Chief Learning Officer - December 2018 by Chief Learning Officer

December 2018 | CLOmedia.com

EY’s

Brenda Sugrue Is CLO of the Year

2018 Learning In Practice Awards – ERGs: An Underutilized Solution for Leadership Development Reason for Optimism – Wichita’s Promise MOVE Program – Experimenting With Social Physics

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EDITOR’S LETTER

Business Is Learning

on’t take this wrong but you’re not doing it right. It’s not the outcomes of what you do that are most important. It’s the process. Now before we go too far, I am not saying corporate learning should ignore the business outcomes of what you do. I’m all for a healthy and growing bottom line. You don’t have a job if what you do doesn’t help your organization in some meaningful way. I don’t have a job if you don’t have a job. So by all means, continue to collect data on learning’s effect on sales growth, cost savings and risk aversion. Make clear the link between the development of people and more engaged workers and higher workforce productivity. Perform sophisticated statistical modeling, use a regression analysis and continue to do all the things a modern data-driven business function should be expected to do.

mate difference-maker. It’s the ability to learn faster and better. It’s being able to collect, analyze and evaluate information and insight quickly. It’s the ability to learn from others and share faster. In some ways, this is a return to the early days of the CLO role. As veteran CLO Justin Lombardo told me in a recent episode of our Chief Learning Officer Breakfast Club podcast, early CLOs like Steve Kerr at GE and Bill Wiggenhorn at Motorola were brought in by visionary CEOs to be agents of change. Sure, individual skill development was a piece of that role, but more important was focusing on the organization’s capacity to grow. In short, to learn from one another and from the outside world. Business outcomes and numbers speak to business executives in a way they understand and value. Making the case for learning as a central element of business means we need a toolkit that includes strong quantitative and qualitative tools to continuously build and reinforce that argument. You can’t rely on the good graces of your bosses to make the case for the value of what you do. Furthermore, I am not arguing you should igBut telling the story also requires you to zoom out nore traditional learning metrics like completion from time to time and put learning in the context of and satisfaction. By all means, track how many peo- what really matters — not just as a path to a better, ple are taking your courses and consuming your more skilled workforce but as the key to innovation, content. Analyze where they wander off and when agility and future success. they lose interest. Butts in seats and smiles on sheets Fortunately, there are lots of examples from which are A-OK with me. to borrow. In this issue, we highlight the winners of What I am arguing is that in focusing on those our annual Chief Learning Officer Learning In Practice things you can lose the forest for the trees. Whether awards. You’ll find many stories of learning executives your intention is to justify an expense, defend a budget, and vendor companies doing work that drives outshow you’re busy or simply trying to do it a little bit comes. But underlying it all is the vision and passion better next time, overly focusing on outcomes overlooks for learning as the future of business. the most important case for learning in business today. Most bosses get it. But the speed of business is such What is the killer app for business in the 21st cen- that there is no shortage of important priorities to fotury? It’s learning. If speed is the defining characteristic cus on. Make sure learning — both the function and of the modern economy, then our ability to learn is the the process — remains one of them. most valuable currency. Learning isn’t a support function of business. It is Reid Hoffman, Silicon Valley investor and business. It’s never wrong to focus on what makes co-founder of social network LinkedIn, talks about learning right for the future of your organization. CLO learning as a central element to business success. In an interview with Fortune about his new book, Hoffman emphasized that speed is more important than efficiency in building a business. Success hinges on being what he called an “intense learner” who is constantly learning and evolving at speed. Mike Prokopeak With skills becoming obsolete increasingly fast, it’s Editor in Chief not a specific ability or a discrete skill that is the ulti- mikep@CLOmedia.com

Learning is not the means, it’s the end.

4 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

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DECEMBER 2018 | VOLUME 17, ISSUE 10 CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER John R. Taggart jrtag@CLOmedia.com

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CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Josh Bersin David DeFilippo Lauren Dixon Michael E. Echols Chester Elton Sarah Fister Gale Adrian Gostick Allison Horn Brooke Pawling Jack J. Phillips Patti P. Phillips Joseph Santana Rocio Villaseñor

CHIEF LEARNING OFFICER EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Cedric Coco, EVP, Chief People Of ficer, Brookdale Senior Living Inc. Lisa Doyle, Head of Retail Training, Ace Hardware Dave DeFilippo, Chief People and Learning Of ficer, Suf folk Tamar Elkeles, Chief Talent Executive, Atlantic Bridge Capital Thomas Evans, ( Ret.) Chief Learning Of ficer, PricewaterhouseCoopers Gerry Hudson-Martin, Director, Corporate Learning Strategies, Business Architects Kimo Kippen, President, Aloha Learning Advisors Rob Lauber, Vice President, Chief Learning Of ficer, McDonald’s Corp. Maj. Gen. Erwin F. Lessel, ( Ret.) U.S. Air Force, Director, Deloit te Consulting Justin Lombardo, ( Ret.) Chief Learning Of ficer, Baptist Health Adri Maisonet-Morales, Vice President, Enterprise Learning and Development, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina Alan Malinchak, CEO, Éclat Transitions LLC Lee Maxey, CEO, MindMax Bob Mosher, Senior Par tner and Chief Learning Evangelist, APPLY Synergies Rebecca Ray, Executive Vice President, The Conference Board Allison Rossett, ( Ret.) Professor of Educational Technology, San Diego State Universit y Diana Thomas, CEO and Founder, Winning Results David Vance, Executive Director, Center for Talent Repor ting Kevin D. Wilde, Executive Leadership Fellow, Carlson School of Management, Universit y of Minnesota James P. Woolsey, President, Defense Aquisition Universit y Chief Learning Officer (ISSN 1935-8148) is published monthly, except bi-monthly in January/February and July/August by MediaTec Publishing Inc., 150 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 550, Chicago IL 60601. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago, IL and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Chief Learning Officer, P.O. Box 8712 Lowell, MA 01853. Subscriptions are free to qualified professionals within the US and Canada. Digital free subscriptions are available worldwide. Nonqualified paid subscriptions are available at the subscription price of $199 for 10 issues. All countries outside the US and Canada must be prepaid in US funds with an additional $33 postage surcharge. Single price copy is $29.99. Chief Learning Officer and CLOmedia.com are the trademarks of MediaTec Publishing Inc. Copyright © 2018, MediaTec Publishing Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Reproduction of material published in Chief Learning Officer is forbidden without permission. Printed by: Quad/Graphics, Sussex, WI

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Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

CONTENTS D

ecember

2018 10 Your Career

NEW SECT ION!

Electronic Arts’ Brad Margolis on his career journey; Allison Horn of Accenture talks social physics; and quick hits on what you’re using and reading.

32 2018 CLO of the Year Brenda Sugrue is the 2018 CLO of the Year Ave Rio The 16th CLO of the Year is leading EY into the future with purposeful design and calculated measurement.

56 Case Study Welcome to Wichita Sarah Fister Gale The city of Wichita, Kansas, is attracting talent from across the nation through its Wichita Promise MOVE program.

58 Business Intelligence Reason for Optimism Mike Prokopeak Plans for the coming year indicate CLOs are feeling good about the road ahead.

ON THE COVER: PHOTO BY BRIAN FLAHERTY

8 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

December 2018

Features

Experts

Diamonds in the Rough

16 BUSINESS IMPACT

Joseph Santana Employee resource groups: a valuable, overlooked leadership gem.

Michael E. Echols We Are Underinvesting in Human Capital

18 BEST PRACTICES

hief Learning Officer Presents the C 2018 Learning In Practice Awards

Josh Bersin A Whole New World (of Learning)

20 ACCOUNTABILITY Jack J. Phillips & Patti P. Phillips A Legend’s Look at Learning

Ashley St. John This year’s winners demonstrated excellence in the design and delivery of learning.

CONTENTS

22 ON THE FRONT LINE

Practitioner Award Winners CLO Staff Learning leaders who have exhibited excellence in the design and delivery of employee development programs.

David DeFilippo Putting Into Practice What We Preach

62 IN CONCLUSION

Provider Award Winners

Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton Impact and Learning Span the Generations

Resources

CLO Staff Learning providers and vendor companies that have delivered highly impactful learning.

4 Editor’s Letter

Business Is Learning

61 Advertisers’ Index

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Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

YOUR CAREER

Career Advice From

Brad Margolis senior director of executive development and organization effectiveness, electronic arts

Brad Margolis, senior director of executive development and organization effectiveness at Electronic Arts, shares his career journey and how he came into L&D. This transcript has been edited for space and clarity.

How did you get into learning and development? I was always interested in three things: people, creativity and problem solving. I came out of school with a degree in business and a degree in computer science. That was mostly my father’s influence, saying, “Get a degree in computer science and you’ll have a job.” And then I was working in Philadelphia for a tech firm, and the blizzard in ’96 happened. There was six feet of snow on my car, and then the backhoe came and put six more feet of snow on my car. I thought, I’m done. I’ve just got to go west. I moved to San Francisco and started exploring options and was still in technology. I moved from tech and did project management, then program management to marketing. I spent three years

InterMax 1996: Product manager.

1996 1997 1993

10 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

A3 Solutions 1997: Director of marketing.

2002

in marketing and was still trying to find the right combo of people, creativity and problem solving. Right around 1999, I had a conversation with a friend of mine, an advocate for women’s rights who was always out in D.C., protesting one thing or another. She had so much passion, so much energy. I said, “I love this! You have all this passion and energy! I want that. I want to come into work every day and have that. I don’t know what that is.” She responded, “I see these problems, and I can’t walk away. I can’t not do it; I can’t not engage.” That got me thinking — maybe I was thinking about passion wrong. I was thinking about passion as this high I was looking for, and instead I started thinking maybe passion is just a lack of apathy, like something you can’t not care about. She said, “Well, it’s really obvious what you’re passionate about.” I eagerly inquired, “Tell me, tell me.” She said, “You butt into other people’s business.” I responded, “So, I’m a jerk? That’s my passion?” She was like, “No, no, no! You solve their problems. You’re really good at helping people see things differently, looking through new lenses, exploring new options. There’s a whole profession out there that does this, and you get paid for it.” I had never heard of the field of organization development and organizational psychology. I went and started exploring and got my Ph.D., started working in the field, started making a difference almost 20 years later.

Kaiser Permanente 2002-05: Senior consultant.

2005

Electronic Arts 2007: Senior consultant. 2011: Director, executive development & organization effectiveness. 2018: Senior director, executive development & organization effectiveness.

