Beautiful game" helps Royal Mail to build manpower-planning skills

Citation

(2007), "Beautiful game" helps Royal Mail to build manpower-planning skills", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 39 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ict.2007.03739cab.002

"Beautiful game" helps Royal Mail to build manpower-planning skills

Football forms the metaphor for an e-learning programme on manpower planning, produced by the global e-learning producer, Tata Interactive Systems (TIS), for the UK’s Royal Mail.

When Royal Mail realized that those managing and administering its mail-centre staff needed to understand both the principles and practicalities of manpower planning, as well as operate the existing manpower-planning system, it commissioned TIS to produce some relevant e-learning materials.

Rohit Sharma, of TIS, explained: “We decided to introduce the concept of manpower planning through game-based learning – a concept that is relatively new to e-learning, although in its non-electronic form, learning from playing games is probably as old as humankind itself.

“The game that we developed finds each learner as the manager of a football team. The learner has to select his or her team to play against a team managed by the computer.”

“However, the learners have to take account of players becoming injured, receiving yellow or red cards during the game and even forgetting to turn up for the kick-off!” he said. “Among other things, the game teaches the learners to make contingency plans – a key concept in manpower planning.”

Having mastered the football-management game, learners apply their new knowledge and skills to Royal Mail’s computer-based manpower-planning tool in a controlled environment. If they make any errors, they receive yellow or red cards and, at the end of the programme, they receive a computer-generated assessment.

The game-based learning materials, which went live last year, are attracting a growing number of users among the Royal Mail’s mail-centre managers and administrators.