Chief Learning Officer magazine RSS

IBM: Driving Innovation

2013 05 20 00:05 AM

To stay on the cutting edge of technology and innovation, IBM leverages learning to continually hone global workforce skills.

With employees in more than 170 countries, IBM’s learning function may be called upon to provide learning at any time. This could involve anyone from a newly promoted sales manager in Bangalore, India, to on-boarding support for a recent graduate in Sao Paulo.

As a result, the fabric of IBM’s learning operation must be equipped with a strategic vision capable of addressing the company’s complex development needs. The company’s answer is to nurture a strong link between learning and business strategies.

“Our learning interventions are fundamentally related to creating business impact,” said Frank Persico, IBM’s vice president of learning. “We spend our time in learning largely looking at what the business issues are and then figuring out how what we do in learning can support those objectives.”

Persico said because customers largely perceive the IBM brand based on their interactions with employees, it’s even more important the company equip employees with the right skills and mentality to be successful.

“It’s not just a matter of getting skilled people to do work,” Persico said. “It’s a matter of realizing that the way IBM appears in the marketplace is largely a function of what our employees do and how our employees behave. Learning is seen as a key component of who our employees are and how it is they behave and what it is that they know.”

Further, given that IBM’s core business — business technology, analytics and services — is built on innovation, leveraging learning to keep its workforce skilled is a major priority.

Persico said IBM’s primary services of business analytics and cloud computing can only be delivered by employees with the highest knowledge base. Each employee must have a deep understanding of how each service is designed and executed, because all of the company’s major growth initiatives are related to progressive technologies and what he calls visionary business initiatives. As such, the workforce needs to constantly be up-skilled so IBM can maintain its position at the cutting edge of technology and innovation.

Persico said the company’s analytics and measurement capability is another factor that separates it from the pack in terms of learning.

IBM has made a strong push recently to use the knowledge and service of the business analytics technology it services for customers to measure the progress and depth of its learning and development programs. This helps it gain more insight into how learning is deployed, to whom it is deployed, and to understand where it is actually making a difference.

He also said IBM’s use of analytics gives the company an overall competitive advantage and helps its learning function operate at an enhanced level compared with other organizations.

The next step for IBM is to move from a reflective approach to learning analytics — retroactively assessing programs based on analytics — to using it predictively to forecast learning development. That means using data about the impact of previous learning efforts to create predictive models of which learning interventions will be best suited to performance issues or needs that may come up.

IBM is already using predictive analytics in areas related to retention and sales productivity. “We are linking the level of participation in on-boarding events for new employees to subsequent attrition,” Persico said. “In the seller space, we are looking at sales training’s impact on quota attainment and attempting to demonstrate causality between the two.”

DAU: Keeping Above the Fiscal Fray

2013 05 20 00:05 AM

Defense Acquisition University remains flexible and adaptable by focusing on learning despite looming budget cuts.

There has been no shortage of challenges for United States government agencies these last few years. From budget showdowns, legislative division and general dysfunction in Washington, many departments have found themselves at the center of a political firestorm.

Despite a challenging environment, Defense Acquisition University (DAU) — the training arm of the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DoD) 150,000-strong acquisition workforce — still landed at No. 7 on the list of 2013 LearningElite organizations. The achievement marks the third consecutive year that DAU has ranked in the top 10.

DAU’s continued success is due to strong mission alignment with the DoD and a flexible learning architecture that puts the learner front and center. DAU is also continually updating curricula, recruiting the right talent and rewarding performance.

The organization’s work on this front is never finished, according to Christopher Hardy, DAU strategic planner and deputy director. “To be elite and stay elite, you must constantly reinvent yourself,” he said. “Benchmark the best and adapt their best practices to your own environment.”

That ability to change has helped DAU stay focused during the fiscal chaos, perhaps best represented by so-called sequestration — the term used to describe the steep across-the-board budget cuts that kicked in earlier this year. The budget cuts have reportedly lopped an estimated $85.4 billion from the federal budget in 2013, of which nearly $43 billion is from defense spending.

Hardy said DAU’s learning strategy is performance-based, focused on aligning leadership priorities with each worker’s job by integrating learning offerings — both formal and informal — into the work experience and pinpointing how and where employees learn.

“Not only is it aligned to our senior leadership’s business goals, it also cascades down to individual employees’ incentive plans,” he said. “This strategy provides our employees with the right learning solution at the right time, at the right place throughout their career.”

To retain that flexibility and relevance, DAU develops and publishes a learning technology roadmap using straightforward implementation strategies. Hardy said the organization’s curricula designs are consistent with the concept that adults learn best by doing both in the learning environment and in the workplace. “DAU’s training and job support are becoming mutually integrated and supportive by using the same tools in training as are used on the job. As this ‘train like you work and work like you train’ approach becomes part of the workplace culture, a ‘work as you train’ environment will blend workplace and learning.”

To measure success, DAU has established a Web-based, real-time performance measurement system that tracks metrics such as organizational capacity, customer satisfaction, speed to market and individual productivity. It also identifies improvement opportunities.

In 2012, DAU had 93 performance tasks. Each leader is assigned individual tasks with milestones related to his or her work. But it’s not just paperwork. “It’s how we run DAU now,” Hardy said. “Once we got the planning in place and the metrics in place, it changed the whole conversation. Before it was all just opinions and who could talk the loudest. After we started showing the metrics, now we have it down to business.”

The performance plan starts with DoD priorities and cascades into specific DAU goals and tasks. Leaders review those tasks quarterly and conduct a formal review at the end of the year. “This enables management to make resource allocation decisions in the context of past results and allocate or reallocate resources as appropriate,” Hardy said.

Each employee’s objectives are set based on the organization’s overall strategic performance plan. Rewards are tied to specific contributions when meeting organizational goals. “The entire process is a deliberate, planned, measured, iterative and integrated mission measured and reported regularly,” Hardy said.

To go along with that performance and incentive plan, DAU’s learning technology roadmap is updated annually to incorporate emerging learning tools and practices such as mobile technology, simulations and on-demand video. The aim is to keep an eye on the future while delivering results now.