2007 2018

Coming from a computer science background, what do you bring that somebody who grows up inside L&D wouldn’t? We all bring our full learning experiences to what we do, to our fields, to our professions. I think one of the things I see is the more successful people are, the more they just tap into the diversity of experiences. It may not be career — it may be life; it may be the hobbies you have or the family or the way of relating. I just see so much of people bringing their true, authentic self into it. An aha for me coming from the field of computer science to the field of learning happened in the late ’90s. Systems thinking was huge. It was all about systems thinking and Pegasus systems and the Peter Senge work that was happening. I was baffled by it; I was like, I don’t understand these systems thinking things people are so excited about. And I went to a bunch of conferences, and it finally dawned on me that systems thinking is the crux and basis on which computer science is taught. You can’t think about how you design the control system for a nuclear power plant control panel and the software without thinking about the system of — if this goes hot, this goes cold. It was just new to learning and development. So for me, that was a thing of, “Oh, there’s a way of thinking that you can just bring in, and there’s so much to integrate from business, to computer science, to finance, to tech.” I love the “everything I know I learned in kindergarten” idea. I’m constantly learning. My son is seven, and he is so much better at relationships than I am. It’s amazing because we just spent so much time teaching him how to fill other people’s buckets. I was like, “What a concept! Fill people’s buckets!” And it really works. I brought his principles to EA and have better relationships as a result. Who has been important in how you’ve gotten to where you are and led you in the right direction? My father was a big influence in my life. He was a lifetime IBMer, so we had an early PC in our home, and I remember playing video games at 14 and him saying, “You know what, you need to stop doing that; you can’t do it for a living.” It was really fun to tell him that I got the job [at EA]. I’ve had great influences. Part of my grad school process [was] when we finished our exams, we needed to get a job. I couldn’t afford to just take a $10 an hour internship, so I reached out to my local network. I did 83 informational interviews, which led to four contracts and two job offers. In that process, I met some of the most amazing professionals and just talked to folks in the field, folks who became mentors who I could tap into and who would share their knowledge and wisdom with me. CLO

Practical Applications Asana Asana is a team collaboration tool. This intuitive web-based tool (mobile app is available) keeps teams organized without needing to rely on email. Simply create a project, add as many tasks that relate to the project and assign the tasks to one or more team members. Handy alerts notify you when your tasks are due or overdue, and you can follow the progress of tasks and projects even if you’re not specifically responsible for the deliverable. You can post supporting files and give people a “like” when they complete a task. If email is where knowledge goes to die, Asana is where knowledge thrives. — Pam Boiros, founder of Bridge Marketing Advisors and learning adviser at Training Orchestra Blinkist I need to be able to stay on top of the best thinking on topics like leadership and learning, but there are so many books published I couldn’t read them all and still have time to do “real work.” Blinkist solves that problem for me: The app contains summaries of thousands of nonfiction books. The summaries set out the key points clearly and typically take me about 10 minutes to read, which is perfect. You have to pay to subscribe, but I think it is a great value. I save time, and it actually makes me feel energized to read more. — Nick Todd, general manager at Expression for Growth Chief Learning Officer wants to hear from you: What app or tool are you currently using? Send your submissions to Ave Rio at ario@CLOmedia.com.

Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

YOUR CAREER

What Are You Reading? Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning By Peter C. Brown, Mark A. McDaniel and Henry L. Roediger III This book is truly an eye-opener for learning professionals. It challenges the status quo of learning “truths” and presents the reader with facts and evidence supported by scientific studies conducted by cognition experts. It proves, with little room for doubt, that our agreed learning methods and processes are, in fact, counterproductive to learning, retention and behavioral change. To close the gap, it offers science-backed proposals on how to approach learning better and how to include this in your learning design. The main learning point has been how the concept of repetition is not the best way to learn; rather, it creates the illusion of mastery and that could be dangerous. — Norman Arosemena, corporate learning expert

Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment By Robert Wright Want to better understand the real challenge of gender bias or road rage? Psychologist Robert Wright describes how natural selection established neural subsystems that no longer work effectively in contemporary societies. Using our current knowledge of the brain’s evolution, he gives credence to the value of meditation as a way to function more effectively. Humans will typically default to one of their seven subsystems designed to address needs that are rooted in hunter-gatherer evolution. This means that I may slip into affiliation, self-protection or status modes because they’re my primary state for coping. My development and/or learning ability is “highjacked” along with the desired outcome. — Rick Cobb, EVP at Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.

When By Daniel Pink This book has solid information about how “when” impacts what we do and why. —Madeline Parisi, content development expert Chief Learning Officer wants to hear from you: What’s at the top of your reading list? Send your submissions to Ave Rio at ario@CLOmedia.com.

12 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go: Career Conversations Employees Want by Julie Winkle Giulioni and Beverly L. Kaye I’m reading this book because I coach leaders and managers, many of who find it challenging to have semi-annual reviews and get a little lost in long conversations around career development. This book breaks down those conversations and touch points into bite-size conversations spread throughout the year, so they are not as intimidating to the leader or the employee. I’m loving how small, bite-size conversations can support front-line managers to help their reports have conversations that matter without intimidating either of them and making it easy to do often. — Teri Johnson, executive coach and consultant

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YOUR CAREER

Top of Mind Experimenting with Social Physics By Allison Horn Allison Horn is the managing director of learning and leadership development at Accenture, which serves more than 425,000 employees in 120 countries and 40 industries. Accenture was the first-place winner of the 2018 Chief Learning Officer LearningElite program.

e experiment a lot at Accenture. Some experiments are more successful than others, but we learn something new from each. Usually we write about the more successful experiments, offering lessons learned and recommended paths forward. But here, I’d like to share a nascent, not yet tested idea: applying “social physics” to our learning and leadership development programs.

Allison Horn Accenture

What Is Social Physics? MIT professor Alex “Sandy” Pentland, often called the father of social physics, defines social physics in his 2015 book, “Social Physics: How Social Networks Can Make Us Smarter,” as “a quantitative social science that describes reliable, mathematical connections between information and idea flow on the one hand and people’s behavior on the other.” He’s used social physics to forecast productivity of small groups, corporate departments and even entire cities with this fundamental thesis: Because we are impacted by those we physically interact with as individuals, teams and societies, we can change outcomes by changing patterns of interaction. Social Physics at Work Pentland’s writing is rich with examples that prove the nature and frequency of team communication to predict team performance

is as significant as all other factors combined (individual intelligence, personality, skill and topics discussed) — observations enabled by technology tracking person-to-person interactions. For example, he helped boost call center team performance by advising that teams take breaks at the same time, nurturing social ties and communication. In the U.S. and European Union, Pentland discovered poverty and crime levels can be predicted by a community’s isolation, whereas diversity of faceto-face communication and richness and denseness of social ties predict wealth. The more diversity of interaction, the more robust the idea flow and the more positive the outcomes. Potential for Learning We could harness these concepts across learning, using copious learner data to help us see, understand and prescribe interaction patterns that aid idea flow correlating to performance enhancement. We all know something magical happens when people connect with each other, so let’s more intentionally engineer human interaction across learning channels to expand networks, increase diversity of thought, and generate more creative connections, innovative ideas and durable learning — during and after learning events. Social physics may prove incredibly powerful for both classroom and virtual channels, and potentially even for communities of practice, digital coaching, mentorship initiatives, longer-term/cross-channel leadership development programs and more. We won’t know for sure until we try, but all signs point to meaningful impact. We are excited to see where this goes after a few more months of sorting through data privacy and technical details. We’ll share our findings as they take shape. Meanwhile, I hope you’ll explore social physics and the power of experimentation in your learning organization. CLO Chief Learning Officer wants to hear from you: What are you thinking about? Send your thoughts to Ave Rio at ario@CLOmedia.com.

According to

I got into the L&D space because

The most underrated trend in L&D is

Allison

I COULDN’T AFFORD BEING A PROFESSIONAL STUDENT

NEUROSCIENCE-DRIVEN L&D

14 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

Power up your workforce

Learn more at www.dxc.technology/eca

BUSINESS IMPACT

We Are Underinvesting in Human Capital Despite underinvestment, L&D is more important than ever • BY MICHAEL E. ECHOLS

R Michael E. Echols is principal and founder of Human Capital LLC and author of “Your Future Is Calling.” He can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

apid changes are impacting virtually every aspect of business. Learning and development is no exception. Here I’ll examine new data and explore implications for corporate L&D investment. At the macro level, two unprecedented developments have occurred in the past year. The first is the relationship between unemployed workers and unfilled jobs. In 2018, for the first time in U.S. history, the number of unfilled positions in the United States economy was greater than the number of unemployed individuals seeking employment. As of June 2018, there were 6.66 million unfilled jobs while there were 6.58 million individuals seeking employment. The gross numbers are sufficiently grim but an even greater problem lurks beneath the surface. There is strong evidence that many of the unemployed lack the skills and experience required to meet the specifications of the unfilled jobs. L&D is more important than ever. The second development involves personal requirements for new hires. The Wall Street Journal reported on the developments in its August 2018 article, “Employers Eager to Hire Try a New Policy: ‘No Experience Necessary.’ ” The article is subtitled: “Inexperienced job applicants face better odds in the labor market as more companies drop work-history and degree requirements.” In the piece, Amy Glasser, senior vice president of staffing agency Adecco Group, is quoted as saying, “Candidates have so many options today. If a company requires a degree, two rounds of interviews and a test for hard skills, candidates can go down the street to another employer who will make them an offer that day.”

