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One Injury is One Too Many: Improving Health and Safety in Alstom
Case study: How Alstom employed a piece of e-learning as part of a company-wide
strategy to reduce accidents at work and increase risk awareness
Over the last seven years, Alstoms Injury Frequency Rate was in decline and the company had proved itself an
industry leader when it came to health and safety. In reaction to a slight reverse in this trend and to avoid
employees slipping into a comfort zone when dealing with every-day risks, Alstom rolled out a mandatory e-
learning program to over 23,000 staff worldwide.
The Background Challenge
It is Alstoms belief that no employee should execute their daily activity Alstoms Environment, Health and Safety policy is very thorough and
without knowing the major risks involved and the safety rules covers so many functions and activities that it would be impossible to
associated with these risks. But with the increasing complexity of include every single guideline and direction in one piece of learning. The
operations and running business in this challenging economic climate, challenge, therefore, was to prioritize and organize content and deliver
Alstom has unfortunately recorded several accidents in the past year. a clear message.

As part of a global initiative to ensure that all Alstom staff understand
the risks of the companys activities and apply Alstoms Environment,
Health and Safety (EHS) rules, Interactive Services was employed to
create an e-learning program to be taken by all Alstom staff worldwide.
This e-learning would be the basis of the companys EHS culture and
contribute to making Alstom a safer place to work.
With 23,000 staff based around the globe, the learning solution also
had to be easy to localize and applicable to the entire organization.
Given the gravity of EHS, a balance had to be found between creating
serious content and framing it in such a way that the learner would be
engaged and motivated before, during and after the learning.

How we helped How we helped (continued) Results

Ccile Michel, Learning Director at Alstom
Transport explained that there was so much
Alstom wanted to say about EHS, but when it
came to building the course, they realized
they had to prioritize and make choices
internally. What was really interesting in the
work with Interactive Services was, once we
found out the limits of the amount of content
we could include, we had internal workshops
in which we agreed what we wanted. We
came up with the messages and Interactive
Services came up with how the messages
should be portrayed. This included the right
graphic environment, the right activities and
the right instructional approach.
As soon as a common objective had been
established, the success of the project was
down to the close partnership between
Alstom and Interactive Services that was
established early on.
As Alstoms Learning Director said, The Transport
team were very grateful of the fact that the project
was as serious for Interactive Services as it was for
Alstom. This is about peoples lives, so the serious
nature of the project was very much appreciated. It
was not like building regular content. What was really
important was that we did the job in a very
responsive and serious way on our side and it was
nice to work with people that, even though they were
under pressure and there were a lot of demands,
were very responsive and very much a partner.
In keeping with the serious tone of the project,
Interactive Services decided to include a lot of case
study material that is relevant to real-life scenarios so
that learners could identify with the content and
relate it to their every-day work. This increases the
impact of the message. As the course is being rolled
out to over 23,000 users, it was also important to
make the course very accessible from a graphical
point of view and make it easy to localize.
In the first three hours after the course was
launched, 180 employees had completed it
from start to finish and Ccile Michel attested
that Alstom are very proud of this. We thought
people might start the course but take longer to
complete it. The numbers show that people got
really into it and once they started they were
very engaged and didnt want to stop. This is
very positive.
At the time of writing (April 2012), less than a
month after its launch, over 2,000 people had
taken the course and the reaction from users
has been favorable. Alstoms Learning Director
affirmed, So far the experience has been good.
People say they like it and that it talks to them.
The content is simple enough and relates to
what they do. The second phase of roll-out
will take place over the next 4 months, during
which time Alstom expect a further 7,000
employees to take the course.

For information
For information please
please contact
contact SarahInteractive
Evans Services contact@interactiveservices.com
sevans@interactiveservices.com Phone:
phone: +1 415 +353 1 8111300
552 3191