Learning Leaders® 2010

Transcription

Learning Leaders® 2010
Lessons from the Best
Bersin & Associates
April 2010
Bersin & Associates Learning Leaders® 2010
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction by Josh Bersin
5
Operational Training and Development Excellence
9
Learning and Talent Technology Excellence15
Learning and Talent Initiative Excellence21
Leadership Development Excellence 25
Learning Organization and Governance Excellence 35
Vendor Innovation in Learning and
Talent Management 48
Learning Leaders 2010 Honorable Mentions 55
Learning Leaders 2010 Award Winners:
Organization Profiles
56
Accenture
57
Amway
60
AT&T
63
Baker Tilly
66
Booz Allen Hamilton
69
CA
76
Cisco
80
Coldwell Banker Commercial
83
Kelly Services
86
NetApp
89
The Nielsen Company
93
Qualcomm
96
Redwood Trust
100
Seagate
103
Bersin & Associates © April 2010 • Not for Distribution • Licensed Material
Learning Leaders 2010 Award Winners:
Vendor Profiles106
Adobe Systems
107
Bellevue University’s Human Capital Lab
110
Cornerstone OnDemand
113
Executive Conversation 117
General Physics Corporation
120
Halogen Software
123
Kelley Executive Partners 126
Plateau Systems
129
RWD Technologies
132
Vangent 134
Appendix I: Directory of Winner Organizations138
Appendix II: Directory of Winner Vendors140
Appendix III: Table of Figures142
About Us144
About This Research144
Introduction
by Josh Bersin
Introduction by Josh Bersin
Our Learning Leaders® program is designed to identify the very best in
organizational learning and talent management. When we launched Learning
Leaders in 2006, we set out to create a program which provides benchmarking,
best practices and an opportunity for the learning community to see real cases
of innovation and success. Since then, the program has evolved significantly. As
organizations increasingly integrate learning with talent management, we have
broadened the program categories to encompass initiatives such as employee
onboarding and succession management.
The program’s goal is not just to provide awards – but to recognize organizations
which are driving high-value solutions based on business strategies. We focus this
program on the use of benchmark criteria based on our years of in-depth study
across all areas of learning and talent management – in fact, several participants have
told us that the application process is a useful benchmarking exercise in and of itself.
The program categories cover six major areas of learning and talent solutions, and
encompass the key ways that organizations can drive value:
1. Operational Training and Development Excellence: Here, we look
at operational training programs which drive high impact, incorporate
performance consulting and blended learning, and demonstrate best practices
in business alignment, measurement and program management. Such programs
are the “bread and butter” of training, and they are constantly in demand
throughout every organization.
2. Leadership Development Excellence: In this category, we look at leadership
and management training programs which build upon our Leadership
Development Maturity Model® to deliver high levels of talent management and
support of the leadership pipeline. With today’s multi-generational workforces,
leadership development and career development programs are critically linked
with employee development, recruitment and retention.
3. Learning and Talent Initiative Excellence: In this area, we look at initiatives
which go beyond a specific operational area, such as change management,
competency management, career development, performance management,
coaching and other non-traditional learning solutions. As any savvy learning
or HR executive knows, programs without attention to change management,
adoption, and performance support rarely endure.
4. Learning and Talent Technology Excellence: Technology continues to play
an ever-increasing role in corporate learning and talent management. Here we
look for examples of where technology is instrumental in delivering high-value
business solutions. These technologies include learning management systems, rapid
e-learning tools and platforms for social networking and learning on demand.
5. Learning Organization and Governance Excellence: In this area, we look
for world class organizational structures, governance and business alignment
programs. We recognize leaders who create organizations which generate
particularly high levels of business value, are aligned with talent management
processes, and have established themselves as critical in executing business strategy.
6. Vendor Innovation in Learning and Talent Management: In this category,
we look at vendor solutions which are innovative and proven to drive business
impact. The category encompasses platforms, tools and content as well as
business solutions and on-demand technologies that make training more efficient
and effective.
In October 2009, organizations of varying industries and sizes submitted
applications about a range of learning and talent programs, technologies and
initiatives. In conducting our reviews, we applied a rigorous set of criteria to
identify the leaders. (You can read the criteria at www.bersin.com/leaders. Simply
register and download an application, where you’ll find the criteria at the top of
the application.) Evaluation criteria include:
• The business alignment and level of understanding of the business problem to
be solved;
• The design of the program, system or initiative, and how its design both adds to
its impact and drives high levels of adoption and engagement;
• How the organization manages change, deployment and measurement of the
learning initiative;
• The level of innovation and creative thinking which went into the learning
solution; and,
• The proven impact of the program, initiative or system.
A recurring theme among the applicants was how to meet learning and talent
management needs with fewer resources. Several of these organizations faced
severe workforce reductions last year. But their learning organizations were able to
focus on the most critical business needs, find ways to adapt to the changing needs
of learners, and facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing. Others found
ways – despite budget cuts – to meet the needs of increasingly global learning
communities, build leadership strength among junior executives, deliver resultsfocused sales training and improve employee retention.
The 2010 Learning Leaders represent the very best of enterprise learning and talent
management with high impact on the business. As with every year, we are honored
to be able to study and promote these leading solutions. We believe you’ll gain
valuable insight from their success stories.
A special thanks to our media partner, Elearning! magazine, for sharing the best
practices of the winners through its print pages, e-zine, and Elearning! Summit events.
Think about applying for a Learning Leaders award in 2011! If you’d like to be
added to the mailing list for news and updates about program news, events and
deadlines, contact [email protected].
Sincerely,
Josh Bersin
Learning Leaders®
2010 Award Winners
Learning Leaders by Category – Analyst Overviews
Operational Training and Development
Excellence
Josh Bersin,
President
Operational training is the bread and butter of learning and
development. Organizations of all sizes have a myriad of
business processes, systems, and operational programs that
require detailed knowledge for success. In the Learning Leaders®
program we define operational training as all training programs
which are not specifically covered by management and leadership
development – so this includes such major areas as sales training,
customer service and support, professional services, marketing, and
professional development for various other internal functions.
This year we received a wide range of applications which covered
many of these functional areas. What we found, in this year of very tight budgets,
is that organizations are still willing to devote tremendous resources of time and
effort to building world-class programs – if the problem is defined well. Accenture,
for example, a company which went through a major downturn in 2009, invested
heavily in deep specialization programs for its consultants through a variety of
“academies” which build skills through formal training, practical experience,
working in teams, and collaboration with university professors. Westinghouse rolled
out a very effective global training program for its nuclear power plant operators
that uses formal and informal learning to build a sharing community.
Ultimately, we selected four winners for excellence in operational training
and development:
• AT&T, for its program to increase the number of users who received training on
AT&T BusinessDirect, which led to a 20 percent increase in worldwide adoption
of the self-service tools;
• CA, for its highly effective, ongoing training workshop and coaching program
designed to standardize the way sales teams work and the way CA goes to
market and negotiates with its customers;
• Cisco, for retooling 40 hours of instructor-led sales channel training into a
16 hour virtual training program resulting in high learning scores and an 85
percent drop in cost per student; and
• Coldwell Banker Commercial, for its blended training program for sales/lease
agents new to commercial real estate which resulted in a 30 percent increase in
sales transaction volume from new hires winners.
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These companies displayed the following:
• Focus on deep skills development. In times of tight budgets, only the best
and most important programs survive. The winners in operational training this
year are programs that have clear, measurable returns on investment – because
they focus on sales, service, consulting, and support skills which are core to the
business’s success.
• Tracking progress, learning, and achievement. When budgets are tight and
the business needs to produce results, what better way to add value than to
track progress and achievement in detail? All our award winners built programs
which have detailed tracking of progress, achievement, and results designed into
the curriculum. The Coldwell Banker Commercial retail broker training program,
for example, which is a highly detailed blended program for development of
sales skills, tracks each student week by week and gives the entire organization
a transparent view of progress among all participants. Such transparent
measurement virtually guarantees high levels of participation and impact.
Figure 1: Tracking dashboard for Coldwell Banker’s retail brokerage training
Source: Coldwell Banker Commercial, 2009.
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• Social and collaborative learning. This year the biggest buzzword in
training is “informal learning.” Every award winner this year built some form of
collaboration and knowledge sharing into their programs. Let’s face it: formal
training is only 15-20% of the learning experience for any comprehensive
program. Participants have to internalize the knowledge by applying it on the
job, and then talk with others about how to perform at even greater levels.
• Relentless focus on business-driven needs analysis. In our research we
like to use the words “performance consulting” to refer to the needs analysis
phase of training. The modern approach to training is to think beyond learning
objectives and identify the business problem, workflows, sources of knowledge
within the organization, and managerial challenges which surround a problem.
This broader study of a problem lets the learning organization build a program
which is role-based, focused on both skills as well as coaching elements, and forces
management and leadership to get engaged in the solution. All the winners have
a strong, business-oriented performance consulting element – which in turns leads
to a program which is easy to cost-justify and has a clear return on investment.
• Realization that managers play a major part in every program. Each
winner this year had a strong focus on the role of line management. Remember
that one of the most important audiences in a training program is the line
manager: he or she must support, reinforce, and build upon the training
program you develop. One example of strong managerial support is CA’s award
winning sales coaching program. CA’s program, which is one of the highest
ROI programs of the year, includes a whole “playbook” for managers to show
them precisely how to support a product launch or other sales initiative as a
player/coach.
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Figure 2: CA Sample Email Coach™ Message
A Sample Email Coach™ Message
Every Email Coach™ message starts with
an engaging “subject” to encourage your
people to open, read, and remember it.
Just reading the title alone serves as a
fast and effective skill refesher.
One key, easy-to-remember
sales negotiation concept,
principle, or skill is reinforced
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• Use of e-learning and online sharing technologies. Finally, it is important
to note that today’s modern operational training programs all use technology
to achieve scale and success. Cisco’s global channel training program, which
touches nearly every field sales organization around the world, was developed
and delivered entirely through virtual classroom technology. By carefully
assigning local learning leaders in each office and architecting a program with
extensive collaboration and interaction, Cisco was able to drive even higher
levels of satisfaction than its prior years’ programs. And AT&T built an entire
learning experience for its business ustomers which allows them to actually do
their jobs with access to online training with support throughout the process. It
redefined the whole notion of “learning on-demand” in a highly productive way.
Figure 3: Cisco’s Channels vSMS program
vSMS Delivery Framework
Module 01 – Understanding Your Partner’s Business
Pre-Work
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2 hr WebEx
Session
Course Work
Individual and
Team Work
Mod 1.2
2 hr WebEx
Session
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Individual and
Team Work
Mod 1.3
2 hr WebEx
Session
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and Team
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Module 02 – Driving Partner Profitability
Mod 2.1
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Session
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Mod 2.2
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Session
Course Work
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Mod 2.3
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Session
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Work;
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Module 03 – Transforming the Partner Conversation
Mod 3.1
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Session
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Team Work
Mod 3.2
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Session
Program
Post Work
Source: Cisco, 2009.
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Figure 4: AT&T Business Direct
Source: AT&T, 2009.
This year, perhaps more than ever, I came away inspired by the high powered,
business-driven solutions in operational training. All the participants faced budget
cuts, restructuring, and a variety of business pressures which made their training
difficult. What we can learn from these programs is that a creative, business-driven
approach to operational training pays off, even during the worst of economic times.
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Learning and Talent Technology
Excellence
Chris Howard,
Vice President
of Research
Technology plays an integral role in every corporate training
program. Over the years, instructional designers and learning
leaders have used technology to extend the role of the instructor,
empower learners to learn on their own, and make learning
available anywhere and at anytime. From content development
and assessment to LMS and social software platforms, today’s
organizations must deal with a wide array of learning
technologies. This category honors true excellence in applying
technology to learning.
There are two winners in Learning and Talent Technology
Excellence for this year: The Nielsen Company and Accenture.
Both winners are leveraging cutting edge technology to support
informal learning strategies.
Theme: Informal Learning
David Mallon,
Principal Analyst
Corporate learning is entering a new era – one of social,
collaborative and talent-driven learning. Today’s workers still
need formal training that is built around specific problems and talent needs;
however, they also need the availability of a “learning environment” in which they
can find information, collaborate and build their own learning plans. The learning
organization must go beyond the disciplines of building content for use online – we
must provide context and pathways through which people can learn. We must help
the organization to be both better learners and better creators of learning.
For more information, High-Impact Learning Practices: The Guide to Modernizing Your Corporate
Training Strategy through Social and Informal Learning, Bersin & Associates / David Mallon, July 2009.
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Figure 5: Finding the Right Information at the Right Time and in the Right Format
Enabling the Knowledge Worker
What do you believe holds back knowledge workers in your organization?
The problem is
“context” not
“content”
Reuse and
standards
badly
needed
Overwhelming volume of information
makes it difficult to notice and keep
track of useful information.
68%
Lack of effective tools (such as
search) makes it difficult to find the
most useful information.
34%
Frequent change of information
makes it difficult to find the most
current information.
32%
Inconsistency of information formats
or sources makes it difficult to use and
comprehend new information.
23%
Dynamic nature of job roles makes it
difficult to find sufficiently targeted or
relevant information.
16%
Job roles or conditions make it difficult
to access sources of information.
12%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
Source: Bersin & Associates, 2010.
Organizations must expand the scope and purpose of the learning function to
focus first and foremost on developing deep expertise within the company, as well
as improving the organization’s ability to adapt in the face of constant change.
These goals are over and above its operational and tactical responsibilities. Training
departments cannot simply exist to solve human performance problems, nor
are they often the best source of such solutions. The internal currency of today’s
companies is knowledge; the mandate of the modern learning organization must
be to stand as a center of excellence for the creation, acquisition and flow of
knowledge in all its forms.
Waking up to How Work Has Always Happened
Our research shows many corporate managers believe that, at most, 20 percent of
on-the-job skills are learned through formal, traditional training. Eighty percent of
all organizational learning occurs informally – or on the job.
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Figure 6: Formal Versus Informal Learning
We need to optimize this
Coaching on the Job
Information in
Support of Work
20%
70%
Not just this
10%
Formal Training
Figure 7: Approaches and Their Perceived Learning Impact
Greatest Learning Impact
Which of the following do you believe have the greatest learning impact for workers in your organization? (TOP 2)
0.0%
10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0% 60.0% 70.0%
Formal Training/Education - Company Provided
Formal Training/Education - Other Sources
28.4%
8.0%
On the Job Performance/Experience
59.8%
OJT Development Programs such as Mentoring, Job
Rotation, or Stretch Projects
36.0%
Coaching By Direct Supervisors
33.4%
Peers, Friends, and Personal Networks
14.0%
User Generated Content
4.2%
Corp Communications or Documentation
3.4%
Total % Not Choosing Formal
64.4%
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Further, in our High Impact Learning Practices research, we asked business leaders
to tell us which approaches have the greatest learning impact on their employees.
As you can see in Figure 7 above, informal approaches (such as on-the-job
experience, mentoring and coaching) are all rated as having more learning impact
than formal education provided by the company. In fact, more than 64 percent did
not choose formal learning as one of their top two choices.
Formalizing Informal Learning
A hallmark practice of the modern high-impact learning organization is the ability to
“formalize” these informal training activities – in other words to bring to them the
same diligence given to formal approaches. Modern L&D teams must now “architect”
these informal elements, establish clear objectives for each, decide how we will
evaluate their success and include them in the design of all major learning programs.
Our two winners offer perfect examples of formalized informal learning.
First, at Accenture, employee feedback indicated a strong need for on-demand
access to easily consumable content. Simultaneously, senior leadership wanted a
channel through which to quickly refresh associates on timely topics. Accenture,
long an organization that recognizes the benefit of knowledge sharing and
the potential power of putting content creation abilities into the hands of all
employees, chose to use existing technology to implement a low-cost and yet very
high-value podcasting platform for the enterprise.
Through the initiative, called uPodcasts, employees use Accenture’s existing
conference bridge system to record their own podcast via a telephone conference
call, and the recording then gets automatically edited into the required format.
Accenture’s learning organization records “interviews” with key practice leads,
making the calls available for search or subscription access via mobile device.
The program has been extraordinarily popular for both content creators and
consumers. No new tools needed to be learned. The time requirements for creating
content are minimal, making it very easy for subject matter experts and the
organization’s leaders to share knowledge. To date 180 podcasts have been created
and more than 20,000 employees (11% of the total workforce) have accessed them.
Our second winner, The Nielsen Company, recently found itself with the challenge
of integrating 250 learning professionals located in 100 countries into one
consolidated department as part of the comapany’s “One Nielsen” initiative.
The Nielsen Company recognized early on that collaboration would be critical.
Bring the team together did not just mean getting people to collaborate going
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forward; it meant consolidating learning management systems, existing learning
content, and related processes.
The Nielsen Company did not have a budget to support a separate investment to
support this massive project, however – it just so happened that the organization
had just implemented Microsoft Live Meeting, Outlook Exchange, and SharePoint
enterprise wide.
Figure 8: Opening page for the Global eLearning Community site
Source: The Nielsen Company, 2009.
Within an amazingly short amount of time, The Nielsen Company established a
learning community on the platform, both to support work and to provide the
foundation for ongoing development and social learning in and among the newly
consolidated learning organization. Global Learning Services, has established a
broad awareness for this community and its leadership role at the organizational
level and is seen as a leader in influencing and spreading the adoption of consistent
learning standards and sharing resources for the benefit of the learners they serve.
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Figure 9: Discussion Boards promote collaboration
Source: The Nielsen Company, 2009.
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Learning and Talent Initiative Excellence
In today’s environment, identifying, developing and retaining
top talent is a top priority for any organization looking to
gain competitive advantage. These organizations are investing
in learning and talent initiatives that result in a recognizable
business impact.
As unemployment continued to grow last year, many
organizations announced hiring freezes, employment furloughs
Madeline Laurano
and massive layoffs. So, why would organizations consider
Principal Analyst
investing in talent during an economic downcycle? The answers
are abundant. Organizations recognize the opportunities to
streamline and standardize processes, create consistency and prepare for the
inevitable periods of growth that will occur in the next year or two. Companies are
looking to prepare for the future, and are focused on becoming leaner and smarter
around recruiting and retaining top talent. While many companies are scaling
back on their investments in these areas, leading companies recognize the benefits
of embracing key initiatives such as the reorganization of enterprise learning
programs and new career development programs.
Our talent management framework reveals how these program areas fit in the
broader talent management landscape as well as key integration points that can
help drive business results. In today’s environment, organizations are looking to
become more strategic, align these areas of talent management and re-evaluate
certain learning and talent initiatives.
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Figure 10: High-Impact Talent Management Framework
Talent Strategy & Business Alignment
Engagement
Strategy
Workforce Planning
Integration
Strategy
Sourcing
Candidate Pools
Assessment
Employer Brand
Recruiting
Selection
Onboarding
Talent Mobility
Leadership
Development
Succession
Management
Career
Management
Performance
Management
Change Management
Strategy
Diversity Planning
Talent Forecasting
Scenario Planning
Enterprise Skills Gap Assessment
Critical Talent Assessment
Capability & Competency Management
Talent
Acquisition
Talent Systems
Strategy
Job Profiles
Competencies
Executive Education
Leadership Curriculum
Assessment & Evaluation
Talent Profiles
Assessment & Calibration
HiPo Identification
Skills Assessment & Transferability
Career Planning & Development
Professional & Management Tracks
Goal Alignment
Skills Gap Analysis
Coaching & Development
Talent Segmentation
Critical-Role Identification
Behaviors
Action Learning
Job Rotation
Coaching & Mentoring
Talent Reviews
Talent Pool Management
Talent Mobility
Employee Brand
Coaching / Mentoring
Talent Mobility
Experiences
Skills
Total
Rewards
Rewards & Recognition
Pay for Performance
Benefits for Talent
Development
Experiences
Bench Strength Assessment
Performance Evaluation & Calibration
Performance-Based Pay
Learning Strategy
Audience Analysis
Learning Programs
Formal & Informal Approaches
Learning & Capability Development
Process Design
& Mapping
Talent Infrastructure
Deep Specialization
Measurement
Strategy
Learning Agility
Business Metrics & Analytics
Organization & Governance
Talent Planning Process &
Solution Design
Learning Content
Learning Architecture
Knowledge Management
Measurement & Evaluation
Talent
Systems
The winners of the 2010 Bersin & Associates Learning Leaders Program® in the
Learning and Talent Initiative category are all from different industries and their
winning initiatives address three unique talent problems – learning measurement,
talent management, and onboarding new employees.
For purposes of this program, Bersin defines “initiative” as an enterprise learning
program, project or activity that results in a recognizable business impact. Initiatives
help to transform a company in some way. The Learning Leaders winners and the
initiatives that they presented are as follows:
• Booz Allen, for creating a positive new hire experience;
• Beers and Cutler (now known as Baker Tilly after a December 2009 merger),
for dveloping a competency model in order to improve retention throughout
the organization; and
• Seagate Technology, for creating a virtual coach to improve the learning
delivery model.
A number of common themes and best practices were prominent in this year’s
wining applications in the Initiative category. They included:
• Creating a positive new hire experience
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• Gaining Senior Support
• Leveraging Social Networking Tools
Creating a Consistent New Hire Experience
Companies that leverage social networking tools in this onboarding process will
be in a better position to extend the onboarding process and to attract younger
generations. Generation Y expects its employers to offer a team environment,
transparency, and innovation- all characteristics that should extend to the employee
development stages. Onboarding systems can also help organizations to extend
the process. Many organizations investing in forms management and electronic I-9
forms are now using this technology for existing employees as well as new hires.
Many companies are also using new hire portals as employee portals throughout
the employee lifecycle.
Booz Allen recognizes the value of extending the onboarding process beyond the
first six months of employment and created a blended onboarding program with
30-60-90 feedback sessions, new hire portals, simulations and orientation. Through
this model, they were also able to create a consistent new hire experience for
every new hire in the organization. Their onboarding roadmap helped to engage
employees in the process.
Figure 11: Booz Allen Simulation Board
Source: Booz Allen Hamilton, 2010.
