How Energy Queensland is Energizing its Workforce for Tomorrow

Today, energy customers demand greater affordability, reliability, sustainability, and technology which presents both challenges and opportunities for companies in the energy industry. Energy Queensland has embraced continuous learning to prepare its employees for the jobs of tomorrow while recalibrating itself for the future of energy—and LinkedIn Learning is helping them get there.

It was a natural transition for the Australian state electricity distributor and retailer, which already had been using e-learning for regulatory and compliance training. Still, to ensure that its 7,000+ employees made meaningful use of their online and on-demand access to LinkedIn Learning, Energy Queensland needed a plan. This took the form of a three-pronged ‘Pilot, Pitch, and Promote’ strategy.

Thrust 1: Pilot to prove value

“We started with a month-long LinkedIn Learning pilot program with 100 employees. Using data and insights from the pilot, we performed a cost-benefit analysis and the results proved that the online learning solution was delivering value to our people in a cost-effective way for the business,” explained Ash Turner, Program Manager of People Strategy, Communications & Change at Energy Queensland.

While this approach helped secure the budget for Energy Queensland to get started on its LinkedIn Learning journey, for deployment success, Ash needed more than management approval; he needed buy-in.

Thrust 2: Pitch to learner needs

With an ambitious learning target of two hours per month for all employees locked in and senior executives encouraged to lead by example, Ash focused on ‘pitching’ LinkedIn Learning to internal users.

He scheduled sessions with teams and departments, provided guidance on how to maximise the use of LinkedIn Learning and worked with managers to identify specific learning needs. These were then translated into curated learning paths in LinkedIn Learning to make it easier for teams to get started.

“The combination of defining different groups of learners, creating unique learning paths, and using the Recommend feature to push content to learners is really powerful,” said Ash. “We’ve tracked the numbers and seen that when the Recommend feature is used judiciously, the view count goes right up.”

Thrust 3: Promote to gain traction

To turn access and awareness into action and traction, Ash developed a full communication and marketing plan. Using a mix of promotional material, seasonal campaigns, success stories, and gamification—in addition to active feedback gathering and executive sponsorship—Energy Queensland recorded impressive results within just 10 months of deployment:

• 45% activation rate
• 7,020 of learning hours
• 4,679 courses completed

Feedback from learners has also been very encouraging. Jasmine Swinton, a fourth-year trade apprentice shared in her feedback that she appreciates how the organisation has made LinkedIn Learning free for its employees, saying, “I’ve bought plenty of books for professional development in the past, but I think a lot of people, like me, would prefer to just get the crucial points from a video in an hour.”

This is particularly significant for Ash because field workers, who form a sizable part of Energy Queensland’s workforce, have a unique set of needs, challenges. and routines when it comes to learning at work.

“With LinkedIn Learning’s anywhere, anytime content, we have made in-roads into strengthening our culture of learning. Moving forward, our focus will be on building success across all our employee groups, including refining our learner engagement strategy for specific groups like field workers,” said Ash. “We’re excited to bring the benefits of learning to all our employees as we prepare for the future of energy together.” Download the full case study.