Fujitsu chose serious games to ensure employee self-learning

Leadership, negotiation, time management, team development and communication are skills that play a vital role at Fujitsu. Through the company’s development programs, the IT service provider has discovered that game-based learning is the most effective tool for training its internal customers in new skills and competencies by creating new learning spaces. It is a tool that is capable of meeting the huge challenges facing Fujitsu Spain’s Human Resources Department in relation to the company’s talent development program: different generations in the workplace, different professional groups, a widely geographically dispersed workforce and the need to break with the formats established over many years in the area of training.

Through game-based learning, Fujitsu has been able to improve on the results of other training models, while ensuring effective learning by three completely different groups: high potential, key performance and managers. But how was a video game able to overcome the huge training challenges facing Fujitsu Spain’s Human Resources Department?

The challenge: The 4 major challenges in talent management and development

Fujitsu Spain has implemented three development programs that stand out for their innovative approach and ability to ensure self-learning:

• Talent development program
• Management Engagement Circle
• Management Program

The three programs are interconnected and responsible for maintaining a new learning and development environment for leadership, negotiation, communication, time management and team development.

However, before the company was able to effectively develop all these programs, it had to address four major challenges that are a reflection of how large international corporations are progressing in the area of talent management.

1. The advent of new generations

Fujitsu Spain employs more than 1,700 people from a range of generations. Millennials perform the same tasks and have the same responsibilities as employees over the age of forty.

Therefore, managing and training a workforce comprised of radically different generations was the first challenge the Human Resources Department had to overcome: is there a training model that is capable of engaging and motivating all of my employees?

2. Three groups with completely different needs

Fujitsu’s talent development program focuses on two large groups: high potential and key performance employees. Two groups with an array of completely different needs, interests and potential. High potential employees have growth potential within the company, while key performers are vital to the organization but have no interest in developing further or taking on new roles and responsibilities.

And to add to the challenge, there is a third group: the company’s 180 managers, with their own individual needs, circumstances and time available to devote to their development within the organization. And this is where the second challenge arises: how to select skills that are common to all three very different groups?

3. The huge geographical spread of the workforce

For global companies such as Fujitsu, providing standardized training to a widely geographically dispersed workforce is a major challenge. In addition, classroom training is no longer an option because of the high costs involved and the fact that employees are not always available to attend the training at the same time.

This new reality raises a new question and presents a new challenge: how to engage employees in the program and get them to take control of their own development?

4. Breaking with traditional approaches to training

Fujitsu’s Human Resources Department’s main goal was to introduce a totally revolutionary concept in talent management and development. Using innovation, Fujitsu set about breaking with traditional approaches to training and giving employees new learning spaces in which to create and define their own development within the organization.

In other words, one of the goals was to get employees to manage their own learning and take control of their own growth. However, the initiative raised a major question:  how to ensure effective learning when this is left to the employee’s discretion?

The solution: Game-based learning development programs and methodology

Fujitsu came up with the following solutions to address the four major challenges:

• Introduce innovation in training
• Promote self-directed learning
• Include motivational elements
• Create new learning environments

The solution chosen by the HR Department was to incorporate a truly innovative model into its three development programs: Gamelearn’s game-based learning methodology.

Game-based learning methodology combines three elements (practical content, simulation and gamification) into a single learning format: a video game. And all three elements are capable of ensuring the effectiveness of the four solutions
defined by Fujitsu:

• Content with a strong practical focus is a truly innovative approach to skills development. Each skill becomes a set of tools, techniques and strategies that the employee learns in a safe environment before putting them into practice in their personal and work life.
• Negotiation, time management and leadership simulators that create new learning environments. And because it is a risk-free environment, the employee becomes more self-confident and sets their own development pace when faced with situations similar to real life.
• Gamification techniques that increase employee motivation and engagement with training because learning becomes a personal and group challenge.

These three elements are brought to life in an online course in the form of game-based learning, thus reducing training costs per employee while increasing learning effectiveness at the same rate.

But… how can learning effectiveness be measured?

The results: The highest rated training initiative

Fujitsu set the following indicators for measuring the effectiveness of the initiative:

Completion rate

The Human Resources Department placed major emphasis on analyzing training
drop-out rates. The completion rate allowed it to measure the effectiveness of
each learning initiative.
For the latest edition of the training, the completion rate was 98%, which
represents a huge improvement over the rates obtained with other training
initiatives.

Recommendation rate

Using this indicator, the Human Resources Department is able to measure the
employee satisfaction rate with game-based learning. And the result has been
astounding, given that 99% of people who took the training would recommend
the initiative and would even repeat it.

Participant feedback

Without a doubt, this is the key indicator of the program’s success. Using the traffic light techniqueSee graph at side (where red means a negative score, yellow a pass and green excellent), Fujitsu was able to visually represent employee ratings of the training initiatives based on their feedback.

And, converted to numbers, the result is an average score of 9.8 out of 10 and an applicability rate of the skills learned of 97%.

Conclusions

Fujitsu has broken new ground in learning programs for talent development and management. In its commitment to innovation, it was able to turn game-based learning into a vital tool for the creation of new learning spaces. Accordingly, it has laid the groundwork for a skills development program in which the employee can set their own learning pace and is given the opportunity to choose.

Within the initiative, game-based learning has become the most effective tool for ensuring employee self-learning and efficient development of soft skills such as leadership, negotiation and time management.