24
Gain Senior Support
Competencies play a significant and foundational role for all aspects of talent
management. Competency models are often considered the thread of any talent
management initiative; empowering organizations with the tools they need to
recruit and retain employees. One of the greatest challenges with creating a
competency framework is gaining senior level support.
Beers and Cutler recognized that its retention data was weak and performance
reviews indicated low performance. It also needed a more consistent talent
acquisition process. The training and development team realized it needed to make
a change and was able to gain senior support by showing the business value. As
a result, they created a consistent competency model to be used throughout the
employee lifecycle, created a college recruiting analysis to understand sources of
hire and talent acquisition processes, and clearly defined leadership competencies.
This is an ongoing process that is continuously reviewed by the executive team in
order to improve performance reviews and reduce turnover.
Leveraging Social Networking Tools
The buzz around social media as a learning tool has exploded over the past few
years as companies find more creative ways to enable collaboration. Seagate
Technology was looking for a more effective learning delivery model after they
reduced its workforce and cut technology spending. In order to create more
employee engagement, they built a virtual coaching tool on the Seagate wiki.
The result was reduced costs, improved performance review process and an
environment of peer-to-peer collaboration.
More than ever before, organization’s are well-positioned to re-evaluate their
current talent and learning initiatives. Organization’s recognize the value of
recruiting, developing and retaining top talent and are investing in programs that
align with the overall business strategy.
25
Leadership Development Excellence
Kim Lamoureux,
Principal Analyst
After a grueling hit on the economy, companies spent the
better part of 2009 strategizing, restructuring and reorganizing
themselves. Companies experienced changes to their top
management teams, the design of new and expanded leadership
roles, and the loss of many valued employees in both leadership
and professional positions. Whether a company adapts quickly
and effortlessly to these challenges is an indication of the
strength of its leadership development strategy.
Through our research, we have determined that there are four
levels of organizational Leadership Development Maturity (see
Figure 12). The achievement of the highest levels of maturity rests on the execution
of six key best practices of leadership development:
1. Maintain strong executive engagement;
2. Define tailored leadership competencies;
3. Align with business strategy;
4. Target all levels of leadership;
5. Integrate with talent management; and,
6. Apply a comprehensive program design.
For more information, High-Impact Leadership Development 2009: Trends, Best Practices, Industry
Solutions and Vendor Profiles, Bersin & Associates / Kim Lamoureux, November 2008.
Organizations that would like to assess themselves against this model should contact Bersin &
Associates directly to participate in our Leadership Development Assessment®. For more information,
please email us at [email protected].
26
Figure 12: Bersin & Associates Leadership Development Maturity Model®
Strategic Leadership Development
9%
Championed by Executives, Talent Management Integration
35%
Focused Leadership Development
Culture-Setting, Future-Focused, Developing Organization
Structured Leadership Training
Core Competencies, Well-Defined Curriculum, Developing Individuals
26%
36%
65%
Inconsistent Management Training
Content Available, No Development Process, Benefit to Employees
29%
The winners of the 2008 Bersin & Associates Learning Leaders Program® in the
“Leadership Development” category are Amway, Qualcomm and Redwood
Trust. Details about how they achieved each of these six best practices are
described throughout the remainder of this overview.
Leadership Development Strategy & Best Practices
Strong executive engagement
The engagement of senior business leaders is essential to the successful creation
and execution of a leadership development strategy. When senior management
is engaged, the programs are more highly aligned to the business strategy,
competencies are well adopted, and leaders are more likely to participate.
Senior leaders at Qualcomm are highly engaged in the company’s leadership
development efforts. Examples of ways in which they demonstrate their
support include:
• Join the Emerging Leader Program either virtually or through video to share
personal stories and key tips to be a successful manager at Qualcomm
• Provide review and input on content / topic areas for upcoming initiatives.
27
• Speak at or introduce instructor-led programs
• Develop video content to share invitations, introductions and personal insights
into leadership development
• Facilitate a “Leaders Teaching Leaders” series focused on key content topics
Redwood’s Trust Executive Team is specifically involved in a number of key
components of its Leadership Development initiative including:
• Scoping and Design of the initiative.
• Visioning around Leadership and Coaching at Redwood.
• Creating first draft of organizational values and cultural behavior descriptions.
• Creating a Roadmap for addressing its business objectives and roadblocks.
• Facilitating in all leadership programs
• Coaching/Mentoring action learning project teams.
Tailored leadership competencies
Leadership competencies define the knowledge, skill sets and experiences that
are necessary for the successful achievement of business strategies and goals.
Leadership development efforts should then be designed to “teach” the
defined competencies.
Redwood’s program, “The $6 Million Game – Business-driven Action Learing,” was
specifically designed to align with Redwood’s culture and values around being
action-oriented, having a results-focus, and coaching and mentoring others. Having
the significant, active involvement of the Executive Team ensured that the values,
culture, and ways in which these Executives lead were communicated and processed
by the teams. Executives became role models and teachers throughout the process.
Also, exhibiting corporate values and cultural principles are hard-coded into the
company’s performance system. Redwood’s core leadership competencies are so
integrally connected with the values that the demonstration of these competencies
is a prerequisite to successfully achieving the goals and objectives of this program.
Amway’s LeAP program directly supports its core leadership competencies, company
values, and the company culture in multiple ways. Amway has four core leadership
competencies: Innovate to Win, Inspire High Performance, Deliver Results, and Passion
for the Business. All four core competencies were directly developed in both the formal
classroom sessions as well as during the completion of the business challenge.
28
Figure 13: Competency Alignment of Amway’s LeAP Program
Core Leadership Competency
Program Lecture Topics
Innovate to Win
1. The Innovation Challenge in Large Firms
2. Innovation, Strategy, and New Business Design
3. Building the Innovation Capability
4. New, Proven Innovation Models From Global
Leading Companies
Inspire High Performance
1. Global Leadership Development
2. Leadership Derailers
Deliver Results
1. Understanding and Managing Culture for
Business Impact
2. Linking Business Strategy and Value Creation
3. Creating Competitive Advantage Through
Organizational Culture
4. Strategic Business Development in Mature
Vs. Developing Markets
5. Linking Business Strategy, Value Creation and
Brand Strategy
6. Extending Business and Brand Strategy to Your Most
Important Customers, Employees and Partners
Passion for the Business
1. Leading Organizational Change and Transformation
Source: Amway, 2010.
Strategic Program Alignment
Aligning leadership programs with the business strategy is absolutely critical for
creating a high impact on the business. The stronger the alignment, the better
business benefits that will be realized as a result of your leadership programs.
Redwood’s Executive Team initially envisioned that leadership development would
focus on improving coaching skills in executives and managers. However, the needs
and scope of people and organizational systems development were broadened
and deepened based on early findings on what it would take to fully address the
following three key business and strategic objectives:
1. Position the company for significant growth.
29
2. Innovate approaches to increase performance and engage employees.
3. Institutionalize Redwood’s unique culture and add two components: a
“Coaching Culture”, and an “Intrinsically Motivating Work Environment.”
The needs and scope of this project continued to change as the process created a
better understanding of solution requirements and leadership needs. This was most
evident when the economy faltered in late 2008 significantly impacting Redwood’s
business model. At that point, the focus of leader development shifted to address
Redwood’s business imperatives in the new economic environment.
Multiple Levels of Management
The primary objective of high impact leadership development is to develop an
entire leadership team capable of meeting key strategic objectives. To move a
company forward, all levels of management must be equipped with the right skill
sets and knowledge.
At Qualcomm, four flagship programs are targeted at each level of leader in
the company.
1. Emerging Leader Program (ELP) - individual contributors with no direct reports
2. Management Skills Program (MSP)- New managers to role or Qualcomm with
zero to three years experience
3. Leadership Skills Program (LSP) – Senior managers or managers with three to
five years experience and that have taken MSP.
4. Executive Leadership Essentials (ELE) - top performing or high potential directors
and senior directors.
30
Role
Manager
Senior Manager
Director & Above
Emerging
Leader Program
Management Skills
Program (MSP)
Leadership Skills
Program (LSP)
Exec Leadership
Essentials
• Individual
contributors with no
direct reports
• New managers to
role or QC with 0-3
years experience
• Sr. mgrs or mgrs
with 3-5 years
experience and that
have taken MSP
• Top performing or
high potential
Directors/ Sr.
Directors
Additional Learning Opportunities
Individual
Contributor
Flagship Programs
Figure 14: Qualcomm Management & Leadership Development Track
New Manager
Workshop
Leading Technical Professionals
Leadership 2009 for
Executives
Executive Insights
Leadership 2009 for Managers
Leaders Teaching Leaders
Managing Successfully @ Qualcomm
Harvard ManageMentor
Ninth House Online Content
Source: Qualcomm, 2009.
Surrounding these flagship programs are supporting development opportunities
and online resources that address timely business challenges and take a deeper dive
into specific leadership needs. Examples include:
• An instructor-led learning program for technical professionals
• An internal leader-led learning program
• An online manager portal, referred to as the “Manager’s Network.”
• A number of online programs and resources
• Electronic book content and summaries
Talent management integration
The integration of talent management processes has become a primary focus
among companies today. Leadership development requires an understanding of
31
• potential career moves, which come from succession management;
• skill gaps that are obtained through performance management data; and
• future positions that are determined through workforce planning
The strategy for the development of leaders at Amway is an integrated part of
the overall Talent Development strategy, which is itself part of the corporation’s
strategic HR Vision. The HR vision in turn is directly linked to the corporation’s
growth through innovation strategy.
Figure 15: Amway’s Integrated Talent Development Strategy
Employee Opinion Survey
IDENTIFYING LEADERS
• Holistic Formal Programs
n
ssio
• Stretch Assignments
• Action Learning
lues
our Va
t to
en
itm
m
m
r
Pe
n
so
el
od
y
• Retention of Leadership Talent
Deliver
on Results
FREEDOM
FAMILY
HOPE
REWARD
Inspire High
Performance
• Intentional Career & Development
Plans
ity
Co
• Self Driven/Manager Guided
Commitment to o
u
• Toolkits for Guided Development
tn
ers
hip
• Hi-Po Identification
(Leadership as a job)
r
B
us
in
es
• On-Boarding
Pa
r
gr
te
Succession Management
nes
s
e
evement
Achi
Learning
Free Enterp
ris
Innovate
to Win
t
ili
sib
on
Perso
nal Resp
DEVELOPING PEOPLE
for the Busi
al
W
o rt
h
Pa
In
Leadership Development
sM
DEVELOPING LEADERS
DEVELOPING PEOPLE
Performance Management
• Aligned Objectives
• Feedback & Development
• Calibrating Performance
Diversity
Structurally, all aspects of talent management, excluding external talent acquisition,
report into one Global Director for Talent Development. Under this Director’s
leadership, all talent management processes are integrated into one strategy with
one common vision & mission. At the core of Global Talent Development’s (GTD)
strategy are the company’s principles, its founders’ fundamentals, core values and
32
leadership competencies. It is these principles and standards that motivate all
of GTD’s processes and it is this central grounding that ensures a consistent and
integrated approach to support employee development. Under singular leadership
and with a singular strategy and goal in place, leadership development is integral
piece of the GTD strategy.
Comprehensive Program Design
The most successful leadership development strategies rest on well-designed
leadership programs. These programs:
• Use a blend of learning modalities;
• Are delivered by expert facilitators; and
• Promote a continuous learning experience.
As outlined in Figure 16, Amway’s LeAP program is seven months in length and is
divided into three core phases.
• Phase 1 – In the first two months, participants are provided with a one-hour
overview of the program and then complete pre-work, three assessments, and a
week on the campus of Thunderbird School of Global Management in
Glendale, AZ.
• Phase 2 – In months three through six, participants work in self-directed global
virtual teams to solve a real business challenge. This process is supported by
monthly virtual update meetings support by the director of L&D at Amway and
the Thunderbird program manager.
• Phase 3 – In month seven, participants complete a final assessment, which
is used to discuss leadership derailers. The program concludes at Amway
Corporation World Headquarters, in Ada, Michigan, where participants present
recommended solutions to the business challenge.
33
Figure 16: Amway LeAP Program Model
The LeAP Process
Phase 1
Phase 2
Module II
3.5 days
Ada, MI
Module I
4.5 days
(Thunderbird, AZ)
Pre-work &
Assessments
Month 1
-
Global leadership
Global mindset
Business strategy
Innovation
Business challenge
Month 2
Pre-work
9 Global Leadership
Competencies 360 Assessment
9 DiSC Assessment
9 Global Mindset Inventory
9 Session I prep
Phase 3 and Beyond
Business
Challenge
Months 3-6
- Application, review
practice & feedback
- Exec presentation
- Learning transition
- Business application
Integration &
Ongoing
Development
Month 7
Program Elements:
9 Linked to Amway’s values and strategic agenda (Growth
Through Innovation, Founder’s Fundamentals)
9 Business Impact Action Learning – Global challenge
9 Internal faculty (OCE/Executive Team ) and external
faculty (Thunderbird School of Global Management)
9 Highly interactive and dialogue focused
9 Technology enabled sharing (SharePoint)
9 Networking with senior executives
9 Global virtual teams
9 Class size: 15-18
Outcomes:
9 Continued development through
job/work experiences
9 Cross-enterprise talent
deployment
9 Enterprise-wide talent
development
Social Networking in Leadership Development
With the growing interest and initiatives involving the capabilities of social web
technologies, the Qualcomm Learning Center and IT launched the Enterprise 2.0
Series: Social Technology @ Qualcomm. The intent of this learning and collaboration
series is to show employees how they can leverage these technologies to grow their
professional network, increase collaboration and communication efficiencies, and
tap into the power of collective expertise.
A few examples of how social technologies are being used in leadership
development at Qualcomm include:
• Yammer, a microblogging, internal Twitter-like tool, is being used in the
Emerging Leader Program to continue the dialogue between participants
throughout the duration of the program and beyond.
34
• A Management and Leadership Development Portal is built on the blogging
platform Wordpress. On the portal, managers can access content through tag
clouds, share comments regarding recent blogs/ posts, and have the ability to
rank resources which produces a “top rated” list for others to access.
• The Business Acumen Series and Emerging Leader Program incorporate Twitter
feeds such as @HarvardBiz as learning resources.
• QMark is being used to tag course-related resources for employees. Instructors,
program managers and employees can all tag resources.
Summary and Considerations
Leadership development has become an increasingly hot topic as baby boomers
are moving closer to retirement age. To create world-class leadership development
strategies and programs, we highly recommend that companies consider the
following points:
• Executive Egagement is paramount to the successful creation and execution of a
leadership development strategy.
• In partnership with business and line leaders, first consider the business drivers
and organizational objectives when developing a leadership strategy.
ª Leadership competencies should include the behaviors, knowledge and skill sets
that are essential for driving and executing the business strategy.
• Leadership program content must be driven by the business strategy, the company’s
leadership competencies and associated gaps in the leadership pipeline.
• Leadership programs must comprise a comprehensive program design that includes
a blend of learning approaches, great facilitation and real-world application.
35
Learning Organization and
Governance Excellence
Based on our High Impact Learning Organization research, a
learning function’s approach to structuring its organization,
planning, and developing business focused governance are top
characteristics of a high impact learning function. Yet excellence
in governance is often overlooked as a key success factor for
learning organizations.
Stacy Harris,
Principal Analyst
and Director of
Research Operations
Figure 17: Effectiveness is Dependent on Alignment and Efficiency
Business and Organizational
Impact
Program Effectiveness
Alignment
Efficiency
We considered the following when selecting our winners this year:
• Structure of their learning function in relation to their business needs
• Planning and budgeting to ensure efficient operations
• Ability to meet business needs in a timely manner
• Optimization of services and delivery methods
• Ability to share best practices within the learning function
• Operational and program level measurement approach
• Overall business Impact
36
The Learning Leaders 2010 for Learning Organization and Governance Excellence
are Booz Allen, Kelly Services and NetApp. We had several other applications
this year with great organizational structures and governance models, but the
winning candidates were able to demonstrate the value they provided to
their business.
This category highlights examples of some of the best-managed learning
organizations in our business, and shows how critical their efforts are to ensuring
true business impact. This year we have identified winning organizations that
represent very different industries, business needs, and organization sizes – but they
all have one main thing in common concerning their approach to this category, a
focus on meeting business needs in a business context.
Leveraging Internal and Client Facing
Organizations
Many organizations have both an internal and external facing learning function,
and you’ll often find that these two functions work as completely separate entities.
This is a lost opportunity to not only share resources and capabilities, but to reduce
overlapping content areas and provide more career opportunities for learning
professionals in your organization.
With over 4.5 billion in annual revenue, and 22,000 employees, Booz Allen
Hamilton has been at the forefront of strategy and technology consulting for 95
years. They provide a broad range of services in strategy, operations, organization
and change, information technology, systems engineering, and program
management. Booz Allen’s approach is based off of their commitment to delivering
results that endure. This business philosophy led to their belief in the power of
collaborative work environments, and they have shown how well it can work for a
business within their own company walls.
Booz Allen Hamilton is a great example of an organization that has been
able to leverage the best from both their internal and client facing learning
functions to impact their business in a positive direction. They have created
clear business alignment through their governance and measurement practices,
and subsequently have provided a learning environment that encourages
development and growth in the organization. This approach has led to business
focused budgeting and program prioritization, timely and innovative solutions,
and a collaborative learning community.
37
Figure 18: Booz Allen Internal and External Approach to Learning
Source: Booz Allen, 2010.
Booz Allen Hamilton has two major learning communities within their
organization, a client facing function and an internal learning function. These
groups report through separate functions, but work closely together through a selfregulated governance function called TEPS (Training, Education, and Performance
Support). This is an example of how closely aligned client facing and internal
learning communities can create impact for their entire business.
TEPS COP has its own Operating Committee comprised mainly of line-ofbusiness principals and senior associates representing multiple lines of business,
functional areas, and the corporate university. The Operating Committee guides
the community’s strategy by setting its vision and goals, and by establishing and
supporting priority initiatives for the TEPS organization to execute. On a quarterly
basis, the TEPS Operating Committee reviews the community’s progress against
priority initiatives and ensures that the Firm’s annual investment in TEPS is being
38
used wisely. Additionally, they regularly survey the lines-of-business across the Firm
and the TEPS members for new market and resource requirements, as well as the
needs for new intellectual capital or capabilities.
TEPS maintains a critical link with a learning council established for Booz Allen’s
corporate university as well. One of the members of the TEPS Operating Committee
also serves on the Firm’s People Strategy Steering Committee (PSSC), a separate
Booz Allen learning council focused on the Firm’s internal People Strategy efforts.
The PSSC is comprised of senior representatives from multiple business groups
across the Firm, including Booz Allen’s internal L&D organization. The purpose
of the PSSC is to function as a leadership and advisory board for Booz Allen’s
People Strategy efforts, which include several internal learning and development
initiatives. The PSSC sets priorities for the Firm’s People Strategy and is briefed on a
regular basis regarding results and progress against the priorities.
An internal and external learning function may seem like they are miles apart in
purpose, but what it takes to get the job done is very similar. While these two
functions report to different divisions within the organization, they have taken
full advantage of working as collaborative teams without diluting their individual
priorities. A structured governance process and open minded leadership are two
important ingredients in their success.
Meeting Global Learning Needs
With annual revenue of 5.5 billion, Kelly Services is a world leader in workforce
management and human resources solutions, offering temporary staffing services,
outsourcing and full-time placement to clients on a global basis. Kelly provides
employment to nearly 650,000 employees annually, with skills including office
services, accounting, engineering, law, science, marketing, education, and
health care.
This large global organization has utilized a strong leadership and governance
approach to ensure it is aligned and focused on the most critical business needs. It
has organized functions around a global working model that supports collaboration
and sharing. With over 650,000 part time learners accessing and participating in
their learning environment, the organization’s focus on measurement has lead to
clear impact metrics for their organization. Additionally, its approach to meeting
the needs of a diverse workforce is centered on a virtual delivery need and includes
a unique web-based template, virtual classrooms with experiential components, and
on-the-job training tools. Based on this organizations business alignment, it was a
clear partner in ensuring positive change management efforts during the recent
39
downsizing efforts that took place in the organization due to the
economic downturn.
Figure 19: Global Scope and Learning Audience
Training
Acclimation and
engagement of new
employees
Full
Time
Employees
On-boarding
Accelerating time to
productivity through process,
skill and technology training
Candidates
Preemployment
Testing
Predicting candidate
job success
Source: Kelly Services, 2009.
The senior director of global learning is responsible for all company-wide learning
initiatives and executes against the following mission statement: To grow Kelly’s
business by improving the performance of our global workforce through effective
learning solutions.
She and her team set the learning strategy for the 6,500 full-time employees and
650,000 temporary/contractor employees across 39 operating countries, as well as
the global onboarding and training framework and detailed plans for executing
against the strategy.
The senior director of global learning has a unique role in that she also serves as
the service liaison to the Americas operation. In this role, she represents Global
Learning and Service in every product and operations leadership meeting. As part
of the Global Service Department, Global Learning is accountable to the senior
vice president of service who reports directly to the organization’s executive vice
president and chief operating officer.
40
Figure 20: Global Onboarding and Training Framework
Pre-Hire
Build
excitement and
connection to
new company
Provide
overview of
training and
activities for
first few weeks
Complete
logistical tasks
PRIOR to new
employee’s first
day
1-30 days
31-90 days
New Hire Onboarding:
• Executive welcome
• Overview of support
functions and tools
• Create connection to key
global initiatives
• Introduce company culture
• Share company history and
values
New Hire Fundamental Training:
• Corporate Compliance
• Front Office Systems
• Standard Operating Procedures: Global
Service
• Pricing
• Customer Service
• Candidate Service/Experience
• Pricing
• Staffing Market Trends, Competitors, etc.
3-6 months
6-12 months
Performance
feedback (PMP)
and/or
assessment
Re-engage
employee as a
mentor to others
New Hire Proficiency Training:
• Commercial Consultant / Supervisor
• PT Recruiter
• Onsite
• Direct Hire/Perm Recruiter
• Branch Manager
• Tier 1 Sales
• Tier 2 Sales
Mentor / Buddy / Concierge
Manager Support
Ownership Legend:
Service HR Manager
Global Learning leverages two types of learning councils: Advisory Boards and
an Executive Learning Council. As each new need is identified, Global Learning
creates an individual council, referred to as the Advisory Board, for that learning
solution to ensure that each new program has appropriate representation from the
operation and the learner audience.