“Defense Acquisition University will continue to invest in the future and intends to maintain its leadership in the learning and development community,” Hardy said. “To go to the next level, we are transforming all aspects of learning by partnering with the very best to access their best practices, experimenting with new technologies and emphasizing the value and effectiveness of learning by doing in traditional, online and future formats.”

Accenture: Exploring All the Angles

2013 05 20 00:05 AM

Accenture’s attention to metrics and long-term planning allows it to design development opportunities that are focused, flexible and timely.

The scale of capability development efforts at Accenture plc is vast. It has to be: the company has 257,000 employees globally. Yet the way it approaches learning is quite uniform, according to Dan Bielenberg, the company’s director of capability strategy.

The learning function serves between 65 and 70 different business units, with a focus on specialization and driving the right kinds of skills to ensure employees remain relevant.

To do this, Bielenberg said the learning organization’s operating model has to align closely with the business. It does this through what it calls capability development leads — employees whose main function is to remain in sync with the business.

“They understand business strategy, have strong relationships with leaders, and they’re able to translate those business needs into skill needs and make sure that we have the right kind of solutions in place,” Bielenberg said.

The company’s actual learning strategy operates on two levels. First, there is the Accenture-wide learning strategy. This details the business imperatives that guide learning, the toolset of learning architectures and standards, as well as customized solutions and strategies related to measurement, training delivery and competency modeling.

Second, all of those things are applied to the different business units or entities. Bielenberg said this allows for flexibility and agility, and this strategy is designed to examine the business and learning landscapes three years in advance.

“We’ll go through a process where we look at a variety of data sets and inputs from our business stakeholders,” he said. “And we listen to our employees pretty seriously. We’ve got an engagement survey. We look at that data. We look at what our business sponsors tell us in terms of their satisfaction with learning. And then we look into the rest of the industry — at emerging trends and capabilities, new technologies, what are our competitors doing? And that’s all [put] into our learning strategy refresh.”

This annual refresh feeds investments and guides what programs are developed and what delivery infrastructures are built. For instance, the company is building more virtual and state-of-the-art classrooms in different locations around the world to enable local office training.

“Accenture is fundamentally a people business,” Bielenberg said. “We succeed to the extent that our people have skills that our clients value. Our leaders know this, and they understand the linkage between the skills people have and our ability to charge billing rates and so forth. Our job in capability development is to help keep that link very material and make sure the skills we’re talking about building in capability development are skills that tie directly into what’s important to the business leadership.”

Essentially, learning becomes an instrument to fulfill the business strategy. For example, Bielenberg said a few months ago the CEO conducted a business review and determined that the Asia-Pacific region would be a primary area of focus for global expansion. This sparked an examination of the company’s talent situation and associated development needs in that region.

Bielenberg said because learning is on the CEO’s immediate radar, it facilitates leadership commitment. This flows down to the individual units. Part of the challenge, however, is there is ongoing tension between people taking time out to learn and people staying on the job doing billable work. The partnership between the capability development leads and the business units helps to mitigate that tension.

Metrics also help to push the learning agenda. Accenture has done studies showing a high correlation between how well-trained people are, how chargeable they are and how long they stay at the company.

Last fiscal year, the company compared data from the past three years for some of its more successful and profitable client contracts. The study examined the people working on a project, leadership and what kind of training people took right before joining and during the project.

“We found if there was a certain penetration of training within the project team, the likelihood of the project succeeding and being profitable was much higher,” Bielenberg said.

That gets business leaders’ attention. The data can then be used to identify the contracts that may be at risk because people have not been adequately trained.

Moving forward, Accenture is looking to enhance its analytics capability as well as its efforts in mobile learning. The company is also exploring where massive open online courses — often referred to as MOOCs, when universities or colleges offer online versions of their courses free to the public — might offer opportunities to enhance its curriculum.

General Mills: Making Learning Collaborative

2013 05 20 00:05 AM

The food company leverages social tools and in-depth metrics to ensure learning reaches all employees and has an impact on the business.

A company can have the best strategy in the world, but with a mediocre and untrained workforce, success may be hard to come by.

“You still need to have great strategy, great execution,” said Kevin Wilde, vice president of organization effectiveness and chief learning officer for General Mills. “But talent is such a lever. There’s a heritage and a legacy from our CEO on down that just believes in this and holds the learning department accountable for bringing relevant and great things forth every year.”

Setting a workable learning agenda begins with business partner relationships. They must know that learning leaders understand their problems, their strategy and visions for growth that can translate those into needed capabilities.

General Mills, for instance, has a council of learning leaders embedded in the supply chain, leadership team, sales and other functions. Wilde has primary responsibility for talent and leadership development.

“If it’s the functional skills, that is the supply chain learning leader or the sales learning leader defining what’s necessary, pulling from the center resources as they need it and then executing things within the function on a global basis,” Wilde said. “It’s quality and regulatory training in China to make sure we’ve got food safety in our products. It’s supply chain in Cedar Rapids. It’s making sure we’ve got new ideas on productivity so we can reduce costs and then reinvest in brand building.”

Many learning services happen digitally. General Mills does a great deal of brand building, for instance, to ensure consumers can identify with its different brands — like Yoplait or the newly acquired Yoki in Brazil.

Wilde said in the past brand building was about television and newspapers. With the explosion of digital, the business has to adapt because consumers learn as much on blogs as they do via deliberate marketing channels, and in real time. Strategies may have to change quickly based on what’s happening on the Internet that week.

“If that’s how the role changes, then the competencies need to be tweaked, and your training needs to emphasize different things,” Wilde said. “I work with great colleagues so it’s fun to see where they invent things. I can’t say all the genius comes from the center. Part of my role is to figure out what other people are doing great and bring it around, whether that great stuff is in China, Brazil or here in Minneapolis.”

Wilde also is the co-owner of General Mills’ social collaboration website, “Connect,” along with the head of information technology. Connect has brought significant value in terms of peer-to-peer learning. Two years into the project, Wilde said the company has produced valuable stories of people bringing new products to life because they connected through the website in ways they might not have otherwise.

“At the end of the day, my vision is when people log into work every day they’re logging into our social site. It’s their primary portal and everything else comes off of that,” Wilde said. “We’re not there yet, but that’s where I’m headed.”

