ManGO's standardization program for SIBUR holding's corporate training center

SIBUR holding is the largest petrochemical company in Russia to produce and distribute polypropylene, polyethylene, BOPP, synthetic rubbers, and other petrochemical products on the Russian and international markets.

A while ago, SIBUR built a modern corporate training center to develop its employees' professional skills and knowledge. The ManGO! Games team, for their part, was entrusted with standardizing the educational programs and the center activities. The initiative is to be implemented in three stages, two of which have already been completed.

Mission: Elaborate and introduce corporate training center standards to ensure training programs and processes scalability.

Background:

Newly built in Tobolsk, SIBUR's corporate training center is an example of a state-of-the-art facility.
No wonder it has become a source of pride for the company management. The latest training infrastructure, including the cutting-edge equipment, impressive functionality, and perfectly orchestrated space management, makes the institution a strong candidate to become the best training center in Russia.

The company's further plans include scaling the training center to handle 50,000 man-days per year or more, which is impossible without standards introduced. All that combined necessitated the standardization for subsequent scale-up.

Solution:

We decided to approach the standardization of the training center in three stages:

• Stage 1 — requirements gathering, elaboration of standards in a convenient checklist format, followed by approval and submission to the facility.
• Stage 2 — standards-based procedural training activities, including drafting the terms of reference for the program, preparing the audience to be trained, etc.
• Stage 3 — holding a workshop dedicated to the adoption of the standards.

Even with its members being true experts in their respective fields, standardization was something of a challenge for the training center team. The problems arose primarily from a lack of training or teaching experience of the center's staff. Even the authors of effective training courses are now to receive different roles. Instead of designing educational programs, their activity will now include, for example, selecting course developers or coaches to deliver classes, with a focus not on development, but on monitoring and procurement. Each of them will have to implement 30 programs a year and do so in a timely and responsible manner to meet all the regulatory obligations. And it is only through standardization that all the necessary existing and missing competencies can be reconciled.

The first stage of the project was aimed at analyzing the needs and developing 18 standards in the form of simple and straightforward checklists. This made compliance with regulations easier and, most importantly, more feasible. The approach is expected to enable the standardization of the existing base along with the subsequent scale-up.

Once approved by the management team, the standards have been handed over to the training center supervisor for further assessment and implementation. As soon as the third stage is completed and the standards are put to effective use, the training center will move to a new level to match the excellence of its technical capabilities.