliver training.

Susan Brattberg

Online and then then we started selling these online programs to other Autodesk training centres and education institutions and then were really took office in the corporate training, selling to architecture, engineering, construction and manufacturing companies.

Andrea

That's good. Thank you. And when you think about when you think about online training, people have different opinion about what are some common misconceptions about online training that you you've you see you've heard from people?

Susan Brattberg

It's always the same. I think it's with anything that you you making an investment in. I don't have time, I don't have budget. Companies say, well, what if I train my people? I'm leave. I'm like, well, what if you train your people and they stay, you know?

Susan Brattberg

So I think it, you know, you've had this, you have this conversation, whether that's in classroom training or online training. I actually think a hybrid is is the best option we can get into that in a moment. And. I think just thinking that you can do it later and even if you could get by with that.

Susan Brattberg

You know, 10 years ago, it's just not an option anymore because things are changing so quickly. And not only is the technology changing the workflows and processes are changing for each every company and every project and every discipline.

Susan Brattberg

So it's the concept of I think we we chatted about it earlier than just in time training and it's. Need a way to learn quickly and apply skills immediately to real world projects, so this the misconception is thinking you can push it off when really in reality.

Susan Brattberg

See. It you you can't. If you want to finish your projects, you just. Can't push it off any longer.

Andrea

Yeah, makes sense. And you just touched this very interesting point of just in time training and people in the construction industry, they work on a timer. They need, they need to complete the project. It's it's very fast and often they just see quick answers rather than deep learning.

Andrea

So how do you think, how do you think we should balance these need these competing needs?

Susan Brattberg

Yeah.

Andrea

Of quick answers to deliver a project or to do a specific job versus conditional learning. How do you balance that?

Susan Brattberg

Yeah, I I think it is a balance and I think you need both. So we've got, we've got tools to do quick answers you know just Google search type functionality where you're searching for something and the immediate information pops up so you can learn it and then immediately apply it.

Susan Brattberg

We also have some pretty cool tools when is a smart. Assessment solution called get insights so we can have people do a pre prerequisite assessment on based on the areas that they get right or wrong it will create a custom learning. For them.

Susan Brattberg

So it's not just assigning everybody, you know, everybody has to take a week off production and sit in the classroom for a week because that's where you no one has time to do that, which is fair.

Susan Brattberg

But if you say OK, we need everybody to have this level of competency before project starts and and you you actually know like the skill set of your people and you do proper. Resource allocation and you know people actually train before a project starts, we can assure.

Susan Brattberg

You and we. Have the the stats and analytics to show it that the projects are more efficient.

Susan Brattberg

But anyway, going back to this assessment, it will create a custom running pass, so it might say you have to do a 2 hour refresher course and I may say I have to do a 10 hour refresher course and at the end of the day it gets everyone to a a skills competency level where they can be proficient on on the project so.

Susan Brattberg

It's it is deep learning, but it's it's all competency focused versus just you know hours like, you know, training hours because that doesn't isn't really as efficient.

Andrea

Yeah, so this is probably like a way to help people train people to deliver project. Manufactory. Is there anything else that you can suggest to improve deliverable projects from the training point of view?

Susan Brattberg

We have tools as well where companies can really tailor content to be company and project specific. And I I just the we work with companies from all over the world all different size AC company.

Susan Brattberg

And when they take the time and again it, it is a little bit more time upfront, but when you take the time to customize it to the company and project and discipline specific, it's not something that you can just push off and learn tomorrow.

Susan Brattberg

It's something like it's that's relevant for your project today. So we've got really easy fast tools to be able to. You know customize or out-of-the-box training which we provide, you know at least 80% of what any company would need to know. But to do those tweaks to make it, you know this special company way really got goes a long way to make it relevant.

Susan Brattberg

And then and then more relevant, it is, the more people retain the information and are able to apply.

