The increase in sales of mobile devices, rapid growth in the mobile share of web traffic, and growing adoption of mobile devices in the workplace, has led to the evolution of ‘A Mobile World’. In 2014, for the first time, the total number of subscriptions globally will exceed the world population.
This growing trend has led more and more organisations to incorporate mobile technology into their learning and development strategies to such a degree that in the HKIHRM Training Needs Survey 2013, more than a third (32.4%) of participating companies intended to increase their e-training budget compared to last year. One organisation that has already mastered mobile learning is MTR Corporation which, through its initiatives, cultivates a continuous learning environment to demonstrate one of its mission to inspire, engage and develop its staff, whilst upholding the corporate Vision, Mission, Values (VMV).
Flexible learning
Carrying an average of 5.2 million passengers every weekday has not only led to major local and international expansion, but also an increasingly mobile workforce. This, coupled with a generational shift in its employee demographic, led MTR to develop innovative ways to engage the younger generation who are more digitally connected and work with a different mindset and expectations. Riding on the technology of smartphone advancement, the company’s mobile learning enables employees to learn with flexibility and convenience, aligning to its staff motto, ‘just enough, just in time, just for me’.
How it works: the 4Es
The blended learning programme follows a 4 Es (Elevate, Enlighten, Engage and Expand) implementation framework.
The first step is ‘Elevate’. Each blended learning programme solicits management support to endorse the programme to elevate staff learning by forming a working group. The senior management also demonstrates support through taking part in the video production and contributing their insights in the newsletter.
The second step is ‘Enlighten’. MTR provides a wide range of training resources to add variety and cater to the different learning styles and needs of staff. Both electronic and physical training resources are provided to staff.
The third step is ‘Engage’. As a new training reinforcement initiative, mobile resources are provided to facilitate continuous and self-learning. Some motivational schemes are designed to encourage better utilisation of the training resources.
The last step is ‘Expand’. To allow more convenient access and to further promote a mobile learning culture, a special platform—the Mobile Learning Hub—is created to centralise and introduce more mobile resources.
Training on the go
A combination of training activities, including traditional seminars, workshops and business-management classes, comprise Executive Continuous Learning Programme (ECLP), which provides leaders/managers with a platform to keep abreast of the latest business best practices and economic developments. To fit with its executives’ preferred learning mode, a mobile webpage is created to facilitate the review of training events and provide a recap of previous sessions and offer supplementary learning materials. This allows employees to initiate learning on the go-—anywhere and anytime—despite their busy work schedules.
The shared experience
Recognising that the sharing of knowledge and experience is a fundamental element of learning, the company has introduced a corporate-wide initiative—‘Learning Organisation’—that provides staff with access to wide range of training interventions, including both physical and electronic training activities. These include seminars, benchmarking visits as well as electronic resources such as learning website and internet sharing platform. More mobile resources are also introduced such as m-version material, mobile learning portal—containing short video clips covering management topics like leadership, people management and personal effectiveness.
Connecting people
Academy of Excellence Service’, a customer service initiative, provides a series of tailored service training events and products. A dedicated mobile application ‘ESpedia’, which stands for ‘Excellent Service Encyclopaedia’, is established to provide news updates, service tips and success stories to frontline staff as a training reinforcement tool. Some interactive app features such as polling, story sharing and a ‘like’ function are built in to engage staff and make the application more fun to use.
Adi Lau, Deputy Director-Operating, MTR said, “In the information age, mobile learning is indispensable to an effective implementation of staff learning and development programmes and sustaining the momentum for staff of different generations. The mobile learning platform provided frontline staff a handy way to obtain timely and useful service tips anytime, anywhere.”
Continuous development
MTR Corporation’s commitment to developing their staff and striving for service excellence has received a number of recognitions from local and global professional organisations in recent years. This includes the Gold Prize of Award for Excellence in Training by the Hong Kong Management Association, BEST Award (ranked 2nd worldwide, 1st in Asia) by the American Society for Training & Development, the Asian Human Capital Award—Special Commendation Prize by the Singapore Ministry of Manpower, and the China’s Best Corporate University Award (ranked 3rd) by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Despite already receiving recognition for its mobile learning deployment through winning the ‘Mobile/e-Learning Category of Best Practice Awards 2013’ by Best Practice Management (Hong Kong), MTR recognises that the process of learning is never over.
Mobile learning plays a vital role in enhancing the training effectiveness within the organisation, which can be seen from the four-level post-course evaluation measurement in different programmes and high satisfactory result in adopting a blended learning approach. In order to facilitate the continual development of its staff, however, the organisation is developing a new mobile platform—M-Learning Hub— to further promote mobile learning and to make it more convenient for its staff members to access and obtain mobile training resources. The Hub works by centralising all existing products and adding more new features such as Language Learning platform, e-Books and video channels.
Morris Cheung, Human Resources Director, MTR explained, “With the expansion in business and ever-increasing customers expectations, MTR faces the pressing need to uplift the staff competencies and capabilities, through accelerating the development of staff, to achieve operational and organisational excellence.”
Daniel Shim, General Manager—Human Resources (China/International & Development) added, “MTR is proud to share and transplant the best practices from Hong Kong, to the mainland and overseas operations to develop our staff.”
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
