Image of an oil field

Example 1 - BHP Billiton

BHP Billiton is a world leader in diversified resources, including coal, oil, and minerals. Because it is a vast, geographically dispersed enterprise, it manages core operations on nearly every continent.

The Challenge

Like many large organizations today, BHP Billiton faces the familiar conundrum of how to keep its diverse employees informed, inspired, and connected across oceans, time zones, and cultures.

Operating in a sea of rapidly evolving global conditions, employees juggle more responsibilities than ever before and shift their energies between projects more quickly. They must discover ways to coordinate seamlessly with one another, as well as synchronize their efforts with distant counterparts whom they most likely have never met, and might barely know.

Teams work long hours under perpetually changing circumstances, while striving to find a common rhythm and forge a deeper sense of camaraderie. Without a strong underpinning of mutual understanding, exceptional team communication, and a compelling feeling of shared purpose, many find themselves increasingly challenged to achieve the organization’s goals.

Our Solution

The Reina Trust Building® Institute stepped in and proposed a solution that entailed rolling out a comprehensive trust-building engagement to maximize team cohesion. To help mitigate the all-too-real obstacles — including distance, cultural divides, and staggered schedules — our online-learning production team developed a new Trust Building® Online platform for BHP Billiton’s teams, based on the proprietary Trust Building® material.

When it launched, we enrolled the individual teams in their own private, online enclaves. We designed these spaces as customized, group-themed venues. The settings were meant to carry forward, and enable participants to build upon, the results of their team experiences from the face-to-face workshops they engaged in at the start of the Trust Building® process.

Through the online platform, the members pursued their team trust work using a tailor-made curriculum. The courseware embodied custom-blended rich media, including audio and video in multimedia interactions; real-world, “What Would You Do,” scenarios; discussion forums built around core trust topics; private journaling capabilities; and more.

In addition to the rich content, teams received just-in-time, online guidance from trained facilitators. These coaches used the platform’s built-in coaching features to communicate with the group as a whole, establish group norms and expectations, manage assignments, moderate discussions, encourage individual participation, and monitor progress.

The Result

Team members proceeded to create indelible bonds with their local and remote colleagues, many of whom may have seemed like impersonal contacts before the process began. Through the Trust Building® Online platform, they engaged in far deeper participation with the content and with each other than would have been possible via the status quo, or even with conventional e-learning.

The combination of asynchronous collaboration, structured exercises, group discussions, and personalized attention helped foster highly adaptable, mutually beneficial, and sustainable trust communities that fully supported BHP Billiton’s personnel-development goals.