Andrea

Yeah, definitely and. You know, sometimes there there is a difference between new hires versus experienced workers that are already working on this project. Like do you suggest, is there any difference in the approach in training?

Susan Brattberg

Yeah. Yeah, very much so. Yeah. I would say for the even the tool I talked about for new hires is really popular to have new hires do the assessment tool and say, OK.

Andrea

In this case.

Susan Brattberg

You know we need one. If everybody, I don't know. I'm just saying throwing out. Everyone says they know rabbit. They do their really. So you can assess you can assess skills. But then what's most important is fill those skill gaps and and you know a new a new employee might have to do a full course and that is OK because it gets into.

Susan Brattberg

That competency level. But once they are, you know, ongoing continuous training, they might literally only have a few hours of refresher training in what's new training to keep up to date on all of the new technology and workflows.

Andrea

Differently, and if we think about synchronous versus asynchronous training, so like the on demand opportunity to learn whenever you like, whatever you like. What do you think are the benefits of on demand learning versus the traditional live sessions?

Susan Brattberg

Well, I think they both have their place and I think hybrid modeling is the best model. So the difference synchronous versus asynchronous asynchronous is self-paced. On demand and synchronous is at the same time and place, so we're synchronous right now, even though we are, it's going to be becoming asynchronous.

Susan Brattberg

So I guess it's it's called by the moment we're synchronous. You can be synchronous in a classroom or like in a real or a boardroom or it can be like an online webinar. But when people are converging at the same time and place.

Susan Brattberg

And so obviously if you're synchronous, you can't look it up at midnight if you know what I mean. Not usually you're not doing the meeting at that time. So it's really just nice to have. Demand. I like to think of it as like prerequisite training, so he wanted to say OK before we, maybe we're doing a a workshop.

Susan Brattberg

It could be a webinar workshop, but maybe we're bringing everyone into the boardroom or whatever it may be, say, before this workshop, everybody show your competent in these areas. And again, it might be it is brand new content. You can assign the whole.

Susan Brattberg

The whole pre exit training if it's, you know saying I need everyone to know. These three softwares prove you know it if you know it, if you don't you know take the course and prove prove you know it so can be prerequisite training for classroom training is a really great multimedia tool.

Susan Brattberg

You keep engaged when you're in the classroom and your workshop, but what it does is when it runs and went in the same time and place, it elevates that to a higher level. So you're not saying you know, those are the most boring classes.

Susan Brattberg

I'm sure we've all been in and he's like, point here. Click there. And it always. Looks easy when you watch someone else do it, but. Then you try to remember it, and it's not so easy, right? So it elevates it so you can be talking about real world projects in case study is an example.

Susan Brattberg

And you know industry expertise and and you know making it much more interactive and really elevating and leveraging the skill set of whoever's hosting a workshop. So I love that and like if you're going to use have any async or any asynchronous component, you want it to be as interactive.

Susan Brattberg

And exciting as possible. And then you can capture that because what if somebody was sick that day or what if somebody joins two months later, at least you could capture that and then you make all of it asynchronous. And that's the most important.

Susan Brattberg

Because then you can look it up on the fly and have it is just in time training. So when you're working on something on a real project you say, OK, how did I do? How do you do this one workflow or this one task?

Susan Brattberg

Or you know, what's this one concept again that I need to refresh? You've got it. And then you can have those quick just in time learning modules. That you can apply the skills immediately, so it's all kind of the best of both worlds.

Susan Brattberg

Our content does work as a complete standalone asynchronous solution, but I always recommend if you can combine any synchronous component. But it's great, so leaving for on boarding. Let's say we see a lot of companies, they'll say, OK, take the onboarding course. They used to do like a 2 day onboarding course.

Susan Brattberg

Now they make it interactive, interactive asynchronous one day onboarding program and then maybe a one hour. Meeting great with the executive team. 00:15:56 Hmm. You know, so you're just, you're elevating it that they're coming in with prior knowledge to that, that interactive session.

