MCI Institute is the vocational education division of Management Consultancy International (MCI). MCI is a business skills focused, registered training organisation specialising in the areas of leadership, management, sales, customer service and project management. MCI’s goal is to bring about positive transformation within organisations and they are dedicated to promoting diverse working environments by using inventive techniques.

MCI’s goal was to develop a way to immerse their students into real life situations using a simulated company that could build skills applicable to all industries. MCI addressed the challenges related to offering online courses to students with varied work experience levels. MCI developed WamCo — Writers and Mentors — which is an online simulated workplace, as a learning and assessment solution to address this challenge. Bringing fun and innovation to story-based learning, WamCo provides context to learning experiences with access to real-life situations. WamCo allows students to develop skills, build their assessment portfolio and allow them to better understand their course.

The impacts of WamCo were seen immediately. Daily work tasks were brought to life and the visualisation propelled student’s learning and the speed at which they submitted assessments. The students were able to then gain the confidence they needed to interview for roles and excel in their new jobs, with has a direct socio-economic impact by reducing the number of unemployed people in Australia.

MCI’s innovation process related to new or changed products, service offerings, procedures and customer offerings is simple and quick. Either team leaders or managers can run with an idea that was born out of their weekly team meetings, or employees can present ideas to senior management in both formal and informal manners. Innovation is present in everything that MCI does, whether it is developing new procedures to ensure that customer experiences are the best that they can offer, or providing new delivery options to enable students to access education in an easier and more efficient manner.

MCI Institute is being recognised for a Business Innovation award in the Australian Business Awards 2016.