The Global Learning structure has been designed to reflect the global operating
structure, but also to support the strategic objective to reduce dependency on the
U.S. Training leaders. In each region, Americas, EMEA and APAC, work with the
headquarters team to set the Global Learning strategy, share best practices and
leverage cross-border resources to support all of the strategic initiatives. Monthly
Global Learning meetings provide the opportunity for all trainers around the globe
to share progress on ongoing and new initiatives.
This global learning function has 90% of its 35 full time learning employees’
reporting into a central learning function, but with matrixed reporting to various
41
business units throughout the organization. Overall they invest on average 3.76mm
in learning to meet the needs of their global learning community, and support their
goals for collaboration and sharing across their business.
With an audience that is dispersed around the globe, Kelly Services works hard to
meet its diverse workforces learning needs. A critical component of its learning
approach is the development of virtual learning tools and environments for both
designers and end-users.
The organization has a standard shared services function that includes the traditional
areas of learning standards, technology management, vendor management, and
competencies, as well as global learning management. This function also supports the
tools and processes for meeting the organizations virtual learning needs. Web-based
training is developed using a proprietary tool that leverages Microsoft PowerPoint
and Word templates to produce level-one interactions. This proprietary tool is being
used in all three operating regions to build web-based courses in more than six
languages currently. Additionally, a content development tool is used at Kelly to also
allow for the development of on-demand learning, called ‘Learning Bursts’. Learning
Bursts provide learners with small chunks of information when they need it, and are
accessible from the LMS, as well as the global intranet.
Meeting the needs of an international workforce continues to be a top challenge
for most HR and learning organizations in today’s rapidly expanding global market.
Kelly’s examples outline one of the most fundamental best practices we’ve seen in
our research: freedom within a framework. Kelly Services provides the guidelines
and tools, while allowing each regional owner the flexibility to customize for the
needs of their regions. Most organizations need to adjust corporate-based learning
in at least four areas:
• Cultural relevancy
• Delivery language
• Delivery method (online, face to face, mobile)
• Data tracking requirements (scores, grades, certifications)
A major part of Kelly Services success in meeting these global needs can be
attributed to its approach to advisory based governance, as well as the flexibility of
their corporate learning functions programs and models.
42
A Focus on Business Outcomes
All three of our winners this year were business focused, but one in particular really
showed the capacity to understand its business function and focused on being part
of the business environment versus a support function.
NetApp is a mid-market high tech company that generates over 3.5 billion in
annual revenue, with employees located in over 130 offices around the globe. The
company also received the #1 spot on Fortune’s 2009 list of “100 Best Companies to
Work For” in the U.S. and have consistently been placed within the top 15 for over
8 years. What makes this high tech company that creates innovative storage and
data management solutions so great to work for?
NetApp’s culture is defined by its values. It starts with a commitment
it made to create a model company. Creating a model company was
about maintaining great relationships with the communities they
serve: customers, shareholders, employees, partners, and neighbors.
The values at the heart of NetApp are trust and integrity, leadership,
simplicity, adaptability, teamwork and synergy, going beyond, and
getting things done.
NetApp is a great example of a mid-market learning function organization that
approaches meeting its business needs by focusing on the outcomes first. The
learning organization has made great efforts to hide the complexity of managing
a learning organization from the stakeholders; instead working hard to meet the
business needs in a proactive fashion. Over the last few years it has focused on
building out effective workflows and clearly defining roles and responsibilities of
each group within learning and those interacting with learning, including critical
handoffs. This approach to process and role clarity meant that business-driven
advisory boards and initiative sponsors could focus on the business outcomes.
To support this alignment and ensure that it is meeting the business needs, it
implemented a sophisticated approach to measuring the impact of formal and
informal learning. This provides a solid platform for business discussions.
With just over 100 employees in the learning function today, the NetApp team
believes its primary focus is to be integral to the success of their stakeholders - from
field enablement to channel readiness to engineering training. This includes new
hire sales and technical training, as well as new college graduates and other onboarding programs. These programs accelerate the time to productivity.
43
Figure 21: NetApp’s New Employee Onboarding Programs and Tools
Source: NetApp, 2010.
The learning organization also focuses on being very proactive around key
corporate initiatives and prioritizes on learning programs aligned to these
initiatives. With the help of several business-driven learning councils focused on
the content and dynamic business changes, it watches closely for the shifting
needs of the business. In response to economic changes, the learning organization
recently shifted strategies to drive high impact learning. This included launching
new modalities of informal delivery, with shifts towards value selling curricula and
transformational programs for leaders.
The organization has a standard shared services function that includes the
traditional areas of learning standards, technology management, vendor
management, and competencies, as well as global learning management structure
that supports needs at en enterprise level. This small learning function helps
support the development of formal and informal learning across the organization
utilizing a network of subject matter experts from each business unit that helps
ensure the relevancy and timeliness of the business critical contents.
NetApp University focuses on making it incredibly easy to do business with them. The
university has hidden the complexity of their organization by building out effective
workflows and awareness of what work each group is doing and how the handoffs
occur. To ensure the success of internal business relationships, NetApp University
provides an educational liaison to business partners in the product groups and business
units to make sure there is someone who understands their needs completely.
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NetApp has shown the power of a clearly-defined, well-run learning function in the
success of their business. They invested the time up front in organizational roles
and process flows so that, when it mattered the most, important discussions were
focused on business outcomes. NetApp University has shown that you don’t have to
build the business case for great learning around complex processes and high tech
needs. It has focused on the outcomes and secured the resources needed to enable
the organization to meet those outcomes.
Measurement: Resourcing and Scorecards
All three of the winners demonstrated well thought out approaches to measuring
their learning functions impact. It warrants a special comment on how they
approached this important selection criterion.
Within Booz Allen Hamilton, the TEPS Community of Practice charted a tiger team
to establish a set of metrics for the community, to collect data that is refreshed on
a regular basis. Additionally, they created a TEPS Impact Dashboard to measure the
community’s return on investment. More specifically, the TEPS Impact Dashboard is
designed to evaluate the group’s impact on business growth, workforce proficiency,
knowledge sharing, and market-relevant intellectual capital.
Specific operational impact measures that have been identified for TEPS include
the following:
• Sales and revenue of learning services,
• The number of new TEPS members
• The number of member certifications in learning-related areas
• The number of requests for information
• Participation in TEPS-sponsored professional development events
• And efficiencies achieved due to TEPS resources and efforts.
In addition to the TEPS Impact Dashboard, the group regularly surveys the members
of the community to measure membership demographics, operational improvement
opportunities, business impact, and regular needs.
Booz Allen’s People Services organization (which includes recruiting, human
resources services, learning and development, strategic people initiatives, diversity,
total rewards, and executive service functions) has a dedicated Human Capital
Analytics (HCA) group. The HCA group functions as a Center of Excellence that
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provides data archiving and analytic capabilities to People Services and the Firm
more broadly, including the TEPS COP.
Kelly Services takes a much more traditional approach to measurement, which
works effectively for its business leaders and connects to business goals. Their
Global Learning measurement strategy includes two approaches that they have
implemented in various ways:
1. Direct Impact – With this approach, a causal relationship is proven between
learning and operational results.
The Kelly University Pilot (June-November 2008) produced the following
operational results as compared to a non-participating control group.
Figure 22: The Kelly Experience Pilot Results
New Hire Turnover
(June - October 2008)
25%
20%
15%
15%
10%
14%
Kelly U Pilot
7%
5%
0%
14%
Non-Pilot
2%
CRO
0%
Virtual
Onboarding
Training
Branch
% of New Hires w/at least 1 fill in first 30 days
56%
60%
50%
51%
40%
40%
Pilot
30%
Non-Pilot
20%
10%
0%
0%
PT Recruiter
Comm Supervisor
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2. Correlation – With this approach, a causal relationship cannot be proven
because there are often many other factors influencing performance metrics
and bottom-line results, so instead we focus on creating correlations. In
these situations, Global Learning doesn’t take full credit for producing the
operational results; we simply show that there are strong correlations between
learning and results.
This type of measurement approach is focused and to the point. Kelly Services
Leadership is able to make business decisions based on the format of the data and
how it reflects on the business data.
NetApp has taken measurement to a new level by implementing a Business
Intelligence (BI) platform which pulls data from the various formal and informal
learning systems and portals such as the LMS, WebEx, video-based informal learning
portals, books online, and external certification/accreditation portals.
The BI platform also uses customer/partner and employee systems (such as SAP/
Peoplesoft) to deliver relevant information either in the form of dashboards for
executives, or detailed reports for program managers (from compliance to new
hire to division specific to product or other category specific), or operational and
analytic reports to manage the needs of the training organization.
Financial data also is available in the BI system to measure and report on
commercial transactions related to learning. Future plans include the correlation of
sales force and channel productivity to training.
Additionally, from a customer education perspective, NetApp tracks standard
measures such as growth in bookings and revenue and contributions to the bottom
line. A major focus is also on new hire programs and their effectiveness - both
qualitative and quantitative.
NetApp considers its employees critical to growth - in strong markets and weak
markets - and has developed infrastructure and initiatives to support their
alignment to NetApp’s goals.
In summary, each organization took a very different approach to measuring the
impact of its learning functions in a business context. Some processes were more
manual than others, and some required more or less input from various groups
inside and outside the learning function. Learning organizations should keep in
mind their own company culture and approach to business measurement when
developing a learning impact or measurement strategy for themselves.
Overall, keep in mind that good organizational structure, planning processes, and
governance should be closely tied to how your organization does business. If your
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business is global, mobile, or focused on service, then the learning strategy should
take that into consideration and make it foundational to your own function.
When trying to decide if you need to make changes in your own organizational
structure or governance process, try answering these questions:
• Is the structure of the learning function optimized to meet business needs?
• Does everyone in your organization understand how the learning organization
does annual planning and sets budgets for major initiatives?
• Do your clients have the perception that you meet their needs in a timely
fashion and with quality outcomes?
• Is learning managed as efficiently as possible in your organization – with
reduced overlap in services, tools, and processes?
• Does your organization unite employees engaged in learning activities? Do
they feel like they are part of a collaborative sharing community on learning
and development?
• Do you simply have a strategy for measuring the impact of your learning
function on the business?
• Can you state the business impact of your learning function today? If not, why?
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Vendor Innovation in Learning and
Talent Management
Chris Howard,
Vice President
of Research
Providers release new products and services every year; and every
year some offerings stand out from the rest – either for the way in
which they so successfully meet a market need or, sometimes, for
the way in which they drive the future of the market itself. This
category of Learning Leaders recognizes innovative products and
services that represent the state of the art in corporate learning
and development. This year, we review provider submissions
grouped into the general themes of tools & platforms, content &
business solutions, and informal learning (including learning
on demand).
Theme #1 – Informal Learning
(including Learning on Demand)
The modern learning organization recognizes that its role
is “market maker” for learning, establishing environments,
David Mallon,
standards and processes to support the creation and transfer
Principal Analyst
of knowledge. Supporting the natural flow of learning and
knowledge throughout the organization requires fundamental
changes to how the learning organization operates. Enabling informal learning
(including on-demand, social and embedded learning) brings new approaches and
disciplines to master and all new technological requirements. The exciting part is
that we are now in the middle of a wave of new technology, one that is changing
at an accelerating rate.
Three providers stand out this year for their efforts at helping organizations to
meet their learners’ next generation learning needs.
RWD, a veteran learning services organization with considerable experience
helping organizations with performance support processes and tools, released the
latest version of their uPerform platform this year. uPerform combines electronic
performance support and just-in-time learning functionality with new support
for social learning, collaboration, and knowledge sharing. Throw in rich content
development and content management tools, usable by both specialists and endusers alike, and the result is a unique end-to-end, on-demand learning solution.
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Figure 23: RWD uPerform: End-to-End Solution
Source: RWD Technologies, 2009.
Cornerstone On-Demand, continues to add to their innovative Cornerstone
Connect platform. Well integrated with their leading integrated talent
management suite, the social learning functionality in Cornerstone Connect is as
turn-key as any we have seen. By encouraging collaboration and making it easy
to join communities of practice, Cornerstone Connect fosters informal learning,
organizational knowledge management, professional networking, and improved
communication across both the internal employee base and the extended enterprise.
Figure 24: Tying to Talent Management
Source: Cornerstone OnDemand, 2009.
Figure 25: Performance Support
Source: Cornerstone OnDemand, 2009.
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Finally, leading lms and talent management suite provider, Plateau Systems,
recently launched a new extension to its platform, the Plateau Talent Gateway.
Based on open source portal technology Liferay, Plateau is selling it as additional
option for use within their larger lms and tm suite. Customers can use it to support
an easy-to-use learning portal face for the entire suite if desired. Talent Gateway
includes comprehensive enterprise social software functionality and is competitive
in feature set with general-purpose social software tools. Also noteworthy, the
Talent Gateway comes with an extensive set of predefined web services through
which an organization can bring social learning functionality to any other standards
compliant portal or intranet including Microsoft SharePoint or IBM WebSphere.
To help an organization get started, Plateau is providing several pre-built portlets
out-of-the-box.
Figure 26: Plateau Talent Gateway – Sample Home Page
Source: Plateau Systems.
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Theme #2 Platforms & Tools
Providers continue to push the markets forward for the tools that develop learning
content and the learning systems that deliver that content. Especially in light of
today’s economy, choosing the right tool or platform that best meets the need in
the most efficient and cost effective manner is vital. Sometimes the best option is
a rapid or collaborative development tool one that facilitates quick go-to-market
times and that takes full advantage of business experts’ abilities in lieu of specialist
developers. Other times, companies decide that the best option is to seek a more
full service or even outsourced provider, whose specialized skills can allow for lower
costs than the buying company could achieve on their own.
In 2009, we noticed a definite trend in the learning and talent systems market
towards adaptive platforms built with configurable workflows, processes,
interfaces, and data connections enabling the system to adapt to meet buyer needs
instead of forcing expensive customizations.
In this year’s awards program, we recognize two providers that represent the gamut
of providers in these spaces.
First, we recognize Adobe for their new Adobe Connect Pro platform. On the
surface, Acrobat Connect Pro appears to be simply a feature-rich web-conferencing
and virtual classroom tool - without the technical barriers common to most such
tools (Adobe Flash is already installed on 98% of computers). However, a deeper
look reveals that Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro could actually be the centerpiece of
an organization’s entire learning content lifecycle creation, distribution, tracking,
and reporting as well as a platform for ongoing social learning and collaboration.
The availability of customizable templates, reusable content libraries, and captured
live events help to ensure content efficiency both by facilitating rapid content
creation and by enforcing content workflows and standards. The integrated nature
helps to remove any content integration headaches.
For more information, Adaptive Talent and Learning Platforms: How Software as a Service Is
Changing the Markets for Talent and Learning Systems, and Why You May Never Need to
Customize Again, Bersin & Associates / David Mallon, February 2010.
Statistic provided by Adobe.
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Figure 27: Adobe Connect Pro Training System
Source: Adobe, 2009.
Our other winner, Halogen Software is recognized for their impressive entry into
the learning management systems space: Halogen eLearning Manager. Traditionally
known for their performance management offering, Halogen s platform
has now grown into a well-integrated talent management suite. The interface
for eLearning Manager is user-friendly and modern in appearance. Most notably,
Halogen’s platform is an excellent example of what we mean by adaptive platform.
The system comes with comprehensive workflow and form editors, allowing
companies to customize system processes and behaviors to best their own needs.
Theme #3 Content and Business Solutions
Another great example of a modern training program is that which Vangent
developed for Rockwell Collins to help grow leaders. The “Leading in an
Operations Environment” program entails a blend of job-relevant training, support,
collaboration, assignments, surveys, and mentoring to ensure that leadership
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skills are internalized, transferred to the job, and sustained. Learners’ managers
introduce them to the program and provide support throughout. An online
community of practice integrates program components and allows learners to
reflect on and share what they have learned. After initial training, learners work
with their managers to create and implement an action plan for transferring their
skills to the job. As they apply their leadership skills, learners receive ongoing
support via job aids, tools, mentoring, online communities, ongoing training,
leadership communications, and recurring meetings with their managers. The
solution involves all the elements of a blended program that takes advantage of
traditional training plus modern techniques for online communities and coaching.
The Provider Innovation category again demonstrates how innovative and
enthusiastic providers are at addressing every aspect of corporate training.
Identifying just a few providers to recognize out of the many worth candidates was
very difficult. Those we selected, however, are providing tools and processes that
meet the demands of important and new areas for corporate training managers.
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Learning Leaders 2010
Honorable Mentions
The following organizations received Honorable Mentions in the Learning Leaders
2010 program:
Operational Training and Development Excellence:
Accenture (www.accenture.com)
Kelly Services (www.kellyservices.com)
Learning Organization and Governance Excellence:
MetLife (www.metlife.com)
Leadership Development Excellence:
BNY Mellon Asset Management (www.bnymellon.com)
Hewitt Associates (www.hewittassociates.com)
Learning and Talent Technology Excellence:
HCL Technologies (www.hcltech.com)
Vendor Innovation in Learning and Talent Management:
Adobe Systems (www.adobe.com)
Altus Systems (www.altuscorp.com)
ePath Learning (www.epathlearning.com)
Expertus (www.expertus.com)
Kaplan IT Learning (www.kaplanitlearning.com)
NIIT USA (www.niit.com)
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Learning Leaders®
2010 Award Winners
Organization Profiles
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Accenture
Learning and Talent Technology Excellence
Accenture (www.accenture.com) is a global management consulting, technology
services, and outsourcing company. With fiscal 2009 revenue of $21.58 billion and
more than 176,000 total employees, the company serves clients in more than 120
countries. Accenture’s clients span the full range of industries around the world and
include 99 of the Fortune Global 100 and more than three-quarters of the Fortune
Global 500.
Accenture needed an innovative and easily accessible way to rapidly deliver “hot
topic” content. The company’s learning leaders identified podcasting as a low-cost,
high-impact strategy for on-demand learning. The program allows employees to
record their own podcast via a telephone conference call recording that gets edited
into podcast format. This novel program has paid for itself 20-times over and has
been expanded to the entire company.
Program Evolution
The podcasting initiative was born from a long-standing series of virtual seminars.
Accenture’s strategy group needed a fresh way to rapidly deliver high priority
“thought capital.” The audience of 2,000 strategy professionals enjoyed listening
to the audio of the 60-minute seminars and was looking for similar audio files, but
in shorter segments. Simultaneously, senior leadership liked the idea of quickly
refreshing on a topic “on-the-go” via a mobile device or laptop.
Learning leaders compared and evaluated wikis, blogs, email, webcasts, and
podcasts. They selected podcasting because it would allow the sharing of content
in audio format, anywhere, anytime – and in a timely fashion. The new podcasting
program eliminated the 60-minute recordings of the weekly seminars and shifted
the content approach to 10-minute custom interviews with practice leads.
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Recording and Publishing Process
Podcasts are typically recorded using the Cisco Unified MeetingPlace conference
call system. A speaker and the interviewer dial in and the recording starts. The
recording is saved as a .WAV file, which the media team edits and converts into an
MP3 file.
The edited file is posted on an internal knowledge management system, where
it can be streamed for immediate listening, or downloaded for playing later.
The knowledge management system is searchable, contains audio, video, and
PowerPoint presentations, and has a capability that allows users to post comments
and ratings for particular files.
Additionally, users can subscribe to an RSS feed and automatically have the files
downloaded onto their computer or MP3 player device.
For the audience of learners, the podcast offers flexibility and convenience.
Recording is simple as making a phone call. It is also cost-effective – at the current
usage averages, it costs about $3-4 per person to produce a podcast. It also appeals
to a mobile and global audience.
Measurement
The success of the podcasting program is measured by monitoring overall usage
and usage per podcast, as well as tracking the creation of podcasts over time to
determine uptake. The knowledge management system allows for individual
podcasts to be rated for quality by users.
Feedback from end-users has been overwhelmingly positive. Creation of new
podcasts and usage has been trending upwards every year since the rollout of the
initiative. To date 180 podcasts have been created and more than 20,000 employees
(nearly 11% of the total workforce) have accessed them.
Learning leaders also monitor and compare the costs and time commitments
of producing the podcasts compared to other types of content, such as virtual
instructor-led sessions and e-learning programs. They find the design and delivery
cost for each course has been reduced by 96% compared to virtual sessions, and
20% compared to rapid e-learning modules. Additionally, the design and delivery
timeframe for each course has been reduced by 97% compared to virtual sessions
and 80% compared to rapid e-learning modules.
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ROI Results
The podcasting initiative increases the efficiency of the creation of new content.
The initiative cost approximately $25,000 to launch, which included the RSS
development by a technical support specialist, the payroll time of the strategy
manager, some initial marketing costs, and site management fees.
By comparison, it costs the company about $10,000 to produce a virtual session,
and $500 for an e-learning module. Each podcast costs a maximum of about $400
to produce, which includes the interviewer fees, media’s editing time, content
development, and the coding and publishing of the audio file on the knowledge
management system.
A course calculator, created by the learning organization from an extensive ROI study
of its various learning assets, has been used to estimate the added value of learning
assets on performance, retention, and recruitment. According to those calculations,
the Podcasting initiative has already netted an estimated ROI of $519,948.
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Amway
Amway (www.amway.com), a leader in the global direct-selling industry, reported
sales of more than $8.2 billion in 2008. Established in 1959 as a seller of household
cleaners, the company expanded and diversified over the years and today is a leader
in health and beauty markets.
In May 2008, the newly hired director of global talent development realized
there was no process for building the entry-level bench strength for the executive
succession management process. Part of his solution was an executive development
program aimed at creating teams of global top performing junior executives
capable of solving a real business challenge.
Leadership Development Strategy
Amway’s overall leadership development strategy has two components. One
component is focused on identifying leaders capable of leading the corporation
into the future. The second component is built around providing these leaders
with the appropriate development opportunities, both on-the-job and formal and
structured learning experiences.
