2023-08-15
Author: Miles Macdonald
Bio: 4C Asia Pacific Regional Director, Miles Macdonald, is the former General Manager of multiple divisions at Cubic Australia & New Zealand. Previous to that he was an Officer in the New Zealand Army.
Improve training results, get staff up to speed and on-point quicker, lower training costs –Â there are many benefits to adopting the digital approach to training and exercising.
We find out the eight key reasons for going digital from 4C’s Asia Pacific Director, Miles Macdonald.
In an increasingly uncertain world, developing and maintaining organisational readiness to respond to disruptions, incidents and threats is critical. Time, resources and budgets, however, are constrained, and there’s a multitude of training methods and solutions to choose from. How do you get the most bang for your buck, ensuring the training you undertake delivers continual improvement in the areas most needed so that your teams are better prepared for future events and scenarios?
One key enabler to increase productivity in Training and Exercising is improved management of both individual events and progression across an entire training continuum. With the right Training and Readiness Management Platform, organisations can break down silos, redefine and automate processes, and increase both the efficiency and effectiveness of training – Digitally Transforming Training Management.
The advantages of adopting a Comprehensive Training and Readiness Platform to digitally transform training and exercising include:
A digital platform enables more efficient and effective planning and running of exercises by automating tasks, streamlining workflows, enhancing collaboration, and providing valuable, data-driven feedback. Additionally, training can be dynamically adapted in real-time to maximise the opportunities for participants to achieve the required outcomes.
Digital tools, templates, exercise libraries, guidance, and best practice for scenario development also empower teams to design and deliver exercises without relying on training experts.
Data can be gathered and collated from multiple sources, such as sensors, simulations, assessments, surveys, and reports. This can be further contextualised by applying metadata, standards, and analytics.
A platform approach supports the development of a comprehensive and coherent real-time view of both the training performance and the results of individual participants and teams. By utilising consolidated data and analytics, the results and impacts of exercises can be measured more accurately and objectively.
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Consolidating data in a single platform enhances the ability to manage the development of individuals and teams across multiple activities. Performance, competencies and skills gaps can be tracked using data-driven indicators, benchmarks, and thresholds. Tracking progression in real-time also improves understanding of readiness development, through tailored feedback.
Additionally, it is possible to implement adaptive interventions mid-exercise, which optimises the learning process and results. The data can also be used to benchmark different exercises, teams, and systems.
Consolidating training design and performance data enables analysis of the factors that influence readiness development, such as frequency, intensity, duration, complexity, and variability of training activities.
By using digital tools and platforms, the costs and time associated with planning, running, and evaluating exercises can be greatly reduced. The time and costs associated with planning can be reduced through, for example, the reuse of exercises, scenarios and templates. Planning and running exercises digitally within a dedicated system also supports distributed work, minimising the need for travel and improving task tracking.
Additional savings can be realised by enabling smaller and more distributed Exercise Control elements, and by automating simulation management. Critically, centralising data in a secure platform reduces manual processes and the double-handling and duplication of information between systems.
Data collected in the platform can be utilised to support wider Lesson Learned processes, including refinement of operational plans and improving the design and delivery of future exercises. For example, feedback, observations, and recommendations from participants, observers, evaluators, and other stakeholders can all be consolidated and analysed to drive organisational improvement. Digital platforms also enable the sharing of lessons learned from each exercise with relevant stakeholders.
Learn how 4C Strategies helped one of Northern Europe’s largest fire brigades to improve its command and control capabilities.
Learn moreFor organisations that manage many activities, a shared platform simplifies scheduling. It also enables increased productivity through facilitating coherent, multi-agency and multi-level exercises, supporting concurrent individual and collective training and it promotes better coordination of scarce resources.
Consolidating training data in a training platform also unlocks the potential to utilise AI tools to further enhance learning, improve training plans and identify operational lessons. In planning for example, AI can support scenario generation based on a combination of real-world and previous exercise data.
The use of Natural Language Processing algorithms, could enable automated performance summaries and reports and identify common themes in feedback. Automated analysis of training progression could also enable the prediction of training risk, driving automated recommendations to subsequent training requirements.
If you want to know more about the future of training and exercising and discover how you can take advantage of these benefits using Exonaut, the markets leading training and exercise management platform, contact 4C today or get in touch with me directly.
