Supporting the financial frontline through turbulent times
By Jess Lehman, Learning and Development Manager at MCAP
MCAP is Canada’s largest independent mortgage finance company. Our competitive advantage depends on how well our frontline advisors know their stuff so they can deliver outstanding customer service during every interaction—whether in-branch, online or over the phone. So they need ample opportunities to grow their knowledge and skills to be ready to perform safely and effectively every shift.
A new, stickier way to train
I’ve been part of the MCAP team for about nine years, six of which I’ve been in Learning and Development. I’ve had the opportunity to use Axonify as a user and an administrator, so that gives me a little bit of an interesting perspective.
We originally brought on Axonify in 2014 to replace our annual certification exam. Rather than doing a hefty exam every year, employees were able to answer daily questions, which obviously was a lot more fun, especially when you throw in the gamified features.
Since then, we’ve started using the platform in a few different ways. For one, it’s now an integral component of our onboarding process. We rely on it very heavily to reinforce daily learnings, have assessments or checkpoints throughout our new hire training, and use it to make sure that new hires are picking up what we’re putting down.
Our team also uses Axonify as an additional method for reinforcement, or refreshers, on the things that they’re learning throughout training. Previously we might have said, read through your notes again and make sure that you’re clear on what we covered today, whereas this is definitely more engaging and a new method. A lot of people prefer digital methods now as opposed to pen and paper. That added another layer to the support that we’re providing.
Also, for anyone who would be interested in learning more about other departments, they now have the option to go the self-directed route, to opt in and complete questions that would not necessarily be applicable to their current role. It’s a way for them to learn about other roles within the company, which is really interesting.
Making professional growth possible during industry turbulence
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic when we were going through the roughest months, we told our agents to drop everything and just focus on one task at a time. We weren’t asking them to complete their daily questions or use the platform at all during those busy times.
What was interesting to me is that months later, when our team looked over the participation data, we found that our agents still chose to log into the platform, play their games and answer their daily questions voluntarily.
That tells me how much our people are loving the platform, and that they’ve developed a habit of doing their training beyond what we’ve instructed them to.
Preparing the workforce for the future
We’ve seen a big impact so far with Axonify. In the near and far future, I would love to continue leveraging Content Marketplace, self-directed learning and building out more role-specific content. It would be great to continue what we’re doing by expanding our user base to other departments as well.
If you’re looking to get started but don’t know how, use what’s already built out as marketplace content because there’s so much good stuff in there you can then build on afterwards. My biggest piece of advice is to make things available to your people, let them opt in and play around to learn some things that they otherwise might not have.