The EU’s upcoming 2020 chemical reporting database may soon create the need for tens of thousands of suppliers to be educated on how to provide chemical content information to their customers. Formal chemical reporting training of many of these suppliers will be necessary for global exporters in automotive, aerospace, electronics, heavy equipment and other industry sectors to continue to export their products onto the EU market.
When it comes to employee and/or supplier training, the question on any leader’s mind is, “Does it work?” At Tetra Tech, we’ve asked ourselves the same question and continue to do so, to streamline our IMDS, REACH and RoHS chemical reporting trainings and to best prepare our attendees for using tools to reach their future compliance goals.
Since 2002, Tetra Tech has trained 8,500 individuals on IMDS and other chemical reporting requirements and maintains a database of survey results from each of these training attendees. We have leveraged this information to continuously improve the user experience for IMDS and other chemical reporting trainings.
In 2018 and 2019, we offered three distinct large-group workshops and surveyed the attendees from each of these sessions to set a baseline for understanding how OEMs can create best practices for educating suppliers on material content reporting requirements.
In all, 293 individuals, representing 233 supplier companies, attended these trainings; 32 industry experts representing 12 large OEM/Tier 1 companies presented; and 28 other non-industry stakeholders (consultants, industry organization representatives, government agency representatives, etc.) also attended.
We asked a wide sample of industry participants for feedback after each of the workshops, and we were provided with great insight into what is effective for workshops and what takes away from the end goals.
The high-level results for benchmarking best practices are, in summary:
- The optimum size for material content reporting workshops is in the range of 50-80 attendees. This “sweet spot” balances the needs for teacher-student interaction vs. critical mass for networking benefits.
- Controlled agendas with well-defined, closed-ended, real-world, hands-on training exercises are significantly more beneficial than open-ended, theoretical, abstract training concepts.
- We learned that it is critical to thoroughly screen attendees to validate that their level of pre-requisite knowledge matches the base level of competency required to benefit from the training program.
To discuss best practices for hosting your own chemical reporting workshop, please contact a Tetra Tech training coordinator.