The company also has an interesting view on learning metrics and measurement. Wilde described General Mills’ learning measurement strategy as evolving, pointing to one measure that has had tremendous value thus far.

Called Holistic Margin Management (HMM), the strategy began several years ago with the idea of applying Lean Six Sigma tools to combat increasing and volatile commodities costs. The more the company has to pay for an ingredient used to make its products, the less it can do in terms of brand building, marketing or research and development for new products.

“Every year, we are providing another level of training to people involved in our products, whether it’s producing it, selling it or thinking about the next one,” Wilde said. “And every year coming out of that training and the application are fabulous stories that unlock dollars or value to the consumer.”

The savings are counted at an annual supply chain conference and typically exceed millions of dollars. Wilde said if one traces the money back to the source, it begins with training. Training provides the tools, inspiration and support employees need to produce productivity innovations.

Wilde said HMM is such a competitive advantage he can’t share some of the things that are taught.

“I admire people that do Kirkpatrick 1, 2, 3 sorts of things,” Wilde said. “But, ultimately, if you’ve got a leader that understands what learning and development is bringing to the party, you’re measuring it to make sure it’s having a great impact and good things happen in terms of new brands or financial resources — I’m very happy with that, and it works for us here.”

Coldwell Banker: Sealing the Deal

2013 05 20 00:05 AM

Coldwell Banker’s commitment to sales training is evident in its enhanced skills-based content that is not only collaborative but tailored to the mobile nature of its sales agents.

Crafting a successful learning strategy for a network of more than 83,000 independent sales agents within 3,100 franchised offices globally is no easy feat, but residential real estate brokerage Coldwell Banker has risen to the occasion.

The company’s corporate university, Coldwell Banker University (CBU), continued to thrive in 2012 after it emphasized performance-based courses and used new technology — such as cloud computing and online video — to train its agents and managers. CBU has since shifted its focus to developing content for managers at the local level.

“We looked at various markets and assessed the various challenges our real estate agents may have in the different phases of their sales cycle and enable them with the best possible service,” said David J. Birnbaum, vice president of learning at Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC.

The 107-year-old company enhanced learning and development to become cloud-based, mobile-friendly and user-generated. It incorporated streaming video to promote collaboration as well as informal learning that is personalized and easily accessed on the go. Each learning initiative, however, focuses on a common target: skills-based training.

CBU offered an array of classroom-based training, simulated virtual learning, online e-learning, just-in-time portals and a variety of user generated content to accomplish this goal and encourage agents to share best practices. For instance, through these tools agents can voluntarily upload short videos to discuss new ideas.

“We want to create online social learning portals and platforms that facilitate the informal learning that’s already taking place,” Birnbaum said. “Most professionals, regardless of their industry, learn a lot by watching other people do their job. We know that agents look up to and want to emulate the best practices of successful agents, so we facilitate that.”

The company experimented with new social platforms and remains attuned to its business metrics, linking all learning initiatives to specific objectives. Learning’s return on investment is also computed from the students’ perspective, not just from the company’s point of view.

According to surveys conducted by Coldwell Banker, 95 percent of CBU sales associates reported they were very satisfied with instructor performance this year; 91 percent reported they would apply what they learned in class on the job.

For whatever skill gaps remain, Birnbaum said Coldwell Banker aims to teach optimal knowledge behavior. “We have a very elite team of instructional designers that create innovative, engaging courses and constantly think about how agents can move their deal forward,” he said.

For five years, Coldwell Banker has been able to align learning with its business strategy on a Level 1-4 Kirkpatrick measurement scale, Birnbaum said. More than eight of every 10 sales associates who completed a CBU program reported their income would increase more than 20 percent as a result. CBU also measures pre- and post-sales data points on its core programs on a yearly basis.

Going forward, Birnbaum said the company will create more mobile learning to help employees get information in the moment of need. “Real estate agents are constantly on the go, working very hard for their clients, and they don’t always have time to take a class or even a brief class online, or module that’s self-paced,” he said. “We’re focusing on performance tools for agents in the field who want to recall quick ideas, lessons or skills that can be accessed on their smartphones.”

Meet the 2013 LearningElite

2013 05 20 00:01 AM

Watch video interviews with learning leaders from the top-ranked companies in Chief Learning Officer magazine's 2013 LearningElite.

General Mills' Elite Learning Strategy

Kevin Wilde of General Mills talks with editor Deanna Hartley about the company's award-winning learning strategy.

Sidley Austin's Approach to Development

Jody Rosen Knower of Sidley Austin LLP talks about the law firm's use of blended learning and mock assignments for new associates.

AT&T: The Marriage of Business and Learning

2013 05 20 00:01 AM

AT&T stays on top of the latest tools, technologies and methodologies to deliver learning to its global workforce while remaining in sync with business strategy.

AT&T’s website claims the company has the largest 4G and Wi-Fi networks in the nation. It also provides the largest international coverage of any U.S. wireless carrier. The telecom company does what it can to spread the message that it is ahead of the curve when it comes to technology.

Contributing to its success is the company’s learning and development function, which works in close collaboration with the business to understand its needs and drive results. Meshing the learning strategy with the business helped propel AT&T to the No. 1 ranking in Chief Learning Officer magazine’s 2013 LearningElite.

From the start, AT&T’s learning strategy is in direct alignment with the company’s core business objectives. Before implementing its learning curriculum, key business groups get together, including AT&T’s corporate strategy and development group as well as its CEO. The learning and development organization is at the table from the get-go, working to ensure that its programs are in direct alignment with the corporate strategy.

“Once we find out what the five-year plans, three-year plans and next year’s plans are, then the CEO team [has] its offsite and they decide our company’s direction: [They say] OK, what are we going to do over the next three to five years? They make their long-term planning,” said Ken Fenoglio, vice president of AT&T University. “Then they go to the board to get approval, and we’re right there with them in that planning process. We’re building our learning courses along the way so that we’re right in sync with the business planning process.”

Each business unit gets an action plan from the strategy team; the learning function then builds plans within the business units based on the annual three- and five-year planning process.

