The 2008 Learning In Practice Awards

As chief learning officer, Andrea Huff’s leadership challenge was to oversee the creation and implementation of a brand new internal talent management system at the company to address its need for succession planning. Her responsibilities extended to the creation of a new high-potential leadership program.

Huff said her biggest challenge in implementing the new internal talent management process was ensuring all the components of the talent process were integrated and reinforced one another.

“For example, [we needed to make] sure that the results of the succession planning and development program — Leaders at all Levels — was directly connected to the performance management process to track the behavior changes that occurred,” Huff said.

“Our recruitment efforts needed to be connected to our diversity initiatives, and our learning management system needed to be a vehicle to support our on-boarding process to help our new hires become productive more quickly. Nothing operates as a stand-alone program without being integrated into all other aspects of talent, learning and HR, and this was the biggest challenge.”

Another obstacle was the absence of a team that could report directly to Huff. Instead, she developed the multifaceted talent management process by collaborating with a cross-functional team.

Huff was able to create a talent review process that identified high-potential and high-performing employees across all departments and even launched the leadership program for high potentials.

In addition, she included a diversity recruitment initiative into the process, as well as a career development portal and learning management system.

Huff said her biggest accomplishments throughout this process were the positive feedback and behavior changes on the part of employees, managers and the executive team, in addition to the way the results of these programs help employees achieve business goals.

“Our employees say we now are creating a development and coaching culture and that the investments we have made in them have helped them become more productive in their jobs and more engaged and positive about their future with [Lee Hecht Harrison],” Huff said.

Article Keywords: blended learning communities of practice e-Learning formal learning leadership development LMS metrics on-boarding outsourcing performance management succession planning talent management technology virtual learning