GOLD: Candy Baptist, Director, Clinical Education and Academic Partnerships, Texas Health Resources Inc.
While Congress was still deliberating over health care legislation in 2009, Candy Baptist was already anticipating the challenges she would see as director of clinical education and academic partnerships at Texas Health Resources Inc. (THR).
Baptist focused on training employees to deliver comprehensive, integrated and coordinated care with a culture of excellence, all while maintaining cost-effectiveness.
Baptist developed partnerships with local colleges to improve the capacity of learning programs. These partnerships were flexible to allow for health professionals’ working hours. For instance, Baptist launched the Academic Partnership Bachelor of Science in Nursing program, an accelerated program that shortens the curriculum to 15 months. Baptist also developed the Clinical Nurse Leader program, THR’s first new nursing role in 40 years.
The programs worked. Registered nurses involved in THR programs had a pass rate of almost 100 percent on their licensure exams. Vacancy rates for registered nurses declined from 11 percent to 2 percent. Employees’ familiarity with equipment, facilities and policies at THR decreased employee orientation time by one to two weeks.
SILVER: Michael Cannon, Manager, New Employee Experience, Effectiveness and Success, IBM
IBM trains 80,000 new employees worldwide annually, and Michael Cannon was charged with developing a training program that could cross organizational and geographic boundaries while remaining customizable. Cannon shifted focus from training and orientation programs during the first four months of employment to a holistic experience that lasts an employee’s first two years at the company.
The New Employee Experience Virtual Team was created to collaboratively discuss existing conditions and best practices for training worldwide in various departments. The team decided to concentrate on mentorship between managers and new employees, building brand connection and IBM values, enabling career growth and promoting self-reliance.
Cannon and his team rolled out the Succeeding@IBM program in early 2010, and it has since increased engagement, loyalty, retention and productivity of employees. Managers from 22 countries reported that 97 percent of new employees worldwide had the basic capability to use IBM tools, and 86 percent were developing skills to professionally network within IBM.
IBMers also benefited from the program’s website, which emphasized a Grow My Career page. Improvements in the new employee experience allowed workers to become productive more quickly and improved retention.
BRONZE: Angie Harrop, Director, Learning and Collaboration, Bell Canada
Leadership training at Bell Canada was adequate before Angie Harrop was appointed director of the practice area in January 2009. However, Canada’s largest communications company was settling into new leadership and different strategic focus, and Harrop wanted to support the reinvented Bell. She expanded career development solutions at all levels, from front-line employees to directors. Previously, leadership programs focused on the top 15 percent of management-level leaders. She centralized those programs so that local branches could focus on team building and orientation. With an improved learning management system and new tactics such as using senior executives in learning activities, Harrop improved Bell Canada’s leadership programs while gaining attention and brand recognition.
BRONZE: Dan Pontefract, Senior Director, Learning, Telus
Despite substantial investments by Telus in learning programs from 2006 to 2009, there was no significant increase in the satisfaction and perception of learning in the company. Then Dan Pontefract enacted a series of changes in Telus’ learning programs to create Learning 2.0. He increased social and collaborative learning models, centralized learning management and strengthened the importance of learning in corporate literature. Because of these changes, Telus has seen a $6 million decrease in learning costs, and the number of page views and completions on new learning programs are growing exponentially.
