Why Innovation Starts with Employee Education

If you talk to any print service provider (PSP) these days, you’re likely to hear the same challenges repeated: labor and workforce development, rising costs, and ongoing economic uncertainty.

For Freedom Graphic Systems (Freedom) — a PRINTING United Alliance member headquartered in Milton, Wisconsin, with multiple locations across Wisconsin and Illinois — the answer to many of these concerns starts with education. The company has invested heavily in employee learning, and COO and President Eric Blohm is quick to point out that the payoff goes far beyond better press operators.

It was that commitment to growth that led Blohm to the PRINTING United Alliance Leadership Summit, where he first encountered the iLEARNING+ platform. He recognized almost immediately that it was a resource Freedom needed — and one the broader printing industry has been missing.

In-House Education x iLEARNING+

For Freedom, iLEARNING+ wasn’t the beginning of its education journey. Instead, it’s been the next evolution of a strategy that started years ago with the company’s in-house initiative called Freedom University.

Go back further, and Blohm’s passion for education blossomed alongside his career. He got his start in the industry in 1986 right out of high school and worked his way through the ranks. As somebody who went right out of high school to the printing industry, he looked for anything to get educated on either technical printing or leadership. “I’m a huge advocate of education,” he says.

Fast forward to when he started at Freedom 12 years ago, one of the first things he helped launch was Freedom University. Initially, Blohm notes they were piecing together a variety of different educational tools. But when many of the programs they were using went through bigger changes, they decided to create their own internal program.

“It forced Freedom to start its own education department with the mindset of creating leadership [and] technical training,” Blohm says. “We would refer to it as our basic skills education: PowerPoint, Excel, how to write a good email, conflict resolution, leadership development … We had this mission to create an education platform for all of those things under one roof.” He adds that they supplemented that with outside trainers and coaches to focus on industry-specific training.

Violeta Varela serves as the training coordinator for Freedom Graphics. | Credit: Freedom Graphics

Violeta Varela, training coordinator for Freedom, helps oversee the company’s various forms of education. She originally started with the company in 2004 on the production floor, and like Blohm, followed a path through various areas of Freedom before landing in human resources.

For her, education is equally important. “As someone that started as an operator, there are a lot of people that have a lot of potential, and they, with our help in sending them or giving them educational trainings, can develop to their full potential,” she believes.

The relentless pursuit of education and innovation eventually landed Blohm at a PRINTING United Alliance Leadership Summit, where he was introduced to the iLEARNING+ platform. “I didn’t know much about it until I met James Martin (Group President, PRINTING United Alliance),” Blohm says. “He was extremely passionate about it, talked a lot about it, and that sparked the idea of how we could bring further education into Freedom, more specifically in the printing portion.”

The Business Benefits of Employee Education

For Blohm, Varela, and the entire team at Freedom, providing education to all employees carries huge benefits. One such benefit is workforce development.

“The more we can deliver education to individuals to learn more about our industry, the better off that they are to understand what we do and join our industry,” Blohm explains. He notes that while the first step has been implementing iLEARNING+ courses for current employees, the plan is to bring it forward-facing to local high schools as well as offer it to Freedom interns.

“Even though [some are] still in high school, they're coming to Freedom and doing intern programs with us so they could also take the courses and enhance their knowledge of printing,” Blohm continues. “And hopefully when they graduate, if they don't go to either a technical school or college, they would look at Freedom for employment.”

But it’s also bigger than that. The team views education as both a personal and professional development tool, giving employees skills that allow them to grow within Freedom, or even to work elsewhere.

Freedom Graphics has a long history of providing education to its employees through an internal training program. They’ve now added the iLEARNING+ platform for print industry training. | Credit: Freedom Graphics

Blohm explains that most employee education revolves around leadership, communication, and basic business practices. While Freedom does require education like IT training and HR-related topics, the enticing quality of iLEARNING+ is the specific focus on printing.  “[Adding iLEARNING+] is really about giving the employees further education in their field to help them advance,” he says.

He refers to this as skills progression. “As your skills progress, you start adding more attributes to your training, then we increase your pay,” Blohm explains. “Our goal is to start off an entry-level employee, and then through Freedom University along with iLEARNING+ have them continue to grow their skills. That benefits them, it benefits the company, and it benefits our communities, because the more that somebody learns a trade, the higher income they make, they invest in their community.”

While the company is still early in its implementation stages, Varela notes that “Print 101: Introduction to the Printing Industry” is already popular among employees. “There might be some employees that are new to our industry [who] start working and see what we do, maybe they really like it, and we have the tools now to help educate them on the industry,” she says. “Maybe someone has been a press operator for several years, and with taking all these courses and certifications, that helps them grow faster in our company, be more prepared for a new position. I feel like [iLEARNING+] is a very complete platform, especially because it's targeted to our industry.”

One other major benefit of the platform that Blohm calls out is its availability in multiple languages. “We have about 19 different nationalities that work here at Freedom,” he says. “Using solutions like this that allow us to be able to do education in multiple languages also enhances not only the company but the employee.”

There are a few iLEARNING+ courses that are available in five different languages (not all are available in those languages). It works hand-in-hand with additional education Freedom offers: English and Spanish as second languages. This plays into the bigger picture of what Blohm describes as “ingredients of innovation.” In his opinion, it takes diversity, listening to others, investing in your employees, and education to truly be innovative.

“The true message is that Freedom wants to invest in its employees,” he says. “I ask a lot of employees, what do you think the true investment or the true ingredient of innovation is, and a lot of times I share that it's really diversity … we want a very diverse group with a lot of different backgrounds, and we find that education stands up to be one of the strongest in driving that innovation. The minute you stop educating, you start to get stale.”

Freedom University, alongside the iLEARNING+ platform, gives the company the education it needs to avoid complacency. “Any opportunity you have to learn more, just take it,” Varela says. “You never know: Even if years later you're not working here, it's still going to go with you. Whatever you learn, it's going to help in your life.”