Element Technical Services

Challenge

Working Efficiently in Safety-Critical Environments

Element Technical Services (Element) is an oilfield service company that provides hydraulic fracturing and coiled tubing operations to oil and gas companies in Canada and the United States. The company takes pride in its innovative approach, constantly developing and refining equipment and products in its facilities and delivering the expertise its clients need to customize and deploy that equipment to suit the unique characteristics of each individual oil well.

The oil and gas field sites where Element operates are safety-critical environments. To protect workers and the environment and to ensure operations run smoothly and efficiently, it’s vital that everyone on the Element team has the knowledge and skills to handle the equipment safely and effectively.

“The oil and gas industry is its own niche, and what we do is even more specialized within that niche,” says Sam Moen, technical specialist and learning management system (LMS) coordinator at Element. “So, when someone joins the company, there’s a lot they need to learn that they’re never going to find online. Training is absolutely critical, and as our business grew, we identified a number of challenges that we needed to solve.

“First, we wanted to streamline our onboarding material and make it more relevant for people joining in different roles, instead of having a cookie-cutter approach that was the same for everyone. Second, we wanted a better way to handle training updates and recertifications. And third, we wanted to lessen the labor intensity for our admin team; their workload was increasing rapidly with the number of employees.”

Investing in on-demand professional development ensures employees can build critical skills when and where they need them—leading to safer operations, stronger teamwork and reduced downtime. It’s a scalable way to boost performance, enhance the customer experience and maintain a competitive edge in a demanding industry.

Solution

Building a Flexible Training Platform

Element decided to invest in an LMS to help organize and automate its onboarding and training processes.

“We knew we were going to have to build something really unique for our business, and the flexibility of D2L Brightspace gave us what we needed,” says Moen. “The ability to build customized interactive content in the Brightspace platform was a key factor in our decision, and so was the ability to upload documents, which would help us to share our equipment manuals and S.O.P.s easily with all our employees.”

Working closely with the D2L Implementation Services team, Element completed the first phase of their LMS project in less than a year and recently completed a second phase to add more functionality.

“A big win was making things easier for our operations admins. Brightspace is fully integrated with our existing HR system, which means when a new employee joins, they are automatically enrolled in the appropriate role-based training, and their safety certification updates upon completion. Streamlining the entire process really supports our compliance audits and renewals.”

Tailoring Training to Employees’ Needs

With Brightspace, Element now has separate training tracks for the three main groups of employees: office staff, facility staff and field teams. “We have a very diverse workforce working in very different roles,” explains Moen. “With Brightspace we can make their onboarding much more relevant, which makes it more engaging. And with Brightspace HTML templates, it’s easier to manage, update and build courses.”

For example, in its safety courses for field teams, Element uses scenarios based on the actual equipment that employees will use. “The lessons really sink in because the questions that we’re asking in the quiz are things that are actually practical to their day-to-day work,” says Moen.

Once employees have completed the initial safety and equipment courses in Brightspace, the second part of their training involves mentorship and practical assessments. “The feedback from our mentors has been very positive,” says Moen. “They say that people who have completed their training in the Brightspace platform are several steps ahead in terms of understanding the equipment, so it makes their practical training much more efficient.”

To enhance their professional development offerings, Element uses Go1 to provide soft skills training and address subject areas where additional support is needed. Go1 complements their in-house custom-built courses, helping create a well-rounded and comprehensive learning experience.

Automating Renewals and Professional Development

For more-experienced employees, Element is also using Brightspace to handle recertification and training updates. The platform automatically tracks expiry dates for each employee’s certifications and provides password protection for advanced courses to ensure that employees can only access training that is suitable for their level.

Training is also linked to career progression through the release conditions tool, as Moen explains: “If you’re at level one of your career path, then Brightspace gives you access to the level two training courses. So, if you want to be considered for promotion, your first step is to complete those next-level courses.”

Result

Effective Training That Scales With the Business

Since launching its training platform in 2023, Element has seen significant improvements in engagement and adoption metrics.

“In the past year, the average number of course completions per employee rose to 12, for a total of 7,500 individual course completions across the company. This was a 27% increase in course completions, and learners collectively spent the equivalent of more than 165 days in Brightspace,” says Moen.

Moen adds: “What impressed me most is that many of our longtime learners had already completed their assigned catalog of role-based training. So, we expected the completion rate to level off. To still see a 27% increase in course completion means our new hires are jumping in right away—and people are staying engaged even after completing their mandatory assigned training.”

With strong signs of learner engagement, Element expanded its course catalog significantly, growing by 200% in just one year, from fewer than 100 courses to over 300. This growth reflects their continued investment in on-demand, role-based learning and the evolving needs of their workforce.

“The metrics are impressive, and our entire management team are major supporters of the project,” says Moen. “I recently sat down with our president, and he told me that when the company started a decade ago, he would never have believed that they would have such a fully-fledged online training system as we have now.”

Over the past few years, Element has almost doubled in size, from 450 employees to nearly 800. Despite this rapid growth in head count—and therefore in onboarding and training requirements—Element is still able to manage the administrative workload with the same number of staff. “Right now, I am the lead administrator, and I have a couple of people helping out part time,” says Moen. “And as far as course creation and content curation go, I’m pretty much driving the show.”

Boosting Safety and Efficiency

In the big picture, the success of Element’s training program has repercussions beyond HR. “It’s having a big impact in the field,” explains Moen. “We’re seeing a sort of invisible metric where better training means that we use our equipment more effectively, which means we spend less time and money on maintenance and deliver a better service to our clients.”

In particular, the positive impact on safety has been a major win. “We have targeted courses on specific safety-critical areas, such as working with tractors and trailers, and the number of incidents has come way down,” says Moen. “With Brightspace, our people have access to the information they need 24/7, so they can always check when they’re unsure about something. As a result, we’re seeing a lower recordable incident frequency rate across our business.”

As a next step, Element is using Brightspace Data Hub to build a dashboard that will make it even easier to track compliance by visualizing employees’ course completions, as well as providing insight into career progression. “We’re also looking at using D2L Brightspace as our focal point for employee communication,” concludes Moen. “It’s all coming together nicely to foster ongoing education and safety compliance for our employees.”