For the first component, Amway attempts to identify leaders across a broad
spectrum of the enterprise, including the executive level (defined as those at the
director level and above – the top 250 leaders globally) and the non-executive level
(those leaders below the director level).
For the second component, Amway has adapted a Global Leadership Development
Model with four levels, or “turns:”
• Turn 1 – From individual contributor to managing others;
• Turn 2 – From managing others to leader of managers;
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• Turn 3 – From leader of managers to functional leader; and,
• Turn 4 – From functional leader to enterprise leader.
For each critical leadership turn, programs have been put in place to address the
global core, common and critical changes in knowledge and skills, time orientation
and work values of each level.
LeAP Leadership Development Program
The Leadership Acceleration Process (LeAP) program addresses Turn 3, from
leader of managers to functional leadership. The seven-month action learning
program was designed to provide the next generation of Amway executives with
the capabilities to lead within a global organization. Participants are nominated by
senior regional human resource executives.
Designed in partnership with the Thunderbird School of Global Management, the
LeAP program requires participants to address an actual business challenge with
recommended solutions presented to the highest level of management within Amway.
At the cornerstone of the LeAP program is the integration of an actual Amway
business challenge with no known solution. The executive sponsor is required to
select a challenge that is business critical, globally relevant and is “Google proof”
(that is, solutions not readily available online).
A Three-Phased Program
The LeAP program is divided into three phases:
Phase 1 consists of the orientation, pre-work, assessments, and a week on the
campus of Thunderbird School of Global Management. Topics include global
strategy, innovation, global mindset/cross-cultural acumen, and executive
leadership. Participants are split into global virtual teams and given a high-level
overview of the business challenge at the end of Day 1, giving them the rest of the
week to begin forming as a team and discussing the challenge.
Phase 2 requires the participants to work in global virtual teams to solve the
business challenge. Teams are largely self-directed throughout this four month
phase. Participants focus on researching, drafting, piloting, and polishing their
solutions. The only set program requirements during this phase is a monthly update
meeting via phone to keep the teams on track and give Amway and Thunderbird
an opportunity to provide guidance and support.
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Phase 3 concludes the program with classroom sessions and presentations at
Amway headquarters, in Ada, Michigan. Each team is given 20 minutes to present
its recommended solution to the business challenge to the top 30 leaders at
Amway. Attendees are asked to hold all questions until after the presentations,
when each team is allocated 40 minutes to answer questions and provide support
and justification for their decisions.
Results
In the first year of the LeAP program, the quality of each of the solutions was so
high the company’s CEO immediately allocated financial and human resources to
oversee the implementation of all three of the proposed solutions.
According to Kim Lamoureux, principal analyst for Bersin & Associates, LeAP is a
great illustration of Amway overall leadership development strategy. “The robust
curriculum touches every level and turn of leadership,” said Lamoureux. “We were
also very impressed with Amway’s multiple learning approaches, assessments,
diverse global participation and outstanding executive engagement.”
Amway’s leadership development encourages the pursuit of high performance by
providing leaders at each level with the core, common and critical skills needed
to be successful at their stage of advancement. By focusing on providing leaders
with the information, resources and tools they need to be successful, Amway is
improving individual and team performance and ultimately, the performance of
Amway as a whole.
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AT&T
AT&T Inc. (www.att.com) is a premier communications holding company. AT&T
BusinessDirect®, the company’s award-winning self-service customer portal, helps
hundreds of thousands of users in over 90 countries manage their network services
online to improve productivity, increase the speed and accuracy of their network
transactions, and optimize network efficiency, all while reducing costs.
The company’s research has shown that increased training – both for internal
personnel and customers – is directly correlated with increased usage on AT&T
BusinessDirect. The objective of AT&T’s learning initiative was to increase the
number of users who received training on AT&T BusinessDirect and to promote
customer adoption of applications for tasks such as placing online orders, reporting
service troubles and handling their billing online.
Getting Input from Customers
The organization utilizes numerous methods to solicit customer feedback. A
representative sample of customers, randomly selected within company size and
global geography, is surveyed twice annually. In addition, frequent users serve on
formal customer forums that meet bimonthly to provide ideas for enhancements.
Focus groups are conducted on a regular basis to have customers preview
proposed application enhancements. And both sales and other customerfacing employees regularly relay customer feedback to the AT&T BusinessDirect
organization for improvement.
The AT&T BusinessDirect portal also offers a chat tool called AT&T
BusinessDirectionsSM. After each session, users are given an optional feedback
survey. This feedback is analyzed to identify areas for improvement to the site and
the training supporting it.
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Multi-Prong Approach
Based on the research, learning leaders knew they had to (1) make customers more
aware of available training; and (2) provide more amenable opportunities for
customers to attend training. The company expanded the various types of training
collateral supporting the applications to include live instructor-led web seminars,
pre-recorded web seminars, online tutorials, simulations, quick guides (how to’s),
user guides, fact sheets, quick tours, and help.
The program is anchored by the AT&T BusinessDirect Learning Center. The learning
center is the centralized point where all training material is located. The home page
provides a list of all the applications supported with training. At customers’ request,
the training can be selected either by application – such as billing, ordering, or
trouble reporting – or by choosing an AT&T service – such as AT&T Toll-Free Service,
AT&T Frame Relay Service, etc.
Marketing programs and other promotions were developed to encourage
customers to take training, and tracking programs were put in place to determine
the effectiveness. New methods were implemented to reach a broader audience. In
the past, training was often approached reactively. Today, customers who buy new
services from AT&T are immediately contacted via email to let them know which
AT&T BusinessDirect® applications are likely to be helpful with the newly purchased
service, and training is offered on these applications. For example, a customer
that orders a new toll-free network is offered training on the tool that enables
customers to re-route toll-free calls to various call centers. Also, newly registered
users of AT&T BusinessDirect are sent an email advising them of the spectrum of
training options available.
The program was launched and marketed by utilizing a range of vehicles including
customer and internal global newsletters, user alerts and sales advisories, and
internal emails, announcements and conference calls.
Meeting diverse, global needs
AT&T BusinessDirect’s worldwide training audience – comprised of both external
customers as well as internal AT&T personnel – has diverse levels of knowledge.
To meet these varying needs, training is modularized. Tutorials, for example, have
modules and lessons within each module. This allows audiences to drill down to the
level of detail that meets their required depth of knowledge.
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Also, in order to meet the needs of a global audience, much of the training and
marketing collateral has been translated into foreign languages. To accommodate
the various time zones, live web seminars were recorded and made available on
demand for replay.
The effectiveness of the training program was assessed by evaluating the impact on
customer adoption after being trained. That is, benchmarks were set by customers
prior to training. After being trained, customer adoption was measured monthly,
to see if adoption did increase and what trend, if any, was generated. This helped
gauge the effectiveness of the training materials and the skills of the trainer. In
cases where adoption was not positively impacted by training, additional analysis
was performed to determine why it was not effective, and what improvement
measures needed to be undertaken for future success.
Overall in 2009, there was a 60% growth in customers who have received some
form of training on AT&T BusinessDirect and efforts to improve adoption have
been very successful. Email campaigns targeting inactive users led to an average of
10% conversion to active users. In addition, there was a 20% increase in worldwide
adoption of AT&T BusinessDirect tools in 2009.
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Baker Tilly
Baker Tilly (formerly Beers + Cutler) provides tax, assurance and consulting services
to leading companies and institutions. With offices throughout the midwest as
well as New York City and Washington, D.C., the firm delivers practical, customized
solutions to help its clients achieve new levels of success.
After monitoring retention data over multiple years, HR leaders in the Washington,
D.C. office (which was known as Beers + Cutler prior to a merger with Baker Tilly
in December 2009), were looking for answers as to why the numbers were not
improving. The firm provided competitive compensation and benefits, fostered
a collegial culture, provided challenging work, and implemented development
programs. Yet retention data held constant at around 15% to 17% over a three
year span.
A Hypothesis Develops
The qualitative data resulting from annual performance discussions review with
managers and partners underscored the issue. Year after year, leaders were having
the same discussions about the same proportion of low performers. It was as if the
firm was operating in a bell curve that it couldn’t get out of.
HR leaders asked themselves why a fairly significant number of employees did not
have the skills or aptitude necessary for them to succeed here. One hypothesis
was that the firm was not hiring or developing to the right set of skills. They
interviewed more than 10% of the firm’s managers to better understand the causes
underlying the performance issues.
Additionally, they conducted a college recruitment analysis. Under the firm’s
staffing model, the firm brings in a cohort from this group equivalent to 5-7% of its
employee population each year to fill its pipeline of professionals.
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The conclusion was that HR did not have a consistent process or approach to
identify, select or develop new hires. The recommendation was to conduct a
competency study and use the results to integrate all talent management systems.
The existing competency model had been developed more than six years earlier
using informal methods, so as they developed a leadership program, HR leaders
took the opportunity to conduct a competency survey to better understand the
skills required to be successful at each level. The goals for the competency model
initiative were to:
• Develop a competency model that accurately reflects performance expectations
• Identify what it means to be a leader at each level of the firm
• Utilize competencies to better integrate talent management functions
• Incorporate the competency model into the recruiting and selection processes
• Improve employee performance according to competencies
• Improve retention
New Competency Model
Based on the results of the competency study, HR leaders validated most of the
existing competencies, made some modifications to others, and added two new
competencies, Strategic Thinking and Managing Change. They also distinguished
Initiative as its own competency and provided greater detail around the behaviors
expected within each competency. Current behavioral descriptions were limited
and did not accurately or effectively capture the full scope of the competency or, in
some cases, were duplicative of behaviors in other competencies.
Finally, the competencies were grouped into the following three clusters: Quality/
Knowledge, Clients and Leadership. This allows HR to better align with its strategy,
measure performance, and determine trends and forecasts.
The results provided a foundation on which to build other talent management
functions, including recruiting, training, performance management, and leadership
development. For recruiting, for example, HR managers used the results to
construct a behavioral interview guide, reference sheet, and updated positions. For
the training program, they utilized the competencies to prioritize content. They
redesigned performance management forms and templates to better assess employee
performance. Lastly, HR managers utilized the competencies to articulate what it
means to be a leader at each level and build a program around those expectations.
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Competencies are now the foundation of the talent management functions. The
firm recruits and selects through behavioral event interviews using the established
competencies. Competencies are used in all aspects of performance management,
including the 60 day review, engagement reviews, upward feedback, mid-year, and
annual reviews. The results of the latter are used to guide development planning,
and ultimately an employee’s compensation and career progression.
According to Madeline Laurano, principal analyst for Bersin & Associates, the
Learning Leaders judging panel was impressed with the firm’s success in creating
highly consistent processes that improve and integrate every area of talent
management. “This is the second year in a row we have been ‘wowed’ by this
company,” she said, noting the firm’s Learning Leader award last year for its intern
onboarding program.
Results
Overall ratings on annual performance reviews improved from an average 3.3 out
of 5 to a 3.7 from 2008 to 2009. In 2007, average overall ratings were 3.2. Scores on
upward feedback have improved, although more modestly, from 3.5 in 2008 to 3.7
in 2009. In addition, qualitative comments have noticeably improved.
Although it’s too early to report with certainty on the state of retention, the firm is
being more discerning in its selection process. A major source of its college recruits
come from its annual intern program. In 2008, the firm extended offers to 77% of
the interns, whereas in 2009, using the new competencies, it extended offers to
only 53%. The goal is to see performance ratings reflect this in the short term and
retention rate reflect this over the long term.
Finally, there is more clarity across all talent management functions around
expectations and how to go about meeting them. In addition to clarifying
expectations for current employees, the firm is now better able to select
employees who meet an accurate set of competencies and prioritize learning and
development actions.
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Booz Allen Hamilton
Learning & Talent Initiative Excellence
With over $4.5 billion in annual revenue and 22,000 employees, Booz Allen
Hamilton (www.boozallen.com) has been at the forefront of strategy and
technology consulting for 95 years. The firm provides a broad range of services in
strategy, operations, organization and change, information technology, systems
engineering, and program management.
Facing rapid growth, Booz Allen decided to revamp its onboarding program
for all new hires. The legacy program had strong components, but it lacked the
cohesiveness and accountability necessary for a consistent new hire experience.
The new onboarding program promotes increased employee participation, while
creating value for new hires, managers, and the organization.
The results of a firm-wide people survey indicated the need for greater new hire
engagement, affiliation, productivity, and retention. Data analysis of the legacy
onboarding program’s costs and effectiveness, as well as diagnostic interviews
with new hire managers, further contributed to needs identification for the new
program. This benchmark research revealed the legacy program was not equipping
staff effectively and teams were beginning to augment with their own orientation
programs, duplicating efforts across the organization.
According to Madeline Laurano, principal analyst with Bersin & Associates, the
Booz Allen initiative is an excellent example of how to align onboarding with
overall recruiting strategy. “It engages new hires, ensures compliance, increases
productivity, requires accountability for each employee, and is used in every
region – truly a best practice initiative,” she said.
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New and Improved Onboarding Program
The new onboarding program serves more than 5,000 new hires annually
(approximately 20% of the total number of employees at Booz Allen). These
employees represent nearly all of the firm’s job levels and classifications.
Booz Allen has over 45 offices across the U.S., each of which is characterized by
a unique culture and client base. To ensure a consistent experience for new hires
across the offices, firmwide orientation is centralized at Booz Allen’s headquarters,
and is followed by customized local office orientation which addresses the
particular learning, job, and cultural needs of employees in each location.
The enhanced Booz Allen Onboarding program is structured into three phases:
Engage, Equip, and Excel.
Engage is designed to excite and prepare new hires for their first year, beginning
as soon as an individual accepts an offer of employment. An online portal provides
new hires with immediate access to a wealth of information about Booz Allen and
prepares them for the firmwide orientation course they will attend their first week
at the firm. The four-day, centralized orientation leverages an engaging discoverylearning model that walks the new hire through the history and culture of the firm,
demonstrates the firm’s core values, and allows new hires to discover more about
the firm’s service offerings and clients. A wargaming-like exercise provides new
hires with a robust simulation of joining a client engagement and solving a problem
as a member of a team. Senior leaders speak with the new hires about their own
work at the firm and offer tips for success, and critical ethics and compliance
information is presented in interactive modules throughout the four days.
Equip spans a new hires’ second week through their first six months and provides
them with the tools, skills, and behaviors necessary for success at Booz Allen. Key
program elements within this phase include a local orientation, manager check-ins
at 30-, 60-, and 90-day intervals, and a formal assessment at 6 months. Check-ins
provide new hires with robust, early career support and rich networking and skilldevelopment opportunities. For example, new hires and their managers meet to
discuss development goals, review progress against stated objectives, and identify
‘at risk’ performance.
The Six-Month assessment serves as an opportunity for new hires to receive formal
feedback on their contribution and performance from their managers and peers.
Excel is focused on continued professional development, affiliation building, and
embodiment of firm values. This phase spans month nine until the end of year one.
The key milestone during this phase is the new hire’s first annual assessment.
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Leading up to the assessment, new hires continue enhancing their competencies
through role-specific learning (for leaders), engage with local affinity groups for
ongoing networking, and receive a series of monthly communications with justin-time information targeted to their stage of the onboarding process. The first
annual assessment provides new hires with formal feedback from their peers
and manager. The outcome of the meeting is a personal development plan that
positions the new hires for success during year two.
Other features of this phase include differentiated support from HR for
targeted groups.
Results
Immediate results of the new onboarding program have included improved new
hire job readiness, efficiency gains, stronger affiliation with the firm, and reduced
attrition. Surveys and interviews indicate the online portal and the enhanced
program curriculum are contributing to increased levels of new hire job readiness
and engagement:
• Greater than 95% of survey participants have acknowledged the program’s
positive impact on their impression of the company, reinforcing their decision to
join the firm.
• Course interactivity and networking components have been two of the most
commonly mentioned positive attributes of the enhanced program.
• 96% of participants have rated the enhanced curriculum, ROI, instructors, and
program logistics higher than comparable components of the firm’s
legacy program.
The enhanced onboarding program accelerates new hire time-to-productivity by
several days, saving the firm millions of dollars of lost revenue.
A four-hour instructor-led class was converted into digital, interactive content,
eliminating instructor costs, participant travel costs, printing costs, and facilities
fees – for a total savings of $1.2 million. Other savings include the elimination of
printing and mailing costs associated with the new hire welcome packet, which is
now available online. The automation of new hire data collection yields process and
labor cost savings.
Senior leaders with new hires joining their teams report that the program has
accelerated new hire time-to-productivity. In the longer term, Booz Allen expects
the program to impact the firm’s retention rates and drive increased connectivity to
the firm.
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Booz Allen Hamilton
Learning Organization and Governance Excellence
With over 4.5 billion in annual revenue and 22,000 employees, Booz Allen Hamilton
(www.boozallen.com) has been at the forefront of strategy and technology
consulting for 95 years. The firm provides a broad range of services in strategy,
operations, organization and change, information technology, systems engineering,
and program management.
Booz Allen believes it’s most important resource is its people. The staff must always
be developing its skills and knowledge, which requires a culture of continuous
learning. The firm has built a structured governance process to ensure learning is
aligned with the business and that processes, tools, and best practices are shared
and utilized to support an efficient learning function.
Internal and External Learning Organizations
Booz Allen maintains both an internal learning organization (a Learning &
Development corporate university) and a client-facing learning organization.
The client facing learning organization provides learning solutions externally to
Booz Allen’s government clients, as well as offers learning solutions and support
internally to other parts of the firm.
Approximately 70 full-time staff members are dedicated to the management
of training / learning-related activities as part of the corporate university.
The university is led by a director who oversees company-wide Learning and
Development (L&D) programming. The director is responsible for learning programs
that support onboarding, as well as career and professional development of Booz
Allen employees at all levels (entry-level through leadership).
Approximately 1,400 client-facing Booz Allen learning professionals span the
firm’s markets and functional areas. The client-facing learning organization
is led by a vice president who manages the firm’s human capital and learning
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(HC&L) business portfolio across the Federal government. The VP supports the
functional growth of the learning professionals and the development of new
learning capabilities for clients. In addition, the VP participates in and manages
the external learning organization’s involvement in a broad range of activities
that influence and shape the global learning industry and the development and
certification of learning professionals.
Community of Practice Aligns and Integrates
Organizations
To support both the client-facing and internal learning organizations, Booz Allen
established a community of practice (COP) known as TEPS (Training Education and
Performance Support). This community is a dynamic, cross-firm virtual organization
for Booz Allen’s learning professionals. For selling and delivering learning solutions,
TEPS generates value by providing best practices, tools, and resources that they
can directly apply to their government clients. TEPS also complements the L&D
corporate university by supporting the professional development of learning
professionals in key functional areas including instructional system design, learning
management systems, learning tools and technologies, and social media tools.
TEPS has its own operating committee comprised mainly of line-of-business
managers representing multiple lines of business, functional areas, and the
corporate university. The operating committee guides the community’s strategy by
setting its vision and goals, and by establishing and supporting priority initiatives
for the TEPS organization to execute. On a quarterly basis, the committee reviews
the community’s progress against priority initiatives and ensures that the firm’s
annual investment in TEPS is being used wisely. Additionally, the committee
regularly surveys the lines-of-business across the firm and the TEPS members for
new market and resource requirements, as well as need for new intellectual capital
or capabilities.
TEPS maintains a critical link with a learning council established for Booz Allen’s
corporate university. One of the members of the TEPS operating committee also
serves on the firm’s People Strategy Steering Committee (PSSC), a separate learning
council focused on the firm’s internal people strategy efforts. The PSSC is comprised
of senior representatives from multiple business groups across the firm, including the
internal L&D organization. The purpose of the PSSC is to function as a leadership and
advisory board for Booz Allen’s people strategy efforts, which include several internal
L&D initiatives. The PSSC sets priorities for the firm’s people strategy and is briefed on
a regular basis regarding results and progress against the priorities.
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Measurement Resourcing
The TEPS COP established tools to assess the performance of the community ,
collecting data on a regular basis and maintaining a dashboard to measure the
Firm’s return on investment in the TEPS COP. More specifically, the TEPS impact
dashboard is designed to evaluate the COP’s impact on business growth, workforce
proficiency, knowledge sharing, and market-relevant intellectual capital.
Additionally, Booz Allen’s people services organization (which includes recruiting,
human resources services, learning and development, strategic people initiatives,
diversity, total rewards, and executive service functions) has a dedicated human
capital analytics (HCA) group. The HCA group functions as a center of excellence
that provides data archiving and analytic capabilities to people services and the firm
more broadly, including the TEPS COP.
Organizational Impact
Investments in TEPS have yielded benefits for multiple audiences and stakeholders.
For example, TEPS-sponsored community events and knowledge-sharing technology
enable a “one to many” approach, promoting the dissemination of best practices
and innovative solutions across the community. Design Kaizens, for example, are
quick solution-development sessions open to the entire TEPS community. Each
Design Kaizen tackles a particular firm, client, or market learning issue or challenge,
leveraging the energy, diverse skills, and experience of the TEPS community to
facilitate solution development. Similarly, a Turbo Fest is a one-hour meeting with
eight mini-presentations that disseminate best practices to a large audience in a
short period of time, thereby maximizing resource efficiency.
The TEPS community also functions as an internal testing ground for ideas and
solutions. Booz Allen teams can test their ideas with an active audience and make
improvements based on the group’s feedback before bringing solutions to the
marketplace, increasing the likelihood of market success. In addition, the TEPS
community of practice provides instant global communications across its 1400
members, enabling discovery and sharing of intellectual capital and ideas – when
needed and where needed.
By leveraging the learning community’s skills and knowledge, TEPS develops new
capabilities that have real market impact. In the most recent example, TEPS led
the development of Booz Allen’s new immersive learning service offering, which
is designed to meet the learning simulation needs of its clients, particularly in the
defense market. TEPS enables the firm to develop these highly integrated and
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customized immersive solutions with multi-disciplinary teams, generating greater
impact on client organizations and yielding longer-term engagements for Booz Allen.
