Postal Service Standardizes TrainingPostal Service Standardizes Training

The U.S. Postal Service is standardizing its training initiatives through the use of E-learning and a recently purchased learning-management system from Thinq Learning Solutions Inc.

The Postal Service, which includes 38,000 post offices across the United States, is replacing a 10-year-old homegrown national training database with Thinq's learning-management system to take advantage of its real-time data-capturing capabilities and its ability to validate employee course completion. "We had a hole in the administrative end of managing our training," says Robert Otto, the Postal Service's VP of information technology. "There was a gap between employees' need for training and the development plan to deliver training."

The responsibility to standardize training, which previously occurred during instructor-led sessions and via myriad E-learning systems used by departments across the country, fell squarely on the shoulders of the 1,200 full-time and 1,000 contract IT professionals employed by the Postal Service. Traditionally, training directors are responsible for purchasing E-learning systems. But as learning-management systems expand from departmental to enterprise use and involve more-complex integration with other enterprise systems, IT is leading the way in purchasing, installing, and integrating these tools.

The Postal Service will begin a pilot phase of the system in January and plans to have 15,000 of its 750,000 employees acclimated to the new system by March.