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How BorgWarner drives performance beyond box-checking

BorgWarner is an American multinational automotive manufacturer. Using Axonify, their team has trained 1,250+ employees across the Ithaca, New York campus without having to hire a larger team of learning specialists to get it done.

How?

Jennifer Payne, BorgWarner’s Campus Training Manager, credits the platform for allowing them to create a comprehensive, world-class personalized learning experience.

“I always joke and say that the Axonify coaches that we have in our platform are part of my team, helping us to create a real time, on-demand and engaging learning experience for everyone,” says Payne. “So using the platform has really enabled us to train and reinforce that content faster, more thoroughly and is helping us to close those learning gaps.”

Relevant and personalized content for the win

Each employee has a unique role within the organization, and their training should reflect those differences. BorgWarner’s Ithaca campus was struggling to serve up relevant and personalized content to their people.

So, with the help of Axonify, they turned training into an ongoing opportunity for employees to learn.

“In our world, in a learning world, we never should be done with training,” laughs Payne. This attitude keeps her team ready to perform their specific duties, even while under pressure.

“When our auditors come in, it’s actually quite an experience, being able to sit down with someone and explain to them how we keep our employees trained. They’re sometimes overwhelmed with the idea that we never back down. But if there’s something that needs to be trained, or communicated, we have that first line of defense to tell our people what they need to know, or have our people tell us what they need to know.”

In the two years since partnering with Axonify, they’ve earned glowing reviews from external and customer auditors alike.

“Our auditors have always come in, and they have a couple suggestions here or there about minor non-conformances. But I’m excited to say that in the last two years, especially since we got Axonify, we haven’t had any findings. In fact, we’re used as one of the strength marks of BorgWarner on the learning and delivery side.”

BorgWarner warehouse

Breaking participation records

Unsanctioned communication channels like WhatsApp groups and Facebook chats aren’t a reliable way to share information across teams (or the most secure). Now that the Axonify platform is recognized as the main line of communication across the Ithaca campus, people are regularly logging in to receive updates and contribute in an authorized manner that’s used at all levels of the workforce.

“I will preach at the top of the mountain that you have to have your people above be supporters. So, our plant manager, our leadership committees and teams, everybody believes in and promotes Axonify,” says Payne. “The expectation is you’re an employee in Ithaca, you are on Axonify and there’s no deviation. We’ve really changed that culture.”

“By having our top leadership, our plant manager and everybody else on board, helping drive that expectation and that culture of learning, that’s how we’ve succeeded. We work closely with Human Resources, supervisors, people leaders and independent contributors to make sure that their people, or themselves, are on the platform.”

Reframing the future of training

One of Payne’s next goals is to start delivering this training experience right from day one with a new hire onboarding path.

“We are looking at doing some priority settings, making it a really deep experience for that new hire coming in,” says Payne. “Instead of them being done training in their first 30 days of their onboarding, they will now experience onboarding for their tenure of being an employee at BorgWarner.”

She has high hopes that a personalized onboarding path will better prepare new employees for the realities of their roles. “They already have so many things they have to know, and they have to learn. So that safety and compliance, and even the on-the-job stuff, we want to give it out in little bitty doses so it’s more obtainable for each one of them.”

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