Securitas Aviation managers take a blended approach to sharpen their technological knowledge worldwide

Securitas Aviation is a specialized division of the Securitas Group. It provides security solutions for the aviation industry. Securitas Aviation is an international company, active in 29 countries and 200 airports, employing 24,000 people.

The Challenge

To prepare for the disruptive changes that the aviation ecosystem will be faced with in the near future, Securitas Aviation developed the Aviation 2020 and beyond program. This program offers a layered, segmented approach to innovation, including initiatives to improve current product offerings, as well as initiatives that could completely alter the way they serve their customers.

Small groups of country, branch and project managers from all over the world were chosen to be the ambassadors of the Aviation 2020 program. Every ambassador is required to have the same elementary knowledge about the current and future aviation ecosystem. Bringing together these managers, and getting them to collaborate even though they live and work thousands of miles apart, proved to be a challenge for Securitas Aviation. So, they called in Totara Partner Neo Learning to help facilitate the transformation journey.

The Solution

To thoroughly analyze Securitas Aviation’s needs, Neo Learning sat down with people from the L&D department. Together, they set up a blended training program that immerses the participants in a transformative learning journey. The goal of this program is for participants to create a hands-on, realistic and innovative business case.

The blended training program consists of three parts.

First, participants are enrolled in an online course about the future of the aviation industry and the disruption new technologies will provoke. Neo developed a highly customized and interactive dashboard that represents five main journeys that take place at the airport (e.g. passenger journey, cargo journey). Javascript and canvas drawings were used to visualize this dashboard in the LMS.

Every journey consists of a program containing courses with lessons, quizzes, assignments and webinars. This part of the program is fully supported by coaches. They follow up on the participants, check in with them via webinars and forums, review the assignments and provide qualitative feedback. The journeys are timed and need to be completed prior to the next part.

The second part of the program consists of a number of classroom sessions during which participants get acquainted with each other. The organization of these classroom sessions is entirely handled by Totara. Collaborative groups are formed in which participants work on their combined business case.

In the third part, participants continue their group work using assignments, forums and live webinars to remotely exchange ideas and collaborate on their business case. To facilitate the meetings between participants from all over the world, Neo implemented the Big Blue Button web conferencing system into the LMS. To support the collaboration, various forums were setup and moderated:

• Ask the expert – provides direct access to specialists. The participants use a direct link that allows them to ask any question they might have regarding their business case.
• Ask the coach – provides direct access to the coach. The coach can provide support and information regarding the process or the outcome. If a team gets stuck, the coach is never far away.

Finally, after all the hard work has been done, each group has to gather in the same location and present their business case to a live Global Aviation Jury. For the participants, this is the ideal opportunity to show off their abilities and innovativeness to Securitas Aviation.

The Results

The first group of country and sales managers has already finished the journey successfully. The international jury was impressed with the results of the program. They called it last year’s best global program at Securitas Aviation.

This first group will now take their business case home with them. They will look for opportunities to implement that business case in their local region, working together with actual customers. In doing so, they will set the pace for innovative solutions, spreading the word and therefore making sure the whole organization is ready for the upcoming changes.

“The LMS and training program owes its success in part to Neo Learning. The consultants really understood our needs. They always kept track of our scope and prioritized the didactic approach. The combination of our and Neo’s expertise formed the basic ingredient of a very successful project.”