“It’s critical that we have people at the table working closely with leaders and others to help define our business objectives,” said Lew Walker, vice president of learning services at AT&T, “and then wrap our learning initiatives around those objectives so we can help the business meet and exceed their expectations, and ultimately deliver value back to our shareowners.”

In other words, no learning event is undertaken unless it has an impact on the bottom line.
“We don’t do the ‘sure would be nice’ training,” Fenoglio said.

Instead the company does pilot courses and administers test content to calibrate the planned training. Then there is a process of fine-tuning until the final product is ready and leadership approves. Then things are scaled and introduced to the masses.

After learning delivery the company uses Net Promoter Score, a metric to gauge customers’ willingness to recommend a product. Learners are asked if they’re willing to recommend the instructor or curriculum to co-workers.

Leadership commitment is another reason AT&T is the top LearningElite organization. Executives actively support a culture of learning at AT&T. In fact, senior leaders are involved in setting the agenda and shaping courses at AT&T University. Starting with the chairman and CEO on down through the ranks, leaders serve as instructors at the university.

“We believe totally in leaders as teachers,” Fenoglio said. “You don’t know your subject matter, you don’t know your business until you actually teach something. We have a nice blend of external and internal [instructors] that we have teaching [and] we really feel like that has gotten us a long way.”

AT&T University also has an advisory board made up of 14 senior leaders from across the company. These leaders make certain every program or course is aligned to business strategies. Fenoglio said nothing is done without their advice and counsel. “They tell us where the points of need are [and] where the business is driving,” he said. “They also make sure that we’re funded properly.”

More than half of AT&T University’s funding comes from the business units, which contributes significantly to buy-in, because if the business units don’t want or find value in something, they won’t pay for it. “And if they want more … they’re paying with their own checkbook,” Fenoglio said.

The learning services team, which is responsible for skills training, partners with the business to provide real-time training to employees on a daily basis. For instance, the team offers programs to help retail store representatives explain the seemingly endless features on wireless devices, TV services and platforms.

“The majority of my budget for learning services is funded by the clients, so they’ve got vested interest to ensure a great return on investment for the curriculum and deliver that content to people that work in their organization,” Walker said.

Meanwhile, AT&T has made efforts to ensure its use of technology in learning remains cutting-edge. Walker said the company is doing a lot of work related to mobile platforms and looking at gaming, even augmented reality. “We’re a technology company, and what we provide from a learning perspective needs to reflect the technology that we are taking out to our customers,” he said. “So all of those sexy things that everybody is talking about, we make it a reality.”

Some employees in AT&T’s retail stores and those who install AT&T U-verse — the company’s television service — now use iPads on the job. “They’ve got iPads and our training needs to reflect what they’re going to see when they get on the job, and so there’s a lot of work around that,” Walker said.

To that end, the learning team has created an effort under the leadership of Delia Hernandez, associate director of learning services at AT&T, to explore advanced learning technology. For instance, Walker anticipates augmented reality — a 3-D version of Web-based training that is still in its infancy — to gain steam in a few years.

“We can’t just be standing still and expecting that leader-led is going to have the impact that it had years ago,” Walker said, “but rather, [we use] technology to be more efficient in our training and hopefully stimulate a better learning experience.”

Even though AT&T keeps up with the latest technology in an effort to stay ahead of the curve, the company’s learning leaders know tools become moot if they don’t impact the business.

“While it’s great to say, ‘I’ve got gaming or I’ve got this,’ if it doesn’t impact the business and move the business forward and make our people better in terms of the jobs that they have to do, then there’s probably no reason to make that investment and make any of the changes that might be required by putting in some of these technologies,” Walker said.

That’s why the team evaluates the impact of any technology or training before rolling it out. At the end of the day, business impact comes first.

“We’re continually looking at how we can be more efficient with our training and make our end users as proficient as possible, so that when they go through our training they can do their jobs successfully and take care of their families and take care of their customers and make a good living,” Walker said. “We [consider] that very, very important within this organization.”

McDonald’s Special Sauce: Learning

2013 05 20 00:01 AM

McDonald’s commitment to in-store training has kept its learning function aligned to the business in the company’s most pivotal area: customer service.

When McDonald’s Corp. executive chef Dan Coudreaut gave away the secret recipe to the company’s famed Big Mac special sauce last summer, customers around the world marveled at the revelation. The secret had, after all, been front and center of the company’s marketing campaign for its marquee burger for decades.

Not part of the well-known Big Mac jingle — but perhaps equally as vital to the Oak Brook, Ill., company’s success — is its learning and development team, its other special sauce.

At a time when most departments are being asked to do more with less, McDonald’s learning department is consistently given all the resources needed to develop, deliver and maintain effective and relevant learning.
“Our impact to the business is clear to senior leadership, who continues to solicit our voice and support learning and development financially, through technology and additional resources,” said Diana Thomas, the company’s vice president of U.S. training. “On top of that, ROI is also clear to our franchisees, who rate our training and tools as positively impacting their people and business results.”

Thomas said McDonald’s learning metrics show that its top-performing restaurants use the company’s training more effectively than others. As a result, those restaurants enjoy lower crew and manager turnover, higher employee engagement, better customer satisfaction scores, fewer complaints and higher cash flow.

Every time a new product, tool or process is deployed, the U.S. training, learning and development team is involved to ensure restaurant performance will sustain or improve customer satisfaction. Every topic and delivery method is designed to meet a business need. This includes alignment across the company as the learning team partners with other departments, franchisees and suppliers to design the best performance services for the system.

“By shifting from being a training team to a performance solutions organization, we are expanding our capabilities to analyze customer needs and determine appropriate learning and performance interventions,” Thomas said. “This way, in addition to formal training, we are determining needs for performance support, communications, incentives and improved expectations.”

Once a learning need is identified, the team uses five moments of need to determine what, if any, formal training is needed in combination with performance support. The five moments are:

• When learning for the first time.
• When wanting to learn more.
• When trying to remember/apply.
• When something changes.
• When something goes wrong.

For example, the learning team is supporting the rollout of new technology used to develop crew and manager schedules. It was decided that the team should blend traditional classroom training with a virtual kick-off session and self-study e-learning modules.

