The Situation

In the early 2000’s, PSE made the decision to outsource all pre-construction engineering positions. One negative, unintended result is that the organization lost a lot of control over the quality of the work and customer satisfaction. In 2015, PSE established the Customer & Systems Projects (C&SP) department to bring the pre-construction engineering function back in-house. Bringing in this specialized workforce and getting them up to speed in PSE’s culture and business practices created a significant training need, particularly to keep pace with the Seattle region’s massive construction boom—PSE’s service area is one of the fastest growing populations in the nation. In 2017, PSE began the development of a centralized training program that would increase the speed to competency for new C&SP engineers and the project managers responsible for gas and electric pre-construction design activities.

PSE recognized that their engineer training program could help the company compete for talent in a market that is dominated by some of the highest esteemed tech companies in the nation. The Seattle hiring pool has high expectations for development opportunities and career paths. It is essential that PSE’s training programs embrace this new audience—the “modern learner.”

Mosaic Offers a Solution

Mosaic began their engagement with PSE by defining what makes the modern learner different than previous generations, and how training programs can adapt to this new audience. The result is a definition that includes the following traits and expectations:

• They want their learning to be exclusively relevant to the work they perform in their roles.
• They are more collaborative than ever and want to learn from the people around them.
• They want their learning to be accessible at a moment’s notice.
• They want the ability to drive their own learning experience.
• They are very concerned with the big picture and want to understand the end-to-end process and where they fit.
• They care about progress and passing milestones to drive their careers.

To support PSE in attracting and retaining a modern workforce, Mosaic is building a training program that provides a bridge between learning and the work engineers do within the context of actual projects. The C&SP program includes six components:

• A knowledge portal that functions as a one-stop-shop for information that is directly relevant to the work being done, easily searchable by role and functional area, and accessible on the job.
• Visual process maps that illustrate organizational relationships and workflows within C&SP and serve as navigational tools within the knowledge portal to reinforce business processes.
• A competency matrix that creates clear end-to-end role and competency definitions aligned to training requirements, assessments, on-the-job training, and career progression points.
• Blended training curriculum for three phases of learning that leverages various modalities, including eLearning, expert-led training, micro learnings, and job aids.
• Competency-based assessments with test-out options to allow more competent employees to progress at an accelerated pace.
• Structured on-the-job training that ensures students develop competency in pre-identified tasks through repetition under the guidance of a trained and dedicated mentor.

In Conclusion

Ultimately, this comprehensive C&SP training program is being built to attract and retain the modern learner through increased speed to competency, a transparent and navigable career path, resources and support that are readily available and easy to use, and training that is digestible and directly applicable to the work they do.