An elearning route for great careers
Engaging young hearts, minds and ambitions early through elearning materials is a great way to build awareness of career opportunities and Scottish Water wanted to secure a steady pipeline of future candidates.
Challenges
Many young people may not consider the varied career opportunities within water, engineering or environmental science, even if they were STEM aware. On top of that, according to the Water Industry Journal, the UK water industry faces a skills shortage and this is particularly felt in engineering, digital technology and environmental management.
There was also the challenge of communicating the benefits of careers in water to large numbers of youngsters on their level with consistent messaging, to consider. The content needed to both simplify potentially complex information and be engaging, yet accessible. On top of that, situations at Scottish Water are evolving, so our client needed the autonomy to update content, seamlessly without requiring extensive technical support.
The approach
In partnership with Scottish Water, Dynamic created an engaging, interactive elearning solution to inspire young students aged between 11 and 17 to consider careers within their organisation and beyond.
The immersive bespoke digital experience features a visually engaging career map which serves as a portal to Scottish Water’s eight career areas; an interactive landing page which captures the imagination of the users and guides them through career exciting insights using a combination of multimedia content.
Key Features of the content include:
interactive parallax movement, using scroll trigger technology to animate elements dynamically as users navigate through the page.
multi-media content: each career area is enriched with various formats, including blogs and vlogs, offering real-life insights from Scottish Water employees; video content helps to humanise the experience, providing a relatable connection to potential career pathways.
editable content management system: the content structure was built to allow Scottish Water to update materials independently.
In addition, we provide our client with a detailed user guide to enable easy content modifications, ensuring long-term usability.
Impact
Enhanced student engagement
The interactive elements encourage exploration and increase retention of career-related information.
Through vlogs and blogs, students gain real-world insights into working at Scottish Water.
Future-proofed content management
Scottish Water has the flexibility to update career area pages, upload new videos, and refresh blog content without needing additional developer intervention.
Scalability & Inspiration
The Career Map serves as a model for industry-wide career education and can be expanded with additional content in the future.
Rewarding and award-winning
In addition, this learning links directly into the school curriculum. Teachers can now download a lesson plan, created from the basis of the careers map. As part of the lesson plan, learning intentions include pupils understanding what role they could play in a climate-conscious company and how they might think about what other skills and qualifications they could achieve in future.
Scottish Water was named winners of the Early Careers Award at the TIARA Talent Acquisition Awards, and the careers map formed part of the entry submission. Scottish Water was recognised for its innovative modern and graduate apprenticeship programs, supported by an in-house skills academy together with its dedication to equality and community engagement.
Conclusion and feedback
Through a combination of innovating our approach to elearning, interactive design and multimedia storytelling, Dynamic has successfully delivered a resource that aligns with our client’s goals of making more people aware of the range of career opportunities within Scottish Water and the wider sector. The career map stands out as a dynamic, future-proof and engaging career exploration tool, reinforcing Scottish Water’s commitment to inspiring the next generation of professionals.
A small selection of the great user feedback, includes:
"So interactive and inviting. You instantly want to take a look at all the different sections and feel that you're being taken on a very visual, informative and interesting journey."
"Really brilliant. So informative, but fun too. No big words or waffle. Just clear, straight to the point information."
"Wasn't too text heavy which is good. Interesting to see real faces and hear about different career paths and entry points to the sector. The graphics depicting the required skills were really good, easy to digest and relatable."
"Very user friendly and informative. I didn’t realise there were so many different jobs at Scottish Water."
