Skills for Today, Confidence for Tomorrow
Kate Valley. It’s the best little landfill in the country – maybe even the world. There’s some nifty innovation happening at this WM New Zealand-run landfill and energy park, powering more than 2000 homes. With a loyal and long serving workforce over the landfill’s 20-year history, when it came to learning some new digital skills, Operations Manager Jon Scanlon thought it would be worth a crack. The opportunity came along in the form of Digital Jumpstart; a digital skills course delivered on site every week over several months.
The issue
“The Knowledge and level of experience the team has is second to none,” says Jon.
“The reason I jumped on this opportunity, is we do have an ageing workforce. With the way everything is technology based now, we are shaping up that way ourselves here at the site from pre-start checks to the company’s online portal,” says. Jon. “We’re in the process of setting up a timesheet that’s online so that we don’t have to fill out paper copies every day.”
Jon saw it as an opportunity to build up some confidence within the team alongside the digital change.
From a corporate perspective, Operations Manager, People & Culture Mohit Tyagi knew that high level strategy was one thing, but something was missing. “How are we going to motivate our people to use those digital tools that we are looking to implement?’ The second question in Mohit’s mind was how to remove the perceived barrier around engaging with new technology at work. “What I have noticed is that a lot of people are happy to scroll through social media or use what’s app on their smartphones these days,” he comments. “But the fear of ohhh this is work… if I screw this up, or what if I use this app and I don’t know what I’m doing.”
What we did
That’s where Mohit joined forces with training provider Upskills and created a digital literacy course. Digital Jumpstart, offered by Upskills and utilising the Workplace Literacy and Numeracy fund, was designed specifically with WM New Zealand’s digital journey in mind. The learning design team at Upskills codesigned the learning to solve the issue of engaging with new digital tools, a key pillar of WM New Zealand’s Digital Transformation strategy.
We wanted to tackle the issue in a few different ways, says Curriculum Designer Sharon Pheasant.
“Getting to the heart of any fear that was reducing people’s confidence to engage with digital was so important”
Sharon tackled the fear factor in a unique way – using the analogy of driving a skip truck – something all the participants in her Marshs Road WM New Zealand group were all familiar with.
“We talked about muscle memory as we learned how to navigate a keyboard or different windows in an app – just like learning to coordinate gear sticks and pedals. And we did a lot of talking about mindset and keeping it all in perspective – we might push the wrong button on our device, but it’s not a matter of life or death.”
Over 16 bite sized sessions delivered on site at Kate Valley and Marshs Road, participants learned from each other, felt comfortable to experiment with digital tools, and had a laugh doing it. Every week, they had specific digital mini tasks to go away and transfer the learning into actions to practise. The results are in this short, sharp programme had a big impact.
The impact
Greater engagement with safety meetings
The Kate Valley site holds a monthly toolbox talk including all staff and contractors. It’s an important way to share information about many things, health and safety included. “Someone from each different division says a safety moment at the start of each toolbox,” explains Jon, “and the last two have been guys that have done the course- they’ve got AI to help them create a safety moment and that’s been delivered and executed verbally by them.” This is significant, because Jon says they wouldn’t have done that before. “Now they’ve got a tool in their toolbox to do it.”
Greater engagement and quality of information recorded
When it comes to prestart vehicle checks and similar functions in the WM New Zealand app, much more information and photos are being entered and uploaded. “This definitely aids us at this end with our job, rather than just say ticking a box and then we have to go and contact them and find out all the information,” says Jon. Streamlining the information flow is making a real difference in the way staff engage with the apps.
Greater digital confidence
100% of participants across both Christchurch sites rated their digital confidence as improving across the board after completing Digital Jumpstart:
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- Digital apps on the job
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- Adopting a growth mindset when it comes to digital
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- Finding solutions themselves for digital issues
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- Writing emails
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- Communicating effectively via email and messenger apps
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- Staying safe online – this comment from a learner shows how important this awareness is:
“Last week someone in my family got in touch about a phone call they’d had. When they told me a bit more about the conversation…I realised it was a scam, and we reported it to Netsafe and managed to stop these guys taking money out of [this family member’s] account”.
Reduced Fear
The most powerful way to understand this outcome is through some of the feedback given by learners throughout the course:
“I’m amazed at what I have learned today – I never thought that I would be emailing documents to myself and downloading apps!”
“I’m old school and I don’t like pushing buttons – but I Iike this ChatGPT!”
“To give things a try – the way you told us to just give things a go – I used to worry if I pushed a button it would all go wrong”.
Legacy
The measure of any learning sits in that old cliché of ‘use it or lose it’ and the legacy of this programme definitely falls into the ‘use it’ category. As Jon says, giving an older workforce new skills is having a ripple effect at work and in life. “We’ve given an older generation more digital skills. They can now take that away and do their banking online and things like that.”
The final words probably belong best to these learners:
“I’ve learned heaps on this course. But I need to do more. I think I’m going to buy my own laptop now”
“I’m changing my mindset a bit now about AI too. I can see that it can really help me with my dyslexia and improve my writing when I need to.”
“I’ve got more confidence using apps for sure. I’m not so worried about trying out a new one”.
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