BY JUSTINE LA ROCHE

Only a few case studies in at the LearnX Summit today and my ticket had already well and truly paid for itself! Terrific to hear three diverse stories of impactful learning with one common thread – the organisations went 'all in':

LEARNX - REFLECTIONS

1) Westpac’s MarketingOne Development Program as told by Tim Banning. Here the organisation achieved just the right balance of competition, complexity and celebrity (Mark Ritson starred) to lift team engagement, create a common language and deepen specialist skills through a multi-faceted, simulated experience. Rather than simply training the 20 or so people largely responsible for strategic brand planning, WestPac went 'all in' by offering the program to its entire marketing team (approximately 250 people) and as a result benefited from shifting the dial on both its capability and culture.

2) With a mission to ensure all Australians have access to fast, affordable broadband as soon as possible and at least cost, NBNCo was acutely aware of the need to find a more scalable, sustainable and effective way to onboard and train its growing workforce of field technicians. Megan Johnston described how the organisation went 'all in' through its Technical Training Transformation (T3) Project by simulating field technicians’ ‘real world’ environments by building five fully operational Training Labs at 5 key locations to cater for the practical elements of the curriculum. These custom-built test and learn environments enabled NBNCo to reduce the time to competence of new field technicians by a third. 

3) With the introduction of the Dreamliner 787-9 to its fleet, the Qantas L&D team needed to craft a large-scale service training program (New Era, Same Spirit) for its international crew that literally involved ‘flying the plane while building it’. Roslyn Colagrossi described the challenge of upskilling the Dreamliner crew in its full range of products and services before the Boeing built plane was even finished, in order to be ready for its maiden voyage. Qantas went 'all in' by constructing a 3D fabricated Dreamliner to scale, so that crew members could familiarise themselves with its layout and features as much as possible ahead of time. (The fresh morning juice shots provided to the LearnX audience and served by actual Qantas crew was a welcomed experiential touch to drive the commitment to service message home). 

My biggest takeaway from all three presentations combined, was that creating solutions of this scale and relevance requires multiple areas of the business to work together - it can't just be an L&D thing. 

Now that's 'all in'.