Waterways Ireland Climate Action and Sustainability Training
Designing a bespoke capacity building programme for all staff in Waterways Ireland on Climate Action and Sustainability.
May 2024 - December 2024
Project Team:
Caoimhín Corrigan - Director in Charge
Antonia Sheilds - Project Lead
Simon O’Rafferty - Subject matter expert
Ella Elliott - Researcher and Project Manager
Project Background:
M-CO were procured by Waterways Ireland, following their previous engagement to produce a Climate Action Plan for the organisation. The objective of this six-month programme was to design, develop and deliver a set of learning materials for the organisation to bring staff up-to-speed on the core concepts of Climate Change and Sustainability, in line with public sector Government requirements.
The Approach
Define, Design, Deliver
This project followed the ‘define, design, deliver’ process to support the organisational objective of creating transformational change within their staff towards sustainability and climate action. The following outlines the activities which took place throughout the project. These activities did not take place in a linear process, but occurred at various stages throughout the project.
Define
The initial research activities were focused on defining the objective of the training and future vision of the organisation.
A survey was conducted on the entire staff to draft learner profiles and gauge organisational readiness to change.
Engagement with HR was crucial to map the organisational structure (departments and roles) for a clear understanding of user needs and expectations in terms of training.
The priorities of the business were established along with current challenges.
A site visit took place for place-based research and to understand daily operational tasks.
Design
The design followed a participatory process that involved a series of workshops to review and test the learner journey.
A preliminary curriculum/learning experience had been designed as part of the proposal to this tender. This served as the jumping off point to inform the design of core modules for the programme.
Insights from engaging with the HR team on previous training programmes highlighted some additional parameters to design within.
Public sector privacy policies around sharing of external materials or host sites also proved a challenge to design from.
Deliver
The final outputs from this workshop series included in-person staff training, workshop materials, two presentation decks and micro-learning resources.
There were 8 in-person trainings which took place onsite in different hotels around Ireland, close to the staff depots. This involved liaising with HR to divide the staff into sessions (regionally and departmentally), as well as managing meeting space and catering for each event.
There were 2 online workshops to facilitate those who could not attend in-person. Slight amendments to the delivery was required to transition the session to an online format.
A communication action plan supported the delivery of the programme.