Human capital is the strategic asset in the modern global economy. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that as much as 70 percent of knowledge and skills are created through experience with the balance created thru formal education. The implications for the human capital assets of the enterprise are profound. The phrase “go down the street to another employer who will make them an offer that day” is a direct result of the first unprecedented development of the imbalance between unfilled positions and employable individuals. Let’s ex16 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

amine the implications for human capital investment. When the first company recruits for a certain level of experience (let’s say five years) and a degree, what they are stating is the level of knowledge and skills required to successfully perform the job being considered. When the original hiring requirements are relaxed, the company essentially is requiring the individual to bring fewer personal assets to the role. If we assume that the job actually requires the knowledge and skills implied by the five years of experience along with the degree requirements, hiring the individual without those assets means the knowledge and skills must come from somewhere else. This is not some abstract “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” conversation. This is a pragmatic discussion about human capital investment — the very domain of responsibility of L&D. We need to look at the issue from both the macro economy and company level. At the macro economy level, it means that in the aggregate, the U.S. economy is underinvested in human capital. Not only do we not have enough bodies to fill the open positions, we do not have enough experience and education to meet the implied knowledge and skills required by companies. What this means at the individual company level is that the persons being hired cannot be expected to bring the human assets (experience and education) required. The implication is that if the company cannot expect the individual to bring the requisite assets, the company will have to make the required investment. In the end, the portion of the enterprise tasked with creating the level of human capital assets (knowledge and skills), namely L&D, must fill the gap. This means the enterprise must increase its investment in response to the important developments I outlined earlier. All of this returns to a common theme I have often talked about in my books and in earlier articles in Chief Learning Officer and elsewhere: that L&D is not a backwater staff function of little strategic importance to enterprise performance. Human capital is the strategic asset in the modern global economy. The rapid changes in supply and demand put increasing pressure on the entire senior management team to respond to the human capital investment issues with a purposeful human capital investment strategy. This goes way beyond incremental budget battles so common in the past. CLO

BEST PRACTICES

A Whole New World (of Learning) The end of the LMS as we know it is coming • BY JOSH BERSIN

Josh Bersin is an industry analyst and founder of Bersin by Deloitte. He can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

hen I began my career as an analyst, I started out studying the LMS market. At that time (early 2000s), learning management systems were an innovative new business application that helped companies build and manage e-learning and track and organize all forms of training. These systems were actually the first practical employee-centric portals. Fast forward to today. Now we carry around smartphones, watch videos and live streams from a wide range of sources, and communicate through multiple social media channels. We’re all used to nudges, AIbased suggestions and a steady stream of messages coming our way throughout the day. This change in the way we interact with information has made the original LMS paradigm, that of a portal-based online university, increasingly obsolete. That said, companies have invested billions of dollars in these systems, which in many cases store some of the most important and hard-to-move data an organization owns. Banks, pharmaceuticals, insurance companies — any highly regulated business — own LMSs packed with employee data, business rules, compliance records and content fundamental to operations. I was at an industry meeting recently with about 50 different companies. Attendees talked about their new learning experience platforms and said they would be “shutting off” their LMSs in the next few years. While I hate to say it, the end of the LMS as we know it is coming. Although companies continue to spend millions of dollars each year operating and maintaining these systems, they are often burdensome to manage, hard to use and hated by end-users. Many now sit behind consumer-like front ends built by companies such as Cornerstone, SumTotal and Instructure. I think it’s clear that the function provided by the LMS no longer belongs in an entirely separate system. Yes, many LMSs are very complex e-commerce, customer education and revenue-generating systems. But the core functionalities of tracking compliance, giving employees reminders of when to complete courses and storing links to online courses really belong in a core HCM system. Workday clearly believes this, and the company is making major progress building its own internal LMS integrated into its platform. SAP, Oracle and ADP still have different applications for HR and learning, but the integration is becoming more urgent every day.

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What most companies are doing now is simply “starving investment” in the LMS so they can spend their money on learning experience platforms, new content libraries, advanced VR and microlearning systems, and tools that help people share video and other types of information, collaborate and implement performance support. Products such as WalkMe, EnableNow and GuideMe, as well as tools such as Axonify and Qstream, can deliver training “as needed” without an LMS, giving L&D leaders the option to shift their investments.

Changes in the way we interact with information have made the LMS paradigm obsolete. Often now when an LMS renewal contract comes up, companies seriously negotiate lower prices or even look at alternative systems. I don’t predict the end of big systems like Saba, SumTotal, SAP or any other LMS vendor overnight. But it’s apparent to me (and to them) that if they don’t advance their technologies to meet market expectations and trends, their new business will start to significantly slow down. I’m a conservative buyer of technology myself, so I never recommend companies buy unproven tools when their business continuity is at stake. However, when new technologies emerge that provide clear value, companies have to shift their investments. I use the analogy of mainframe computers, which are still a multibillion-dollar business — just not a growing IT market segment. Similarly, I believe the LMS is on its way to becoming a back-office server, more integrated into HCM over time. Let’s all get excited about the new world of learning, which I call “learning in the flow of work.” That’s where this world is going, and that’s where the new investment will be. CLO

ACCOUNTABILITY

A Legend’s Look at Learning

Let’s view training as an investment versus a cost • BY JACK J. PHILLIPS AND PATTI P. PHILLIPS

Jack J. Phillips is the chairman and Patti P. Phillips is president and CEO of the ROI Institute. They can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

or almost four decades, Tom Peters has been preaching the gospel of putting people first, a message more urgent than ever in today’s rapidly changing business environment. Peters is a leading business management guru and the best-selling author of 16 books, including “In Search of Excellence,” co-authored with Robert H. Waterman Jr., which is often cited among the best business books written with more than six million copies sold. Peters has condensed his years of teaching and consulting into a new book titled “The Excellence Dividend: Meeting the Tech Tide with Work That Wows and Jobs That Last.” A chapter is devoted to the importance of training. Peters prefers the word training instead of learning, development and preparation. His advice is particularly important as he has spent much time in the past four decades with top executives. In this chapter, Peters underscores the importance of training and its role in an organization. He reminds us that training is critical and investments in training should be significant. For example, training investments are huge in military organizations, fire departments and police departments, where lives are at stake. In the Army, he points out, three-star generals obsess about training, while in most businesses, it’s a midlevel staff function. Sports teams, theater groups and ballet companies also focus extensively on training, he adds.

• Bet 1: Five of 10 CEOs see training as an expense rather than an investment. • Bet 2: Five of 10 CEOs see training as defense rather than offense. • Bet 3: Five of 10 CEOs see training as a necessary evil rather than a strategic opportunity. • Bet 4: Eight of 10 CEOs, in a 45-minute tour d’horizon of their business, would not mention training. We would not bet against Peters. His conclusion is that training = investment No. 1. And that investment pays off almost immediately. Unfortunately, far too many executives still see learning as a cost, not an investment. They see it as a necessary evil or something they must do because of compliance. We know what happens when executives see learning as a cost. Like all costs, they are controlled, reduced, minimized or even eliminated. As a result, business partnerships become rare, influence diminishes, support is lost and funding is curtailed. When executives see learning as an investment, support is improved, commitment is enhanced, business partnerships flourish, and funding is maintained or enhanced. To see learning as an investment, strategic, expensive and important programs must add business value. This pushes the evaluation of learning to the impact level with a clear connection between learning and business impact. An ROI analysis is needed for a few projects, using the same calculation that the CFO would use when investing in a capital expenditure. When this is accomplished, the mystery of learning being an investment is removed. This seems like a daunting task for many CLOs, but it’s not if you design for the results you need using the concept of design thinking. This requires that proPeters poses several questions to top leaders about grams begin with the end in mind (with defined busihow training is organized and supported: Is your chief ness measures), the right solutions are selected to influtraining officer your top-paid C-level job (other than ence the business measure, and success is expected at CEO/COO)? If not, why not? Are your top trainers the impact level throughout the process. All stakeholdpaid as much and treated as well as your top market- ers, including designers, developers, facilitators and ers or engineers? If not, why not? If you randomly managers of participants, will see their role is to ensure stop an employee in the hall, can they describe in de- the program delivers business value. When programs tail their development plan for the next 12 months? If are designed to drive the business measures, they delivnot, why not? er results, removing the fear of a negative ROI. This is Peters also makes huge bets about how executives possible, and it is being done by thousands of organiperceive training: zations globally. CLO

Training = investment No. 1. And that investment pays off almost immediately.

20 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

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ON THE FRONT LINE

Putting Into Practice What We Preach As leaders, we need to do what we say • BY DAVID DeFILIPPO

David DeFilippo is chief people and learning officer for Suffolk. He can be reached at editor@ CLOmedia.com.

n the practice of leadership and among firms there have been many books and much talk about various leadership styles, including authentic, collaborative or even inspirational leadership to name a few. All these make sense and have value as frameworks to define and develop one’s leadership approach, so I am going to introduce a simple and practical way that I think about leadership. Simply put, are we really doing what we say? In their seminal 1974 book “Theory in Practice: Increasing Professional Effectiveness,” Chris Argyris and Donald Schön define this relationship as “theories of action” comprised of two components: espoused theory and theory-in-use. Essentially, their work affirms that espoused theory is the belief one’s intended behavior is based on, while theory-in-use is the actual action employed. In both cases the litmus test of effectiveness is evaluated based on the achievement of the desired outcomes. Since there is potential for incongruence between one’s espoused theory and theory-in-use, raising one’s self-awareness to bridge this potential gap is key to efficacy and self-correction. I think about Argyris and Schön’s theory and its contribution to organizational practice in three ways: culturally, behaviorally and tactically. First, every organization has a culture, whether explicitly or implicitly defined, that can include several elements such as vision, mission and values. As defined by Boris Groysberg, Jeremiah Lee, Jesse Price and J. Yo-Jud Cheng in their Harvard Business Review 2018 article, “The Leader’s Guide to Corporate Culture,” culture is the “tacit social order of an organization” that “defines what is encouraged, discouraged, accepted or rejected within a group.” As such, values and vision statements are words that are designed to be the embodiment of the organization thereby shaping leadership and employee behavior. These reside on websites, in recruiting materials and are used during investor day presentations to, in large part, set the standard for what the organization aspires to be. In this way, the espoused theory of an organization resides in these internally and externally facing declarations. Next, take the actual behavior that an organization embodies. To what extent do these actions align with the advocated corporate values? It is often cited that the “tone at the top” of a firm has the greatest impact on positive or negative organizational behavior. Take the origins of this expression, which are rooted in the ac-

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counting field’s best practices with the belief that leadership’s attitude toward ethical and rigorous financial practices contributes to corporate culture. In our recent history, when there was tone deafness by leadership toward this objective, firms such as Enron, Tyco and Adelphia Cable ended up in perilous situations, to name a few who no longer exist as trusted name brands.

raising selfawareness to bridge the gap between one’s espoused theory and theoryin-use is key. Third, in the case of Adelphia I had direct experience back in the early 2000s when I was doing consulting work at the former headquarters in Coudersport, Pennsylvania. The short version of the story is that due to the misuse of corporate funds by the founding family, the company could not repay a significant amount of debt and was forced into bankruptcy. As a result, the firm was broken into pieces, purchased by other cable operators and ceased to exist in a short period of time. While working there, I remember seeing corporate values and vision statements on the walls; so, where was the breakdown in what was espoused versus carried out in practice? I’m not sure I’ll ever know the answer to that question, but what became apparent was the devastation to those remaining employees and the secondary effects on the townspeople who owned restaurants, hotels and other businesses that used to benefit from bustling crowds. I was struck by the shopkeepers screening me by asking if I was one of the “good guys,” there to fix the business and, in turn, help them, or one of the “bad guys,” there to shut them down. In sum, whether the congruence of Argyris and Schön’s theories of action are manifested through firm culture, values or the tactical behaviors of leaders doesn’t really matter. In the end, the simple test for leaders is to ensure that the ratio of what we say and then do is in alignment. CLO

Through mountains of research and data, employee training has been uncovered as one of the most underrated challenges growing organizations face today. Whether it be program management, engagement or learning retention, HR and learning and development professionals struggle to ďŹ nd the right formula. Aligning your program to overcome challenges is what we do. BizLibrary is a leading provider of online learning solutions. Our award-winning microlearning video library engages employees of all levels and our learning technology platform helps you achieve more. Partnered with our expert Client Success and Technical Support teams, clients are empowered to solve business challenges and impact change within their organizations. We make working with us easy and aspire to be your online learning partner.