Andrea

You know, it's interesting. And one of the challenges that we have with training is maximize. We want to maximize engagement and knowledge and knowledge retention. So what do you think is the best way to structure a training program to maximize engagement and retention?

Susan Brattberg

Yeah, this is. Something we put a lot of time into figuring out what works and like I said, we've been doing technical training and teaching working professionals for. Decades, and I feel that the interactive learning methodologies really work. So you've got your different ways that people learn.

Susan Brattberg

So Visual audio, read, write, and kinesthetic, and so you know, some people are going to be fine just reading some people we find watching, you know, hours of video. That there's very few power between for most people. They need to learn with all of the different interactive learning styles to be able to retain and apply the information.

Susan Brattberg

So that's what we do. We have everything is delivered in the in an interactive format that covers all learning styles and like the companies we work with. You know they're teaching dozens or hundreds or even thousands of people at a time. So obviously you look at those type of of numbers.

Susan Brattberg

Everybody learns in their own unique way.

Andrea

And we know that training could be a driver for technology adoption. So one of the challenges that construction companies have, they invest large amount of money in. 00:17:30 In. In software and new technologies. But then they struggle with adoption. So how do you think the company can use training to?

Susan Brattberg

Hmm.

Andrea

Successfully adopting this, these new technologies that are investing on.

Susan Brattberg

Well, I think there's. It's if you invest in technology and you don't have a training plan, you can pretty much be sure. That that technology. Is not going to get adopted, so in my perspective the training piece is a very small insurance policy to ensure that effective adoption of the technology itself and not just the technology, but the way you want the technology use the.

Susan Brattberg

Custom workflows and processes, you know, because the technology you know, we've been teaching Autodesk technology for. Well, even before I wait for probably 40-40 years, we've been teaching it back when we were doing our, you know, migrated from drafting to CAD, we were teaching this stuff and and even then, you know it's everybody does it in their own unique way.

Susan Brattberg

So I think. I think any type of technology adoption, you need a training program and you need it done in the way that you're going to be using that technology for each project. So I have seen over my years. You know, many been execution plans.

Susan Brattberg

And very few can I say that I I've seen training be a component on the BIM execution plans. You've got this beautiful plan, yet people have looked. Have we even have even people get people to fall away?

Andrea

And we know that the workforce is evolving and at the moment we have different generations in our team and these people can have different way of communicating. Some of them may be very tech savvy, some of them may not be tech service. So how do we?

Andrea

How do we develop? An effective training program that can. Be good for all of.

Susan Brattberg

Well, I think well. We have a lot of best practices and like I said our our templates are made and all learns can learn from them. So yes, you need to be able to turn on a computer, yes, but I think anyone in our industries would be on that point anyway, but literally turn on your computer and log in and press play.

Susan Brattberg

You'll get into the training and it will teach you so, like even at our college at digital school, once they have the the basic knowledge, we're getting them to the level where they are, you know, becoming the bin managers and BDC managers.

Susan Brattberg

An industry, so we're helping them get from, you know, very basic level all the way to, you know, pretty sophisticated jobs in a year and then with corporate training, we're taking these same the same methodologies and helping people. You know, they might not even you know, what's been, you know, it starts at the basics.

Susan Brattberg

What is? You know, what is this software do? Starting at the basics, teaching all the way to level of levels of proficiency where they can get industry certified and and things like that, but certainly excelling in their careers but. The methodology is is breaking it into bite sized pieces and delivering it with all learning styles.

Susan Brattberg

And it really.

Andrea

Yeah.

Susan Brattberg

Really works. Yeah, we've trained hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people over the years. Yeah. But you know. I want to say over 100,000 people just to help them migrate from Kaiju.

Andrea

Yeah, interesting. I remember that time was tricky because many people didn't believe that that will be the future. And now we talk. We speak about being as like business as usual. Yeah, nobody's surprised.

