Persona #3: Mary, a professional tower ATCO, to be reskilled into remote tower ATCO

Time to introduce the Perona#3: Mary. This is an ATC Persona, developed to represent the profile of a professional tower ATCO, who has to be reskilled into a remote tower ATCO and is supposed to be relocated in another city in order to start working as a remote tower controller in a multiple remote tower. In contrast to Bill, Mary was designed as a person who feels at ease with technical systems but still needs some assistance when solving complex operational issues. In fact, although she may be very careful in doing her job (she tends to follow procedures and rules and considers safety as being very important), Mary was imagined as having had hard times in completing her initial training. 

On the other hand, Mary was designed as a person who is willing to relocate, because of the positive impact on her social life: in fact, she was imagined as being single and thus open to spending more time with friends. She never really integrated in her own village, and would thus be keen on moving to a big city for her social life and entertainment. To sum up, Mary is very motivated to relocate and work in a highly digitalised environment, but may not be entirely at ease or totally independent in solving complex situations. In line with this, Mary’s training needs are expected to deal with advanced use of the remote tower systems, as for the technical skills, and with problem solving, decision making and service orientation among the transversal skills, so as to enhance the possibility that she successfully concludes her remote tower training. 

This issue is very important to be considered: in fact, given that all professional tower controllers will attend a reskilling training program to become remote tower controllers, what if the training is not successful? The Mary ATC Persona was designed to highlight this issue, so as to address specific training needs and to design targeted training programmes.