How SBD transformed its readiness training and reduced the employee onboarding costs by 54%

A longtradition of craftsmanship

Since 1843, Stanley Black & Decker has provided the tools and innovative solutions that customers trust to get the job done. The Craftsman® brand was acquired from Sears Holdings in 2017, along with the Sedalia manufacturing plant in Missouri, where about 800 employees skillfully manufacture select Craftsman metal storage products.

The highly skilled process within the 900,000 ft2 facilities is optimized for efficiency, quality, and speed so that Stanley Black & Decker can respond to continually evolving consumer needs, stay ahead of competitors, and adapt to the challenges of a changing workforce.

Next-generation training for tomorrow’s workers

For new employees, DeepHow shortened their time to proficiency and reduced the need for other workers to train them, enabling the Sedalia plant to shave 54% off onboarding costs.

DeepHow transformed workforce readiness and proficiency within the plant by minimizing expert downtime and accelerating the onboarding process during a time of extreme worker shortage.

DeepHow captures existing knowledge and know-how and then provides a scalable training platform to onboard, retain, and upskill tomorrow’s workforce.

Challenge 1 — Capture and Transfer Technical Know-How

The retirement rate in the U.S. has remained consistent, leading to a continual need for new hires. Preserving the knowledge of team members with 30+ years of experience became a priority for their training teams.

The training and development team was eager to capture the valuable technical know-how of these senior technicians so that new hires could benefit from it before these experienced employees departed.

For new team members, there’s a lot to learn: to be considered proficient, they must master 25 discrete processes. But the existing traditional training methods and written SOPs required substantial learning time and significant oversight by subject-matter experts—diverting them from their own tasks.

Challenge 2 — Attract and Retain Tomorrow’s Workforce

To foster innovation, Stanley Black & Decker recognizes that today’s millennial workforce is motivated by careers that offer development and growth along with utilizing technology they’re familiar with.

“What does this job entail?” is a common question during a recruitment interview. With DeepHow, the recruitment team can give prospective workers a better understanding of job requirements.

This means new associates are better prepared for the task, resulting in lower turnover rates of first-time workers.Stanley Black & Decker needed a scalable, practical solution to help new associates acquire the skills they need today, and then to build on those skills so they can assume new responsibilities.

Faster onboarding, faster time to proficiency

Stanley Black & Decker uses DeepHow Navigator® and DeepHow Skills®, enriching conventional training in the welding and folding process for the signature Craftsman® Toolbox. Using the DeepHow Editor®, the team captured experienced team members at work and developed a series of expert-guided instructional videos for deployment to the shop floor.

DeepHow’s easy-to-consume, segmented videos — along with images and documents attached to each workflow — provide supplemental support for peer-to-peer training. By enabling associates to confidently learn new skills without disrupting production, DeepHow Navigator has decreased downtime associated with new learners.

Reward progress in skills development

Recognizing that people love to learn new skills and grow, team leaders encourage associates to use DeepHow to acquire new skills and then award skill certifications within the DeepHow Skills Module to validate and reward those efforts.

This approach boosts engagement between team leads and employees and broadens the visibility and recognition of ‘fast-track’ associates who are eager to advance within the organization.

Overall, the workforce is more knowledgeable. Production managers now have better visibility into what skills are available, positioning them to assign qualified associates to new roles or which associates can fill in when there is a call out.

The DeepHow difference

By using the DeepHow platform to capture and deliver video-based training and maintain up-to-date training records, Stanley Black & Decker has transformed how skills are developed and transferred at the Sedalia plant.

Our AI-powered video training platform has delivered numerous tangible benefits. The most important: a 54% cost reduction compared to hands-on peer-to-peer training, coupled with faster onboarding and a shorter time to productivity.

Today, when facing the challenge of new product launches and new employee onboarding, the team can quickly access live training content creation and confidently upskill frontline workers. Stanley Black & Decker now has clear visibility into overall skill competence across the workforce, which means the Sedalia management team can efficiently schedule production and identify training gaps that need to be bridged.

Better still, DeepHow was integrated with minimal disruption, enabling the Sedalia team to blend new workforce readiness into existing training methods.

Workplace readiness is a pressing challenge for skilled trade organizations

Creating a workplace readiness action plan is the necessary first step to upskilling new talent and capturing know-how from your most experienced team members. Download our expert guide and build your action plan today.

Get the Guide