Russian companies find gaming, simulations key to training
Developments in technology have extended to employment training, with simulators and work-related video games becoming as important as seminars and workshops
Nov 15, 2013
As a generation used to gaming enters the workforce, researchers and companies are finding high-tech methods useful for training, as they harness not just younger employees’ personal interests and experience, but also different individual learning methods.
Moscow- and New York-based training games developer Action Learning cited 2011 research from the Gartner Group, expecting more than 50 percent of companies working in innovative industries to use game-based motivation and training techniques for staff by 2015.
For Russia in particular, with a shrinking labor market, employers are looking for ways to nurture staff, as well as more cost-effective methods of training, said Action Learning’s general director, Roman Mandrik.
"Programs that support a worker’s motivation and build up his competence in certain areas are becoming ever more popular," Mandrik said.
The sectors Action Learning serves range widely, he added, from finance and industry to service and consumers.
Targeting the task
The theory is not to serve an industry, but instead to focus on the specific task presented by the client. Some programs can apply broadly, however: training in finance for workers new to the industry, for example, or in creating PowerPoint presentations.
"Such interactive trainer-simulators suit any company, and their advantage lies in the fact that the training can already start tomorrow, without taking in any changes," Mandrik said.
On the other hand, a mining simulator developed with Severstal, Gornoye Delo, is more specific to the industry and not adaptable, he added.
Windows on training
One of Action Learning’s products within the past year was developed on order from Moscow region window manufacturing and sales company Proplex.
Missia: Komfort, launched in March, is based in experience from across Russia and six months of research conducted among staff, analysts and customers, Proplex said in a press release. It uses actors and real-life scenarios to train the company’s sales managers, and, like entertainment video games, increases the complexity of the situations the players encounter during its progress.
Skill development is not the program’s only benefit, however.
"Thanks to its immediate use among sales staff, the program is helping to create an assignment profile and a single work standard for window sales managers," said Lev Minullin, development director of PVX production at Proplex.
Participation is voluntary, but Proplex reported that more than 1,900 sales managers had registered for the game since its introduction, 35 percent of them having finished it - considered a high figure for a voluntary remote training program.
Outside the company, Missia: Komfort was recognized at the eLearn Expo Awards in June as best innovative eLearning solution.
Far from being unique to Proplex’s business, the game’s principles are easily adaptable for other industries, Minullin feels.
"The competencies and skills needed for sales managers are identical in any industry," he said. "The differences take shape only in the product or service, where each has its nuances, and also in the form of communication with the consumer."
In the air
Perhaps the first industry that comes to mind where high-tech simulators are regularly used is aviation, where pilots are trained how to operate highly complex machines.
State airline Aeroflot is no exception, with a facility behind Sheremetyevo Airport housing flight simulators that replicate the cockpits of planes such as the Airbus A320 and the Sukhoi Superjet 100.
One of the pilots said that the navigation software is not produced specifically for the simulators, which are made by CAE and Thales, but instead is the same program that they encounter in flight. Geography, weather and topography can all be programmed by the instructor to test the pilots’ skills in different conditions.
Simulators in training are not limited to pilots or to navigation. For flight attendants, for example, training involves rehearsing emergency situations across the carrier’s fleet - instructing passengers on how to evacuate an aircraft (in Russian and English), opening a door properly and extinguishing fires.
Handling the doors can be especially tricky since each craft - Sukhoi, Boeing and Airbus - has its own particular features, which attendants have to remember. Many of the simulators have small monitors in the doors where windows would be on actual planes, which can illustrate different evacuation scenarios such as fires, smoke, or emergency landings in the woods or at an airport, indicating to the attendants whether the door in question is useable.
The center includes the largest water evacuation training pool in Europe, complete with rafts: 24 meters by 22 meters.
"When construction was starting here, they said to us, ‘Why will there be such a big pool? There you have 15 meters, 18 meters,’ and we said, ‘Aeroflot is going to take the Airbus A380,’" said Boris Malakhov, deputy director of the training center. "If [the pool] is 15 meters [wide], and the width [of the raft] is 12 meters, 1.5 meters on either side, where would they train?"