To provide support during the actual schedule generation, the learning team enabled a help system within the application with multiple online job aids, including short checklists and show-me modules, which show learners how to use the application for the step they are on.

The five moments of need, Thomas said, help foster the company’s “plan to win,” a framework to design and deliver learning and performance services for all levels of the organization, from the crew room to the board room.

The plan is supported by goals in five areas: people, products, place, price and promotion. For 2011-2013, focus areas were elevating talent management, optimizing the menu, broadening accessibility and modernizing the restaurant experience.

“Learning is our culture. It’s the foundation of what makes us better,” Thomas said. “It’s deeply ingrained at all levels and in all aspects of performance evaluation and development. We don’t need to build and maintain leadership commitment to the importance of training. We need to support it.”

Thomas said the learning team’s alignment with the business ensures the company routinely feeds its talent pipeline. Learning alignment to the business also may be why it’s not uncommon for learning team members to become leaders in other departments within the company.

UPS: Promoting Learning

2013 05 20 00:01 AM

A cornerstone of UPS’ development strategy is to promote from within — an approach its leaders consider successful because of the efficacy of its training.

Global package delivery company UPS has three goals: create value for customers, transform to strengthen the company’s leadership position and invest in key markets to develop new business. The company’s learning vision is to provide and champion valuable development services to drive these business results.

However, as one of the world’s largest private-sector employers, UPS has less than 20 percent of its employees working from a traditional office — a percentage that likely will not soon change.

“As we look to the future and recognize the global distribution of our audience and dynamic influences that adjust our business every day, our ability to effectively implement learning strategy becomes even more important,” said Mary Kay Kopp, UPS’ global learning network director.

Based on research, market trends and analytics, the company has created two distinct yet dependent strategies. One strategy involves transforming the company’s corporate learning and development function into a leadership development organization. The other, the Global Learning Network strategy, aims to provide leadership and direction in training and talent development.

The execution of these strategies offers greater consistency and enhanced targeted development for UPS employees. It also has resulted in better use of company resources.

For example, to execute the company’s mission to create value for customers, UPS’ leadership and talent development team received a $1.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to create a training program for the on-road supervisors who manage drivers, called UPS Integrad: Managing Performance.

“We realized we needed to make an adjustment when our younger drivers began requiring significantly more time to become proficient, and more of them were leaving the company during their initial training period,” Kopp said.

Trainees now spend one week at UPS Integrad, an 11,500-square-foot UPS training center just outside of Washington, D.C. There, employees move from one station to another practicing the company’s “340 Methods” prescribed by UPS industrial engineers to save seconds and improve safety in every task — from lifting and loading boxes to selecting a package from a shelf in the truck.

Trainees also play a video game that places them in the driver’s seat and tests their ability to identify and avoid obstacles in real-time. They then progress from computer simulations to “Clarksville,” a village of miniature houses and businesses on the Integrad property. Trainees drive a real truck and must successfully execute five deliveries in less than 20 minutes.

In 2012, the UPS Integrad program reduced the costs associated with driver injury by 56 percent, reduced package delivery costs 12 percent and mileage/time efficiency costs by 7 percent. The company accounted an overall return on investment of 9.2 percent.

“The learning industry is moving at a pace and doing a lot of good things,” said Anne Schwartz, vice president of leadership and development at UPS. “Young people are taking over [baby] boomers’ positions. It’s really important for learning leaders to stay attuned to those things and pull in programs that allow the efficient execution of learning. Everything has to be tied to output. You have to make sure you’re moving the business with learning.”

Moving the business is why the company invests so much time in employee development: UPS invests an average 12.6 hours for each non-management employee per year and 28.3 hours for each management employee. UPS also develops employees based on its legacy of promoting from within.

“We believe the people we bring on, who learn the business and run the business, understand more about the business than people we could hire fresh off the streets to replace them,” Schwartz said. “Investing in our employees is a hallmark of our business, and we invest in employees with learning opportunities to reflect that.”

Kopp and Schwartz said the large number of promotions at UPS indicate its development programs are successful. Roughly 60 percent of the firm’s full-time drivers were once part-time. Further, nearly 80 percent of full-time managers — including most vice presidents — once held non-management positions.

Jiffy Lube: Running Full Speed

2013 05 20 00:01 AM

Jiffy Lube’s comprehensive Web-based learning system maintains a standard level of knowledge while conceptualizing a clear path for continued development for employees.

Having to facilitate service-worker training for 20,000 employees across 2,000 retail locations in the United States and Canada can make the complexities of fixing a car’s transmission or an oil change seem like a walk in the park.

But the learning team at Jiffy Lube International, the automotive maintenance chain owned by global energy provider Shell, has developed a blended approach to training that has the company running along just fine.

Jiffy Lube, a 100 percent franchise system, depends on its in-store technicians’ skills to deliver consistent service to customers. The typical new hire is between ages 18 and 25. And for most of its employees, Jiffy Lube isn’t just their first job in the retail business — an industry fraught with high turnover — it’s their first job, period.

“Being able to deliver a consistent customer experience, high-quality service and vehicle maintenance and repair is obviously a challenge with that type of demographic and that type of footprint,” said Ken Barber, manager of learning and development for Jiffy Lube.

The desire to have a program that meets the needs of such a distinct employee constituency is the main reason the learning function moved away from a model of videos and face-to-face training to a Web-based ecosystem of learning and certification testing, Barber said.

Jiffy Lube’s Web-based in-store training, Jiffy Lube University (JLU), not only is effective at engaging the company’s younger demographic — thanks to its use of technology and game-like mechanisms — it provides evolving service technicians with a clear visual map for continued development, encouraging them to stay longer.

Within the first 30 days of employment, Barber said all service center employees are required to complete a Web-based training course on orientation and safety. They also have to begin online training for one position in the store.

Barber said every 30 days thereafter the new technician goes through an online training course for every in-store position. That continues for three years, Barber said, at which time the employee will have completed the company’s advanced management training.

This process is replicated in each of the franchised service centers. Barber said the ownership structure of Jiffy Lube’s service centers varies. An individual owner may operate a single location in a small town, while another owner may have a portfolio of up to 500 locations spread across the country or within a given region.

