Game Based Approach To Make Learning Immersive And Relevant

In a recent partnership with one of the biggest private players in the Solar Power industry, The Catalyst designed and deployed a Game based learning program for 400 employees from various departments.

The company sells energy to government utilities as well as independent industrial and commercial customers in India. Hence the employees work closely with government officials, contractors, labourers and villagers alike. Furthermore, with business growth at an all-time high, employees need to step up and embrace challenges to accelerate.

Business problem:

The focus was to enable the employees from various departments, such as operations and management, construction or purchase, to enhance their performance and potential in the workplace.

Diagnostics Conducted:

The Catalyst conducted numerous stakeholder calls with key folks covering questions under the broad heads of communication, ownership, Influencing, assertiveness, handling teams etc. The purpose was to understand the real life challenges faced by employees in greater detail which enabled the Catalyst team to customize the program content to match the exact participant context.

Program design

The learning and development collaboration exercise targeted both Jr. and Sr. Managers. While the junior manager workshop aimed at developing ownership /accountability and impactful communication skills, it aimed at building high-performance teams and stakeholder management skills for the senior managers.

The program design involved two major capsule modules for 5 hours and 2 assimilation sessions of 2 hours each respectively, spread over 80 days for 15 batches targeting both Jr. and Sr. Managers on key topics.

• The main sessions were made highly interactive using game-based activities throwing various challenges to the participants at a different levels.

• Participants were awarded points and the leader board monitored the progress level of each team, further adding the element of fun with learning.

• The learnings were further embedded through a series of caselets and roleplays which helped participants mirror their actual work situations and apply the concepts learnt.

• Each module was wrapped up with a powerful post-action task in the form of a quiz, reading material, videos on the concepts/frameworks, which was uploaded on the LMS.

The assimilation session focused on the implementation of the learnings from the main session. Almost 80% of the participants from each batch, shared their implementation stories in the live session.

These real-time implementation stories were then shared with the organization’s senior officials and the 3 best stories from every batch were recognized.

Program Delivery:

The team Catalyst handpicked qualified senior trainers and conducted teach backs and assessments to shortlist the final trainers. A detailed TTT was conducted to ensure that they were completely hands-on with the entire program content and prepared to deliver the program seamlessly.

A team of 5 facilitators, 3 co-facilitators, and a program manager was deployed for this immersive journey.

Outcome

A total of 60 sessions of 210 hours were invested in this journey program. Through this scientific approach to program design, we were able to achieve an exhilarating feedback rating of 4/5 from the participants.