Saffron’s record of success at the Learning Technologies Awards continues after receiving the bronze award for ‘Excellence in the design of learning content – commercial sector’, alongside partner Barrick Gold, at this year’s celebratory gala.
As the second-largest gold mining corporation worldwide, Barrick Gold is subject to stringent regulatory and compliance obligations. As with many heavily regulated sectors, a high-level of training fatigue is commonplace, alongside the assumption that compliance training is, and will be, an uninspiring and repetitive experience.
To overcome this challenge, long-term partners Barrick and Saffron took the organisation’s annual Code of Conduct training as an opportunity to develop a unique, captivating, informative and personalised learning solution. By creating an immersive learning environment, incorporating an innovative sliding doors ‘alternate reality’ interaction, alongside real-life scenarios and a quirky retro aesthetic, the course challenged perceptions of compliance training to deliver a lively, impactful experience for all learners.
This course broke through previous training assumptions and limitations, acting as a template for the wider business, with other departments looking at the approach for their own learning initiatives. External recognition from the Learning Technologies Awards has not only solidified the course as an example of ‘Barrick’s best’ but also showcased how to challenge conceptions of compliance and what compliance training can aspire to be.
Saffron’s CEO Noorie Sazen said, “At Saffron, we seek to deliver purposeful innovation and excellent learning design in every piece of learning we develop. To have our approach and record of excellence recognised, particularly within compliance, is hugely rewarding. This project was a product of a successful and collaborative partnership with the team at Barrick. We look forward to building on this in the future!”.
The course, winning bronze from among 450 submissions, was put through its paces with a meticulous multi-stage judging process in order to verify the measurable impact achieved.
The judges and awarding body summarised the project’s standout features: “A difficult topic presented in a unique and challenging way. The elearning meets a challenging brief in terms of both the performance need and the diverse range of target learners. We liked the use of the ‘sliding doors’ variant of the traditional branching scenario technique. We felt this gave learners a good perspective on the topics at hand. A nice piece of elearning that responds to a challenging performance brief – a worthy bronze award winner”.
