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Georgia Gulf

The Company

Testimonial

"The OKC plant has worked hard at promoting a positive safety culture to ensure the safety of our employees. In fact, the OKC plant has now gone two years without a recordable injury. PureSafety has greatly helped us to maintain that culture by ensuring that our employees receive the customized training they need to stay safe and productive."

Joyce Huckabay
Environmental Health and Safety Manager

Georgia Gulf is a leading North American manufacturer and international marketer of two integrated chemical product lines, chlorovinyls and aromatics. The Oklahoma City (OKC) plant manufactures polyvinyl chloride powder. This product is sold to companies that use it to manufacture PVC Pipe, vinyl siding, vinyl windows or other similar uses.

The Challenge

The biggest training issue for the OKC facility was the difficulty of training employees that work 12-hour rotating shifts at a facility that operates 24-hours a day. In one week, operators work both days and nights and this made scheduling safety training very difficult. Some of the problems were:
Poor Information Retention
Operators were required to attend safety training at 7:00 in the morning, after they had just completed a 12-hour shift. Employees were tired which made it difficult for them to efficiently absorb the training material.

Overtime Costs Were Expensive
Georgia Gulf paid overtime to every employee who attended classes after their shift was over. Safety training is necessary and beneficial, but Georgia Gulf was looking for alternatives to eliminate the overtime costs for both scheduled classes and make-up classes.

Misplaced Training Materials
Safety training was mainly stand-up classroom training, but the Oklahoma City Plant had tried to utilize video CD training. With only one copy of each module, video CDs would get misplaced or lost. Training on that module was then stopped until the CD could be located or replaced.

Inability to Customize
The existing video CD training could not be customized with pictures or content. Each Georgia Gulf site had specific safety issues that were unique to that location, yet there was never a way to modify the CDs or course materials. Everyone received the same generic training that then had to be supplemented with stand-up training.

Classroom Scheduling Conflicts
The video CD could only be played on one special computer in one room, complicating the training.

No Flexibility to Start or Stop Training CD
In many cases, Maintenance and Operations employees may only have a spare 10-15 minutes at a time. With only one CD available per module and one dedicated training computer, the employees couldn’t pause the training and return later.

The Solution

Trace Kielman, the Safety Coordinator at the Georgia Gulf Pasadena, TX facility was having the same difficulties as the Oklahoma City Plant so he began doing some research into alternate training methods. BNA, who was Georgia Gulf’s vendor, introduced Trace to PureSafety. Trace quickly learned that PureSafety has the ability to customize any course in the course library, solving a crucial and ongoing problem. He further discovered that PureSafety could actually create custom courses from the ground-up, thus addressing some very specific safety training needs.

The Results

Georgia Gulf was thrilled with PureSafety’s online training solution and especially the ability to quickly customize courses so that the employees received the safety content they needed, depending on their work location.

Customized courses
Georgia Gulf was able to modify the content and images to be specific to each site. Thus employees received the exact safety training they required. They also modified the tests to include site-specific questions.

Vastly Improved retention
Employees receive the safety information they need, when they are awake and rested. They are able to take their safety lessons 10 minutes at a time if necessary.

Courses are Available 24/7
Regardless of the site or the work shift, employees could easily take their safety training. Make-up classes were eliminated.

More hands-on training when needed
Since employees received much of their safety training online, the Safety Trainers were able to devote themselves to those tasks that require hands-on training.

Significant Cost savings
Employees were able to take their training anytime, anywhere, almost eliminating overtime costs. In addition to the overtime costs saved, maintenance activities no longer had to be shut down while the Maintenance Department completed their safety training.

Student Course Completion Is Easily Tracked
Each month, managers automatically receive a report that lets them know who has completed their assigned courses and which courses are currently overdue.

Employees enjoy their training
Employees comment that they enjoy the interactive nature of the course and they love the flexibility online training provides.