Arizona’s largest electric utility serves more than 1.3 million customers across the state from Douglas to Yuma to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. The company operates a diverse energy generation portfolio, including Palo Verde, the largest nuclear power plant in the United States.

The Challenge

Joe Hauglie, an Instructor Senior who has been with the company for over a decade, manages a range of training and safety courses for power plant, engineering, and field employees. Responsible for maintaining 30–40 courses per year – about 25% of which undergo major updates annually– and a large, geographically dispersed workforce, his team needed a solution that not only allowed them to create courses as quickly as the information changed, but also engaged their employees with otherwise “dry” safety and procedural content.

Previously, the team used an alternative AI Voice tool, but found that out of the many available voices, only two sounded somewhat natural; this limitation forced them to attempt to use internal employees to create the voiceovers. This process presented many bottlenecks and unsuccessfully held employee attention for training courses that ranged from 15 minutes to over an hour in length.

“Getting real people to do the recordings was always our last resort,” said Joe. “It’s impossible to keep the quality consistent and information up to date, especially when we’re up against a production deadline. Also, one of our biggest obstacles was giving them content with variety that kept them engaged.”

The Solution

After connecting with a WellSaid representative, Joe and his team decided to try the tool. They found immediate success with the lifelike voices, expressing how their team loves using WellSaid because of its intuitive user experience.

“It’s as simple as copy, paste, download, plug, play. The ease of use is what makes it perfect, and it blows the competitors out of the water.” He also noted that some of their key internal customers and subject-matter experts found that the WellSaid voices were far more engaging and made the training courses much more appealing.

Not only was it a simple solution that streamlined the course creation workflow and opened up bottlenecks, Joe found that it was easy to get internal sign-off on purchasing the tool compared to the previous AI Voice tools that were being used due to strong internal data policies.

“Previously, there were a lot of [internal] red flags that went up with AI-based tools, especially around data, but our management was totally enthusiastic about WellSaid once they learned that the company doesn’t hold onto data.”

The Result

As a result of adopting WellSaid, Joe and the (Non-Nuclear) Generation Training team saw a significant increase in engagement scores from past courses, with over 75% of employee feedback since adoption praising the realism, variety, and diversity of the voices.

“The most inefficient process that WellSaid helped close the gap on was getting material out the door that people would actually engage with,” Joe said. “[Our workforce] is often a hard audience to engage, but using WellSaid allowed us to jump directly to giving them audio they wanted to listen to in natural voices that held their attention.”

He also added, “Being able to use WellSaid has given us more competence and confidence in delivering material. Nobody wants to do this type of training more than they have to. But if you can do it with some types of interactive, … meaningful, verbal input, it becomes a lot more realistic [and] natural, which makes it easier to learn. WellSaid keeps the barrier very low when it comes to creating engaging content even from material that is often bland.”

Looking ahead, Joe’s team plans to integrate WellSaid into a major safety course that’s traditionally delivered live but is transitioning to blended instruction, with both online and in-person content. By adding dynamic, natural narration, they expect to keep employees engaged through the full two-and-a-half-hour training. The tool has also expanded beyond Joe’s team, with the corporate group using WellSaid in a company-wide training initiative with great success.

“It’s a great product. We’re happily using the tool and loving every minute of it,” said Joe.

Conclusion

By adopting WellSaid, the company transformed its safety training, overcoming challenges of engagement and content creation. The intuitive platform and lifelike voices not only streamlined workflow and gained internal approval but also significantly boosted employee engagement. This success has led to broader integration of WellSaid across corporate, highlighting its impact in engaging learning experiences for even the most challenging of content topics.

‍