Patagonia employees reach to higher levels of design and management with lynda.com

Challenge: how to help employees continue to grow in their skills

Patagonia employees may be scattered around the globe, but they are a close-knit group when it comes to some common values—a love of the outdoors, a passion for quality, and a desire to make a difference. Product developers still follow the design principles set down by the first crew of climbers and surfers who founded the company more than 30 years ago—that of simplicity and utility.

Creating the highest quality tools and apparel requires that Patagonia’s product developers continue to keep their design skills sharp. Several developers started using lynda.com and approached Patagonia’s Training Director Lu Setnicka to see if the company would be interested in providing lynda.com training to others.

Once Setnicka saw what lynda.com had to offer, she realized that the courses would fit nicely within the company’s goal of providing skills-based training while offering reasonably priced training to employees around the world.

Solution: provide world-wide access to the Online Training Library®

Patagonia structures its training around the company’s core values: environmentalism, quality, integrity, and, in their words, “not [being] bound by convention.” This unique approach opens up possibilities such as parent education, management training, wine tasting, and even trips to help restore ecosystems in what’s becoming the largest national park in Patagonia, Chile.

“I look at these core values and then go out to discover creative ways to meet the educational needs of employees,” says Setnicka. “lynda.com online training videos offer an easy and effective way for us to provide some essential training, whether an employee is located at company headquarters, our distribution center, one of our retail stores, or in Europe or Japan.”

Setnicka signed up for the lynda.com lyndaPro Multi-User Program, which offers her the flexibility to assign accounts to employees on a rotating basis.

Adobe Illustrator training is the most popular, and employees are seeking out other lynda.com training courses, too. Microsoft® Excel® is popular, not only for the production department, but for managers out in the retail stores. Some users go online to learn more about Microsoft Outlook® for more effective email management. One project manager in creative services who does all of the scheduling for video projects is studying digital video principles. Some are brushing up on Microsoft Word® skills.

Results: the flexibility and convenience of lynda.com training meets employees where they are

Setnicka has found the flexibility that lynda.com online training offers to be immeasurably valuable. Employees can get online and study whenever they want, wherever they are.

“Some of our product developers travel to factories in other parts of the U.S. or in other countries,” says Setnicka. “Even if they’re on an overseas trip, they can go online and develop their skills. Being able to access the training any time is a huge advantage.”

She’s also impressed by the wide range of courses available through the company's multi-user license.

“Different people have different training needs,” she says. “Some employees need basic software skills, others need something more technical. It’s all available through lynda.com.”