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BY JOSEPH SANTANA

Employee resource groups: A valuable, overlooked leadership development gem waiting to be mined.

he need for leaders at all levels in organizations continues to grow as the business ecosystem becomes more complex and competitive due in part to globalization, emerging technologies and an acceleration in the speed of disruption. On top of this, a growing number of baby boomer leaders are leaving their companies to pursue other noncorporate business or personal interests. So itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not surprising that a 2014 Deloitte University Press survey of global organizations revealed that 86 percent of participating companies said having more effective leaders at all levels was their No. 1 business issue. Unfortunately, according to the same study, despite investing about $14 billion in leadership development, only 8 percent of these companies felt they had a good leadership development process. This low percentage represents a huge gap in an

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area where organizations are spending so much money and focusing so much energy. In my experience working within corporations, the missing ingredient needed to make these huge formal leadership-training investments pay off is opportunities for experiential learning. We all know there is a huge difference between learning how to do something via examples and explanations versus putting that skill to work against a real opportunity or challenge. This need for the experiential component is recognized by a growing number of firms, who search far and wide for the opportunity to develop leaders.

Searching for the Right Experience According to a 2017 survey by Deloitte of more than 10,000 human resource professionals, the percentage of firms offering experiential programs to

Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

their developing leaders jumped from 47 percent in 2015 to 64 percent in 2017. Some of these programs are quite exotic. For example, one of these leadership development support offerings uses in-water survival exercises to help build and enhance leadership skills and team dynamics. Participants go through practical exercises such as life raft evacuation, underwater egress, surface water survival, jumping from a height and rescue. The program is designed to help improve their stress awareness, build self-confidence, enable participants to assume leadership roles in simulated survival scenarios and enhance their emotional control. Another program offers budding leaders the opportunity to explore their leadership capacity using horses. During the program, participants are able to familiarize themselves with the principle of shared leadership demonstrated by a herd of horses, as well as verbal and nonverbal communication styles. The program is designed to help leaders embrace uncertainty and shared leadership in complex systems. Then there is a company that offers leaders an opportunity to develop their external perspectives through custom-designed, brokered learning exchanges with external thought leaders in leading global organizations and diverse industries — entrepreneurs, disruptors, NGOs, customers, future talent, government representatives, and so on. Leaders go through a series of structured meetings to discuss specific topics affecting their businesses and witness customers making purchases, watch surgeons at work in a hospital and host discussions with recent university graduates to better understand people from the millennial generation. Still another organization offers a tech approach to leadership development and learning. Using 3D immersive gaming, developing leaders become part of a gaming story, where they receive a mission and are thrown straight into action. The immediate feedback they get on their performance is supposed to provide them with real-time learning in a virtual environment. Finally, there are organizations that focus on developing participants’ mental resilience tools to increase their leadership agility. The goal of these interventions is to improve participants’ clarity, focus and ability to bounce back from high-pressure situations so they can show up in a powerful way in the moments that matter most. Participants in this type of program learn, for example, breathing techniques to help them switch into what is called a parasympathetic state. The parasympathetic system is made up of nerves that return us to a restful and calm state after we’ve responded to a stressful event. The idea is that by developing the capacity to activate the parasympathetic system intentionally, these leaders are evolving their ability to center themselves on de26 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

ERGs do not replace other investments in training. Rather, they complement them. mand so they can respond in a more flexible and agile way to challenging experiences. While there is a wide range of pricing for these programs, none of them are inexpensive. For example, one in-water leadership development program charges $9,500 per participant with an opportunity to shave $4,500 off if the candidate qualifies for a scholarship. Needless to say, only a select few are sent by companies to these types of programs. Some high-performing companies, however, have found a less expensive and more practical solution for providing experiential opportunities to their developing leaders.

ERGs: Leadership Development Vehicles According to a joint study completed in 2018 by the Institute for Corporate Productivity and Elevate, a number of companies considered to be top performers in their respective industries believe their employee resource groups are the most effective tool they have for developing a variety of leadership skills important in today’s business environment. For example, in addition to managing budgets, delivering presentations and other core skills, they use their ERGs to help developing leaders: • Get hands-on experience handling challenging real-world project management assignments. • Acquire skills working across cultures and within groups with diverse ways of thinking. • Develop a sense for the bigger picture across organizational silos by connecting with people from different departments. • Connect with coaches and mentors who will support and help guide their development. •M eet sponsors who can advocate for them. •P ractice speaking on behalf of the organization. • Demonstrate what they can do and build a solid track record of accomplishments. Involvement in these mini-organizations within an organization and its various challenges also enables budding and emerging leaders to generally broaden their experience working within team dynamics; their ability to work in environments where leadership is shared with others and where exercising influence is key; and their familiarity with a wide array of demographic, cultural and cognitive diversity. It can also increase the situational awareness of leaders, incorporation of performance feedback and mental resilience.

Some organizations even appoint senior leaders to serve as ERG sponsors. In almost every organization there is a need for program sponsors, project sponsors, initiative sponsors and so on. Done well, a sponsor can play a huge role in the success of any of these efforts. Unfortunately, nearly 50 percent of project and program teams rate the performance of their sponsors as poor to fair. A few of the key reasons given for executive sponsorship failure include: The pool of executives simply lack the knowledge or skill to be effective sponsors. Many organizations assume a senior business leader will naturally have this sponsor knowledge and skill, but that’s simply not true. Many senior business leaders have never been exposed to an opportunity to gradually ease into this role, which can be quite different from formally running even a large business unit. The organization has a multitude of projects, programs and initiatives that demand sponsors. This demand outpaces the few members in the pool who have proven skills and talent as sponsors. Executives who may not be ready to take on the role of sponsor are “volun-told” into a high visibility role in a major effort. The company, finding itself in desperate need of a sponsor for the effort, may push someone who simply is not fully ready into the role. The bottom line is companies need more welltrained senior executive sponsors than they currently have on the bench. Here again is an opportunity for ERGs to help organizations, in this case developing more senior leaders. One way to put this into practice, would be to first provide some basic training to the newly appointed ERG sponsor. Have a more seasoned executive sponsor available to coach them through the process of sponsoring the ERG. Then, based on the results they produce to demonstrate mastery of sponsorship skills, put them into the general available executive sponsorship pool. This simple approach is a low-cost way to leverage ERGs to train upcoming sponsors while providing the company’s ERGs with a role they need. Bottom line: Whether developing a new supervisor, manager or someone more senior for executive sponsorship roles, ERGs do not replace other investments in training. Rather, they complement those investments by providing the aforementioned abundance of experiential opportunities to develop leaders at any level. As organized communities within the larger organization, ERGs provide developing leaders with safer and smaller environment where they can flex and develop new skills before applying them in the larger company. On top of this, the cost to the learning organization is very little or even zero.

An Omnipresent, Underutilized Corporate Resource As far back as 2011, one study revealed that more than 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies had ERGs. Today, it’s a pretty safe bet that if you work for a company that has a few thousand people, you likely have ERGs. On average, companies already invest between $2,500 and $5,000 per year per ERG. Unfortunately, in most organizations this potentially valuable existing resource is ignored and underutilized. This is especially true when it comes to employing ERGs to support leadership development. In fact, according to the previously mentioned joint study by i4cp and Elevate, of 363 corporate respondents, fewer than half make effective use of this resource. High-performance organizations are generally twice as likely to leverage their ERGs to develop leaders compared with lower-performing companies, but they still fall shy of 50 percent. This means there is room for improvement in leveraging ERGs as a leadership development resource.

Firms offering experiential programs to their developing leaders jumped from 47 percent in 2015 to 64 percent in 2017. Companies failing to leverage their ERGs to develop leaders while searching far and wide outside their company for solutions is reminiscent of a story in an 1890 book by Russell H. Conwell titled “Acres of Diamonds.” The story is about a man who sold his farm and home to unsuccessfully search for diamonds in a far-off land. What the man never realized was the land he once owned and sold was actually littered with a bounty of almost colorless, transparent stones that he did not realize were some of the most precious diamonds in their uncut, unpolished state. While companies spend time and money hunting for ways to develop leaders at all levels, the ERGs that exist amid the vast majority of these organizations offer the tools they need. Perhaps it’s time for organizations to better mine and leverage what they already have. CLO Joseph Santana is chairman of the I4CP CDO Board and author of “Supercharge Your ERGs: 18 Tips to Power-Up Your ERG/BRG Strategy.” Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

Is your culture innovation capable?

Embedding innovation within work cultures leads to organizational success By Tim Harnett

Business transformation has been a long time coming for every industry, challenging organizations that grew and matured in a more analog society. With consumers living digital lives, Andrew Webster, vice president of transformation for ExperiencePoint, believes traditional approaches can no longer deliver what consumers want and need. “As conditions and expectations change at an unprecedented pace, organizations and employees require new ways of thinking and tackling more and more complex business challenges,” Webster says. One new approach involves realigning work cultures to be more receptive to innovation. These cultures are more capable of addressing any predictable or emerging challenges organizations face. “Many organizations currently draw against the bank of previously used solutions,” Webster says. “But solutions that may have worked in the past might not solve today’s challenges. As organizational complexity increases, you need fresh, new thinking, or you’ll be vulnerable to the future instead of being poised to grow with it. In truly complex environments, where there are no right or wrong answers, we’re a little less equipped to approach things with creativity, and that needs to change.” Webster notes that most organizations are nascent in their journey toward innovation capabilities, but they’ll need to improve — and quickly. Three-quarters of HR professionals have been tasked with changing their workplace culture, according to recent research. Needing to increase innovation is one of the main motivating factors in workplace culture change.1 But where to begin?