“Booz Allen is an excellent example of an organization that leverages the best
from both its internal and client facing learning functions to impact its business in
a positive direction, said Stacey Harris, a principal analyst for Bersin & Associates.
“It has created clear business alignment through its governance and measurement
practices, and subsequently has provided a learning environment that encourages
development and growth in the organization.” According to Harris, this approach
has led to business-focused budgeting and program prioritization, timely and
innovative solutions, and a collaborative learning community.
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CA
As a world-leading IT management software vendor, CA (www.ca.com) creates
enterprise solutions for the management of complex computing environments.
Utilizing negotiating power to leverage mutually beneficial deals for both the
customer and the organization is an integral component of CA’s strategy.
The lack of a corporate negotiation strategy had, until 2008, inhibited sales teams
from leveraging a set of standardized, best-in-breed negotiation practices. In
response, CA’s Employee Education group created a dynamic, ongoing, resultsfocused offering to standardize the way sales teams work and to balance the way
CA goes to market and negotiates with its customers.
Needs Analysis
A needs analysis discovery process was conducted to both analyze the competencies
of successful negotiators on its account teams and document the gaps in behavior
needed to meet organizational requirements. Through a series of interviews and
focus groups, these assessments conveyed that the global sales organization faced
multiple thematic negotiation challenges, including:
• Managing customers aligned to buying timeframes that did not benefit
the organization;
• Dealing with customers who use non-response as a negotiation tactic; and,
• Responding to customers trained by the industry to expect high
end-of-quarter discounts.
Needs analysis also revealed several common missteps that were being made by
sales teams during the negotiations process, including getting stuck in the priceplaying field and agreeing to customer demands without fully understanding the
impact to the organization.
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Program Alignment
Prior to program design, a learning charter was created and signed by global sales
sponsors within the organization to ensure alignment to business needs. It included:
• Business objectives and measurements;
• Learning objectives and measurement strategies;
• Risks, assumptions, and potential constraints; and,
• Resource and sales sponsorship requirements.
To deliver on the components of this charter, CA Employee Education teamed with
business stakeholders to create a comprehensive, continuous global learning and
performance program.
Blended Program of Workshop and Coaching
Situational Sales Negotiation (SSN™), a two-day instructor-led workshop, was
implemented to provide negotiators with practical application of a new set of
negotiating principles. To ensure content quality, CA teamed with negotiation
provider Bay Group International (BGI), as well as various stakeholders.
Prework is utilized to set the stage for the application and practice of negotiation
techniques during the workshop. The interactive, experiential workshop provides
opportunities for working through the stages of negotiating relationships. Internal
delivery instructors, who go through a formal “train the trainer” process with
BGI, have prior backgrounds as front-line sales managers and can offer real-world
experience to learners.
All graduates receive a monthly coaching reinforcement message via email for one
year after the completion of the negotiation workshop. These messages encourage
them to implement the plans they developed in class for using their skills on a real
account, and make it more likely that this key reinforcement step occurs back in
the field. Monthly email coaching provides both a tool for reminding graduates
to implement their in-class plans immediately and a mechanism for collecting best
practices and negotiation success stories.
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Continuous, Ongoing Coaching
To reach negotiating success, sales teams must be consistently coached to reinforce
and support the behaviors learned in the negotiation workshop. Sales management
teams are encouraged to assign negotiating peer-mentors to reinforce the
workshop’s principles and ensure adoption of the new skills. Instructors serve as
field learning consultants to assist in “real world” coaching and mentoring around
opportunities with real customers and deals.
To help managers coach their teams specifically around the skills that they learned
in the SSN workshop, CA Employee Education and BGI created the Negotiation
Reinforcement Workshop for Sales Management. These sessions motivate managers
to reinforce effective negotiation with their sales teams and provide coaches
with proven guidelines for effective coaching–and the importance of using those
guidelines to boost sales team performance. They also show managers how to use a
Negotiation Planner as an on-the-job coaching aid and increase the willingness and
ability of managers to use a systematic process to reinforce good sales negotiation
using tools from the negotiation workshop
At the beginning of each month, managers also receive a Management
Reinforcement Toolkit, which includes all of the information needed to run a 20minute sales meeting focused on reinforcing concepts from the SSN workshop.
Results
Over 70 sessions of the course, many in localized languages, have been offered
to over 750 learners since the program’s inception in January of 2008. In terms of
learning and behavior impacts, level III assessments conducted at least 90 days post
SSN workshop showed that:
• 99% of respondents reported the workshop had a positive impact on their
confidence level when negotiating on behalf of CA;
• 97% of respondents reported positive change as it related to agreeing to
customer demands without fully understanding the impact on CA;
• 94% of respondents reported positive impact on their tendency to get stuck in
the price playing field;
• 78% of respondents reported a positive impact in their negotiation planning
skills; and,
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• 73% of respondents reported a positive impact in their ability to “concede only
according to plan.”
While the negotiations program has not been the sole impact on CA’s business
metrics between FY’08 and FY’09, participation by over 750 learners has been a key
contributor in improving sales teams’ abilities to create negotiations that support
attainment of organizational goals and financial objectives (see Figure 1).
Figure 28: Business Impacts of Situational Sales Workshop
Program Business Objective
Result
Increase renewal rates and protect
existing pricing/share within each account.
8% increase in renewal yield between FY’08
and FY’09.
Increase bookings and overall profitability.
15% increase in attainment of Total Bookings
in constant currency between FY’08 and FY’09.
Grow deal sizes by gaining higher
selling prices.
25% deal size increase in deals over $10
million between FY’08 and FY’09.
Increase renewal rates and protect
existing pricing/share within each account.
20% increase in Average Life of Subscription
between FY’08 and FY’09.
Enhance cash flow.
30% increase in Cash Flow from Operations,
based on goal, between FY’08 and FY’09.
Source: CA, 2010.
Josh Bersin, president of Bersin & Associates, pointed out that CA has been
named a winner in the Learning Leaders program three years running. “CA’s sales
negotiation program is yet another example of the company’s ability to deliver
innovative learning with a very powerful impact on the business.”
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Cisco
Cisco (www.cisco.com) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how
people connect, communicate and collaborate.
In reaction to the global economic slowdown in late 2008, Cisco, like many
companies, put a moratorium on all non-critical business travel and slashed training
budgets. One of the training programs affected was Channel Sales Masters Series,
which develops a channel account managers’ skills for becoming a business advisor.
This is critical to Cisco’s success since 85% of the company’s business is fulfilled
through channel partners.
Prior to the economic crisis, Channel Sales Masters Series was a four-and-a-half
day, instructor-led training (ILT) program that cost $4,600 per student, plus travel
expenses. Learning leaders resolved to create a virtual synchronous training
program that would develop the same skills, cost 85% less to deliver, and require no
travel for students or instructors. It decided to retool the program using Cisco’s own
Web 2.0 collaboration technologies – WebEx Connect and WebEx Training Center.
The New Virtual Approach
The new virtual Sales Masters Series incorporates multiple Web 2.0
technologies, including:
• WebEx Training Center – Delivers eight synchronous training sessions for the
core learning and application.
• WebEx Connect – Provides main communication and documentation portal for
students, producers, and LP instructors. Extended student/global training team
uses WebEx Connect for ongoing collaboration before, during, and after each
theater program delivery.
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• Flash videos – Simulate instructor-lead learning in certain modules, saving
significant classroom time. Flash videos are also used for manager
coaching reinforcement.
Interactivity similar to the ILT training experience was preserved through the
use of WebEx breakout rooms, structured chat and annotation exercises, polls,
whiteboards to share ideas, engaging dialog, and ongoing sharing of best practices.
Outside of class sessions, students also participated in group and individual
coursework activities, and utilized their class WebEx Connect space, as well as email
and WebEx meetings, to communicate and share information.
Leveraging Web 2.0 Technology
Cisco used the whiteboard component of WebEx several different ways in the
instructional design of the program. Instructors employ it to “break the ice” for
each of the eight sessions. Each session opens with a question. The students are
invited to respond using the text tools and the whiteboard. This provides an
opportunity to build rapport between the students and also between the students
and the session facilitator.
The chat functionality of the Web 2.0 tool is especially effective in delivering the
program to students whose primary language is not English. The chat area gives
students a vehicle to share their thoughts. Chat is used for answering classroom
questions, sharing examples, and indicating when assistance is needed.
Polls are used to check for understanding. The poll feature is also the medium
to transmit the Level 01 evaluation to the students after the completion of each
module. The transfer feature within WebEx Training Center allows the team provide
to materials electronically during program sessions, meeting the goals of Cisco’s
Green initiative by producing no hard copy materials for students, facilitators,
and hosts.
Results
The initiative has met and exceeded Cisco’s original goals. The program, now
successfully implemented in Asia Pacific, U.S./Canada and emerging markets, is
meeting the original learning objectives, with 16 hours of synchronous learning
time compared to 40 hours of classroom time. Level 1 scores average 4.5, a high
score for synchronous learning.
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The students are using the skills they learn and sharing best practices, which
confirms knowledge and skill transfer is occurring. Cisco’s learning leaders believe
the successful learning in less time may in part be due to the time between each
virtual session. Students spend two hours learning a key concept, and then have
two to five days to apply and absorb it, before they add two more hours of training
on top of that.
Cisco has also exceeded its cost reduction goals. On average, the cost per student
to participate in the program has dropped 85% and time away from the job is
reduced 60%.
According to Josh Bersin, president of Bersin & Associates, Cisco’s program earned
Learning Leader status for its best practices on several fronts. “It’s an excellent
example of how to combine virtual and collaborative learning effectively. Our
team of judges was also impressed with the program’s global, well-integrated
design,” he said.
There are some additional surprise benefits. With a virtual program, learning
leaders find they can bring in expertise more readily, from anywhere in the world.
A course held in China, for example, requires financial experts who speak Mandarin
to help explain the concepts and coach the students. Because no one has to travel
to participate in the program, the company can utilize individuals with these skills
in Cisco offices in California, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Beijing.
Another benefit of synchronous learning is that a smaller instructor pool can cover
more students in more locations. One instructor can run programs in two parts of
the world during the same week. For example, someone in Cisco’s U.K. office can
hold a learning session in the morning for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, and
four hours later, hold another morning session for North or South America.
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Coldwell Banker Commercial
Coldwell Banker Commercial (www.cbcworldwide.com) is a worldwide leader in the
commercial real estate industry. It is owned and operated by Realogy Corporation,
the world’s leading real estate franchisor. Coldwell Banker Commercial has more
than 200 affiliated companies with 3,400 commercial real estate professionals in 20
countries worldwide.
Commission-based commercial real estate is difficult for new sales associates
to penetrate because of the long sales cycle (9-18 months on average) and the
distinct set of sales skills needed to be successful. Driven by the weakening real
estate market in 2009, Coldwell Banker Commercial resolved to accelerate the
success of sales associates who are new to commercial real estate, as well as those
transitioning from residential real estate.
A Unique Audience
There was no formal or structured training program in place to help new sales
professionals accelerate their commercial real estate careers at Coldwell Banker
Commercial. This audience is made up of self-employed individuals who work for
Coldwell Banker Commercial franchises. They are not direct employees of Realogy
or Coldwell Banker Commercial, so their training programs are not mandated. They
respond to training that is rigorous, yet relevant to their work in the field. Thus,
it is critical to introduce ideas, concepts, and fieldwork that can be implemented
immediately to gain traction in the field.
Much of the audience has residential real estate experience and expertise. However,
there is no correlation between success in residential real estate and success in
commercial real estate. In fact, certain residential sales skills and methods must be
replaced with ones that work on the commercial side of the industry.
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Emerging Broker Training Program
To meet this need, Coldwell Banker Commercial launched Emerging Broker Training
(EBT), a blended four-month program for sales/lease agents who are new to
commercial real estate. Learners are required to complete the following:
• Two sets of traditional live classroom training (seven days total) – The capstone
activity at both sets of live training is the development and video recording
of each student’s action plan. At the first set of live training sessions, students
record their action plan for the next three months, which is the approximate
amount of time before they return for the final set of training. At the final
set of live training classes, students record their 12-month action plan. This
component encourages each student to think about what they have learned
and plan how they will apply what they have learned.
• Seven live virtual classroom sessions held using WebEx Training Center – Three
self-paced e-learning modules (on Objection Handling, Leasing Strategies, and
technical tutorials) include at least one business simulation where the learner
must successfully navigate through the simulation before finishing the lesson.
• Approximately 15 highly relevant fieldwork assignments help learners gain
traction in the field and focus on generating new sales leads and contacts.
One assignment requires the learners to conduct detailed studies of their local
markets. After they complete these studies, they contact local newspapers and
submit editorials about their findings. Many of these articles are published.
Learning leaders at Coldwell Banker Commercial believe that successful
completion of field work is the best measure of knowledge, skill transfer, and
successful application.
• Students are required to pass two formal exams at the start and the end. In
addition, there are multiple quizzes, some formal and some in the form of
games. The final assessment moves away from the “traditional” exam model
with a Jeopardy-style game where students compete in teams; the game also
tracks individual scores.
Coaching and Individualized Tracking
Each participant selects a mentor who provides support and guidance throughout
the program. The mentor assists the student with the fieldwork assignments.
Students are required to meet with their mentors on a pre-determined schedule to
discuss progress, fieldwork, challenges, etc. The aforementioned action plan videos
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are sent back to each student/coach pair for re-enforcement, as well as to provide
new coaching opportunities for the mentor.
Throughout the entire four-month program, each individual learner’s program
activities are tracked in a custom online scorecard database. The database allows
students to see their progress as well as view other students’ data (increasing
motivation); allows managers see students (increasing accountability); and allows
instructors to see an entire class as a group or individuals.
The system assigns a point value for each activity. Learners can receive partial points
for fieldwork not completed in its entirety, or for attending a live session but not
participating substantially. This generates student enthusiasm as they work harder
to perform above the minimum – knowing that each component will be evaluated
on an individual basis. A friendly competitive atmosphere is created by posting an
anonymous bi-weekly class ranking. Top students receive special recognition and
awards at the graduation ceremony and a scholarship towards earning the top
commercial real estate industry designation (CCIM).
Results
The simple but impactful best practice of awarding partial points for all activities
(including participation), publishing a bi-weekly class ranking report, and offering
incentives to the top students, has generated higher quality work, higher
attendance, increased participation, and significantly improved the graduation rate
(from 58% to 90%) for the EBT program.
Data such as gross commissions, number of appointments, number of contacts, and
number of closings is collected from each EBT class and compared to other EBT
classes. The goal is to measure the iterative trend of the program. Kirkpatrick Level4 business results, including sales transaction volume of new hires, have increased
30% across the board since the program started.
“The Emerging Broker Training program is a fantastic example of a well-designed,
blended, coaching program for teaching all levels of professionals how to sell
commercial real-estate,” said Josh Bersin, president of Bersin & Associates.
Learning leaders at Coldwell Banker Commercial are seeing an upward trend in
business activity for EBT students. Even though the commercial real estate market has
seen a significant downward trend, EBT graduates appear to be “bucking the trend.”
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Kelly Services
With 2008 annual revenue of $5.5 billion, Kelly Services (www.kellyservices.com)
is a leader in providing workforce solutions. Kelly offers a comprehensive array of
outsourcing and consulting services as well as world-class staffing on a temporary,
temp-to-hire and permanent placement basis. Serving clients around the globe,
Kelly provides employment to 650,000 employees annually.
Kelly Services’ learning organization utilizes a strong leadership and governance
approach to ensure it is aligned and focused on the most critical business needs of
its clients. It has organized the learning function around a global working model
that supports collaboration and sharing. A focus on measurement has lead to clear
impact metrics. Based on the learning organization’s business alignment, it was
a key partner in ensuring positive change management efforts during corporate
reduction implementations that took effect due to the recent economic downturn.
Strong Learning Organization Leadership
The learning organization has 35 full-time equivalents (FTEs), and 90 percent
of the learning organization reports to a central function through a matrixed
reporting structure. They have a standard shared services function that includes
the traditional areas of learning standards, technology management, vendor
management, and competencies, as well as global learning management.
The senior director of global learning is responsible for all company-wide learning
initiatives and executes against the following mission statement: To grow Kelly’s
business by improving the performance of its global workforce through effective
learning solutions. She and her team set the learning strategy and execution plans
globally. She also has a unique role in that she serves as the service liaison to the
Americas operation. In this role, she represents Kelly Services’ global learning
and services organization in every product and operations leadership meeting. As
part of the global service department, learning is accountable to the senior vice
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president of global service who reports directly to the organization’s executive vice
president and chief operating officer.
Strong Governance for Alignment
Global learning leverages two types of learning councils: advisory boards and an
executive learning council. As each new need is identified, global learning creates
an individual learning council, referred to as an advisory board, for that learning
solution to ensure that each new program has appropriate representation from the
operation and the learner audience.
The global learning structure has been designed to reflect the global operating
structure, but also to support the strategic objective to reduce dependency on the
U.S. training leaders in each region, Americas, EMEA and APAC, work with the
headquarters team to set the global learning strategy, share best practices and
leverage cross-border resources to support all of the strategic initiatives. Monthly
global learning meetings provide the opportunity for all trainers around the globe
to share progress on ongoing and new initiatives.
Measurement
The global learning measurement strategy has two approaches. With the direct
impact approach, a causal relationship is proven between learning and operational
results. Direct impact measures include workshop activity results (i.e., the
bottom-line impact of real tasks completed as part of a training workshop) and new
sales revenue directly attributed to a particular sales training program, per
the participant.
With the correlation approach, a causal relationship cannot be proven because
there are often many other factors influencing performance metrics and bottomline results, so instead they focus on creating correlations. In these situations, Global
learning doesn’t take full credit for producing the operational results; they simply
show that there are strong correlations between learning and results. Correlation
measures include: Kirkpatrick Level One survey results; usage results; completion
rates; awards program; and productivity.
Many of Kelly Services’ learning programs have changed the culture, built skills, and
improved bottom-line company results. The following are a few illuminating examples:
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All new hires participate in The Kelly Experience, a six-hour onboarding program,
during their first week so they can experience the company culture, learn of
the strategic priorities and determine the role they play in service excellence. In
2008, this program resulted in an 85 percent reduction in employee turnover, as
compared to a control group during the six- month pilot, resulting in $930,000
in turnover cost savings. New employees were also more productive two months
earlier than the control group.
Targeted at senior sales executives, Global Solutions Training (GST) enables
salespeople to recognize and facilitate cross-selling opportunities. The curriculum
is comprised of 11 solution courses and includes scenario-based role plays and a
high level of interactivity. The average sales of employees completing at least one
of the GST courses is 623 percent higher than those who have not participated in
the program.
Recruiters who have attended Recruiter University, a skills-based classroom
workshop, averaged 16 percentage points higher for Interview: Start ratios
(standard recruiting productivity measure) than non-participating peers. In
addition, live cold calling activities with side-by-side trainer coaching resulted in an
average of 73 new job orders and 163 new candidate interviews.
Significant revenue has been attributed directly to the skills learned in a classroom
workshop called Consultative Selling Skills. During the most recent quarterly
conference call, the six selected participants who presented attributed the
following results directly to the workshop: $5,250,000 in new business; $1,500,000
in growth from existing customers; and $250,000 in prospective business.
According to Stacey Harris, principal analyst with Bersin & Associates, the panel of
Learning Leaders judges was impressed with Kelly Services’ collaborative global
model and ability to focus on the most critical business needs. “The learning
organization’s strong business alignment has allowed it be a clear partner in
ensuring positive change management efforts, particularly during the downsizing
efforts that took place due to the economic downturn,“ she said. “And its focus on
measurement has led to clear impact metrics for their organization.”
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NetApp
In 1992, NetApp (www.netapp.com) made shared storage an affordable reality
with the world’s first networked storage appliance. Today, the company creates
innovative storage and data management solutions that accelerate business
breakthroughs and deliver cost efficiency.
NetApp considers its employees critical to growth - in strong and weak markets - and
has developed learning and development infrastructure and initiatives to support
their alignment with NetApp’s goals. This approach has contributed to the company
appearing on Fortune’s annual Great Places to Work list seven years running,
including 2009, when it beat out Google for the #1 spot.
Learning Organization’s Mission and Structure
The learning organization’s primary focus is to enable the success of its stakeholders
– from engineering training, to channel readiness, to field enablement. This
includes new hire sales and technical training, as well as new college graduate
and other on-boarding programs designed to accelerate the time to productivity.
The learning organization also focuses on proactively supporting key corporate
initiatives with learning programs aligned to those priorities.
The vice president of NetApp University is responsible for company-wide learning
and development programs (that includes employees, partners and customers),
leading a team of 100+ employees. There is a great partnership with HR that drives
leadership and development programs for employees. The allocation of staff
resources breaks down as follows:
• Development 35%
• Delivery 15%
• Performance Consulting 14%
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• Measurement 10%
• Administration 10%
• Technology Management 8%
• Management 8%
Alignment through Account Managers and
Learning Councils
Within the learning organization, there is an educational liaison, or account
manager, for each business group within NetApp, and more than one for highvolume training business partners such as products groups and sales groups. These
account managers can anticipate the needs of business units and accelerate time-tocompetency for their constituents. They work closely with the business to make sure
that learning programs are effective and aligned and that budget is allocated to
activities that produce the greatest impact.
The liaisons also chair a council at each business group to set training priorities and
guide resources for the learning and development process, which is continual and
integrated deeply into NetApp’s internal processes. NetApp also has several specific
learning councils – field readiness (focused on sales training), partner learning
council, technical learning council, and professional-skills learning council – each cochaired by the key stakeholder and a learning organization leader.
Focus on Business Outcomes
NetApp University has implemented a Business Intelligence (BI) system that brings
learning information together to (1) give learning dashboards to executives; and (2)
provide many levels of analytical and operational reporting for managing the business.
This data allows the CEO and other business executives to track usage, identify the top
five programs, or break down training by department, region, or other metrics.
Executives can access powerful, quantitative information to answer such questions
as: “When did a sales group in a specific country take a specific course?” “What
is the most frequently taken course?” and “By what date did all of a subset of
employees take a specific course?”