Susan Brattberg

It's a pretty exciting time.

Andrea

There were people. There was a lot of resistance at the beginning, from many people. Of course, there were people were enthusiastic about this new technology. Yeah, it's it's a process and now we are all in and it's very sunny. One of the challenges that I've seen for companies is the ability to measure return on investment for training programs.

Andrea

So why should I spend? The money my money. The budget in training program. So how do you think can company measure this return investment of training program? 00:22:00 Well, I think.

Susan Brattberg

There's a lot of ways to measure it. Number one is the actual you spend this much money on the training and then how efficient are the projects, how much time are people saving? But really where you can get into these astronomical returns on your investment is when you start looking at what the project efficiency, but also the technology.

Susan Brattberg

Option if you were, you know, some of the major accounts like the global firms that we're working with are spending millions like 10s of millions of dollars on technology. And if that doesn't even get implemented, you know that what does it cost, you know, what is the?

Susan Brattberg

I guess the loss of that investment, you know, so one is we're helping drive you know we're very small. I think I mentioned earlier there's small insurance policy to insure effective adoption of these in technology investments. And then with the big big return comes in when people are more efficient on projects also attracting and retaining top staff.

Susan Brattberg

You know you it is. It is. Is this compounding effect, you know, what does it cost to hire someone new and train someone new? So just having the training alone is a way to keep people, you know, if if there's a lot of studies that show.

Susan Brattberg

If compensation is similar. A person would choose to work at the company that invests in the professional development. You know, even even if the compensation is slightly less. That's the company that they'll choose to work. For so it's. It's a must have and then you can compound it even further, not just efficient project, but you can compound compounded because.

Susan Brattberg

The skills competency is number one competitive advantage to win bids. So if you're actually winning more projects because you have a trained team, then you add that on and then the other piece I. Want to throw in? Is what does it cost if people aren't trained and you're liable, you know what happens if something goes wrong on that project?

Susan Brattberg

Now, because everything is tracked, there's more data on anything. Companies have to prove that that their people are trained, so we give them the the proof, the data analytics. To show that they're they're trained. So when you compound all of those things that we have spreadsheets.

Susan Brattberg

So we work through with companies, but we like them to do it themselves because they don't believe us. If we do the calculation because the return is like literally in the thousands of percent. So we say here, fill it out yourself and then we say, oh, it's an astronomical return on investment.

Andrea

I think there is also a cost. As you said in. And not investing in training anything else that. You think could possibly go wrong? 00:24:43 Yeah. 00:24:44 Yeah. So in terms of like the the results, so everybody's talking about AI at the moment.

Andrea

What do you think? Can we use AI and how to create training programs or ideally customized to for specific projects and workflows?

Susan Brattberg

Yeah. Well, we are embracing AI. We think it is the future. It's not the future. So now, right. And so we've incorporated AI into our course development at globally training. So we have a very cool feature called AI powered course creation.

Susan Brattberg

So as part of our course authoring technology, the generator which is the fastest way to build and customize training, that will always be up to date and can run. On any learning management system.

Susan Brattberg

And then this cool feature with the AI powered course creation allows companies to just prompt the generator and it will generate a course just based on your prompt and it will create the full table of contents and the full course. Now of course it's like any AI you're going to need to vet it and have a subject matter expert.

Susan Brattberg

You know, tweak it, but it's going to get you 80% of the way there and it just takes that writers block away with companies that want to go to the next level and customized training to make IT company and project and discipline specific.

Susan Brattberg

Thick a lot of times, they're just scratching their head. Like, where do they start? You know? Is this unconscious competence? Seems I am an expert. How do I break it down to explain it to somebody else? Is a really challenging thing to do.

Susan Brattberg

So it builds it in templates and it gets you started. And you say, oh, well, I like this, but I want to add more detail here or change that. And so it's it's just really helping companies get customers training off the ground quickly, leveraging the content that we have and then building their own company specific training on top of it.