The center also instructs or retrains staff from other airlines, and Malakhov said that 17,998 people had passed through the complex in 2012. Since its opening, moreover, it has brought more than $1.6 million back onto Aeroflot’s accounts, mainly through savings of not having to send staff abroad for training.
Moscow- and New York-based training games developer Action Learning cited 2011 research from the Gartner Group, expecting more than 50 percent of companies working in innovative industries to use game-based motivation and training techniques for staff by 2015.
For Russia in particular, with a shrinking labor market, employers are looking for ways to nurture staff, as well as more cost-effective methods of training, said Action Learning’s general director, Roman Mandrik.
"Programs that support a worker’s motivation and build up his competence in certain areas are becoming ever more popular," Mandrik said.
The sectors Action Learning serves range widely, he added, from finance and industry to service and consumers.
Targeting the task
The theory is not to serve an industry, but instead to focus on the specific task presented by the client. Some programs can apply broadly, however: training in finance for workers new to the industry, for example, or in creating PowerPoint presentations.
"Such interactive trainer-simulators suit any company, and their advantage lies in the fact that the training can already start tomorrow, without taking in any changes," Mandrik said.
On the other hand, a mining simulator developed with Severstal, Gornoye Delo, is more specific to the industry and not adaptable, he added.
Windows on training
One of Action Learning’s products within the past year was developed on order from Moscow region window manufacturing and sales company Proplex.
Missia: Komfort, launched in March, is based in experience from across Russia and six months of research conducted among staff, analysts and customers, Proplex said in a press release. It uses actors and real-life scenarios to train the company’s sales managers, and, like entertainment video games, increases the complexity of the situations the players encounter during its progress.
Skill development is not the program’s only benefit, however.
"Thanks to its immediate use among sales staff, the program is helping to create an assignment profile and a single work standard for window sales managers," said Lev Minullin, development director of PVX production at Proplex.
Participation is voluntary, but Proplex reported that more than 1,900 sales managers had registered for the game since its introduction, 35 percent of them having finished it - considered a high figure for a voluntary remote training program.
Outside the company, Missia: Komfort was recognized at the eLearn Expo Awards in June as best innovative eLearning solution.
Far from being unique to Proplex’s business, the game’s principles are easily adaptable for other industries, Minullin feels.
"The competencies and skills needed for sales managers are identical in any industry," he said. "The differences take shape only in the product or service, where each has its nuances, and also in the form of communication with the consumer."
In the air
Perhaps the first industry that comes to mind where high-tech simulators are regularly used is aviation, where pilots are trained how to operate highly complex machines.
State airline Aeroflot is no exception, with a facility behind Sheremetyevo Airport housing flight simulators that replicate the cockpits of planes such as the Airbus A320 and the Sukhoi Superjet 100.
One of the pilots said that the navigation software is not produced specifically for the simulators, which are made by CAE and Thales, but instead is the same program that they encounter in flight. Geography, weather and topography can all be programmed by the instructor to test the pilots’ skills in different conditions.
Simulators in training are not limited to pilots or to navigation. For flight attendants, for example, training involves rehearsing emergency situations across the carrier’s fleet - instructing passengers on how to evacuate an aircraft (in Russian and English), opening a door properly and extinguishing fires.
Handling the doors can be especially tricky since each craft - Sukhoi, Boeing and Airbus - has its own particular features, which attendants have to remember. Many of the simulators have small monitors in the doors where windows would be on actual planes, which can illustrate different evacuation scenarios such as fires, smoke, or emergency landings in the woods or at an airport, indicating to the attendants whether the door in question is useable.
The center includes the largest water evacuation training pool in Europe, complete with rafts: 24 meters by 22 meters.
"When construction was starting here, they said to us, ‘Why will there be such a big pool? There you have 15 meters, 18 meters,’ and we said, ‘Aeroflot is going to take the Airbus A380,’" said Boris Malakhov, deputy director of the training center. "If [the pool] is 15 meters [wide], and the width [of the raft] is 12 meters, 1.5 meters on either side, where would they train?"
The center also instructs or retrains staff from other airlines, and Malakhov said that 17,998 people had passed through the complex in 2012. Since its opening, moreover, it has brought more than $1.6 million back onto Aeroflot’s accounts, mainly through savings of not having to send staff abroad for training.