The BI system pulls data from the various formal and informal learning systems
and portals such as the LMS, WebEx, video-based informal learning portals, books
online, and external certification/accreditation portals.
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BI also uses customer/partner and employee systems (such as SAP/Peoplesoft) to
deliver relevant information either in the form of dashboards for executives, or
detailed reports for program managers (from compliance to new hire to division
specific to product or other category specific), or operational and analytic reports to
manage the needs of the training organization.
Financial data also is available in the BI system to measure and report on commercial
transactions related to learning. Future plans include the correlation of sales force
and channel productivity to training translating to the impact on business.
Operational Measures
NetApp has different operational measures for each piece of the training function.
For example, for delivery functions, there are metrics specific to classroom training
around instructor performance, classroom experience, registration experience, and
courseware quality.
For courseware development, there are various metrics around development
timelines, deltas between plan and actual deployment of content, and quality
of adherence to editorial, graphics standards, and guidelines. The training
organization measures customer service issues and mean time to resolution, with an
aim to reducing the calls while seeing growth in training adoption. Learning leaders
also focus on room/lab/instructor utilization.
From a customer education perspective, NetApp tracks standard measures such as
growth in bookings and revenue and contributions to the bottom line. A major
focus is also on new hire programs and their effectiveness – both qualitative
and quantitative.
NetApp also has a series of measures for informal learning where the focus is
on repeat users and growth in usage. Several other delivery metrics measure fill
rates, percentage of training based on delivery type, by geography, by audience
type (customer, partner, employee), by category (compliance, new hire, product/
solutions, professional skills, leadership & management, process & tools), by
geography, and by business unit. The list of measures is continually refined.
According to Stacey Harris, principal analyst with Bersin & Associates, NetApp
was named a Learning Leader for its focus on business outcomes first. “NetApp’s
learning organization has managed to build out effective workflows and awareness
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of what work each group is doing and how the handoffs occur. This process
and clarity of roles has allowed business-driven advisory boards and initiative
sponsors to focus on the business outcomes,” said Harris. “Also, the organization’s
sophisticated approach to measuring the impact of formal and informal learning
provides a solid platform for business discussions, supports alignment and ensures
that it is meeting business needs,” she added.
NetApp University and the learning organization enjoy executive-level support and
appreciation for the impact of learning on the business. This fiscal year, NetApp
University was publicly acknowledged by the CEO with the company’s top award
(Total Customer Experience Award) at a recent all-hands meeting for offering a
competitive edge. This award, , represented a real achievement for the learning
team and a validation of the importance of learning to the entire company.
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The Nielsen Company
Learning and Talent Technology Excellence
The Nielsen Company (www.nielsen.com) is the world’s leading marketing and
media information company, with operations in more than 100 countries. Its
mission is to provide clients with the most complete understanding of consumers
and markets worldwide
In 2007, over 30 individual Nielsen companies merged into “One Nielsen,”
impacting 34,000 employees in 100 countries. Following integration, there were
numerous learning organizations and training professionals scattered globally,
implementing various learning standards, processes, and courses. Nielson had to
not only create a global learning community aligned with corporate strategies
and goals, but also identify new ways of using current technology to conquer the
geography and time differences between global learning teams.
Nielsen decided to leverage the learning management system used in one of
the company’s business units for the new global organization. A taskforce team
of seven U.S.-based members was established to gather information, identify
existing content that could/would be migrated to the new platform and to
manage the content migration. Their analysis of content revealed that there
were no common standards for look and feel or consistency. They also found an
inconsistent learner experience and frequent duplication of effort in learning
development projects. These findings did not support the new company values of
simple, open and integrated.
Leveraging Existing Technology Spending
The team studied a variety of methods to improve communication and
collaboration between all of the global learning and development training teams.
During the analysis, they discovered that the company’s IT group was implementing
a roll out of Microsoft’s Live Meeting and SharePoint products globally.
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Considering the economic business climate of the past several years, the task team’s
directive required taking immediate action to impact and leverage resources
globally. Adopting and using these technological solutions was well suited to the
team’s effort.
Creating a Global eLearning Community
The teams’ goal was to build an open electronic platform for collaboration, sharing
information, and building trust in the global learning community, so community
members would be willing to give up local control of standards, best practices,
tools, and resources.
Using the existing MS SharePoint tool, a robust interactive website was built. Called
The Learning Center, it allows cross-functional learning professionals to dynamically
search information, standards, best practices, social networking opportunities,
and discussion boards to connect with one another across time and geography for
support and information.
MS Live Meeting and Instant Meeting Audio Conferencing bring individuals from
across the globe into the same meeting for live discussion and collaboration.
Meetings are recorded with the MS Live Meeting visual and Instant Meeting Audio
Conferencing audio integrated into a single file. This permits community members
who are unable to attend meetings the opportunity to replay and fully participate
in the discussion boards, wikis, etc.
The largest challenge continues to be coordinating synchronized communication
between colleagues across the globe. One solution the team has implemented
to combat time zone issues is the use of the MS Live Meeting recording feature.
Each monthly general meeting and special interest group meeting is recorded and
posted on the collective SharePoint site. Meeting times for the six special interest
groups are varied in order to allow the various regions around the world to
participate live periodically.
Results
In less than two years, using existing familiar Microsoft technologies, more than
250 learning professionals have been linked across geography and time. The global
learning leadership team benchmarks and measures the success of the community
platform implementation in multiple ways:
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• The number of new members joining the community – initially seven members
and now 250 and growing, a 3571% increase since the original task team was
formed two years ago.
• The number of members accessing the community’s website – the website
currently averages 31 requests per day and had 118 distinct users in the last
30 days.
• Through the consistency (use of common templates and navigation) and
voluntary adoption of instructional design standards as seen in the output of
learning modules demonstrated during a monthly meeting project showcase.
Two years ago, learning modules varied in look and feel, navigational features,
interaction, visual engagement, complexity, and quality. Now, company leaders
can see the impact of the community on the final output of learning professionals,
resulting in a more positive and consistent learner experience for Nielson’s
employees and clients.
Bringing the learning groups together to leverage resources, expertise, best
practices, and ideas has enabled the company to provide engaging, interactive, and
consistent learning activities to over 50,000 clients and employees globally. According
to David Mallon, senior analyst for Bersin & Associates, Nielsen’s ability to leverage a
global community is impressive. “Within two years Nielsen managed to do globally
what many companies struggle to do locally. The organization also found new ways
to use existing enterprise tools – which they can continue to leverage limited only by
the imagination and creativity of the community,” he added.
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Qualcomm
Qualcomm (www.qualcomm.com) is a leader in developing and delivering innovative
digital wireless communications products and services based on CDMA and other
advanced technologies. Included in the S&P 500 Index and 2009 FORTUNE 500 list,
Qualcomm is regularly ranked as one of the world’s best-performing tech companies.
New business challenges for Qualcomm include increased complexity and
globalization of markets. Qualcomm also added approximately 3500 employees
over the past three years to fuel growth. The company’s philosophy is to promote
from within, so this lead to significant growth in Qualcomm’s leadership team.
Qualcomm recently redesigned some of its flagship leadership development
programs in response to these challenges. The key driver of leadership development
is to grow world-class leaders in an organization rooted in technology and
engineering, with the purpose of building an internal talent pool that fully
understands the business. The company seeks to build bench strength at the senior
levels of the organization, while at the same time accelerate the integration of new
managers who can handle the company’s tremendous growth.
According to Kim Lamoureux, principal analyst with Bersin & Associates, Qualcomm’s
new programs are part of a singular, coordinated development effort. “Qualcomm’s
program fulfills the specific needs of two distinct leader levels within the company.
The emerging leader program prepares young professionals – a segment often
overlooked for leadership development – for a career in management, as opposed to
waiting until they are already in a manager role. The executive-level program builds a
critical pipeline of high potentials for leading the company into the future.”
Emerging Leader Program
The invitation-only Qualcomm Emerging Leader Program is designed specifically
for individual contributors (no direct reports or direct management responsibilities)
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who have the aptitude, potential, and desire to be future leaders. Participants
are nominated by their manager, project lead, HR generalist and/ or by their
identification as top technical talent within the company. To ensure participation
from business units and locations that modeled organizational demographics, a
learning management system is utilized to allot seats to each business unit.
The program takes participants through a dynamic learning experience over the
span of 12 weeks and includes a 180 degree assessment (self and manager ratings),
1.5 day classroom session, four 1-2 hour virtual classroom sessions, 1:1 manager,
learning partner meetings and online learning components. The total time
commitment for participants over the 12 weeks is approximately 23 hours.
The Emerging Leader Program utilizes a variety of social networking technologies
that allow participants to stay connected throughout the entire program:
• Emerging Leader Community Site – built on a blogging platform, this is
the central location for all resources and tools as well as a platform to build
community through web 2.0 functionality.
• Yammer – “Twitter-like” tool allowing participants to share best practices as they
happen, ask questions, and create ongoing dialog during and after the program.
In partnership with PDI Ninth House (www.pdininthhouse.com) , Qualcomm
developed a blended learning experience that provides a scalable learning platform
to drive large-scale behavioral change in emerging leaders on a global basis,
faster and at lower cost than traditional classroom instruction. The content is
designed to equip emerging leaders with the knowledge, skills, and tools to help
them effectively lead and engage others in their current role, while building their
management skill base to prepare them for future opportunities.
Emerging Leader Program participants are formally surveyed at the mid-point
and end of the program. Based on survey data, 94% of participants agree there
is significant application and transfer of knowledge and skills back on the job
and 88% feel the program will improve their performance on the job. Overall,
participants reported there was a 52% increase in skill level or knowledge of the
content after completing the 12 week program.
Executive Leadership Essentials
Executive Leadership Essentials is a blended learning experience that begins with
a three-day intense educational experience that provides participants with the
opportunity to explore and be challenged by the core elements of leading today’s
demanding and complex organizations. Led by a senior facilitator from Bluepoint
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Leadership Development (www.bluepointleadership.com), it incorporates short
lectures, group exercises/discussion, video case studies and a series of practicums
where participants practice their skills while working on real Qualcomm challenges.
Program objectives for Executive Leadership Essentials include:
• Enhancing personal leadership presence
• Developing the coaching skills to coach others for high performance
• Learning to create and lead highly innovative and productive teams
• Creating significant organizational commitment and alignment
• Designing a challenging, personal leadership development plan
• Providing a development experience over time
• Designing and delivering additional resources that are tuned to the
learners needs
• Holding participants accountable for application back in the workplace
Executive Leadership Essentials targets directors and senior directors globally from
across the organization. Through top leader identification tools, HR nominations,
and direct manager nominations, more than 100 directors/senior directors have
participated in the program globally to date.
Designed to equip managers with the core competencies necessary to successfully
lead at the personal, interpersonal, team and organization levels, the fast-paced
Executive Leadership Essentials workshop provides a strong foundation for
people at all organizational levels. Over the course of four distinct modules, the
experiential workshop takes participants through a series of thought-provoking
mini-lectures and videos, interactive exercises, and noteworthy case studies.
The workshop is followed up with three application coaching sessions conducted
by an experienced Bluepoint Leadership coach over the phone. Three months
after the initial workshop there is a half-day follow-up workshop that is titled
‘Planning to Lead.’ This session allows participants to discuss progress, successes,
failures, roadblocks and learn from each other. It also creates an environment of
accountability and focus on execution.
Specific feedback and success metrics tied to the Executive Leadership Essentials
Program show that more than 95% of workshop participants have participated in
the follow-up half-day session ‘Planning to Lead’ that is offered three months post
workshop, which shows commitment to this initiative. The majority of executives
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participating in this program have taken the opportunity to utilize other online resources and e-learning opportunities provided to them. Utilization of the
application coaching offered through the program has been over 90%.
In addition, Kirkpatrick Level One evaluation feedback indicates that the content
of the instructor-led workshop content is at the right level, introduced at a good
pace, and overall the time the individuals spend in class is very worthwhile. The
overall course effectiveness rating is 4.81. Participant feedback also indicates that
the program is well-timed for critical business needs, helping them meet current
business challenges and assisting with developing leadership capabilities within
the organization.
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Redwood Trust
Redwood Trust (www.redwoodtrust.com) invests in, finances, and manages
residential and commercial real estate loans and securities backed by real estate
loans. Its principal office is in California and is traded on the New York
Stock Exchange.
Starting in the late 2000s, Redwood began looking for systemic solutions to address
the strategic objectives of creating a coaching culture and closing a succession gap
to support company growth. With the help of their learning and development
partner, LSA Global, Redwood focused on positioning executives as true facilitators
of people development and fast-tracking young talent.
In late 2008, a challenge emerged as a result of the worsening economy. The real
estate investment industry was hit hard by the mortgage crisis and Redwood had
to navigate through it, in part by leveraging its talent pool. As a reflection of
current business imperatives, an additional goal was created stating that leadership
development programs need to generate bottom-line impact to offset their cost.
$6MM Game – Business-Driven Action Learning
Redwood’s solution integrated leadership development, role realignment
and performance systems to change how the company develops talent. A key
component of the program is the $6MM Game, which puts emerging executives
into real business challenges aligned with Redwood’s strategy. Senior executives
serve as mentors/coaches, allowing them to see firsthand the performance of the
upcoming crop of leaders. From this process a select few participants move on to
greater roles in the organization.
The goal of this program is to help leaders learn how to create tangible value at
Redwood. Specific objectives are to create a “real” experience where participants will:
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• Identify an opportunity that will impact the company’s bottom line or create a
competitive advantage.
• Create a business case and sell it to the President, CFO and Chief
Investment Officer.
• Develop an implementation plan and execute it.
• Initiate and lead change across functional organizations.
• Navigate organizational politics successfully.
• Develop enhanced relationships with people from other departments.
• Develop enhanced relationships with the executive team.
How It’s Played
In its first implementation, there were six teams of three, each with an executive
acting as a team mentor and a senior executive sponsor (the CEO, the president,
or the chief risk officer). The president, CFO and chief investment officer were the
stakeholders to whom teams pitched their opportunity and plans for approval. The
flow of the game was as follows:
In March 2008, teams were identified and given the scope of the project. It was
positioned not as a training program but as part of a large-scale business project.
Teams were then given training on how to work together as a team. They
were given approximately one month to work with their mentor and executive
sponsor to identify multiple opportunities they could pursue that would add
value to the company.
Teams picked an idea and began the process of developing an ROI to validate
its merit. Some teams found their project would not work and had to begin the
process again; others found the right project immediately. Once the idea was
vetted, teams had to prepare and deliver a presentation (and in some cases several
presentations) to the president, CFO and CIO for approval and sign-off. This process
took throughout the summer and by fall, ideas were approved. Throughout the
fall, teams implemented their projects. By December 2008, teams completed
implementation, handed any new systems or processes to the appropriate parties
and measured their project’s impact.
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Results
The teams not only developed new critical processes and validated key existing
processes, but they also identified high-potential market opportunities.
Three of the six teams were successful in delivering ROI results and creating new
processes or systems that are integral to ongoing operations at Redwood. The
ideas of these teams have been integrated into the company’s infrastructure and
produced a combined $3 million bottom-line impact in the first year, with $10
million expected in year two.
Several high potential new leaders surfaced during the program, and two were
moved into senior positions.
Many participants experienced “Aha” moments relating to: identifying
opportunities; presenting and selling ideas to stakeholders; vetting information
and data; being flexible and adapting to changing circumstances; working crossfunctionally; identifying leadership voids and filling them; and, managing politics.
In addition, MAPS (Redwood’s internal performance system) tools, including the
Values 360 and the Leadership Performance 360, along with several other indicators
point to the effectiveness of Redwood’s coaching. Performance objectives are being
accomplished and executives and managers are using the system information to
coach their people.
According to Kim Lamoureux, principal analyst for Bersin & Associates, the Learning
Leaders panel of judges was very impressed with Redwood’s initiative. “It showed a
real shift,” she said. “Executives and management took ownership of talent. They
clearly articulated objectives and were engaged in scoping, visioning, facilitating
and coaching participants.”
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Seagate
Learning & Talent Initiative Excellence
Seagate Technology (www.seagate.com) has been at the forefront of the storage
industry for nearly 30 years. Its global workforce is committed to the development
of the company’s next-generation digital storage solutions. From the first 5.25-inch
hard drive for the PC to the development of perpendicular recording technology,
the company has been pioneering new industry standards that have fueled
advancements in the digital information age.
In early 2009, Seagate significantly reduced its workforce, shaving labor costs by
more than 25 percent. The company reorganized and many Seagate employees saw
their jobs change significantly, both in scope and in content. To stay competitive,
it was critical that employees stay engaged and focused on executing the new
strategy during this critical period.
Learning Gets Lean
Due to a 43% reduction in headcount in the Global Leadership and Learning (GL&L)
organization and 15% cut in the GL&L budget for technology purchases, the team
recognized that a more effective learning delivery method was required if they
were to continue delivering their functional responsibilities.
Seagate employees needed direct access on demand to the resources required to
successfully complete the FY2009 performance evaluation cycle. And managers
needed further assistance building soft skills and competencies to successfully
execute their performance management responsibilities throughout the year and to
guide employees through the change management process.
Budgetary and resource constraints provided the impetus to create a truly costeffective solution. The team realized that Seagate’s internal enterprise wiki,
recently released by IT, offered an ideal platform. Using the Seagate Wiki (SeaWiki)
would require the team to rapidly adopt new skills in “wiki markup language”
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to meet the design and build requirements and allow the team to manage the
content in a dynamic “just-in-time” fashion. New content, edits, and adjustments
could be easily made and released within minutes, without reliance on IT or
outside vendor resources.
The Virtual Coach
The team seized the SeaWiki opportunity to build a “Virtual Coach” that would
provide action-oriented information on key management topics that all employees
and managers can use to build their management and leadership skills.
The Virtual Coach – built and deployed in just six weeks – synthesizes the content
and resources from several Harvard Business Publishing e-learning courses on
management and leadership. It also connects the course content with other
Seagate-specific information on how to complete HR processes, use HR business
tools, and build the skills to support these processes.
The Virtual Coach contains nine topic sections with more than 160 pages, 375
bookmarks and 100 tags. It leverages the content of 21 of the Harvard Business
Publishing Harvard ManageMentor modules, all eight sections of Leadership
Transitions, Harvard Business Publishing and other RSS feeds, as well as topic blogs
based on industry-leading articles.
Highlights include:
• Direct access to the information and tools that employees need, when they need
it, at their convenience.
• Simple navigation provides transparency to key learning and practical resources.
• User-friendly layout streamlines access so employees can quickly and easily scan
the available information and locate associated tools and resources.
• Holistic approach ensures that related topics and resources are at ones
fingertips. This highlights associated information that can be used in the
moment, or that will encourage a return visit at a later time.
Results
Through the creation and delivery of the Virtual Coach, the GL&L team helped
drive engagement and contributed to organization-wide communication of key
strategies during a critical time for Seagate. Employees now have quick access to
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information, tools, and resources, and can collaborate and network to build their
management and leadership skills. Meeting the high standards Seagate employees
expect With Web 2.0 technologies — social networking, resource sharing, blogs,
and tagging — employees are better equipped to identify, locate and access the
resources, tools and experts they need.
Allowing direct access to content that had previously only been accessible through
the formal learning management system has produced quantifiable results. For
example, the IT Helpdesk has experienced an 83% reduction in remedy tickets
during the latest performance evaluation cycle, as compared to last year. In
addition, more than 15,000 Seagate employees successfully completed the FY09
Performance Evaluation Cycle in the required timeframe of June 7 – September
18, 2009. This activity produced over 640,000 hits to the iMAP system, but created
only 462 Employee Helpdesk requests. This represents a soft savings of more than
$215,000 during this period alone.
To date, the Virtual Coach has received over 54,000 page views in 2009 and
is routinely is listed in the “10 Most Popular Pages” compiled weekly for the
SeaWiki platform. It also enables the continued delivery of Seagate’s leadership
development programs, while incorporating the ability to collaborate with past,
present and future-potential participants. Based in the principles of learning on
demand, it facilitates peer-to-peer collaboration and social networking; allows
employees to access, capture, and contribute to the knowledge and insight of
thought leaders within Seagate; and enables “just in time” informal learning that
fits the needs of today’s knowledge worker. Any employee can post questions,
start discussion threads and interact around key leadership topics such as decision
making or engagement.
Whether through a high level checklist of actions, resources, and tools or a step-bystep video demonstration for completing a performance management related task,
the Virtual Coach fulfills its value proposition – “Consult the Coach. Refine your
approach. Strengthen your skill.”
“Giving Seagate employees an informal and accessible learning experience that is
still aligned closely to corporate objectives and values contributes significantly to
Seagate’s high-impact learning culture,” said Madeline Laurano, principal analyst
with Bersin & Associates. “Using the Virtual Coach as a platform to communicate
about key strategic initiatives and share related resources, employees have stayed
better connected and focused on corporate goals during a particularly critical time
for the company,” she added.
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Learning Leaders®
2010 Award Winners
Vendor Profiles
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Adobe Systems
With a reputation for excellence and a portfolio of many of the most respected
and recognizable software brands, Adobe (www.adobe.com) is one of the world’s
largest and most diversified software companies. Adobe’s award-winning software
and technologies turn digital interactions into richer, high-value experiences that
reach across computing platforms and devices to engage people anywhere, anytime.
Acrobat Connect Pro is an integrated web communications solution that enables
live, interactive web meetings, virtual classes, on-demand presentations and
courses, and group collaboration. It allows sharing of a wide range of content,
including Microsoft PowerPoint slides, live and recorded video, Flash content, live
screen sharing, application sharing, audio, and multiuser text chat.
How it Works
Acrobat Connect Pro’s interface and interactive tools help participants learn
and retain content from virtual classes and self-paced courses. Connect Pro is a
very lightweight solution that removes the common barriers to e-learning by
giving learners instant, easy access to courses and virtual classrooms. All that is
required is a web browser and the Adobe Flash Player, already installed on 98% of
Internet-connected computers. Learners click on a URL—no downloads or plug-ins
required—to work through self-paced courses.