Recognize the need and address the barriers to change For some organizations, starting a journey toward innovation capability represents a significant departure from how they’ve always done things. The leadership team might need time to align themselves with innovation

2018 Workforce state of the industry survey

capabilities. “Executives often say they expect innovation,” Webster says. “But they’re seldom willing to explore operating models that challenge long-held assumptions or what made them successful in the first place.” Compliance and regulations shouldn’t be barriers to innovation. “Constraints at both a psychological and system level actually help us to be more innovative,” Webster says. “Two challenges to creating an innovationcapable culture are behavioral and structural. People need time and the space to innovate. Sometimes an organization’s structure makes it difficult for people to see the customer perspective. Give workers time to improve behaviors and think creatively.” While layers of decision-making can negatively impact innovation, Webster argues a more productive way to tackle the challenge is on the behavioral side. “At the behavioral level, there’s a range of bad habits organizations need to address. At ExperiencePoint that’s a major part of the role we play, getting people to embrace more productive habits. Rather than hack away at layers of decision-making, a more productive approach might be aligning the organization to the right behaviors.” Make key populations aware of unproductive behaviors and work to replace those behaviors with new habits. Webster says this will help the organization learn how its workers interact with innovation and generate positive outcomes from the process. These can then be shared throughout the organization to build momentum for the change. “Having many voices in the organization — what is commonly disparaged as bureaucracy — can be an opportunity,” Webster says, “if the voices are equipped with the right behaviors. These people can then contribute with generative feedback that accelerates idea development and removes barriers, allowing ideas to thrive. Rather than start by changing the structure, if people behave differently, the structure will evolve.”

We believe that experience is the best teacher. ExperiencePoint provides award-winning design thinking and innovation training that transforms the way people learn, innovate, manage change and solve complex problems. Using realistic simulation experiences, and a hands-on and proven workshop method, ExperiencePoint gives participants foundational competence and the confidence to think and solve problems differently, innovate and transform their organizations. Our clients include many of the world’s leading companies and academic institutions. Learn more: www.experiencepoint.com

Culture change takes time but delivers results Many barriers to innovation haven’t changed over time, but making the case to tackle them has become easier thanks to success cases leaders can follow. One of the biggest outcomes from having an innovation-capable culture is an increase in employees’ ability to recognize and respond to problems. “Innovation-capable cultures have greater agility and can deploy focus quickly to where it needs to be,” Webster says. Other benefits of an actively innovative culture include a more engaged workforce and improved customer experiences. “There’s something exciting and invigorating about creating the new,” Webster says. “Even more importantly, innovative organizations are more connected to their customers. Staff are more connected to the people they serve, and a connection to customers

2018 Chief Learning Officer State of the Industry survey.

is a connection to purpose. The more connected we are to purpose, the more intrinsically motivated we are, the more satisfied we are in our work. This produces more excited workers who get to see the results of the work they’re doing. A culture of innovation is consistently doing things like replacing complexity with simplicity for a customer or replacing frustration with intuitive appeal for a better customer experience. But you do need to support your employees as they make those improvements.” Organizations will need to embrace new systems to contribute to their future. Only by allowing employees the freedom of creativity will organizations be able to grow their culture and innovate to thrive. Learn how ExperiencePoint can help you transform the way people learn, manage change and solve complex business problems: www.experiencepoint.com.

• Learning In Practice Awards •

PRESENTS

2018

Learning In Practice

awards

30 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

he road to excellence is often long and fraught with obstacles and lessons. Achieving excellence in anything requires perseverance and diligence. To borrow the wise words of Aristotle, “Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives — choice, not chance, determines your destiny.” This year marked the 16th anniversary of Chief Learning Officer’s Learning In Practice Awards, a recognition program to honor learning industry leaders who have demonstrated excellence in the design and delivery of employee development programs through a combination of qualities such as leadership, vision, business acumen and strategic alignment. Judges selected the nearly 70 winners from almost 200 submitted nominations. The winners were honored at a special reception during the 2018 CLO Fall Symposium held Sept. 30 to Oct. 2 in Houston.

Practitioners received awards across eight categories in two divisions: Division 1 for companies with 10,000 employees or more and Division 2 for companies with less than 10,000 employees. Categories included Business Impact, Innovation and Technology, to name a few, as well as the industry’s top honor, CLO of the Year. Learning providers and vendor companies were also recognized for their excellence in eight categories, including academic partnerships, blended learning, e-learning and more. This year’s winners included executives from across the United States, as well as international finalists from as far as Canada, England, India, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland. Congratulations to this year’s winners for the pursuit and achievement of excellence in the design and delivery of learning! Nominations for the 2019 Learning In Practice Awards will open in April.

PRACTITIONER AWARDS

PROVIDER AWARDS

CLO of the Year: For the learning executive who is without peer in developing and executing learning and development strategies, marshaling and managing resources, and achieving measurable success. The CLO of the Year award recognizes executives for their body of work over the course of their career.

Excellence in Academic Partnerships: Recognizes accredited academic learning institutions that have partnered with an organization in the past year to develop skills, competency or knowledge in a general employee population.

Business Impact: For learning executives who have implemented a significant measurement or evaluation program that has demonstrated exceptional business impact from their workforce development programs. Potential results may include measures of employee retention, sales, revenue growth, customer satisfaction or cost reduction, among others.

Excellence in Blended Learning: Recognizes vendors that have deployed a variety of tools in support of a client’s learning program that delivers engaging learning combining multiple modalities.

Business Partnership: For learning departments that have partnered in a progressive way with business partners or external organizational divisions and functions such as the sales and marketing department or external customer groups to develop and deliver a targeted employee development program that supports the partner’s goals. Innovation: For learning executives who have marshaled resources and applied innovative practices, processes and/or technologies in a new and groundbreaking way to address a significant business or organizational opportunity. Strategy: For learning executives who have demonstrated exceptional business acumen combined with forward-looking vision to develop and execute a comprehensive learning strategy that clearly aligns employee development with broader organizational strategy. Talent Management: For learning executives who have developed a program that effectively integrates learning into broader talent management initiatives such as employee engagement, onboarding, succession planning, recruiting or performance management. Technology: For learning executives who have delivered new and unique applications of emerging technology to employee learning and development. Trailblazer: For learning executives who have either launched a new enterprise learning function or completely overhauled existing workforce development initiatives in the past year.

Excellence in Community Service: Recognizes vendors that have provided significant investment of company resources and time in support of a community service project or initiative. Excellence in Content: Recognizes vendors that have created superior customized and/or off-the-shelf learning content. Excellence in E-Learning: Recognizes vendors that have rolled out an innovative and effective e-learning program or suite for a client. Excellence in Executive Education: Recognizes executive education providers that have delivered a targeted executive education program for a client that has delivered measurable results. Excellence in Technology Innovation: Recognizes vendors that have rolled out an innovative learning technology for a client such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, apps, video, social collaboration tools or games and simulations. Excellence in Partnership: Recognizes vendors or consultants that have effectively supported a client’s learning and development function to set strategy or establish or implement a program via consulting or whole or partial outsources services. Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

Brenda Sugrue Is the 2018 CLO of the Year Treating learning as a science and a business has Brenda Sugrue and EY looking forward to 2020. BY AVE RIO

n elementary school teacher, a university professor, a company owner, an industry researcher and now an award-winning corporate learning leader, Brenda Sugrue has spent her career in learning. She says working in so many roles has allowed her to identify principles to guide the development and delivery of effective learning regardless of audience, content or context. She said those principles are the anchor from which she makes decisions in her role as global chief learning officer for EY, a $35 billion professional services organization with more than 260,000 people worldwide. In her first few months as EY’s CLO, Sugrue presented her vision for learning at the company: to increase the alignment, effectiveness and brand of learning at EY. This strategy accelerated the development of the skills needed to achieve the company’s Vision 2020 plan, which aims to make EY the leading global professional services organization by 2020. “I am very interested in the science of learning and how to apply it at scale to engineer effective and efficient learning experiences,” Sugrue said. “The more we know about how the mind works and the best ways to build expertise, the more confident and successful we will be in designing systems and content to develop knowledge and skills in any audience.” When Sugrue presented the strategy to the company’s highest management body, EY’s Global Executive, she promised to run learning like a business. “That means having a well-defined budget, clear strategy and priorities, efficient execution and accountability for results,” Sugrue said. “Defining, tracking and reporting those results is critical.” The bookends of Sugrue’s strategy were design and measurement. An enhanced design increased the effectiveness of the learning and generated business outcomes, while a focus on measurement showed the business impact and increased executive support and investments in learning. 32 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

Purposeful Design Sugrue said design determines the quality of the learning. Learning designs that include realistic practice activities with mechanisms to monitor and correct individual and group errors, for example, are more effective than designs that focus more on information and demonstrations, she said. “A design checklist such as the one we use at EY ensures that all the essential elements of effective instruction are designed into the solution so that it has the best chance of being effective.” When Sugrue joined EY four years ago, she began her strategy to improve design. One of the first things she did was to simplify and standardize one indicator of the learning function’s performance: the feedback survey that participants complete after learning, often referred to as level 1 evaluation. Sugrue led an effort to reduce level 1 survey questions to the four that are most highly correlated with impact: perceptions of value, relevance, confidence and intent to apply. “If learners are not feeling good about the learning experience, that can decrease learning, application and business impact,” Sugrue said. “We are now able to report on these four variables across all our learning and identify groups and content with lower scores.” Sugrue’s team also added two open-ended questions to the survey and began using machine learning to identify what people like most and what they would change. Sugrue said this analysis showed that learners want more opportunities to practice and reflect, the activities that are proven to have the greatest impact on learning.

