How DuPont Upskills a Global Workforce

We spoke to Jose Zuniga, Darren Cowdrey and Joelle Srebinski from DuPont’s Operational Excellence Capability and Development Team, who use Synthesia to create videos for global enterprise transformation.

The Challenge

DuPont is embarking on an extensive, multi-year journey to transform operations across the company. This ambitious plan left Jose and his team with the considerable challenge of conveying the fundamental components of their Operational Excellence (OpEx) transformation through DuPont's online OpEx Academy.

With DuPont's expansive global footprint, conventional methods like PowerPoint presentations and in-person training sessions were no longer feasible to scale across thousands of employees. Video emerged as the ideal medium, but it introduced its own set of challenges, around whether to outsource video production or attempt it in-house:

• Cost: Outsourcing video production, hiring studios and actors, was too expensive for a global initiative which required many professional videos
• Skills gap: In-house video creation with traditional editing tools was time consuming to create and required additional upskilling to achieve professional quality 
• Untrained cast: The team attempted to film themselves, but as they are not trained actors this often took multiple takes to become usable

“Outsourcing to a third party for video creation was too expensive, which led us to look at our options internally. We needed a way to create videos more efficiently, more economically, and professionally.” – Joelle Srebinski, Senior Consultant, Continuous Improvement, DuPont

The Solution

Jose and his team needed a video tool that embodied the lean and efficient change management information they were delivering. DuPont now uses Synthesia to develop its in-house OpEx Academy curriculum and provide timely learning, in the flow of work. 

Employees can quickly search the DuPont intranet to find Module Playbooks on role-specific training. Each module is supported by Synthesia videos which provide executive overviews of the core content employees need to deploy, to be successful in their day-to-day activities.

Here’s what the DuPont team values the most:

• Cost: A cost-effective, scalable alternative to creating videos with external actors, studios, and equipment 
• Flexibility: Effortless video edits and updates without starting from scratch
• Localisation: Synthesia’s ability to generate content in 120+ languages enables DuPont to localise content across the world 
• AI Avatars: 140+ AI Avatars bring DuPont training to life with a diverse and innovative edge

“Synthesia hit the sweet spot in terms of efficiency, professionalism and cost.”
– Jose Zuniga, Operational Excellence Capability and Development Leader

Results

With Synthesia, DuPont has transformed their operational excellence training, engaging workers more effectively and reducing costs.

DuPont’s results speak for themselves:

• Cost savings: The team saves up to $10,000/per video in comparison to working with third party video providers 
• Time savings: DuPont has been able to create videos 80% faster, saving hours of resources
• Organisational transformation: Synthesia brings novelty and AI innovation to DuPont’s learning content, resulting in increased learner engagement and impact

“When we said we were creating videos on our own I think expectations were low. But people were amazed that we could do this and how professional it looked.” – Darren Cowdrey, Lean Six Sigma Consultant, DuPont

Encouraged by their initial successes with Synthesia, DuPont plans to empower more Synthesia video creators across their global DuPont teams, with a particular focus on providing operational excellence training in many more languages.