Internal education in the chemical industry, with a focus on legal compliance and active learning - the case of INEOS Inovyn

Abstract

Education is a broad concept, that is used in all different organizations, in different forms. It is not only an important and effective tool to use when introducing new employees, but is also demanded for certain processes or tasks. These demands are mentioned in different legal requirements, which not least affect chemical industries, whose operations involve many risks and therefore high safety requirements. The aim of this study was to the investigate the chemical company INEOS Inovyn’s education, from two perspectives. The first perspective concerns the company’s compliance with legal requirements, that belong to their Environment, Work En- vironment and Process Security departments, specifically within their education. The second perspective instead concerns the company’s internal education. The internal education was examined to investigate their use of the learning method called active learning, to provide the company with suggestions for improvements. These improvements will regard both legal compliance and the use of active learning. In order to conduct the study, necessary methods were developed to investigate the compliance with the law and the use of active learning. These methods were also developed with the aim of making the research usable for future, similar studies. The study resulted in a number of legal requirements having a certain or complete lack of legal compliance, within the company’s educational courses. Success factors for compliance with legal requirements were identified, both based on the text and structure of the legal requirements and perceived importance of the requirements within the company. In the investigation of the use of active learning, the results showed that the use of active learning was relatively low and could be developed to make learning processes more efficient. The conclusions of this study include, among other things, a few suggestions that could lead to a higher level of legal compliance. For example, to use more consistent references to the requirements in the company’s educational material to ensure that all requirements are complied with. Further, the study identified a need for the use of active learning to a greater extent. Other active elements, or a higher frequency of the elements that are already used, could lead to more effective education and an increased learning at the company.