How fostering a culture of continuous learning and innovation has allowed the MTR to create a Learning Organisation.
Established in 1975, MTR Corporation develops and manages Hong Kong’s railway network together with property and community development projects. Already carrying an average of 4 million passengers every weekday, plans are afoot for continued major expansion, and between 2014 and 2020 five new lines will be opened, enlarging the existing network by 25%. This expansion, coupled with a loss of expertise due to the generation shift of the workforce, has raised a number of challenges for the HR team in the MTR.
Implementing LO cultural change--To keep the MTR abreast of the changing labour landscape a ‘Four-A’ strategic approach was utilised to implement the LO concept and facilitate cultural change.
Key HR challenges
HR has to ensure that staff have ready access to key project information together with relevant plans and documents, and at the same time has to ensure that staff are equipped with the tools they need to cope with ever-rising customer expectations. To overcome these challenges the MTR is seeking to inculcate a corporate-wide culture of learning and innovation across different business functions by creating what they term a Learning Organisation (LO).
Phase I: Alignment
Senior management alignment to steer the LO vision
Senior management have formulated MTR’s corporate training and development strategy to ensure alignment with business plans and needs. They also make a point of getting personally involved in leading the programmes—sharing their knowledge with staff through blogs and mentorship.
Morris Cheung, Human Resources Director Designate, MTR shared the visions of LO, “We aim to provide continuous learning, skills development and renewal opportunities for people to grow. Everyone in the MTR is encouraged to share knowledge and expertise openly and seek creative ways of working.”
Phase II: Acquisition
Acquiring LO mindset through learning and development initiatives
The MTR designed and launched various learning and development interventions to support staff development, innovation and collaboration.
Staff Development
A multi-tier staff development curriculum was designed in line with business needs and rolled out to all levels of staff. The Management Training and Development Department continues to work closely with all relevant stakeholders in order to tailor-make the best training solutions for specific staff groups.Additionally, to help meet long-term manpower needs in supporting business growth, the corporation deploys their Integrated Staff Development Programme. This aims to nurture a potential pool of talent by equipping staff with supervisory skills and knowledge to help enhance their competencies and readiness to take up greater job accountability at the next level in their careers.
MTR’s multi-tier staff development curriculum.
Four Clicks to Teamnovation
As part of the LO concept, a series of learning and development interventions, named ‘4 Clicks to Teamnovation’ were launched. The programme forms a comprehensive learning package to help hone staff members’ innovative thinking skills. The package includes a creativity assessment, a mobile learning portal and a ‘Teamnovation Kit’ with innovation tools. Additionally, materials include an innovation and creativity video that uses a drama—featuring corporate-wide management and staff participation—to introduce innovation tools and share some of the MTR’s creative best practices.
Staff also attend weekly CPD seminars to broaden their knowledge in the general railway domain. Learning and sharing sessions have also been organised on a variety of topics including: innovative thinking, safety, advanced building technology, health and leisure.
Jam enhances stickiness
A corporate-wide 72-hour raiLOvation Jam was held to encourage colleagues to generate innovative ideas through an online discussion platform. Over 4,600 posts were logged and the organisation plans to implement many of the innovative ideas suggested to further enhance service quality.
Jacob Kam, Operations Director, MTR said, “We are dedicated to encouraging our staff to embrace an innovative mindset to attain business excellence, which closely aligns with the Operations team’s Leading for Excellence, Actions for Pride Programme (LEAP) by getting staff to LEAP out of their comfort zone.”
LEAP is an innovative transformation programme launched in the Operations Division to help address upcoming challenges and aims to transform existing operation modes.
Creative group idea generation workshops help engage staff and enhance creativity at the MTR.
Sparking new ideas
The MTR has adopted a knowledge sharing strategy to improve communication and collaboration among colleagues through establishing face-to-face sharing forums. These take the form of regular management communication meetings and online systems that have attracted participation by over 10,000 staff and have significantly expanded connectivity and knowledge sharing throughout the organisation. The online system enables the capture and sharing of critical knowledge from project experience, and with staff working collaboratively this has sparked innovative ideas including a next-generation green roof.
TC Chew, Projects Director, MTR highlighted the obvious benefits of such knowledge sharing, “We have a fast-growing organisation to meet the aggressive challenges of delivering on our railway expansion programme. We believe knowledge sharing is critical for us to create a more cohesive team across our multi-project environment and to leverage best practices and lessons learnt for the benefit of our current and future projects.”
Phase III: Alliance
Continuous learning, sharing & innovating culture
The organisation has adopted an holistic communication approach to cascade important messages to staff at all levels and highlight key benefits. To facilitate this information transfer, line communicators and ‘LO Champions’ have been appointed as change agents.
The Corporation has also customised a Learning Organisation Champion Certification Programme to further boost staff skills in knowledge management, innovation and facilitation.
Phase IV: Absorption
Integrating LO into daily work practices
Corporate and divisional innovation programmes have been established to help integrate learning, innovating and sharing into daily work practices. Initiatives include idea-submission tools, an innovation fund for research and development and an ambassador network to promoting innovation. Furthermore, Work Improvement Teams (WITs), each with 8 – 10 staff members, have been set up where members voluntarily initiate work improvement projects throughout the organisation.
Impact on corporation, employees, customers and community
The innovative and holistic training strategy of the corporation—blending empowerment, partnering, coaching and sustainability with contemporary e-learning solutions—has brought significant advantages to the corporation, customers and the wider community through enhancing equipment reliability and safety, improving customer services and saving energy. These initiatives have brought organisational success through cultivation of talents—speeding up their development while at the same time respecting their individualism and engaging them. This strategy has, in turn, paid dividends in terms of staff feeding creative ideas back to the Corporation.
Letting the grass grow beneath your feet…can be a good thing. Staff from the MTR’s Projects Division inspect a trial of ‘Next Generation Green Roofs’.
It would appear that pursuit of LO is much more a journey than a destination and the MTR will continue to strive for innovation as it continues its LO journey. David Tang, Property Director, MTR summarised, “The MTR fully recognises the interrelationship between its growth as a company and the wellbeing of the communities it serves, we aim to make use of our assets and knowledge to contribute to society.”
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