Either way, Jiffy Lube’s framework for learning is the same comprehensive, four-part blended model.

First, employees must complete the Web-based training course. “Those courses are designed with our audience of 18- to 25-year-olds in mind,” Barber said. “So it’s very interactive, there’s a great deal of visuals involved [and] a lot of video. You can see as well as hear how to perform a service.”

The second step is to pass a certification test. Employees must pass each test with a score of 80 percent to continue to the next step in the learning process.

The third step involves taking that new knowledge and applying it to the job. For this, the learning function administers a document called a Daily Training Observation Guide (DTOG).

“The DTOG becomes a dual purpose tool,” Barber said. On one hand, it is a learning tool: it breaks down, step by step, how to perform a service or job. On the other, it’s used as a scoring tool for the supervisor to measure students’ progress.

The DTOG produces three scores: “1,” “2” or “P.” One indicates the student did the step or process wrong. Two means the student performed sufficiently, but there are still areas for coaching. The final score — P — indicates the student is proficient and has completed all of the job requirements.

At that point, the manager logs a passing student’s certification in the JLU database for record keeping. In 2012, Barber said Jiffy Lube tallied more than 940,000 completed courses and earned more than 150,000 certifications.

For employees taking their development into a supervisory role, the company adds a three-day, instructor-led training course to the process. There, Barber said aspiring managers are instructed in leadership, time and financial management, and goal setting. Once completed, the final step for managers-to-be is to complete a business simulation in the JLU Web portal. The simulation presents students with challenges and questions they are likely to face in the store, as well as some less likely to arise. Decisions are linked with points, and a proper score is required to become a certified manager.

So far the approach has paid off. In the last three years, Barber said the company has seen a 33 percent improvement in the turnover rate system-wide — a mark that saves Jiffy Lube tens of millions of dollars a year in new employee training costs.

P&G Sells Learning

2013 05 20 00:01 AM

Procter & Gamble NA CBD Capability drives individual manager engagement along with employee accountability and rigorous follow-up.

To say Procter & Gamble NA CBD Capability (P&G) is a learning organization aligned to the business would be an understatement. In a way, it is the business.

CBD stands for customer business development, a sales function within the company; the capability team is the unit within CBD responsible for training the sales division. That’s in addition to a companywide learning and development function driven through human resources. Any increase in development is likely to result in a sales boost, which in turn adds to bottom-line growth.

Further, the top L&D professionals charged with leading the team are sales people first. They managed customers early in their careers and then became L&D professionals. The other functional business divisions within P&G operate in a comparable vein.

Either way, the mission and values for the organization are the same as with many among the LearningElite: to deliver learning that is relevant, timely, targeted and measurable.

Walter Knox, P&G’s North America CBD Capability leader, said to ensure the function’s development goals are met its learning team follows a standardized industry framework of preparation, follow-through and evaluation — also known as “Prep up, step up and follow up.”

What sets the capability team apart in its approach to the framework, however, is the level to which it requires individual team members and managers to be engaged in the development process.

“The employee identifies what it is that he or she needs to learn in order to deliver his or her business results,” Knox said, referencing the brand of employee-driven ownership the capability team emphasizes.

Also important is the level of manager engagement in the individual development process. Once people identify the areas in which they need to grow in their sales role, their manager is brought in to map out a course for learning. Knox said this level of manager engagement is pivotal — and noteworthy — to the capability team’s approach to training.

The capability team then offers a blended approach during the actual follow-through, or step up phase of an individual’s development. Depending on the individual’s learning needs and path mapped out with his or her manager, Knox said content delivery could happen in a classroom, virtually, in a podcast or other medium.
The real nuts and bolts of the P&G capability team’s strategy come through its measurement and follow-up, said Beth White Marshall, the measurement and evaluations analyst for the capability team.

The first measurement benchmark comes after an individual’s learning plan. The employee fills out a training evaluation, and those results are then benchmarked against other global companies. Knox said the employee and manager also sit down to discuss what was learned as well as how the plans apply learning to specific business objectives discussed in the preparation phase.

Roughly 45 days later, the capability team does a follow-up. The team sends the individual a note asking how he or she has applied learning to the job. It continues to track learning effectiveness via an online tracking system, which monitors the individual’s progress and evaluates whether performance improvements led to increased sales.

The capability team continuously evaluates the effectiveness of each learning program. It does a comprehensive review after each program is completed — annually for classroom programs, but reviews are quarterly or ongoing for e-learning and other forms. Knox said the team also holds a quarterly meeting with senior leaders to present and review scorecards and metrics on each program.

In 2012, the capability team conducted an impact study showing sales are estimated to increase by up to 3.84 percent as a result of training. In terms of return on investment, the team said its values have exceeded its own internal standard.

“We are a culture of learning,” Knox said. “We are a learning organization. And so our overall objective is to make sure that we have an inspired and enabled agile group of learners, thinkers and doers.”

2013 LearningElite Top 10

2013 05 20 00:01 AM

Chief Learning Officer magazine's LearningElite program honors the best organizations for learning and development. Meet this year's top 10.

AT&T: The Marriage of Business and Learning

Deanna Hartley

AT&T stays on top of the latest tools, technologies and methodologies to deliver learning to its global workforce while remaining in sync with business strategy.

McDonald’s Special Sauce: Learning

Ladan Nikravan

McDonald’s commitment to in-store training has kept its learning function aligned to the business in the company’s most pivotal area: customer service.

UPS: Promoting Learning

Ladan Nikravan

A cornerstone of UPS’ development strategy is to promote from within — an approach its leaders consider successful because of the efficacy of its training.

Jiffy Lube: Running Full Speed

Frank Kalman

Jiffy Lube’s comprehensive Web-based learning system maintains a standard level of knowledge while conceptualizing a clear path for continued development for employees.

P&G Sells Learning

Frank Kalman

Procter & Gamble NA CBD Capability drives individual manager engagement along with employee accountability and rigorous follow-up.

IBM: Driving Innovation

Deanna Hartley

To stay on the cutting edge of technology and innovation, IBM leverages learning to continually hone global workforce skills.

