DEME is a global leader in offshore energy, dredging, marine infrastructure, and environmental works. The organisation enables the production of renewable energy, creates new land, and tackles pollution, operating on thefine line where water, land, and energy meet. DEME’s vision is to work towards a sustainable future by offering solutions for global challenges like climate change, a growing population and urbanisation, increasing maritime trade, and environmental issues.Based in Belgium, DEME has been operating for nearly 150 years, and it currently employs more than 5,300 people; its organisational skillset and knowledge has made it an expert in its industry.
Today, the world is facing a host of challenges – including rising sea levels, demand for minerals to help cut carbon emissions, and the need for land reclamation and brownfield development, to support the growing global population. Tackling these issues calls for a range of innovative solutions, which is exactly what DEME’s diverse portfolio offers; its goal is to combine the best technologies and the brightest minds, to create a better and more liveable world for all.
Central to DEME’s goal is its ability to adapt to waves of change in our ever-evolving world. The organisationoperates in a highly regulated and dynamic environment driven by a rapid pace of technological change and transformation. Understandably, it perceives lifelong learning as a mindset – and the right tools are crucial in empowering its workforce to continuously learn and develop. This way, DEME can not only adapt, but it can also explore new opportunities.
Education is DEME’s gateway to exploration. The organisation already prioritises the growth and development of its workforce by investing in training for both hard and soft skills via its learning journeys. It also provides career maps to help people navigate through opportunities, and build lifelong careers supported by lifelong learning. Moreover, DEME is continuously expanding and fine-tune its training offering. As an organisation, DEME is a place for explorers; always inventing new ways of working, it is a pioneer of this generation and the next. And all of this epitomises its HR tagline of “Where neXt”, with X symbolising the unknown future.
Naturally, best-in-class solutions are needed to help uncover the solutions of tomorrow. As such, DEME made the decision to partner with Cornerstone and leverage its own LMS, to help its people excel and ensure they are always prepared to meet – and overcome – the challenges of their roles. By implementing the LMS, DEME has made Cornerstone the corelearning platform for its workforce’s learning and development.
Main Challenges
DEME operates in a highly regulated industry and high-risk environment.As such, maintaining rigorous safety standards, and ensuring compliance, are central to its operations, and training to uphold these is non-negotiable. With thousands of employees working across various teams worldwide, and each required to adhere to specific certifications and protocols, DEME needed a solution that could deliver the right training to the right individual. Another factor to consider was timing; automated reminders were a must-have, to ensure that employees were renewing their mandatory training and maintaining continuous compliance. And from the perspective of DEME’s HR team, it needed to track training across its workforce, and evidence this to external bodies as needed.
For DEME, mandatory training was one piece of the puzzle. In order to help build lifelong careers, the organisation needed to cater for a spectrum of individual learning needs to help drive skill and career development across its workforce. This meant integrating a flexible range of learning modes, including virtual and in-person training, as well as being able to assess the impact of training on each employee’s growth.
Aside from facilitating training, another challenge for DEME was delivering seamless co-ordination and integration between both its office and maritime teams. This also tied into the need for strong compliance and safety – by ensuring its teams were well synchronised in the handling of any operational and administrative tasks, the organisation could maintain operational excellence. With these needs in mind, DEME turned to Cornerstone to implement Cornerstone Learning to better deploy and track training, as well as drive high organisational performance.
“In an industry as challenging, regulated, and complex as ours, it’s vital that both DEME as an organisation, and its people, have access to best-in-class solutions to continuously maintain compliance and improve performance. We selected Cornerstone because we felt that its offerings could do exactly that, and we’re pleased with the positive impact this partnership has had on our organisation.”
Najwa Abid – Talent Manager, DEME
Why Cornerstone?
DEME operates in an industry that is shaped by strict regulations. As such, it was vital that the chosen solution would be able to provide support in maintaining compliance and safety. But on a broader level, DEME wanted to offer its workforce tailored learning plans that not only considered relevant compliance training, but also offered modules that met each person’s goals to help them build their skills and knowledge – and, ultimately, lifelong careers. Cornerstone was the provider of choice because its solutions could meet the organisation’s varied needs, coupled with a wealth of experience in supporting large organisations in highly regulated environments.
Implementing Solutions
DEME implemented Cornerstone Learning, making it a single source of truth for employees looking for relevant training. Throughout this process, Cornerstone was available to provide holistic, around the clock support, and offered consistent communication to support with any issues or errors.
As part of the implementation process, Cornerstone became the central repository for DEME’s training data. This meant that its HR team could easily access, and leverage, data for reporting as needed.
Results
Cornerstone’s platform has had a big impact on how DEME’s workforce operates. Ensuring flexibility and developing intuition are two of the most important aims for the organisation. As such, DEME is now able to facilitate the synchronisation of operational and administrative tasks between its maritime and office employees. This has been vital in helping the organisation ensure that both groups are consistently aligned and running effectively.
DEME has also been able to enhance its workforce’s flexibility and intuition across learning and development. The organisation can now create, manage, and track detailed and personalised training plans for each individual, depending on their department. As a result, 50% of DEME’s employee population is now engaging with learning on a monthly basis. For its maritime employees, a core aspect of each plan has been ensuring that people are adhering to, and excelling in, industry-specific certifications and safety protocols. DEME now has a range of options available to keep its team compliant; for instance, the organisation can deliver and monitor e-learning modules, schedule in-person training sessions, and implement automated reminders for certification renewals. Moreover, maritime employees have been able to develop a strong understanding around the importance of their training obligations, thanks to the platform’s capabilities and flexibility. All of this has resulted in the team demonstrating a consistently high standard of competence and readiness, and continuous skill and knowledge development, across both external compliance needs and corporate training initiatives.
The value derived from Cornerstone’s platform has been equally impactful on DEME’s office workforce. Employees now have access to both the aforementioned compliance training, as well as a catalogue of content to support a variety of professional development goals. And with the team embracing the resources on offer, DEME can analyse and report on this uptake in learning to continuously aid strategic professional development and ensure that its training is proving effective.
DEME’s holistic transformation has touched thousands of people and has resulted in a cohesive and well-trained workforce. As such, employees completed over 11,400 training sessions in 2023, equivalent to over 280,000 hours. Moreover, over 5,200 sessions, and over 158,000 hours, of training were completed in the first six months of 2024. Today, DEME has been able to foster a culture of continuous learning, ensuring that every employee gets the training they need at the right time.
Conclusion
The skills and knowledge of DEME’s workforce is underpinning the future of water, land, and energy as we know it – and Cornerstone is right by the organisation’s side, every step of the way.
