Bombardier boosts leadership through soft skills training

Bombardier is considered the world leading company in railway material production and one of the biggest aircraft manufacturers in the world. As a market leader, this Canada-based company has launched a program for the development of functional skills with which to maintain its leadership in the sector.

This program is part of a strategic plan of the Canadian company, seeking to increase the performance and competitiveness of its workforce by focusing on talent development through non-technical skills.

With the time management simulator Triskelion, Bombardier has ensured that its training in organizational effectiveness skills has a real impact on the business results of the company.

Challenges: from Millennials to a free training

The implementation of the simulator Triskelion into the skills program responds to a number of needs identified by the Department of Training and Development of the company; needs that have been determined by the emergence of new generations, the so-called Millennials (the average age of the workforce is just 27 years).

In this way, the training challenges have been:

• To find a methodology capable of responding to the characteristics of a new generation radically opposed to all previous ones.
• To design a program that will maintain the levels of quality and effectiveness of face-to-face training, but of an e-learning nature, in response to the unavailability of Bombardier employees to participate in face-to-face lessons: great geographic dispersion, collapsed schedules…
• To create a new program at the organizational level that will facilitate the development of the necessary functional skills for the company, allowing the employee to self-assess and set an autonomous learning pace with which to establish their own career development.

As a result of these challenges, there was an explicit request from the company’s business area. After previous experiences and seeing the role that new generations play within the organization, it was established as an indispensable requirement to provide employees with a solution that will guarantee great learning flexibility.

An explicit request that seeks to improve profitability, effectiveness and engagement of investments thanks to a free type of training: the employee decides.

The solution: Time Management Simulator

In order to address the great challenge defined by Bombardier’s business area, innovative learning methodologies were chosen so that they would break with all previous training experiences.

In this way, the time management simulator Triskelion (online course in video game format) was the chosen solution for the development of organizational effectiveness skills: personal productivity skills, time management, organization, planning, coordination…

Thanks to the learning methodology that surrounds Triskelion (quality content, advanced simulator and gamification techniques), Bombardier also found the answer to the rest of challenges:

• Adaptation to the characteristics and needs of a new generation → Bet on new technologies through the video game.
• Development of a quality face-to-face training and e-learning nature → Design of contents highly qualified to practice and rehearse in real simulated cases.
• Self-assessment of learning → Individual control panels to measure student progress in the simulator.
• Self-development of training → A solution easily accessible and adapted to any device with Internet connection: PC, tablet or smartphone.

Results: Improvement in business indicators through service level agreements

The program for the development of functional competencies (organizational efficiency) through video games has involved the participation of 170 Bombardier employees, obtaining results which were unexpected even for the Canadian company itself.

A. Increase in performance and productivity

To measure the impact of the training, the business area has started to evaluate its influence through a strategic indicator for the company: Number of closed service level agreements (SLA). This type of agreement is presented as a written contract between the supplier (Bombardier) and its clients to establish the quality of the service and the relationship between the two parties during that same service: response times, time availability, staff assigned, available documentation… Once the agreement is closed, the project with the client can start.

This way, it has been identified:

• The number of service level agreements (SLA) closed in more than 5 days has decreased in a 4%
• The number of closed cases in less than 2 days has experienced an increase of a 2%
• Results which become even more important after the growth in the number of new projects experienced by the company

B. Direct impact on the job

92% of the employees who have completed the training ensure that they are applying the skills learned in their jobs, thus showing a direct impact on their personal productivity.

C. Improvement of the level of engagement of the training

Thanks to the use of Gamelearn’s online platform, participants have been able to define their own learning pace. Being an online access platform, the user has only needed a device with an Internet connection (PC, tablet or smartphone) to be able to do the course. In this way, they have chosen at what times to do the training and through which device.

It was the indispensable requirement defined by the company’s business area and the results speak for themselves:

• Completion ratio has been of 97%.
• 90% of participants state they would take the course again.

A considerable improvement in the level of engagement achieved by a training which has also resulted in savings in training costs per employee of the company of a 40%.