What we created for Sabre employees is now available to everyone online
Earlier this year I was approached by my manager to assist our Corporate Responsibility team with a new human trafficking awareness training course they wanted to launch to all 10,000 employees, called Passport to Freedom. Knowing little at the time about the plight of human trafficking, I was interested to bring my project management and design skills to the table to see what kind of impact our team could make to the cause.
Over the course of the months, I worked with a fantastic vendor, MLink Technologies to produce a 30-minute eLearning course to roll out to all employees. When I started on this assignment to help develop this course, I had no idea what journey I would personally take over the course of the months.
Weeks were spent talking to stakeholders like Barbra Anderson, Director of Corporate Responsibility and Cristina Scott, Chairperson for Passport to Freedom to better understand what specific outcomes we wanted our employees to walk away knowing, feeling and doing when they completed the course. Day after day I scoured the internet watching videos about modern-day slavery, reading survivor stories, digging into statistics and reaching out to organizations that help put an end to human trafficking to ensure that our content was the most up-to-date and relevant for our employees.
MLink took this information and crafted a brilliant piece of work. Throughout the development cycle, we had input from 27 Sabre employees around the globe including former CEO and current board member, Sam Gilliland and representatives from the Polaris Project. It was exciting to see how the training continued to take life and transform into an engaging and informative tool.
Those who gave input knew the importance of our mission, to educate, engage and inform our employees, so they were personally invested as well. Within four months of releasing the training, 27 percent of all Sabre employees have voluntarily taken the course and it has received 4.5/5.0 star rating. The responses have been outstanding such as “proud to work for Sabre,” “inspirational,” “compelling,” and “empowering,” which I truly believe is in part to the teamwork and collaboration among employees in Sabre and our external partnerships.
I have been in learning and development for over 14 years, and this is the first time I have had the opportunity to develop a resource that could literally save a life. This project gave me the opportunity to emotionally move someone, to create passion for fellow mankind, and to remember that our communities matter. What is even more exciting is how employees are now becoming activists on their own to raise awareness in their communities by spreading the word through presentations and sharing the facts they learn with their loved ones.
We have even had interest in our training from prominent travel industry organizations to share our training with their employees. Our goal when we started was to train our Sabre employees, but the impact has been far greater than expected. And we’re now really excited to offer this online resource to anyone, anywhere, on-demand. Check out the course for yourself here. For me, this began as a project and transformed into a personal passion.
I have been fortunate since my initial involvement to continue to stay engaged through representing Sabre and attending various events to help support organizations that help put an end to human trafficking such as Mosaic Family Services and the Dallas Women’s Foundation. I have been able to conduct presentations outside of Sabre to spread awareness of human trafficking.
I also look forward to volunteering my time to make an impact in the Dallas/Fort Worth area with Mosaic Family Services starting in 2014. I hope you take 30 minutes of your time to take the course we are now providing to everyone. This is the same training our employees received starting in July, and my call to action for you is to become aware and take responsible action.
Help us spread the word by posting the link to the Passport to Freedom course on your social networking sites or email to your friends and family. Together, we can help make a difference to eliminate the second most lucrative and fastest growing criminal industry in the world, human trafficking.