Calculated Measurement The second prong of Sugrue’s strategy — measurement — shows how a company is doing and how it can do better. “We can confirm if a learning solution as designed is having the impact we expected, and if not, what is causing the gap,”

PHOTO BY BRIAN FLAHERTY

• Learning In Practice Awards •

Sugrue said. “We can correlate patterns of consumption with performance and provide better guidance to learners.” She said measurement can also show that the cost of training is less than the cost of hiring for particular skills. Sugrue created a four-pronged measurement strategy: reporting, program evaluation, analytics and special studies. Reporting focuses on costs, consumption, satisfaction and delivery channel mix. With these metrics, Sugrue said they have been able to show that over the past four years, the company delivered 40 percent more learning hours (from 9 million to 13 million hours) to 30 percent more people and increased average hours per person by 15 percent (from 47 to 51 hours), while keeping costs flat at $500 million. For program evaluation, there is a standard methodology including level 1, 2 and 3 surveys for measuring satisfaction, learning, application and qualitative impact. Sugrue said they Brenda Sugrue, EY’s global chief learning officer supplement surveys with interviews to document business impact cases. Quasi-experimental studies are conducted for across the world and increased its use of shared services and quantitative results, using sampling to equalize control and automation. Sugrue said they are implementing an integrated treatment groups. Sugrue said they’ve done 22 business im- talent technology suite which includes learning. “We are forpact studies over the past four years and have consistently tunate to be part of a larger global talent transformation and doubled business metrics to be part of an organization such as revenue, client satiswhere ‘strengthen global and faction and retention. empower local’ is one of the Sugrue said their level 1 pillars of our business strategy through 4 results are in the and how we operate,” Sugrue top quartile compared with said. “The challenges of our the results of more than 200 size and complexity are oversimilar studies in other large come by our commitment to organizations. For example, teaming and collaboration.” EY’s average application The company is also rerate is 84 percent compared shaping its workforce to delivwith 66 percent in bencher new and transformed ser— Brenda Sugrue, global chief learning officer, EY mark studies. vices. Last year, Sugrue’s team The analytics component launched a badging program of the strategy uses big data to correlate learning with other for skills such as analytics, blockchain, artificial intelligence talent and business metrics such as engagement and gross and transformational leadership. Sugrue said their upskilling margin. Finally, Sugrue said the special studies are done inter- programs rapidly develop the specialists they need to enable nally and externally to identify performance differentiators growth in particular markets. “We have redefined our apand validate trends and best practices. proach to career, development and performance with freSugrue said investing in measurement has been a corner- quent conversations and feedback to guide development stone of the learning transformation at EY. “It has changed goals and activities so that people can stay at the top of their the conversations we have about learning, moving us from game in their current roles, and at the same time pursue opinion-driven to data-driven discussions,” she said. “It has their personal career interests and aspirations,” Sugrue said. validated our evidence-based approach to learning design She said her role and the role of her team is to anticipate and delivery [and] has allowed us to link upfront business the skill needs of the business and build those skills as rapidalignment of skills and content with business impact.” ly and effectively as possible. She said she and her team keep Further, she said investment in measurement has guided people relevant in a changing world and give people the opthe company’s configuration of new technology and in- portunity to transform who they become. “That is the role creased the credibility in an organization of auditors and an- of the CLO,” she said. “To engineer a learning environment alytical professionals. that supports the growth of the business and the personal growth of each individual within it.” CLO

“That is the role of the CLO. To engineer a learning environment that supports the growth of the business and the personal growth of each individual within it.”

Next for EY

In addition to a focus on design and measurement, EY’s learning transformation has standardized learning processes

Ave Rio is Chief Learning Officer’s associate editor. She can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com. Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

VE L I

BUSINESS IMPACT DIV. 1 CHRIS BOWER Global Director, GM Center of Learning When General Motors’ Chevrolet brand marketing team faced the challenge of preparing its sales force for the launch of seven new vehicles in 2017, it teamed up with GM’s Center of Learning and GP Strategies to brainstorm a ride-and-drive event that would provide hands-on training in an “experiential way.” In a highly competitive market, providing educational and motivational training is key to preparing sales consultants to discuss and compare the product to its competitors.

To enroll in the event, salespeople were able to view a video via an enrollment website and then register to sign up. Those enrolled were provided hotel and travel information as well as agendas for the dealer and sales consultant events. The events included 50 staff, 130 vehicles, tires, tents and more, with limited downtime, but paid off: More than 6,500 dealer managers and sale consultants attended. Chevrolet has since seen the success of the event, with monthly unit sales gains of 1.9 percent in the four months following the tour (compared to the 0.3 percent gain to those who did not attend), totaling $49 million in gross profits to GM. — Brooke Pawling

34 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

Brenda Sugrue, left, and Christiana Zidwick.

▲ BRENDA SUGRUE

CHRIS HALL

Global Chief Learning Officer, EY

Assistant Commissioner, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection

London-based EY was in need of a new strategy initiative to help reach their goal of becoming the leading global professional services organization. With a lack of comprehensible and accessible data, the strategy initiative created four years ago had to get an upgrade to meet the company’s goal of increasing market share, brand and revenue and enabling the organization to continue thriving.

With 50,000 employees impacted by this specific initiative, EY has outperformed external benchmarks and experienced an increased win rate by 22 points.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Distance Learning Center successfully implemented the practice of installing a test-out option for all mandatory online training. The company’s 65,000 employees must take 58 various online courses that are required for annual completion, but many employees have limited computer access and slow network activity due to being in remote locations. With the help of Chris Hall, the center created this test-out option to verify and record mastery of the test topic with successful results. Now, 16 percent of the total mandatory courses have the test-out option and, according to the company’s application, it has seen $46.8 million in recouped time costs applied to other national security threats and concerns.

— Brooke Pawling

Brenda Sugrue stepped in to help develop a measurement strategy that included a new program evaluation framework and methodology. The framework’s elements were developed in consultation with a firm specializing in measuring the business impact of learning, and included business alignment, readiness, quality and consumption, according to the company application. Within this framework were four phases — satisfaction, learning, application and business impact — where a qualitative and quantitative study was conducted to extract accurate data on program participants.

PHOTOS BY WILL BYINGTON

With that in mind, the team, led by Chris Bower, collaborated to come up with “Find New Roads Tour,” a five-city tour developed to create an exciting experiment around the new products and provide insights to share with their dealerships. The team began by analyzing the overarching learning strategy for all new product launches developed by the Center of Learning two years ago, including gaining awareness, building knowledge, putting into practice and accessing the details. The final design included three major components: hands-on driving experiences, interactive learning labs and the Possibilities Pavilion.

• Learning In Practice Awards •

BUSINESS IMPACT DIV. 2 PARIMAL RATHOD SVP and Head, Business Impact Group and L&D, Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance Co. Ltd. Faced with growth sluggishness across distribution channels, Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance Co. Ltd., based in Mumbai, India, was looking to rejuvenate. Various distribution models and networks were explored, and the organization eventually launched a variable agency model — Agency Partner Channel. Intended for mass affluent consumers, the channel has a unique variable compensation structure with a low fixed cost, is capable of a fast distribution scale-up, is self-propagating and has high potential for geographic spread.

A pilot project in two cities resulted in growth in distribution, customer interest, branch traffic and business numbers. The organization then gauged the potential to scale up the channel across the country. However, there were a number of concerns about scalability and sustainability, including a lack of talent availability, building processes and systems, defining roles and competencies across roles, developing recruitment and sales tools, learning and development, and more. To make the APC scalable, sustainable and profitable, Kotak launched a robust sales enablement structure: the Centre of Excellence. The design of Agency COE enlists all stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, distributors and life advisors. A comprehensive enablement training structure was designed for the entire sales hierarchy, an effort led by Parimal Rathod, senior vice president and head of Kotak’s business impact group and learning and development. Since its inception in 2012, the channel has seen a compound annual growth rate of 140 percent and 100 percent sales growth year over year. It is No. 1 in new agent licensing across the industry year over year, according to Kotak’s application, and the cost-to-premium ratio was achieved in three years compared with the industry benchmark of seven years. Additionally, it has the highest branch productivity across the industry. —Ashley St. John

ELIZABETH COLLINS-CALDER Director, Leadership Development, Suffolk Boston-based Suffolk’s goal is to increase gross revenue from $2.5 billion annually to $5 billion by 2022. To ensure the company can sustain that trajectory, Elizabeth Collins-Calder and team created the Leadership Accelerator Series and Emerging Talent Series to strengthen the company’s pool of capable leaders by focusing on three things: alignment to business priorities, skill development and mentoring nationally.

James Mitchell

▲ JAMES MITCHELL VP of Global Talent Management, Rackspace Faced with a rapidly growing organization and no leadership development program to develop more senior leaders, James Mitchell, along with Rackspace University, facilitated a six-month global program to promote rack managers to senior managers and higher within six to 12 months.

Both programs are designed to ensure alignment to the firm’s business strategy, according to the company’s application. The LAS focuses on individual sessions such as influencing others, crafting mission, vision and strategy, delegation and situational leadership, and coaching for performance. The ETS focuses on mindfulness, managing your boss, learning the business fundamentals and giving and receiving feedback. This allowed session participants to engage in dialogue and consider different levels of experience, new perspectives and how to strengthen the company’s pool of candidates. The company has since seen the initiative excel with participants’ average ratings for the programs totaling to 4.04 out of 5 and boosting overall employee satisfaction 8 to 10 percentage points higher than the average national benchmark.

Through learning outcomes such as expanding their Rack Leader Network, participants have had an accelerated progression promotion rate of 8 percent, higher performance ratings and higher engagement scores within the companywide annual engagement survey, according to the company’s application.

— Brooke Pawling

Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

BUSINESS PARTNERSHIP DIV. 1 ► GENERAL MOTORS CENTER OF

LEARNING General Motors needed to think big to support the learning needs of its 180,000 employees. The automaker wanted to completely revamp its learning business model from something primarily supported by training on a local or regional basis to something that was consistent across the globe. This was vital to correcting the inconsistencies and inefficiencies in training delivery and development in different areas and to effectively create content that could be reused globally. To accomplish this, GM had to develop successful partnerships with regional learning leaders and business partners. It developed an initiative called the Global Learning Network that consisted of learning leaders from around the world. Several company training leaders traveled to meet face-toface with regional training leaders in order to understand their training function. From there, GM brought these regional leaders together in a learning workshop to discuss the findings of this tour. A GLN leader was also chosen to be responsible for communicating global priorities to all regions, deciding how to use GM’s resources, and relaying messages and feedback from the regions to company leaders. The broader GLN governance group met and developed a clear vision and mission: to build a high-impact learning organization that serves as a globally integrated business partner to deliver excellence in customer experience and drive business results. The group also developed a common learning infrastructure and focused on collaboration from the very beginning to ensure a smooth start. Finally, it partnered with GP Strategies, a Maryland-based company that provides sales and technical training, to help with training delivery.

BNY MELLON Financial service organization BNY Mellon regularly evaluates how its services and offerings align with its clients’ evolving needs, and in 2015 it discovered something new its clients wanted: strategic partnerships to improve complex problem-solving. So, it began on a multiyear journey of transformation. Executive leadership acknowledged the need to better position the company as its clients’ strategic partner in order to grow and improve its client relationships, and BNY Mellon adopted a set of research-supported best practices called the Client Experience Program in 2016. CEP involves several key components including strategic account planning, active listening, coaching and providing feedback, and creating a common language for client communication. It aims to make the business development process more consistent and transform the relationship with the client. BNY also created a team called the Client Experience Group to help drive the initiative.

Thanks to the GLN, regional learning leaders now act under a common mission. It has improved the effectiveness of training, developed a forum in which regional leaders can communicate and share best practices and created a process that allows for the sharing and reuse of training material, which is estimated to have save GM $1 million in costs.

The program has received positive feedback, including high levels of engagement from participants and encouraging feedback from clients about how well-prepared the BNY Mellon teams are and how excellent their thought-processes are in tackling problems. In addition, BNY employees feel better about the new way they prepare for meetings and are enthusiastic about how much more impactful their client interactions are now.