With Acrobat Connect Pro, organizations can quickly design compelling courses
with templates and a library of content, teach more effectively with instructor
management tools, and track learner progress to make sure the e-learning is
actually achieving its goals. Course management features include enrollment tools,
automatic learner notifications, and custom report features.
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Customer Impact
Customer examples demonstrate how this platform can be leveraged to improve a
learning organization’s (1) overall efficiency, (2) ability to meet time-critical needs,
and (3) capacity to support informal on-demand learning.
Constellation Brands, a leading international producer and marketer of more
than 250 alcohol brands, enhances staff training and strengthens relationships with
growers and winemakers, sales channel, and customers using Acrobat Connect Pro
to build and deploy a global, on-demand training program.
Previously, training programs were based on a costly, time-consuming, classroom
training model. New employees were flown to California’s Napa Valley for a week
of on-site training, which in large part involved employees sitting in classrooms and
viewing lectures with PowerPoint presentations.
After researching web conferencing solutions, the company decided to adopt a
hosted solution of Acrobat Connect Pro. The interface allows non-technical wine
experts to develop courses in-house using familiar tools like PowerPoint and then
use Adobe Presenter to deliver that content to Acrobat Connect Pro.
The company initially deployed only recorded courses online. Today, with
approximately 850 employees and partners actively engaged in online training,
the company is blending a series of live Acrobat Connect Pro presentations into its
learning model. Live sessions with experts are recorded and then made available
to people worldwide, helping ensure consistent delivery and wider distribution of
expert knowledge inside and outside the company.
Acrobat Connect Pro is also used for weekly production meetings, sales team
meetings, and brand manager presentations—streamlining administrative
workflows and increasing employee productivity.
Leading retailer Borders Group, Inc. trains its global workforce using interactive
Acrobat Connect Pro modules as the foundation for e-learning. After benchmarking
other solutions, the company opted to use a combination of Acrobat Connect Pro
and Adobe Presenter software.
Previously, Borders relied on field personnel to deliver face-to-face training. New
employees often had to wait for a trainer to be in their areas or travel to attend
a scheduled session. The company wanted to limit travel budgets and the time
employees spent out of stores. The team also wanted to ensure that employee
training was consistent and in alignment with the Borders brand.
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Results are evident in the metrics. In less than 14 months, nearly 85 e-learning
modules on operation skills, sales training, and management skills were rolled
out company wide. Borders reduced its field training staff from 55 to 30, saved
hundreds of thousands of dollars in time and travel expenses, and redeployed
former field trainers to in-store jobs.
New employee training has been shifted to store managers, who use features
within Acrobat Connect Pro to gauge employee completion of operator training as
well as customer interaction, sales skills, and other training modules. Every learning
assignment includes a hands-on component to guide users through in-store skills,
which store managers can readily oversee.
The net cost benefit of adopting Acrobat Connect Pro amounts to more than $4
million in savings over a three-year period (an impressive return on investment of
651%), with a positive cash flow achieved in just two short months.
The savings are comprised of a combination of hard dollar savings and productivity
gains. For instance, Borders is reducing travel costs associated with in-person
training and meetings by 90%. The cost of printing and collating hard-copy
materials provided for in-person training has been reduced by 90%. Facilities costs
associated with in-person meetings and training sessions have also been reduced by
90% using Acrobat Connect Pro.
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Bellevue University’s Human Capital Lab (www.humancapitallab.org) is the think
tank devoted to giving business and academic leaders meeting ground to work
together to measure the impact of learning and development investments. The
mission of the Human Capital Lab is to develop innovative and valuable approaches
to unlocking the long-term potential of human capital investments. The Lab
currently works with Fortune 1000 companies to evaluate the productivity of
learning interventions.
The Human Capital Lab is an entity developed and supported by Bellevue University,
a regionally accredited university, and a leader in corporate learning. The Human
Capital Lab measures the business impact of the corporate learning partnerships
the University has with companies including The Home Depot, Verizon Wireless,
Convergys, and others.
How it Works
Bellevue University’s Human Capital Lab brings together business and academic
leaders to research, measure, and isolate the impact of learning investments. The
Lab helps organizations overcome obstacles to measuring learning – going beyond
Kirkpatrick Levels 1-4 and actually isolating the impact of learning. Going beyond
Level 4, gives organizations a true ROI measurement of learning and the ability to
optimize learning for increased productivity.
The Lab takes a scientific approach to measuring and isolating the impact of
learning on overall strategic business goals. Doing so answers the questions that
most concern learning leaders:
• What business outcomes should be measured?
• How do we know the outcomes are a result of the learning and not some other
environmental impact?
• How much should be spent on business impact analysis?
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• How much money did the learning intervention contribute to the company’s
bottom line?
In 2009, the Lab formed a strategic alliance with Capital Analytics, Inc., a leading
research firm on human capital investment, management, and ROI. As a team, the
two organizations take a comprehensive view of an organization and evaluate
what is currently being measured, what should be measured, and what are the best
measurement methods.
Bellevue University offers an MBA with a Human Capital Management
concentration and the nation’s first and only Ph.D. program in Human Capital
Management to educate corporate learning leaders on how to measure and
manage investments in human capital to benefit their organizations. Human
Capital Lab experts develop program content and teach courses while working with
graduate students as they participate in and benefit from the knowledge being
developed and distributed at the Lab.
Customer Impact
The case studies below illustrate how two leading organizations have used the Human
Capital Lab’s research capabilities to isolate the impact of learning interventions.
Mutual of Omaha understood that educating its workforce would have inherent
benefits such as boosting employee morale, engagement, and innovation. However,
the company didn’t have concrete evidence as to the economic impact the tuition
reimbursement program was having on overall corporate performance.
The Human Capital Lab analyzed the tuition reimbursement program against Key
Performance Indices (KPIs) to determine if the investment has been worthwhile. The
study evaluated approximately 700 tuition reimbursement program participants
against a control group of 6,765 full-time, non-participating employees over a span
of five years. The study answered questions such as:
1. Does the tuition reimbursement program improve employee performance
and retention?
2. Do certain employees respond differently to the program?
The Lab predicted that employee participation in the program would increase KPIs:
career mobility within the organization and employee retention. In fact, program
participants experienced:
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• More positive job mobility and higher retention than non-participants
• Twice the number of positive job changes as opposed to non-participants
• A higher number of job changes than non-participants across all employee levels
The study illustrates the powerful impact educating a workforce can have. Even
during a time of reorganization, program participants were more likely to be
retained than non-participants. Mutual of Omaha discovered that by investing in
their tuition reimbursement program, they actually were increasing the skill level of
employees while building employee loyalty and retention, and adding to the longterm strategic value of the organization.
Sun Microsystems had a mentoring program in place, but wasn’t sure what value
it was contributing to employees and the company. Leaders wanted to learn:
• Does mentoring improve employee performance and retention?
• Do mentors have similar responses to the program as mentees?
• Do certain employees respond differently to the program?
The Human Capital Lab and Capital Analytics, Inc. evaluated 1,000+ participants
against a control group of 9,000 non-participant employees. The study spanned
a five-year period and multiple forms of data in the analysis including 79
spreadsheets, 68 variables, 108,164 lines of data, and 18 separate analyses.
For mentees, $12.73 was returned for every $1 invested in training and 25 percent
of program participants received salary grade increases versus only 5 percent of
non-participants. The mentees were promoted five times more than those not in
the program. For mentors, $16.78 was returned for every $1 invested in training
and 28 percent of program participants received salary grade increases versus only 5
percent on non-participants and mentors were promoted six times more than those
not in the program.
The mentoring program positively impacted Sun Microsystems’ employees and
brought tremendous value to the company as a whole. Sun Microsystems initial
investment in the program was $695 per participant. For each $1 invested in the
mentoring program, $29.50 was returned and the program improved participant
retention rates for an overall company savings of $6.7 million. These are highimpact results.
The business impact measurement conducted by the Human Capital Lab is
important for organizations because it documents, at a statistically significant level,
what training investments are doing to meet the organization’s business goals.
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Cornerstone OnDemand (www.cornerstoneondemand.com) provides integrated
learning and talent management software and services. Cornerstone’s Softwareas-a-Service solutions span the workforce lifecycle, including onboarding, learning,
social networking, compliance, performance, compensation, and succession
planning. The company also provides extended enterprise solutions to help
companies better train, enable and connect with customers, vendors, and resellers. Cornerstone Connect brings together Enterprise 2.0 technologies with social
networking to enable effective workplace collaboration, improve employee
performance, and drive innovation from customer and partner communities. By
encouraging collaboration and making it easy to join communities of practice,
Cornerstone Connect fosters informal learning, organizational knowledge
management, professional networking, and improved communication across both
employees and the extended enterprise.
How it Works
The Cornerstone Connect platform features a wide range of ready-to-use enterprise
social networking and collaboration tools, including:
• Rich user profiles
• Status updates
• Live feed views
• Communities of practice
• Discussion boards
• Expertise location
• Blogs, wikis and podcasts
• Rating and sharing of content
• Knowledge management (including alumni)
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• Tag clouds
• RSS feeds
Cornerstone Connect is a social learning product that helps address several
challenges, including:
• Identifying and capitalizing on latent professional networks
• Locating company expertise
• Building a corporate memory
• Retaining Gen Y / Millennial workers
• Engaging alumni and retirees
• Capturing reliable feedback from customers and partners
Customer Impact
Three examples of the software in use include Advantage Sales & Marketing,
Liberty Mutual, and Cornerstone OnDemand, which is using its own software
internally to engage its employees and its extended enterprise of clients and
alliance partners.
A premier packaged goods sales and marketing firm, Advantage Sales &
Marketing (ASM) uses Cornerstone’s comprehensive suite—including platforms for
learning management, employee performance management, succession planning
and compensation—for its more than 20,000 associates across 66 offices in the U.S.
and Canada. When ASM launched the Connect platform in 2009, one of the first
workplace communities it created was for its new Accelerated Career Excellence in
Sales (ACES) program.
ACES is a five-month sales and leadership skills training program designed to
provide qualified candidates with the sales and leadership skills necessary to
become successful business development managers or customer development
managers – vital roles in ASM’s sales organization structure. ASM uses Cornerstone’s
LMS to train the ACES group using a specific curriculum and corresponding projects.
ASM also had been using SharePoint to facilitate information exchange with
various groups within the company. However, limitations with the technology and
the desire to be more strategic in fostering informal learning led the company to
pilot Cornerstone Connect.
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For the social networking pilot, they developed a workplace community to
supplement the program by facilitating informal learning, enhancing the mentortrainee relationship, capturing corporate memory and gaining valuable insight
into the participants’ program experiences. The ACES trainee group consists of
millennials who also happen to be geographically dispersed – resulting in a high
rate of participation. Within two weeks, the community featured 21 blog posts,
generating more than a total of 800 views and 45 comments.
ASM plans to learn from the initial pilots, evaluating employee engagement with
the online collaboration tools and the quality of information shared, to introduce
social learning opportunities in other areas of the company, as well as determine
other use cases for social networking tools in the organization. This includes
“mining data in people’s heads” to capture valuable knowledge via targeted
questions, with the resulting information being a searchable resource
for employees.
Liberty Mutual recently launched Cornerstone Connect to facilitate informal
learning as part of the company’s front line management training program.
Participants take part in an in-person, week-long program, supported by
supplemental online courses via Cornerstone’s LMS. Using Cornerstone Connect,
Liberty Mutual’s team has created a management community to maximize and
extend the benefits of the training program in a meaningful way.
The group of 30 to 50 participants will be able to connect online with their
instructors and meet their peers before they enter the classroom. This includes
sharing information about their jobs, prior experience and management challenges,
identifying their goals for the course and asking questions of senior-level managers
in advance to help in structuring the learning experience. Beyond the classroom
training, the community can evolve into an information resource, where the
management development group can share content or program participants can
post updates on their action plans.
The pilot program is in its early stages, but the intent is to learn from the pilot and
look at other ways to integrate enterprise collaboration into the company’s training
and development initiatives, as well as its extended enterprise initiatives.
Cornerstone OnDemand is using its own platform to connect employees and
internal groups, as well as engage its extended enterprise of clients.
Cornerstone decided to “eat its own dog food” by launching the Cornerstone Dog
Food portal for its 200 global employees. The company also created “communities
of practice” in specific areas such as sales and marketing, client services and quality
assurance. The employee community is a communications vehicle for sharing
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company news and voting for Cornerstone’s “employee of the month.” Employees
go to the site to nominate a colleague, and other site visitors are able to vote on the
nominee. For the other groups, the workplace communities act as a one-stop resource
to ask questions, share information, and network with colleagues in other offices.
For Cornerstone’s extended enterprise, the company launched the Cornerstone
Success Center – a client portal that is a virtual, 24x7 user group and also allows
users to test drive the Connect platform. The Success Center takes advantage of
the platform’s Web 2.0 and collaboration functionality, providing clients with
an interactive forum for networking with peers and Cornerstone experts to ask
questions, learn more about various software features, share talent management
best practices, provide product innovation suggestions, and more.
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Executive Conversation
Executive Conversation (www.conversation.com) is a global learning and
development company that works with sales organizations to build business
acumen for effectively engaging and selling to customer executives. Its blended
training solutions are specifically designed for direct sales, channel performance
and developing manager coaches.
Sales organizations routinely face the challenge of equipping teams to credibly
sell the business value of their solutions. Compounding traditional issues such as
employee turnover and a steady flow of new versions, today’s economic climate
now finds customers demanding financial justification for even small investments.
In 2006, Executive Conversation paired a team of its consulting executives—
accomplished C-level executives from Global 2000 companies—with its instructional
design staff to create Know it Now, an online learning framework representing the
buyer’s side perspective.
How it Works
Know it Now is an online learning framework based on a curriculum that
Executive Conversation has successfully delivered face-to-face to more than 60,000
participants in 59 countries since 1990.
The framework is accessible standalone, whereby learners login to an Executive
Conversation hosted environment, or; as components are SCORM-compliant and
built to the latest standards, on a client’s internal learning management system
for clients who prefer to host Know It Now in-house. Architected to rapidly deploy
customized learning programs that meet client’s diverse initiatives and cultures, the
Know it Now learning framework consists of the following six components:
• Skills Assessment: Five versions of a proprietary Fluency Assessment that
evaluates individual and collective proficiency in articulating and selling a
solution’s power to transform customer performance.
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• Courseware: Know it Now’s modular collection of approximately 20 hours of
self-paced courseware may be used standalone, blended with instructor-led
training or blended to complement other client training initiatives. Adhering to
a ‘learn by doing’ instructional philosophy, the course content immerses learners
within environments to solve challenges.
• Performance Simulations: Learners control role-specific avatars in an immersive
3D selling environment as they navigate through a series of branching decisions
that model stages of the sales process. Constructive prompts are triggered if
learners head in a suboptimal direction.
• Manager Coaching Kits: Organized by where in the selling process a manager
wants to focus, kits provide step-by-step guidance for time-strapped managers
to build upon strategies learned in Know it Now courseware. Wholly webbased, all of the kits enable both managers and team members to complete
activities, store/submit/view work product, communicate, etc. when and where
it’s convenient for them. Designed for today’s mobile sales organization, kits
flexibly accommodate use in group settings, such as team meetings; use oneon-one, for more in-depth application; and distance independent use for teams
distributed across locations.
• CXO 2.0 Engagements: This integrated series of live, leader-led virtual classroom
experiences provides learners real-time opportunities to employ their new skills
with Executive Conversation’s Consulting Executives and address questions
relevant to their account portfolio. Designed for in-depth application, sessions
are modeled around actual accounts and opportunities with learner and leader
both completing pre-session, preparatory assignments.
• Management Reporting: Secure, online usage reporting is available 24 x 7 for
appropriate client management. Clients may generate on-demand reporting
by individual, group, or other meaningful audience segment to track team
progress, view which individuals have completed specific components and
compare results between groups.
Customer Impact
Companies representing a wide range of industries have found Know it Now an
effective learning framework for improving their business performance in support
of a diverse set of initiatives. The following recent use scenario illustrates how the
framework was deployed across multiple objectives by one enterprise.
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Having developed a key new growth strategy and suite of supporting sales
collateral, Polycom, an industry leader in collaboration solutions, realized their
team needed stronger financial acumen to successfully execute the initiative. They
chose to incorporate a customized Know it Now deployment into their strategy
to address the issue. Solution requirements included extensive client-specific
customization, an accelerated delivery timeframe and multi-lingual support for
their 700 member global sales organization.
Fluency Assessments validated competency challenges that could jeopardize the
success of the initiative. A Know it Now curriculum was designed consisting of a
sequence of learner touch points over a five-week period that blended a suite
of Know it Now self-paced components with live, executive-led, online sessions
tailored by geography. The self-paced components served to develop foundational
skills, while the live sessions delivered at specific milestones challenged participants
to apply their new skills and use the new Polycom tools with actual customer
opportunities through simulated engagements.
Polycom estimated a bottom-line benefit from their Know it Now investment in
excess of $1.2M and cited the following benefits:
• Time to market: 439 members of Polycom’s global sales organization successfully
completed their curriculum. Polycom estimated a hotel and airfare savings of
$384,986 relative to traditional training. Additionally, incremental revenue from
early mover advantage was realized, however not publicly disclosed.
• Improved productivity: Polycom estimated 4,788 hours of employee time otherwise
spent traveling was saved, which Polycom estimated was worth $600,000.
• Smaller carbon footprint: Reducing travel also means fewer carbon
emissions and minimizing environmental impact which Polycom estimated at
approximately 380,000kg of CO2.
Team-wide surveys and interviews revealed still further results, including a sharp
increase in new sales opportunities. The vast majority of participants strongly
agreed or agreed they were now able to more credibly articulate business
justification for investing in Polycom solutions. Finally, nearly two out of three
managers stated their team has experienced an increase in the number of calls made
on customer contacts outside of IT-decision makers who buy for business value.
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General Physics Corporation (GP) (www.gpworldwide.com) is a global performance
improvement company and a leader in sales and technical training, learning
management services, e-learning solutions, management consulting and
engineering services. GP helps improve organizational effectiveness through
innovative and knowledgeable training, consulting and business improvement
services customized to meet client-specific needs.
Companies face common challenges in educating retail/business-to-consumer
sales channels. Via Training (a division of GP) provides custom training programs
that address sales channel effectiveness. Its blended training and marketing/
communication programs teach product knowledge, sales skills and sales
operational tasks.
How It Works
In one study, 79% of retail customers stated that the retail sales professional (RSPs)
is the primary influencer in their purchasing decision. Therefore, the underlying
goal of each Via Training program is to develop brand and product advocates—
sales professionals who actively support and recommend client brands.
Via focuses on designing programs that capture the attention of the indirect
sales channel—professionals who are not usually required to complete training,
but do so voluntarily. These training programs need to meet a number of unique
challenges in order to reach out to these front-line advocates in retail channels
around the world.
Via’s clients must effectively reach a global audience which—in the case of
retail sales—can easily exceed over one million RSPs. As well as being a very
broad audience with a significant turnover rate, the global RSP population is, by
definition, linguistically and culturally highly diverse; perhaps as diverse is the range
of learning needs and contexts across this audience. To add to the complexity of the
training situation, RSPs work in a wide range of sales channels and often encounter
entirely different product lines and business drivers depending on their region,
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country, employer or sales channel. Finally, since Via clients have indirect relationships
with many of these RSPs, they must deal with stiff competition from multiple thirdparties who are seeking the attention and loyalty of the exact same audience.
Via works with its clients to develop, manage and host a personalized sales training
experience. Features of these programs can include personalized portals, social
networking, blended training and support materials, promotion and reward
programs, and measurement.
Customer Impact
Via works with clients to support consumer-facing sales channels in industries
such as consumer electronic, direct selling, information technology, retail and
automotive. All of these programs have one goal in common—to increase
sales. Often, its clients are working through indirect sales channels where the
sales professionals can actually sell competing products. In these cases, Via uses
technology and program features to inspire brand and product advocacy among
the RSPs.
For example, in the mobile device marketplace, a leading software IT company
faces a global marketing, training and communication challenge. Offered in every
developed country, these mobile communication devices are complex, feature-rich
products that research shows sell best when presented and recommended by welltrained RSPs.
The mobile device training program developed by Via had three primary delivery
mechanisms: (1) an online training and support program; (2) a field trainer
program; and (3) a social networking program.
While each mechanism has a specific goal, the blended approach of the program as
a whole means that integration is essential. Each pillar of the program augments
and reinforces the others to ensure the best training experience for the broadest
range of RSPs, as well as to extend the client’s reach and impact as widely as
possible among those RSPs. Via develops and delivers blended content to all
three pillars, hosts and manages all three applications and provides day-to-day
administration of these programs.
In another example, Via supports a retail training program for a leading consumer
electronic manufacturer. This manufacture’s goal is to turn its indirect sales channel
into product advocates. It has designed its program to take advantage of the
training rewards features offered by ChannelSmart, Via’s training platform. Every
month, this client offers its RSPs multiple incentives to complete e-learning courses.
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Incentive programs include an eBay-style auction, shopping catalog and contests.
In an effort to manage its budget, this client has taken advantage of DIY (“do
it yourself”) features and administrative tools to develop and launch its own elearning modules and communication pieces.
Via is also working with a major communications company to manage and host
its online training program. This program targets both its indirect retail sales
channel—developing brand and product advocates—and also trains and supports its
field trainers. This past year, Via has worked with this client to ensure that its field
trainers understand the changes in their newly redefined roles and have the skills and
knowledge necessary to excel in these roles. The company has deployed a blended
training program that includes online and face-to-face training, online assessments
and mandatory participation in the forum. Via has developed much of the content
and manages and hosts the online portions on its ChannelSmart platform.
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Halogen Software
Halogen Software (www.halogensoftware.com) offers a complete suite of webbased products that automate, simplify and integrate performance appraisals, 360
degree feedback, compensation management, succession planning, and learning
management. Halogen’s offering makes HR best-practices accessible to companies
of all sizes and its healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, education and
professional services specific suites meet the unique needs of these industries.
