Packt Publishing is a global on-demand technology book publishing company based in Birmingham (United Kingdom). Founded in 2004, the company is a sector bellwether, providing IT professionals worldwide with tutorials, guides, specialized books, e-books, videos and courses.
The British company (with a solid foothold in India) is known for its extensive knowledge of new technologies and commitment to innovation. Setting its course by such giant stars as Netflix or Spotify, in recent years the company has developed an annual subscription system to provide sector experts and professionals with the best selection of publications, tutorials and videos.
The challenge of motivating and engaging employees with a training course
With a global and digitized staff working across several countries and cities, Packt was facing the challenge of providing its employees with an attractive training capable of enticing and motivating them. The human resources managers were dealing with the considerable difficulties in mustering up voluntary enrollment in their training offers. Assembling a group of people for classroom training had become a sort of impossible mission and the traditional e-learning platforms were incapable of engaging and motivating their employees.
Packt Publishing also had a great need to offer a quality course on leadership, team management and influence. The company’s managers need to know how to manage writers working at every corner of the globe, provide them with the appropriate feedback and ensure that they deliver jobs by the agreed deadlines.
Such leadership skills are particularly important for the company, which operates in a highly innovative and mercurial sector where any delay whatsoever could negatively affect sales.
Solution: Pacific, the serious game for leadership and team management
To meet these two daunting challenges, Packt decided to commit to the Pacific video game developed by Gamelearn. In this serious game, the employee is stranded on a desert island and must lead a team to build a hot-air balloon and escape the island alive. During this adventure, the player learns to motivate his or her team, provide feedback and delegate tasks to become an inspiring leader.
For Packt Publishing, the Pacific video game provided at least three advantages:
- Motivated and engaged employees. The videogame’s storytelling and content interaction kindled a great deal of interest and curiosity among Packt employees. Accustomed to boring and less-interactive formats, employees were absorbed by the story from the very beginning and clearly excited by this innovative learning method.
- Direct practice and experiential learning. Pacific has a sophisticated simulator that lets employees put their learned skills into practice. The course goes beyond theoretical exercise by having players make decisions from the very outset: delegating, distributing tasks, and building and motivating teams. Learning by doing and experiential learning have been scientifically proven to improve the pedagogical processes of any training.
- Anywhere and anytime. Playing Pacific only requires an internet connection and username. This means that employees can learn whenever and wherever they want, on any device (computer, tablet, smartphone), at their own pace and according to their own needs.
Leaders who are more motivated and better trained
All these advantages have made the training launched by Packt a “total success”. The completion rate reached 96%, in stark contrast with classroom training and other e-learnings. Moreover, 96% of the students stated that they would recommend it and 96% considered it applicable to their jobs.
The adventure presented by Pacific and the interactivity with its contents were able to capture the attention of employees and increase their engagement. Because of this success, Packt has already opted to expand its training program to other departments in the company. The results point to managers bristling with more motivation and confidence, and greater leadership and team management skills. These new leaders will be entrusted with ensuring that Packt remains the world leader in the edition, publishing and distribution of specialized technology contents.