The future of training is the focus for the latest episode of the Maritime CEO Tech Leader Series sponsored by Dualog.
Featuring the head of Ocean Technologies Group, Manish Singh, and OSM boss, Bjoern Sprotte, the discussion centres around how training has changed in the last few months and what will be the likely long term changes in training as the Covid-19 pandemic recedes.
Setting the scene, Sprotte related how when the World Health Organization officially declared the coronavirus a pandemic on March 11 training came to a “complete standstill” overnight, necessitating a swift adoption of replacement digital tools.
“What we have seen is a more connected learning community, which, in my view, really looks ahead instead of having what we call this touch and go,” Sprotte said, explaining how pre-Covid-19 when people came to a training facility, they spent time together, then left and it tended to be tricky to confirm just how successfully the lessons had been absorbed.
“With this new technology we stay connected, they share learnings and create a self-learning community by that, which is encouraging each other to learn skills and create a sense of belonging. For us that is also a retention mechanism obviously,” Sprotte said.
Singh, who oversees well-known training brands Videotel and Seagull among a host of products in the Ocean Technologies Group, said shipping as a whole was still adapting to the new normal of remote training.
“What will see in the coming months is not so much transformation, it is going to be more improvisation, and more adoption,” Singh told the TV show. “So in the very immediate term I am not expecting a total transformation of the technological platform, I’m seeing a convergence of the few already available technologies to solve some of the problems the customers have.”
Singh said his company was helping shipping companies migrate what would otherwise happen in a bricks and mortar environment into the e-learning environment.
“Adoption of that will accelerate very sharply in the coming months,” Singh said.
Both participants in the episode felt the pandemic had sped up the digitalisation of training by around three years.
Stay tuned next week as we sit down with the man tasked with taking the world’s top container carriers to the next level of digital competence.
The Maritime CEO Tech Leader Series, sponsored by Dualog, comes out every Thursday in June.
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