— Andie Burjek

36 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

DELL EMC Dell EMC Education Services had a problem with training delivery: low net promoter scores for the outsourced partners around the world who take care of customer service. So Education Services partnered with Metrics That Matter in 2017 to deploy surveys and collect data to discover areas of improvement. The analysis found that learners saw training delivery as the main contributor to low NPS and highlighted two critical areas that needed improvement — new-hire training and road map training. Dell EMC Education Services created and launched a new certification framework focused on learner experience and providing extensive feedback so that trainers can improve the training they deliver. As a result of this initiative, NPS improved by 24 percent over the course of the year. — Andie Burjek

C3 After it was acquired by Everise Holdings in December 2016, C3, or Customer Contact Channel, needed to redefine its organizational culture. C3 provides outsourced customer management solutions and developed an initiative called Progressively Achieving Career Experience. PACE identified and provided learning content for five key roles at C3 — agent, supervisor, trainer, quality assurance representative and workforce management — and was developed to fill positions internally. PACE has proven to be a success for new employees getting used to the organization and its culture and for older employees interested in career progression. Meanwhile, its library of 326 custom online courses and 65 instructor-led courses continues to grow. — Andie Burjek

LD • Learning In Practice Awards •

BUSINESS PARTNERSHIP DIV. 2 E. & J. GALLO WINERY The future-thinking E. & J. Gallo Winery looked at its manufacturing process and realized it needed to ensure that it would continually have a workforce with the skills needed in a manufacturing environment that is constantly changing due to technological advancements like automation and robotics.

Gayle Kleck and Keith Keating

ALAMO COLLEGES Most students who attend and graduate from the Alamo Colleges in Texas go on to stay in the area and contribute to the regional economy. However, many of the students at this community college face major hurdles to graduation, such as needing to study part-time because of family and work responsibilities, and completing their degree has often been an elusive goal. Alamo Colleges, grasping the core belief that its success is measured by the success of its students, developed the Student Success Completion Program in order to increase the number of degrees and certificates that students earn. This required a partnership among the five colleges across the community college network, all of whom worked toward a common goal, known as the Wildly Important Goal, or WIG. This was a multiyear effort, beginning in 2013, when community stakeholders, the business community and Alamo senior leadership convened to discuss what challenges students were facing and brainstorm potential strategies to address those challenges. In 2015, the college network accelerated the training involved in WIG and achieving those goals. Alamo Colleges cemented WIG’s place from the top down by including it on the agenda of board of trustees meetings and senior leadership meetings and including it in training for both new and current employees. The organization also made sure to publicly celebrate results to boost morale.

Gallo looked toward high schools and created a talent pipeline program that includes capstone programs for high school students and a manufacturing internship program for recent high school graduates. Part of this strategic workforce development strategy was creating a partnership with several California school districts, including Modesto, Hughson and Turlock, and holding a summit where leaders from these districts could meet with Gallo and start developing plans. Gallo considered how it could best partner with each individual district rather than creating a one-size-fits-all solution. Two of these programs for different districts include the Manufacturing Practicum for Modesto and the Gateway to Industry Program for Ceres. Students who complete the high school program can go on to apply for a 12-week internship program and from there are eligible for entry-level manufacturing jobs. Launched in 2014, the learning initiative has resulted in 230 high school students completing the program. Fifty-nine have become interns and 44 have been placed in permanent positions. Also, the Manufacturing Pipeline Program has grown to support up to 50 interns a year. — Andie Burjek

SIDLEY AUSTIN

Alamo Colleges used to place last in number of degrees and certificates earned across all community colleges in Texas; now it’s taken over as the No. 1 producer of degrees. That’s a change from 7,147 degrees/ certificates in 2014 to 12,759 in 2017. The community college network has also seen a rise in employee engagement and satisfaction. Additionally, Alamo Colleges became a member of the Achieving the Dream network, a network of more than 220 community colleges whose goal is to help low-income students and students of color achieve success.

Attracting and retaining clients is important to any successful lawyer, but the skills involved in this don’t always come naturally, and when a lawyer is handling a high-stakes matter, on-the-job learning just doesn’t cut it. So Sidley Austin’s learning team partnered with firm leaders to create the Litigation Skills Practice Series, a comprehensive, multiyear curriculum that has helped improve the skills of lawyers, paralegals, consultants and more through a mixture of classroom learning, hands-on simulations, personalized feedback and coaching. Since 2016, more than 85 teams and 100 lawyers have participated in this training, and firm leaders have benefited as well and earned nearly 800 hours of continuing legal education credit.

— Andie Burjek

Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

VE IL

INNOVATION DIV. 1 MARIAM KAKKAR Chief, Talent Development Unit, United Nations Development Programme The United Nations Development Programme is one of the oldest and largest U.N. agencies, working to eradicate extreme poverty, reduce inequalities, and ensure sustainable economic and social development in more than 170 countries. The Talent Development Unit uses an innovative approach to offer leadership and management learning opportunities to those working for UNDP, independent of their level, their contract status or their location, which is considered a game-changer in the U.N. system, according to the company’s application. Mariam Kakkar helped launch the innovative approach titled Leadership Development for All with the sole objective of driving a culture of continuous learning, innovation and knowledge creation. Additionally, the updated leadership development portfolio, which launched in 2017, added more than 10 new programs across all grade levels. The Leadership Development Pathway will now include the three-month virtual learning program LDP Foundations; LDP1: Emerging Leaders and LDP2: Future Leaders, a 12-month virtual learning program; LDP4: Executive Education, which includes scholarships for open-enrollment programs at leading business schools; LDP RR, a customized training program for senior leaders of UNDP Country teams; a Women’s Development Programme which is a blended learning program for high-potential female staff; and last, the Senior Executive Programme. UNDP has seen a tenfold increase in reach, advancing from 200 participants in L&D programs in 2016 to 2,000 participants in May 2018. Across the globe, 56 female learners and almost 30 percent of all learners are based in “hardship locations” like Afghanistan, Syria or North Korea, where learning opportunities are low. UNDP saw major success and is now considered the benchmark within the U.N. system for offering inclusive and innovative leadership development. — Brooke Pawling

38 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

Joe Ilvento

BLAIRE BHOJWANI Sr. Director, Learning Innovation, Hilton Faced with the business challenge of figuring out how to build empathy in employees who have no hospitality experience without pulling them away from their duties, Blaire Bhojwani helped implement the Business Immersion Virtual Reality Program. The VR-based learning solution combines 360-degree video, 3D objects and animation that fully immerse the learner in hotel operations, according to the company’s application. The first step in this learning initiative was to get stakeholder buy-in at the highest level, but it proved easy with the knowledge that they had a forward thinking CHRO. Next, after storyboarding and getting approval for the strategy, the team held VR 101 workshops for the HR teams and discussed equipment and tested the VR themselves.

ELIZABETH MacGILLIVRAY Strategic Learning Leader, Mercer

After getting some direction, structure and adding necessary revisions such as a VR coach to guide the learner, cheer them on and provide help if needed, the VR Business Immersion was first piloted and then launched at a Hilton Leadership Group meeting in front of 300 senior leaders. After some minor obstacles were figured out, the team streamlined it down to eight tasks and added a checklist. The initiative has shifted expectations of how VR can be used for onboarding, has successfully been used to build empathy for team members and drives business performance.

With the knowledge that increasing its budget was not an option and that learning is a business imperative, Elizabeth MacGillivray and her team at Mercer introduced Micro Experiences and deconstructed learning into 30-minute bites delivered within virtual festivals, according to the company. Micro Experiences offer tasks and assignments people can complete in addition to their usual work, which allows them to explore different parts of the firm. The company adopted a “peer to peer” learning model, a “work fast, fail fast” scrum approach and created a virtual festival framework, which included 30-minute-long interactive sessions delivered by volunteering colleagues. In 2017, the company reported that 6,000 additional hours of learning were recorded at zero cost.

— Brooke Pawling

• Learning In Practice Awards •

INNOVATION DIV. 2 NANCY ROBERT

◄ JOE ILVENTO

EVP, Chief Product and Marketing Officer, American Nurses Association

Chief Learning Officer, Commvault

American Nurses Association Enterprises — a professional association and credentialing organization serving 4 million American nurses — is like many other organizations with multiple subsidiaries. Each of these subsidiaries had its own LMS and way for customers to buy content, but it was too difficult for leaders to share content with customers. This created the problem of unengaged learners unable to provide feedback to the organization. Nancy Robert and her team recognized this problem and met it head-on, coming up with the goal of finding a single, simple platform through which customers could access course material from and get more engaged with learning by personalizing it to meet their individual needs based on experience level and circumstances. “Learner engagement is not a nice-tohave for us; it’s mandatory,” Robert said in the application. ANA Enterprise conducted a comprehensive, 18-month worldwide search before choosing D2L’s next-generation learning experience platform, Brightspace. Robert then had her team and D2L collaborate to restructure learning materials for more personalized, engaging content. Additionally, Robert and her team translated course information from 400 products into smaller chunks, while grouping courses together thematically so learners could ingest it in short bites.

In an industry where career development is essential to all employees and outdated skills translate into a competitive disadvantage, Commvault empowered employees and managers to quickly asses, prioritize and develop specific skills with a global business tool. Joe Ilvento and his team’s learning strategy started with a business strategy. The project leveraged a five-phase partnership with the business. Phase one included the creation of job roles and levels and identifying a set of job core competencies, which each had a subset of three to five competencies. Phase two was an innovative strategy and one of the biggest keys to the solution’s success, where vendor-purchased job competencies were the basis of assessment before that was deemed too subjective and a Knowledge, Skills and Abilities/Key Performance Indicator description approach was applied. Phase three was the mapping of individual competency proficiency levels to training, coaching and on-the-job development activities. Phase four saw the launch of the tool in the field. And phase five was a live launch, which has since seen great success. Overall, the company indicates that individual development plans and/or the number of career conversations have increased by 454 percent for those who have completed the program over those who have not. — Brooke Pawling

MIKE BLANCHETTE Senior Director, Sales Acceleration, Veeam After being hired by Veeam in early 2017 as senior director of global sales acceleration, Mike Blanchette immediately assessed the learning staff, learning strategies, content technologies and impact on business results. Blanchette’s first step was to create an organizational structure which supported the mantra “Veeam Fast,” as well as implement a major initiative to revamp the new-hire training program. Blanchette reduced the bulky six-month program to a self-guided online platform, according to the company’s application. Sellers are now trained before their quota starts, and this change required the launch of a new LMS with competency mapping and a social learning platform where recorded sales pitches and product demonstrations are viewed and rated by the sales organization. — Brooke Pawling

MERIYA DYBLE Director, Learning Reimagined, ATB Financial

Now, eight outdated delivery systems are combined into a single LMS, impacting 104,000 employees. It has since seen increases to learner customer satisfaction Net Promoter Scores and continues to deliver new, creative ways of learning to its customers.

