Great Western Railway (GWR) is one of the largest train operating companies in the UK and is part of FirstGroup plc. With over 1000 drivers to train geographically dispersed throughout England and South Wales, all with varying IT skills and limited time to engage with learning on the job, GWR is challenged in supporting and managing train drivers’ learning and development.

Culturally, there are several barriers as well. Like so many industries, training on the railway is usually delivered through a top-down approach and is viewed as “done to you”. Training and assessment can elicit fear as candidates worry the outcome will be that they are not ‘perfect’ and could lose their jobs.

This perception creates a barrier to self-development, requiring everyone to acknowledge their human fallibility.

Breaking down barriers to self-development

At GWR, there is a drive to break down these barriers, resulting in a shift in culture to a place where individuals are supported to own their competence. Fallibility doesn’t need to be feared by default as part of a fair culture, where it is acknowledged that skills and knowledge wax and wane over time.

This ethos chimes with that held by AssessTech. As a training and technology company providing solutions to empower people at the heart of the railway, AssessTech has partnered closely with GWR to support this culture shift through developmental competence management.

Competence management solutions

Developmental competence management is a continuous process that achieves lower business risk, reduced incidents and improved performance. Each solution provided by AssessTech is underpinned by the understanding that candidates are on a journey of competence, and everyone’s journey is different.

GWR’s solution using ACMS/AssessBook

GWR have adopted both ACMS and AssessBook to support this endeavour. ACMS is an assessor-led competence management solution that provides a complete view of a candidate’s competence record. At the same time, AssessBook is a candidate-driven learning management solution that provides a complete view of a candidate’s training and learning, underpinned by Totara’s LXP product.

The two solutions are integrated so that assessors, managers, and candidates across GWR can access the complete history of their training, learning, and assessments at each stage of their journey.

GWR uses this integrated model as part of its assessment strategy in both formal and non-formal contexts.

As part of GWR’s Competence Management System (CMS), each candidate is on a schedule of formal assessment events (in ACMS). To avoid end-loading assessments, ACMS can track criteria throughout the schedule so that assessors can mark items for development (using a grading scale) at the next event.

eAssessment in AssessBook, whether using a SCORM-based system or the native Totara quiz engine, has become increasingly common during formal learning, such as train-type conversions. These assessments provide raw data about what candidates know, allowing for an exploration of what they don’t know, without making assumptions until personalised one-on-one feedback has been undertaken.

This data is output from the AssessBook database and presented in ACMS as a report to aid the assessor-led event with the candidate.

This formal use has paved the way for unsupervised knowledge checks in activities such as Safety & Business Briefs. The assessments are configured in AssessBook to provide immediate feedback and signpost learners to complementary resources for incorrect and correct answers.

In addition, bite-sized eLearning forms a key part of the strategy to engage learners daily when driving duties allow. The aspiration is to complement episodic top-down competence management with bottom-up everyday questions and signposting toward further eLearning and resources.

As a result, the event cycle becomes self-sustaining, with the candidate at the front and centre of the process to manage their competence. This also ensures that managers’ time is spent on areas for development, prioritising support and training where needed, preferably as identified by the colleague, and providing evidence to praise areas of greater proficiency and expertise.