DAU: Keeping Above the Fiscal Fray

Mike Prokopeak

Defense Acquisition University remains flexible and adaptable by focusing on learning despite looming budget cuts.

Accenture: Exploring All the Angles

Kellye Whitney

Accenture’s attention to metrics and long-term planning allows it to design development opportunities that are focused, flexible and timely.

General Mills: Making Learning Collaborative

Kellye Whitney

The food company leverages social tools and in-depth metrics to ensure learning reaches all employees and has an impact on the business.

Coldwell Banker: Sealing the Deal

Jennifer Kahn

Coldwell Banker’s commitment to sales training is evident in its enhanced skills-based content that is not only collaborative but tailored to the mobile nature of its sales agents.

To view the full list of the 2013 LearningElite, click here.

The Week That Was

2013 05 17 12:30 PM

The top five stories from the week of May 13. Also, authentic leadership: legit concept or terrible management fad?

Millennials Have Information, Not Knowledge

2013 05 17 10:00 AM

Younger workers have unlimited information at their fingertips, but they still need to take advantage of the wisdom of older workers to become knowledgeable.

General Mills' Elite Learning Strategy

2013 05 17 00:01 AM

Kevin Wilde of General Mills talks with editor Deanna Hartley about the company's award-winning learning strategy.

Little Improvement in Wage Gains Likely

2013 05 16 08:00 AM

Private sector workers are likely to see little or no improvement in the overall pace of annual wage increases in the coming months, according to a new index.

Arlington, Va. — May 15

Private sector workers are likely to see little or no improvement in the overall pace of annual wage increases in the coming months, according to the preliminary second quarter Wage Trend Indicator (WTI) released today by Bloomberg BNA, a publisher of financial news and information.

The index declined to 98.68 in the second quarter from 98.73 in the first quarter. During the past two years, the WTI has remained within a narrow range, fluctuating up and down from 98.47 to 98.75.

During its history, the WTI has predicted a turning point in wage trends six to nine months before the trends are apparent in other economic measures. A sustained increase in the WTI forecasts greater pressure to raise private sector wages, while a sustained decline is predictive of a deceleration in the rate of wage increases.

Reflecting mixed economic conditions, three of the WTI's seven components made positive contributions to the preliminary second quarter reading, while three factors were negative and one was neutral.

Among the WTI's seven components, the three positive contributors to the preliminary second quarter reading were job losers as a share of the labor force and the unemployment rate, both from U.S. Department of Labor; and industrial production, reported by the Federal Reserve Board.

The three negative factors were forecasters' expectations for the rate of inflation, compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia; average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers, from the Department of Labor; and the share of employers planning to hire production and service workers in the coming months, measured by Bloomberg BNA's quarterly employment outlook survey.

The neutral component was the share of employers reporting difficulty in filling professional and technical jobs, also from Bloomberg BNA's employment survey.

Bloomberg BNA's Wage Trend Indicator is designed to serve as a yardstick for employers, analysts and policymakers to identify turning points in private sector wage patterns. It also aims to provide timely information for business and human resource analysts and executives as they plan for year-to-year changes in compensation costs.

Source: Bloomberg BNA

Executives: U.S. Businesses Not Delivering Societal Impact

2013 05 16 08:00 AM

The majority of employees and executives believe that businesses are not doing enough to instill in their cultures a sense of purpose aimed at making a positive impact, a new survey suggests.

New York — May 16

A new online survey released Thursday by Deloitte finds that the majority of employees and executives believe that businesses are not doing enough to instill in their cultures a sense of purpose aimed at making a positive impact.

The annual Deloitte Core Beliefs & Culture survey also found that organizations that focus beyond profits and create "a culture of purpose" are more likely to find long-term success. An overwhelming majority of respondents who said their company has a strong sense of purpose also said their company has a history of strong financial performance.

Moreover, the survey, conducted online by Harris Interactive, identified many activities that contribute to creating a sense of purpose at work, including activities that make a positive impact on clients, employees, communities and society.

When asked what types of efforts they considered helpful in achieving a sense of purpose, employees and executives both recognized many activities as strong factors — such as products and services that make a positive impact on clients, employee development and mentorship and volunteerism.

The survey results also shine a light on the impact business can have on government and nonprofits. Both employees (46 percent) and executives (60 percent) strongly agreed that government cannot reach its full potential without the help of the business community. Furthermore, employees (45 percent) and executives (54 percent) also agreed that nonprofits cannot reach their full potential without the help of the business community.

Respondents who said their organization had a strong sense of purpose were more likely to say their company had performed well financially over the last year (90 percent) and historically (91 percent). They also were more likely to say their company had a distinct brand that stood out among competitors (91 percent), strong customer satisfaction (94 percent) and strong employee satisfaction (79 percent).

By comparison, of the respondents who said their organization did not have a strong purpose, far fewer said their company had performed well financially over the last year (65 percent) or historically (66 percent). They were also less likely to say their organization had a distinct brand that stood out among competitors (61 percent), had strong customer satisfaction (63 percent) and strong employee satisfaction (19 percent).

In addition, a large majority (85 percent) of executives were more likely to agree that their company's sense of purpose is part of the reason they chose to work there, compared with 61 percent of employees who agreed that a strong sense of purpose was one of the reasons they selected their employer.

Source: Deloitte

Three Ways to Improve E-Learning

2013 05 15 00:03 AM

If you find e-learning to be among the most efficient methods of learning delivery, you’re not alone. But these technology trends can take it a step further.

Technological advances are challenging learning professionals to rethink how they approach more traditional methods of delivery, such as e-learning.

Studies have shown that e-learning is one of the most effective methods of learning delivery, especially in safety and health care compliance. Studies also have shown that the method is cost-efficient and saves time over classroom training.

For example, according to a client study by UL Workplace Health and Safety, workers’ compensation insurer Workforce Safety & Insurance (WSI) implemented a program to provide safety training to policyholders, including access to more than 300 e-learning health and safety modules. The results showed savings to employers of more than $3.6 million in training costs and a decline in work-related injuries demonstrated via reduced workers’ compensation premium charges of 72.3 percent.