Andrea

It's certainly a great opportunity for many industries and they will be interested to see how the future other the industry wants using the high, but speak about the future. Now, nobody can predict the future and we know the future is unknowable, but I'll be interested like we know we have new new concept like the.

Andrea

We have gamification. Gamification has been introduced in training. I'm thinking about Duolingo that tried to get me files experience for people to learn new language or technology like augmented reality or virtual reality that can help people just visit the site. The construction site virtually, but what are some emerging technologies that you think?

Andrea

00:27:08 Yeah. Will ship the future. Of training for the construction industry and where do you see the future and from your point of view in the next, let's say 5 to 10 years?

Susan Brattberg

Yeah, I think how fast things have changed. I can see it changing so quickly right now already with AI that it's just accelerating technology adoption and training is the number one way to also Dr. adoption of AI, let alone like people that are savvy in AI are definitely.

Susan Brattberg

Growing and excelling in their companies, so knowing AI is number one training trend. We have AI courses which is really cool. So AI and course development AI in. I guess. Customizing training and even pulling in company workflows and standards and things like that.

Susan Brattberg

We've got some cool technology to make it use AI to make the training more company and project specific, which we're very excited about. And then the cool things with our training is we can keep it up. Date umm it is a patented technology that allows us to push updates up to date out to anybody that's using our platform on any learning management system.

Susan Brattberg

And I think that. I don't remember with us, I think. What companies can do? They're just starting to dabble in. So what we're seeing is a really cool trend is project based training. And so it's not just the people in one organization that are doing the training, but the entire supply chain, the whole project team.

Susan Brattberg

And we've only seen them in a few case studies right now. But when the whole project team knows what they're. Thing before the project starts, I can. That's the most efficient project anybody's ever been in in their life. So that's that's a really cool trend that we're seeing great success with.

Susan Brattberg

And then also those linking in. So there is augmented reality and virtual reality training. You know you put your cool Google glasses on and all the things. So you see all the information about the project.

Andrea

Yeah, that's correct.

Susan Brattberg

But your training information is right there as well, and also in software plugins. So it's just literally right in front of you. So you know, if you're working in whatever tool having the training and predictive plugin. So when you're clicking on you know the say in Revit and you click on ribbon, the training for that is popping up.

Susan Brattberg

And again that's not even the future. That's the now, but making it even more available it right. You know you're not having to go from platform to platform. It's just right and available to you at anytime.

Andrea

And that's great. And can you share with us what's happening with global training? So what's what's next, any exciting developments on the horizon?

Susan Brattberg

We were always releasing new content and new technology. It's been pretty exciting for us that we're now recognized as a technology partner, not just a training providers. So we've gone through all of these transitions. We've been an education company. Then we realized we're an education tech company.

Susan Brattberg

Then we realized, hey, we're software company. The SAS company, like software as a service company. Now that we're true, true technology partner and part of these companies, tech stacks and really the fund. For their tech stack, because we're teaching people how to use the whole tech stack in the most efficient way, so it it's pretty exciting transitions for us.

Susan Brattberg

Yeah. And then and then and really that that happened with our latest patent. So that was just in the last year that we have this. And.

Andrea

Yeah. Thank you, Suzanne. We are at the end of our episode. It was a great episode. Thank you for sharing so much knowledge around online training. If people want to reach out to you, where can they find you?

Susan Brattberg

Yeah, thank you. Good question. Umm, so our website is global etraining.ca. So CA stands for Canada or Canadian company with the global reach. So if you go to globallytraining.ca, you'll see all of the information reach out to me personally as well. If you from your LinkedIn and just see.

Susan Brattberg

And Brent Burke, I'm happy to answer any questions, but I would encourage people to check out our website and then we do have a free demo on our website. So give it a try for yourself and you can also get a free demo for your whole team as well.

Andrea

Thank you, Suzanne.

Susan Brattberg

Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for having me.