Everyone who’s ever worked in a factory knows there’s few things less exciting than paying attention to a dull video of safety measures. How to safely set up and climb a ladder? Please. Always stay in the designated lanes in the production area? Wow, thanks for the tip. However, if you’ve ever been on the wrong side of a work accident, you know there’s few things as important as those very same safety measures.
Brand spanking new member of our FLEGA family Play It Safe founders Mike Ptacek and Brecht Kets saw an opportunity for improvement. They started building their game based learning platform for safety and prevention back in 2017. On the back of numerous startup awards, they carefully added more modules and happy clients as time went on, culminating in a recent partnership with IDEWE, one of the largest external prevention services in Belgium.
It’s easy to see why this works. Studies have shown that learning through playing games guarantees better results than classical or traditional e-learning methodes as the employee is encouraged to actively participate in the learning process. As a result, they will be more attentive and have better retention of the information that could save someone’s life one day.
The platform also makes it easy for managers to follow up on the progress of their employees. When there’s a need for a more targeted training, managers are saved the hassle of rounding up all their staff for a classical training. As the training programs are available 24/7 through a web browser or mobile device, every employee can train at his/her convenience.
To give you an idea of how flexible their tools are: when COVID-19 first hit last year, they quickly whipped up a corona module to teach people basic safety measures such as social distancing and hand sanitisation. Another advantage is the simulation of unsafe scenarios without actually creating an unsafe work environment. Next to a 3D simulation of the workplace where people can create their own avatars, Play It Safe can also enrich the onboarding process with 360° video. The modules are tailored to various sectors such as retail, healthcare, construction, and banking.
Saving lives by playing games: if that isn’t a killer pitch, we don’t know what is. Keep up with their latest work by following them on Twitter or LinkedIn. Glad to have you in our corner, guys!