Three technology trends can help learning professionals aiming to increase the quality and use of e-learning programs. They are gamification, scenario-based learning and informal learning.

Game-Based Learning

Organizations have worked game-based learning into their e-learning programs because evidence suggests that the immersive and engaging nature of the method accelerates learning, improves skill acquisition and retention.

Karl Kapp, professor of instructional technology and assistant director of the Institute for Interactive Technologies at Bloomsburg University, writes frequently about gamification. In his 2012 paper, “What Every Chief Learning Officer Needs to Know About Games and Gamification for Learning,” he urges learning leaders to embrace gamification. He writes: “Games in our training programs are not a break from learning — they are learning. They are everything we say should be a part of great instructional design. They engage the learner, are interactive and they enable the learner to get immediate feedback and to demonstrate mastery.”

The following examples demonstrate game-based learning’s effectiveness.

In 2012, Deloitte published an article by Doug Palmer, Steve Lunceford and Aaron Patton titled “The Engagement Economy — How Gamification Is Reshaping Businesses.” Included are case studies and examples from numerous organizations such as SAP, Cisco and Samsung. They all cite improved employee performance through implementing a game-based learning initiative.

Traci Sitzmann, assistant professor at the University of Colorado at Denver Business School, found in a study that learners’ “post-training self-efficacy was 20 percent higher, declarative knowledge was 11 percent higher, procedural knowledge was 14 percent higher and retention was 9 percent higher for trainees taught with simulation games, relative to a comparison group.”

Finally, a paper published by e-learning production company Digitec Interactive showed a significant reduction in training time through gamification, with one organization citing a 50 percent decrease when it implemented game-based training.

Scenario-Based Learning

As with gamification, technology is making it easier to create more context-rich scenario lessons.

Scenario-based learning presents learners with a situation and guides them through choices and decisions to navigate the task or problem. Instead of showing learners the best way to complete a task and then having them repeat that activity, learners are directed through the scenario and allowed to make choices.

In her 2012 book Scenario-Based E-Learning, Ruth Clark makes the case that scenario-based learning accelerates expertise by providing opportunities for learners to gain experience in a controlled and safe environment.

Separately, in a 2009 article Clark asserts that scenario-based learning, when applied with solid instructional design methodology, can dramatically decrease training time. She cites a U.S. Air Force case study in which “25 hours of scenario-based e-learning that simulated multiple electrical equipment failures raised the expertise of two-year Air Force technicians to the same level as 10-year veterans.”

Additionally, companies using e-learning have taken scenario-based learning to technological heights by allowing learners to become active participants in a simulation video and see firsthand the consequences of choice and behaviors.

One organization, video simulation company Will Interactive, uses a virtual learning simulation tool to team up with organizations including the U.S. Army, National Football League and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to create video vignettes in which learners choose a character and proceed through scenarios, making choices and seeing the results.

Formalizing Informal Learning

While gamification and scenario-based learning are enhancing our formal learning programs, informal learning can be a relevant and valuable mechanism for effective retention as well.

Learners experience moment-of-need learning opportunities as a matter of routine in daily life. Picture a driver with a flat tire. Instead of calling for assistance, he or she uses a smartphone to watch a short YouTube tutorial on changing a tire.

But how do learning professionals plan for random and unexpected moments of need in the workplace? Informal learning means finding ways to capture these personal “aha” moments and allow learning to occur on demand.

Mobile technology is being integrated into health and safety products that allow workers to use their mobile device and a QR code to access moment-of-need information. A worker might encounter a jammed piece of machinery and need to know the appropriate and safe method for locking out the equipment. A quick scan of a well-placed QR code on the machine immediately pulls up useful information such as specification data sheets and a video tutorial on the proper lockout procedure.

Another way to use informal learning is through an incident management system, which allows workers to report incidents or unsafe practices in the workplace.

When there is an incident and investigation, the details are recorded in the system as an event and can be automatically turned into training modules for the entire organization. Additional training modules can be created as part of ongoing curriculum development related to the specific topic. This is an effective blend of informal and formal learning.

Holly Howell is director of professional learning services for UL Workplace Health and Safety. She can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

Study: Most Firms Don’t Offer Specialized Courses for Technical Pros

2013 05 14 07:00 AM

The top five leadership challenges for CLOs are delivering on projects with fewer resources, recruiting needed talent, balancing team coaching needs versus project needs and team-skill development, a new study suggests.

Elkridge, Md. — May 13

Global performance improvement services provider GP Strategies Corp. has announced the release of a new research study, "Leading Technical Professionals."

Training Industry Inc. and GP Strategies recently conducted the study based on feedback from more than 900 leaders and managers of technical professionals, 300 technical individual contributors and 100 learning professionals.

Key findings in the study include the following:

The majority of learning leaders (53 percent) said that their organizations do not offer specialized courses, workshops or a standalone program for leaders of technical professionals.
Significant misalignment appears when comparing the leadership challenges faced by managers and the assumptions made by the learning and development community.
Learning and development's top three leadership challenge assumptions are self-development, encouraging team engagement and leading teams through organizational changes.
Technical leaders' top five leadership challenges are delivering on projects with fewer resources, recruiting needed talent, balancing team coaching needs versus project needs, team skill development and encouraging innovative thinking.

Source: GP Strategies Corp.

SuccessFactors Hires Gartner Analyst to Lead Development of HCM Software

2013 05 13 08:00 AM

The software firm has hired Thomas Otter to drive the development of its core HR system, Employee Central.

San Francisco — May 10

Software firm SuccessFactors announced Friday the hiring of Thomas Otter as its vice president of product management to help lead the development of a new series of human capital software products.

A former Gartner analyst with 21 years of experience in the information technology industry, Otter will aim to help SuccessFactors evolve a new generation of human capital management (HCM) software and best practices.

Otter will drive the product direction of Employee Central, SuccessFactors' cloud-based core HR system. The cloud-based service aims to provide a foundation for global HR processes and local compliance. It also aims to enable smart decision-making with analytics and social collaboration capability.

Otter has spent the past five years at Gartner, most recently as its research vice president covering HCM trends and technologies. Otter was Gartner's lead analyst on SAP from 2009 to 2011.

Source: SuccessFactors Inc.