David Mitchell

Said the following about Dante Frederick:

“To support the modernisation of infrastructure, ticketing and passenger services, Dante partnered with online learning provider Kallidus. Together they have created and rolled out the One Step Ahead programme. This innovative blended learning initiative has been designed to drive organisational change and give 3,000 customer-facing staff the critical skills they need to support the required improvements in customer care and performance.

The programme includes an introductory experiential workshop, an introductory eLearning module for staff who were unable to attend the classroom session and for developing a suite of seven innovative eLearning modules designed to drive behavioural change as well as two motivational learning games for knowledge assessment which have been delivered using iPads, smartphones and desktop PCs.

Description of the key challenges, and the approaches adopted

Learning and Development and Employee Engagement specialists at GTR worked to deliver the best possible solution given the challenges presented, using in-depth research to inform the development of the programme.

There was resistance to change to overcome. Most employees believed they were already doing a great job and many saw eLearning purely as a cost-saving measure. To win learners’ hearts and minds and drive behavioural change, Dante brought an innovative approach to the table, using relevant, engaging content with scenario-based learning, authentic storytelling, animation and game-based learning as an assessment tool with prize draws for high scores to help motivate learners.

Demographics were also a challenge as most of the workforce is middle-aged with little experience of using digital technologies and not even set up on work email. Dante focused on developing an easy-to-use learning experience, with fully responsive bite-sized eLearning modules, enabling staff to fit learning into their day without compromising the running of trains and to choose where, when and on what device they wanted to learn.

During the implementation it became apparent that classroom training would be impractical for the third of the learning population working in remote locations. To respond to this business need Dante and his team developed a video-rich introduction module introducing these individuals to the key concepts of the programme and the four key characters from the classroom session which became central personalities running throughout the eLearning.

Patchy Wi-Fi and bandwidth issues in remote locations were overcome by using animation rather than video for all eLearning modules aside from the introduction module.

Outcomes

100% of all customer-facing staff and their managers and supervisors across all networks and even in the remotest locations served by the railway completed the course as scheduled by the end June 2019. This is a significant achievement and major cultural change at GTR given that 80% of all learners weren’t using or weren’t set up to use email at work, and given the initial resistance to change.

The programme has exceeded the client’s and all stakeholder expectations in terms of effectiveness and efficiency and has driven a change in culture and peoples’ behaviour. In the 12 months since the learning technologies programme began, there has been significant improvements in customer service performance across all four networks.“