Halogen eLearning Manager provides a new approach to the integration of
learning and talent management. It integrates fully with the other modules in
Halogen’s talent management suite, giving users a truly seamless, closed loop
experience and boosting their return on their talent management investment. The
power of Halogen eLearning Manager is that it enables learning managers and
HR leaders to use the same system to link and track employee performance, and
learning, thus gaining actionable intelligence about their learning investments.
How it Works
Traditionally, performance management and learning management systems have
been separate applications. Halogen eLearning Manager fully integrates learning and
performance management in a tangible, practical way. eLearning Manager provides:
• A simple tool and single interface for employees to track and manage goals,
development plans, training activities, performance appraisals and
talent assessments;
• One centralized system for managers to direct all talent management tasks; and
• One centralized system for HR and learning leaders to generate reports
on performance ratings, skill gaps, competencies, training compliance,
certifications, and succession plans.
With eLearning Manager, HR and learning managers have clear insight into
organizational goals and the performance strengths and gaps across the
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organization, so they clearly know what training and development support the
organization needs to meet its current goals as well as its succession needs.
eLearning Manager administrators have the tools to measure the effectiveness
of their training programs by monitoring actual improvements in employee
performance over time – something organizations have been longing to do for
years to tangibly demonstrate the ROI from training investments.
A common workflow engine underlies all components of the Halogen suite – this
allows the processes of learning and performance to be integrated. Busy employees
and managers have one home page where they will find all of the tasks they have
to complete that relate to talent management processes, whether this is updating
their profile, completing a self-assessment, providing multi-rater feedback or
approving a training request.
Customer Impact
More than 125 enterprises and over 100,000 end users have begun using Halogen
eLearning Manager since it was released in late 2008. The two examples below
illustrate some of the real-world business benefits realized by these customers.
At Ocean Bank, the largest independent state-chartered commercial bank
headquartered in Florida, executives wanted to reduce the number of bank clients
using only one service by 20 percent. Talent management professionals at the bank
realized that training branch managers to develop cross-selling skills within their
teams was the key to improving results.
The bank tied the managers’ and the front-line employees’ goals with those of
the business. For managers, they tied the goal of reducing single-service clients to
the performance management process by adding the ability to train employees
on cross-selling as a new competency. This allowed the training department to
evaluate how adept managers were at training staff. Additionally, a productivity
competency was added to front-line employees’ performance evaluations, related
to this cross-selling capability.
The talent management team uses Halogen eAppraisal to input and track data
regarding goals and feedback, and they use Halogen eLearning Manager to provide
senior-level executives with training effectiveness metrics. Using the Halogen system
as part of an integrated talent management approach, the Ocean Bank training
team has successfully aligned their goals with the business’ and demonstrated the
valuable link between learning and performance.
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New England Organ Bank (NEOB), the oldest independent organ procurement
organization in the U.S., has taken a holistic approach to learning by implementing
a single, simple tool for all performance, development, and training activities.
The NEOB recognized that with the combined solution of Halogen eAppraisal
and Halogen eLearning Manager they could deliver on current best practices of
fully integrating performance and learning, as well as ensure adherence to strict
healthcare industry regulatory requirements.
Managers can create development plans and register employees for training, within
the employee’s performance appraisal, while they are discussing performance and
career aspirations. They can tie a development plan to a specific goal/competency,
addressing development needs in context, when they are being identified – all
without ever leaving the performance appraisal form. Employees can then manage
their performance and learning from the same simple to use web interface.
The Training Impact report gives the NEOB an indication of how successful training
was in improving an employee’s score on a particular competency by showing the
actual percentage difference in competency scores between appraisal processes for
employees who’ve taken training.
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Kelley Executive Partners
Kelley Executive Partners (www.kelley.iu.edu/kep) is the executive education arm
of the Indiana University Kelley School of Business, one of the country’s premier
business schools. It provides customized executive education to major corporations
worldwide. Executive experiences are custom developed and designed and
delivered in virtual, on-line, face-to-face and blended delivery settings.
Kelley Executive Partners has created an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) that
combines social and mobile technologies along with collaborative and competitive
team problem solving. The game has a flexible narrative and content that can be
altered to fit into a client’s needs. The ARG allows Kelley Executive Partners to
create an engaging and enjoyable learning experience while meeting a client’s
learning goals.
How it Works
The ARG is the twenty-first century version of an interactive business simulation.
Simulations have proven to be very robust and highly regarded by users for the
ability they provide to compete or collaborate around business problem solving.
A significant advantage of the ARG is that while teams may either compete or
collaborate, outcomes are not determined by computer. Secondly, the ARG is a very
immersive experience, which engages even senior executives to learn by doing, not
by being told.
Kelley Executive Partners research indicates that ARGs, while popular among game
designers and a select group of interactive marketers, have never been used for
executive education or business education in general. ARGs are uniquely powerful
in their ability to simultaneously teach participants about a wide array of topics
without being overwhelming. ARG participants are actively engaged, creating
content, solving problems, and reflecting on their decisions and processes.
The ARG supports a variety of learning styles- including kinetic, auditory, and/or
visual- which facilitates collaboration and teaming. The teams are expected to solve
complex problems by taking necessary raw data from multiple resources; thinking
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critically and analytically, and putting their individual skills, interests and abilities at
the disposal of the team to solve a common problem.
The ARG also is an excellent vehicle for effecting behavior change. Because the
game evolves depending on the actions and interactions of the participants’
feedback on effective behavior (or ineffective behavior) is direct and immediate.
It allows individuals to determine effective team behavior for solving business
problems, and allows management teams to evolve their own methods of
collaboration supported by team-evolved cultural norms. The ARG has been used
with international teams to accomplish the following learning goals:
• Acquire and develop social and mobile marketing techniques;
• Improve virtual team performance and collaboration styles; and,
• Create “acceptable use” policies and social media strategic plans.
The use of an ARG in custom executive education does not require any particular
hardware or software consideration for a user. The ARG can be conducted
anywhere, without any geographical limitation. It is scalable from a minimum
of one team of 4 – 8, to scores of teams of any size. The ARG can be (and usually
is) integrated with other, more traditional executive education tools such as case
studies, team-building exercises, and action learning.
The technologies used in the ARG are, largely, free. Most participants can use
their own smart phone or PC to participate. The costs associated with the ARG
are largely associated with the design of the experience and the instructional and
coaching resources required for facilitating participant reflection and reacting to
participant actions.
Customer Impact
The most recent version of the ARG ran over a period of four days with sixteen
high-level executive participants from Coca-Cola’s North African division. Utilizing
social and mobile media tools such as microblogs, blogs, YouTube videos, GPS, and
smart phones, participants sent and received information from characters in the
game’s story.
Clues led participants to various locations to solve puzzles and make decisions
about how their team would divide their skills and resources to move forward.
Using iPod Touch devices, mobile GPS devices, and hand-held video cameras, teams
communicated over distances around campus to coordinate their efforts and share
information with the Kelley Executive Partners employees facilitating the game.
128
Participants were highly engaged in the game as evidenced by their late night
tweet posts and self-organized strategy meetings.
Coca-Cola has seen several direct benefits emerge from the ARG. The ARG was
structured to enable Coca-Cola to understand how its millennial consumers were
using web 2.0 technologies (and avoiding television) so to develop more effective
marketing strategy. The ARG helped the team to identify specific actionable
marketing insights, strategies, and tactics that could immediately be implemented.
The immersion in the ARG also allowed the Coca-Cola team to assess which Web 2.0
technologies to use for the purpose of building culturally relevant and enhanced
collaboration for a geographically dispersed executive team.
129
Plateau Systems
Plateau Systems (www.plateau.com) provides enterprise-class SaaS (software as
a service) talent management suites. Major global corporations and government
agencies, including General Electric, the U.S. Air Force and Capital One Services are
using Plateau’s integrated talent management solutions to improve productivity
and facilitate strategic workforce initiatives around learning, performance,
compensation and career, and succession management.
The Plateau Talent Gateway combines the best of social networking, portal, and
Web 2.0 tools, allowing customers the ability to easily and effectively facilitate
knowledge sharing, collaboration, and learning activities. The Plateau Talent
Gateway combines a complete talent profile with social networking and portal
tools, and provides a seamless and direct connection to the capabilities of the
Plateau Talent Management Suite.
How it Works
In many ways, the Plateau Talent Gateway represents the future of learning
management systems by combining traditional formal learning with informal
learning activities. Plateau used Liferay, an industry leader for open source portal
and collaboration software, to create the Talent Gateway. Plateau augmented
the software to include numerous portlets and features geared toward the talent
management market, such as discussion boards, wikis, and blogs, creating a
relevant product that easy for customers to use.
In this open architecture, the Plateau portlets are built to the JSR-286 specification,
which allows organizations to embed these portlets in any other JSR-286 based
portal or embed those other portals in the Talent Gateway. The pre-built portlets
all have easy drag-and-drop capabilities and are completely configurable. The
Plateau Talent Gateway provides a configurable solution, that out-of-the-box allows
customers to pick from any of 76 available tools and Plateau Portlets and make
those immediately available to their users.
130
The Talent Gateway can be used in any situation where an organization is looking for
flexible social networking, portal, and Web 2.0 tools to facilitate knowledge sharing,
collaboration, and learning activities that directly impact organizational initiatives.
Customer Impact
OCLC, a nonprofit membership-based computer library service and research
organization, is using Plateau to develop and manage Webjunction, a web-based
community helping libraries meet their technology and training needs. OCLC
needed to find a way to bring together their fragmented constituents (library staff
and organizations around the world) and provide a venue to that would allow
them to engage in discussions, participate in groups, share content, and partake in
collaborative learning development with each other.
The solution was WebJunction, which provides library staff with an online
community to create, learn, and share. The site is developed and deployed on a
Plateau Talent Gateway platform that integrates social tools, content management,
Plateau learning management, customer management, and virtual meeting spaces.
WebJunction makes it easy for OCLC members to connect with friends and
colleagues across the library community using social tools; create custom content,
conversations, and ad-hoc communities; and learn relevant skills with flexible online
courses and social and learning management tools.
Plateau Talent Gateway is a recently introduced product, and based on customer
feedback and research, Plateau anticipates the Talent Gateway will be used by
clients in the following scenarios.
Plateau Talent Gateway can provide new product training to a geographically
dispersed sales staff whenever organizations recognize that they can’t meet all of
their sales training needs with formal training alone. With social networking and
collaboration tools, they can supplement formal training processes and optimize on
the job performance. These informal learning tools provide organizations with the
opportunity to use on demand, social, and embedded learning in conjunction with
formal sales staff product training. By blending the formal training with informal
learning, they can build an environment that allows them to better cultivate and
sustain learning.
Plateau Talent Gateway can provide training and information to the extended
enterprise (i.e., partners and resellers) whenever organizations recognize the
need for a more flexible and efficient solution. By pairing informal learning and
collaboration with formal training they can improve productivity and the bottom
131
line, while accelerating the time to competence for new partners and resellers.
By rapidly delivering training to their larger extended network of partners and
resellers quickly and efficiently, they can improve the quality and the convenience
of training while reducing the costs associated with providing onsite training.
Finally, Talent Gateway can be used by clients that require a strong collaboration
and knowledge sharing in departments such as R&D. By utilizing social networking
and collaboration tools, organizations can now offer an appropriate and
convenient venue for project team members and stakeholders to collaborate and
work together on a daily basis to plan and execute on projects.
132
RWD Technologies
RWD Technologies (www.rwd.com) is a leading provider of human and operational
performance improvement solutions that help employers maximize the return on
their investments in people, processes, technology, knowledge, and customers.
Since 1988, RWD has helped thousands of clients globally to enhance organizational
productivity through its broad range of integrated products and services.
RWD uPerform is a Just-in-Time (JIT) training development and performance
support platform that promotes social learning and end-user generated content. It
addresses the loss of accrued organizational knowledge, the challenges of enabling
a diverse workforce, and the use of complex technical applications by:
• Providing functionality to capture knowledge;
• Facilitating the retrieval of knowledge; and,
• Helping prepare a workforce for change by encouraging users to
share knowledge. How It Works
RWD uPerform is an authoring and content management application that
enables organizations to create and deliver targeted, high-quality learning and
performance support content and information to employees.
With RWD uPerform, authors with no programming or multimedia experience
can create, edit, and publish procedures, Adobe Flash-based simulations, and elearning courses. To manage this information across the organization, authors use
RWD uPerform to store, organize, manage, and distribute content to the entire
workforce via the web and relevant to their contexts. RWD uPerform also allows
employees to share knowledge and collaborate seamlessly via discussion boards,
subscriptions, and personalized context-sensitive learning and support information.
133
Customer Impact
RWD uPerform enables organizations to share knowledge and collaborate easily
across the enterprise. In particular, RWD uPerform helps organizations streamline
previously created learning content and can help to create and store new content.
Detailed below are three examples of how companies have successfully used RWD
uPerform and solved expensive business problems.
A leading food manufacturer deployed the RWD uPerform environment for a multicountry, multilingual, multi-application implementation. To keep maintenance
centralized, the RWD uPerform environment consists of a three-tier server
architecture for the entire end-user population. The company can manage enduser accounts, upgrades, and patches without maintaining multiple environments.
LDAP synchronization and Single Sign-On allow for streamlined management of
the end-user population. Also, the manufacturer leveraged e-record functionality
to create documents in more than ten languages. The food manufacturer continues
to develop documents globally and incorporate existing English documents into a
single, easily managed, global SAP project.
An industrial manufacturer wanted to maximize its new investment in an ERP
system. The company began introducing employees to the new system using RWD
uPerform simulations during Conference Room Pilots (CRP). Users could review the
new functionality at their own pace to prepare their questions and discussion for
their remote participation in the CRP sessions. The company saved time and reduced
cost through the uPerform simulations, which facilitated remote CRP sessions and
eliminated the need for employee travel.
To help differentiate itself from the competition, a leading personal computer
vendor decided on a global implementation of SAP CRM 2007 for its employees
located across five continents. But it needed to ensure employees would be
effectively using the technology in order to deliver on its promise to its customers.
RWD uPerform helped to complete two of the company’s primary tasks – setting up
and managing workflow, or the global approval process for learning materials; and
creating new learning materials based on the key functionalities employees would
use within the new system. For existing documentation, RWD helped determine
what could be re-purposed into new learning materials, thus cutting down on
the amount of time needed to create new learning materials. The documentation
was completed under a tight timeframe and was effective for getting a global
workforce up to speed on a brand new CRM system.
134
Vangent
Vangent (www.vangent-hcm.com) helps organizations achieve mission-critical goals
by analyzing key performance issues, building job-essential skills, driving behavior
change, and measuring the results. Vangent’s custom solutions which leverage
performance consulting, e-learning, classroom-based training, performance
support, learning evaluation strategies, and blended delivery interventions have
been deployed across a full range of organizational environments.
Rockwell Collins, a Fortune 500 communications and aeronautics firm, sought to
develop highly effective leaders who could inspire, influence, and leverage talent
in order to build customer satisfaction, control expenses, and manage assets to
support growth in a challenging environment. Through a collaborative design
process working with key Rockwell Collins’ stakeholders including executive
leadership, line managers, and learning and organizational development staff,
Vangent developed a year-long program to transform managers’ leadership
approach from a metrics/reporting focus to a people-centered approach.
How it Works
Vangent created a comprehensive leadership development program for Rockwell
Collins, one that supports transformational change within the organization. Called
“Leading in an Operations Environment,” the program entails a sophisticated
blend of job-relevant training, support, collaboration, assignments, surveys, and
mentoring to ensure that leadership skills are internalized, transferred to the job,
and sustained.
Learners’ managers introduce them to the program and provide support
throughout. An online community of practice integrates program components and
allows learners to reflect on and share what they have learned.
After initial training, learners work with their managers to create and implement
an action plan for transferring their skills to the job. As they apply their leadership
skills, learners receive ongoing support via job aids, tools, mentoring, online
135
communities, ongoing training, leadership communications, and recurring meetings
with their managers.
Customer Impact
The business impact of this program is a radical change in the culture of the
organization. Leaders invest their time in empowering their people and building
effective teams, allowing them to try strategies that they would never have been
able to previously. Because senior leaders have embraced and encouraged the new
leadership paradigm of empowering and investing in the people, all managers now
feel that they can spend their time motivating their teams and finding new ways to
collaborate to solve problems and meet customer needs.
The commitment that senior leadership has demonstrated for this approach is
spreading throughout Operations so that there is a new sense of unity in leadership
throughout the organization. Instead of remaining in their isolated organizations,
leaders are reaching out to each other through functional excellence groups and
online communities. They are sharing best practices and asking for help in solving
business problems.
An initial look at learners’ performance development plans and action plans
shows that leaders are raising the bar for themselves and for their teams. They are
identifying specific actions that they can take to unleash their employees’ passions,
drive innovation, and execute more productively. Several managers initiated new
projects that would never have been tried in the past. The culture that viewed risk
as something to avoid at all costs is beginning to see calculated risk as a means to
drive innovation.
Based on the implementation of the “Leading in an Operations Environment”
program, Rockwell Collins reports a significant improvement in leadership skills and
practices. Specific outcomes include:
• Standardization across all of operations as Rockwell Collins now requires
the program for all leaders, providing them a broader perspective of the
organization and their role in it.
• Stimulated demand:
o Other divisions are requesting similar programs;
o All classes have waiting lists, and the WBT serves as interim training.
136
• High ratings from participants (ratings of 4.4 and above out of 5), citing its
immediate job relevance and their managers’ involvement as primary benefits.
• High applicability as participants apply the program on the job:
o Using the WBT to facilitate discussions with their teams;
o Using resources from the classes to inspire their teams;
o Sharing resources and best practices online.
• Indications that the program works cross-culturally.
• 415 Rockwell Collins managers that are currently in the program are positively
impacting 7,000 employees through their improved leadership.
• Increased teamwork as managers are collaborating more with their peers and
using their networks to solve problems. They are using new communication
tools such as the online Community of Practice to share best practices and to ask
for help in solving problems.
Appendix I
Directory of Winner Organizations
138
Appendix I: Directory of Winner Organizations
AT&T www.att.com
CA www.ca.com
Cisco Coldwell Banker Commercial www.cisco.com
www.cbcworldwide.com
Booz Allen Hamilton Kelly Services
www.boozallen.com
www.kellyservices.com
NetApp www.netapp.com
Amway Qualcomm Redwood Trust
www.amway.com
www.qualcomm.com
www.redwoodtrust.com
Baker Tilly www.bakertilly.com
Booz Allen Hamilton www.boozallen.com
Seagate Technologies www.seagate.com
Learning and Talent Technology Excellence Accenture www.accenture.com
The Nielsen Company Bersin & Associates © April 2010 • Not for Distribution • Licensed Material
www.nielsen.com
Appendix II
Directory of Winner Vendors
140
Appendix II: Directory of Winner Vendors
Adobe Systems
www.adobe.com
www.HumanCapitalLab.org
www.cornerstoneondemand.com
Executive Conversation
www.conversation.com
www.gpworldwide.com
Halogen Software
Kelley Executive Partners
www.halogensoftware.com
www.kelley.iu.edu/kep
Plateau Systems
www.plateau.com
RWD Technologies
Vangent
www.rwd.com
www.vangent-hcm.com
Appendix III
Table of Figures
142
Appendix III: Table of Figures
Figure 1: Tracking dashboard for Coldwell Banker’s retail brokerage training
10
Figure 2: CA Sample Email Coach™ Message
12
Figure 3: Cisco’s Channels vSMS program
13
Figure 4: AT&T Business Direct
14
Figure 5: Finding the Right Information at the Right Time and in the Right Format
16
Figure 6: Formal Versus Informal Learning
17
Figure 7: Approaches and Their Perceived Learning Impact
17
Figure 8: Opening page for the Global eLearning Community site
19
Figure 9: Discussion Boards promote collaboration
20
Figure 10: High-Impact Talent Management Framework
22
Figure 11: Booz Allen Simulation Board
23
Figure 12: Bersin & Associates Leadership Development Maturity Model®
26
Figure 13: Competency Alignment of Amway’s LeAP Program
28
Figure 14: Qualcomm Management & Leadership Development Track
30
Figure 15: Amway’s Integrated Talent Development Strategy
31
Figure 16: Amway LeAP Program Model
33
Figure 17: Effectiveness is Dependent on Alignment and Efficiency
35
Figure 18: Booz Allen Internal and External Approach to Learning
37
Figure 19: Global Scope and Learning Audience
39
Figure 20: Global Onboarding and Training Framework
40
Figure 21: NetApp’s New Employee Onboarding Programs and Tools
43
Figure 22: The Kelly Experience Pilot Results
45
Figure 23: RWD uPerform: End-to-End Solution
49
143
Appendix III: Table of Figures (con’t)
Figure 24: Tying to Talent Management
50
Figure 25: Performance Support
50
Figure 26: Plateau Talent Gateway – Sample Home Page
51
Figure 27: Adobe Connect Pro Training System
53
Figure 28: Business Impacts of Situational Sales Workshop
79
About Us
Bersin & Associates is the only research and advisory consulting firm
focused solely on WhatWorks® research in enterprise learning and
talent management. With more than 25 years of experience in enterprise
learning, technology and HR business processes, Bersin & Associates
provides actionable, research-based services to help learning and HR
managers and executives improve operational effectiveness and
business impact.
Bersin & Associates research members gain access to a comprehensive
library of best practices, case studies, benchmarks and in-depth market
analyses designed to help executives and practitioners make fast, effective
decisions. Member benefits include: in-depth advisory services, access to
proprietary webcasts and industry user groups, strategic workshops, and
strategic consulting to improve operational effectiveness and business
alignment. More than 3,500 organizations in a wide range of industries
benefit from Bersin & Associates research and services.
Bersin & Associates can be reached at http://www.bersin.com or at
(510) 654-8500.
About This Research
Copyright© 2009 Bersin & Associates. All rights reserved. WhatWorks®
and related names such as Rapid e-Learning: WhatWorks® and The
High-Impact Learning Organization® are registered trademarks of
Bersin & Associates. No materials from this study can be duplicated,
copied, republished, or re-used without written permission from Bersin &
Associates. The information and forecasts contained in this report reflect
the research and studied opinions of Bersin & Associates analysts.
144

Learning Leaders® 2010

Transcription

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