After making the major investment in 2017 to transition 5,300 team members from Microsoft Office to Google’s G-suite as part of its Work Reimagined strategy, Meriya Dyble put her reading skills about peer-to-peer learning to the test. The results were a peer-to-peer learning strategy that taught team members enough competency in the G-suite to reimagine the way they work. Five hundred team members from varying levels across the company were chosen from a self-selected process and were ready to support the change. The results indicate strategic planning, consolidation and reporting are now twice as fast.

— Brooke Pawling

Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

STRATEGY DIV. 1 ► DAMODAR PADHI VP and Global Head of Talent Development, Tata Consultancy Services Technology and its network effect are changing industries worldwide. That’s something learning and development expert Damodar Padhi has to cope with daily. Our rapidly changing technological environment has resulted in the redesign of Tata Consultancy Services’ business model. TCS used to educate its workers in classrooms, but that wasn’t enough to keep up with the digitally competent world. Something had to change. To help his 390,000-plus employees become more familiar with new technology, Padhi created a digital learning course called “The Continuous Learning Program.” CLP provides lessons on technologies, domains, leadership, behavior, culture and language. One of its main perks is that employees can use it anytime, anywhere. Therefore, employees can gradually learn and grow their skills.

Damodar Padhi

LAURIE JEPPESEN

ALANNA CORRIGAN

Global Assurance Learning and Education Leader, PwC

Sr. Dir., Corporate Customer Service Training, Air Canada

Employees have gained more than three million competencies across proficiency levels with the help of this program. In addition, more than 350,000 employees have had access to nearly 14,000 learning programs. Customers have started to notice employees becoming more adaptive to technology as well. The customer satisfaction index has increased from 90 to 92 percent in the past three years.

As digital disruption in business is becoming a trend, changes must be made to adapt. Business and people models are rapidly changing. To address this matter, PwC’s Laurie Jeppesen changed her company’s audit training curriculum. The curriculum traditionally involved four programs, each lasting one to two weeks. In Jeppesen’s new initiative, she created 109 training events that could be run separately or together. PwC worked with their key stakeholder group — the Assurance L&E Network — to perform the following: list every topic, replace training overlap and substitute long courses with a flexible solution. This plan was in the works for three years without a budget. With the help of three tools — an interactive Excel feature, a website to access materials and a standardized curriculum for small firms — Jeppesen’s program came to fruition. The curriculum received exceptional firm and participant ratings. In addition, there was an average of only 2.7 attempts to pass the courses. This solidifies PwC’s reputation as a top-tier professional services brand.

At Air Canada, there was one lingering issue: Employees had to leave work for a full-day class to complete training. That became problematic, as employee routine and productivity declined. Alanna Corrigan’s corporate training team introduced the Airports Digital Learning initiative so employees could complete training during work hours. This technological training method has its perks. Made in large part to combat the stressors of working in an airport environment, café-style learning stations were developed within airport locations. These stations include comfortable seating, coffee and touchscreens. The initiative has resulted in cost savings and overall satisfaction from Air Canada’s 23,000-plus employees.

— David Chasanov

Through CLP, Padhi successfully completed his goal. He found a way to have an easily accessible program that can teach his employees additional technology skills. The program has many effective features. It includes online courses, videos, gamification and simulations that can be seen on personal devices such as smartphones and iPads. The tools for learning and development are there, and it has generated a positive buzz for TCS.

40 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

STRATEGY DIV. 2 ▼ SCOTT HAMMOND

KATHLEEN McCUTCHEON

Senior Manager, Industry Programs, Autodesk

VP, Human Resources, Tokio Marine HCC

Autodesk’s recent business model change led to an expansion of its Architecture, Engineering and Constructing market. This not only targeted enagement with new companies, but also new roles within those companies. Autodesk’s employees now had to engage an unfamiliar group — company executives. But how? At Autodesk, making good conversation with potential customers is vital to making a sale. Knowing this, Scott Hammond implemented ways to help his salesforce improve their conversation strategies with clients. Hammond’s team identified three challenges in doing this: helping sales and partners engage new customers, creating and delivering appealing content, and helping those involved retain knowledge. To address the first challenge, Hammond created an AEC customer conversation guide. The guide provided sales with resources including customer profiles, buyer challenges and how to conduct an executive conversation. With regard to the second challenge, the team created “insight videos.” These videos are short, mobile and fun pieces of learning content that Hammond’s team could absorb in just 90 seconds. For the third challenge, Hammond took into consideration that his sales team loves competition. So he created a platform that sends out two to three trivia questions per day through a mobile app. After answering the questions, employees explained why their answer was correct or incorrect. Through these three actions, change was made for the better. Partners who took advantage of Hammond’s program had 30 percent more sales opportunities than those who didn’t take the program. To make things better, the trivia platform rose sales’ retention of knowledge from 60 to 80 percent. — David Chasanov

Scott Hammond

Despite its fast growth, Tokio Marine HCC lacked something very important: leadership development programs. As acquisitions grew, more employees proved less than ideal in terms of leadership. Kathleen McCutcheon came to the rescue. McCutcheon worked with her senior leadership team to create a leadership development function. It required numerous conversations and brainstorming sessions with executives. The talent development team labeled Tokio Marine HCC in terms of roles and responsibilities. From there, four programs were created. The first program, Foundations of Leadership, was made for newly promoted and newly hired. Next was a program targeting evolving leaders called LEaD, or Leadership Excellence and Development. The third program focused on leaders of business units. Last, the fourth program created development opportunities for senior executives of the organization. These programs are already looking to be a huge success. Findings aren’t fully determined yet, as it will take several years to configure. However, based on early results, 20 percent of participants have received promotions. — David Chasanov

LISA DRUET Senior Manager, E. & J. Gallo Winery In any business, it is imperative that employees are skilled and motivated. To meet this need, Lisa Druet created an advanced manufacturing training center to educate new employees. Her idea was divided into phases including design, construction and benchmarking. The hard work paid off. The center, which is more than 12,000 square feet, consists of three classrooms, a computer lab, a quality lab, multipurpose rooms and a large production simulation environment. Thanks to Druet’s efforts, it is estimated that the training center will reduce time to competency by at least 25 percent and deliver more effective training. — David Chasanov

Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

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TALENT MANAGEMENT DIV. 1 JUDITH ALMENDRA

▼ MEREDITH OAKES

Vice President, Human Capital, TTEC

Global Head of Campus Strategy and Pipeline Development, BNY Mellon

TTEC faced a few challenges surrounding onboarding before Judith Almendra, vice president of human capital at TTEC, led a unified, cross-functional team to fix the problems and transform the onboarding process. Before the initiative, new employees were not receiving adequate equipment and system access on their first day, there was a lack of communication between new employees, the recruiter and the hiring manager when an employee accepted a job offer, and finally, there was a lack of consistent and effective new-hire orientation. The initiative, Onboarding: Creating a Wow Employee Experience, overhauled the existing, ineffective and frustrating employee onboarding process to create a unique, personalized and best-in-class onboarding experience for new global professional and enterprise services employees.

Natasa Prodanovic

▲ NATASA PRODANOVIC Group Talent Director, Coca-Cola HBC AG

The initiative involved four simultaneous workstreams. The first workstream aimed to automate and standardize by simplifying and re-engineering the provisioning process and creating a streamlined, automated workflow model aligned to support requisitions by predefined user profiles for new employees. The second workstream aimed to connect and engage by creating a new employee, recruiter and manager communication journey map, which detailed new employees’ first-year journey. The third workstream was aimed at orientation. During this phase, they launched a “one-stop shop” on TTEC’s social platform, which included new-employee resources. The team also restructured and launched a new first-day orientation program, including an updated agenda, a CEO welcome video, a site tour, introductions, a one-on-one IT session for laptop setup and more. The fourth workstream focused on the new Year One program — a scalable and self-paced e-learning program distributed automatically during onboarding. Under Almendra’s initiative, the team exceeded their five goals for the program. They achieved an average onboarding eNPS score of plus-56; achieved a new employee onboarding overall evaluation score of 4.7 out of 5 after three months; improved the percentage of provisioning tasks completed on time from 42 percent to 92 percent; reduced provisioning work time by five hours per request; and achieved a 42 percent increase in users on the company’s social media platform.

Three Fast Forward Programs designed under the guidance of Natasa Prodanovic, group talent director at Coca-Cola HBC AG, supported the company’s growth strategy by accelerating the development of the company’s top talents. The programs aimed to prepare top employees for the transition to the next organizational level by acquiring critical experiences, developing the right leadership mindset and building prioritized leadership skills through blended learning and exposure to senior management. The three programs included: Manage Self to Manage Others, Manage Others to Manage Managers, and Manage Managers to Manage Function. The architecture of the programs involves a mixed learning approach. Specifically, the programs are 70 percent experiential learning, 20 percent collaborative learning and 10 percent formal learning conducted internally through the company’s Leadership and Capability Center of Expertise and selected external partners. Prodanovic’s effort to redesign the fast-track programs, making them more outcome oriented and more focused on development initiatives and investments, resulted in positive improvements to the company’s talent development indicators. The programs doubled the promotability rate of Fast Forward participants.

— Ave Rio

42 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

BNY Mellon’s self-defined vision is to be an employer of choice for early career talent, building the company’s diverse pipeline of future leaders. Meredith Oakes, global head of campus strategy and pipeline development at BNY Mellon, helped develop a strategy to attract and develop early-career, high-potential talent. Through early relationship cultivation with university students, a rigorous summer analyst program, highly selective rotational leadership programs and creative talent engagement strategies, Oakes helped build a diverse, global pipeline of future company leaders. In 2018, BNY Mellon received more than 8,000 applications for positions offered through its Leadership Pathways programs. The program has a 15 percent applicant increase year over year. — Ave Rio

Meredith Oakes

• Learning In Practice Awards •

TALENT MANAGEMENT DIV. 2 JIM WHITEFORD

▼ HELEN ROSSITER

Executive Director, Ally

Sr. Talent Development Specialist, West Marine

Ally began with the slogan “Be an Ally for our customers” when the bank launched in 2009 after the Great Recession. Today, the company has a new slogan: Do It Right. According to the company, that means that all Ally employees do for others what they would expect themselves, with a collective desire to improve things and a genuine understanding of what really matters to the customer.

The initiative had two major positive results. First, employees learned how to infuse the brand slogan into their work, and feelings of pride and belonging to the company increased. Second, organization leaders demonstrated commitment to listening and acting, based on the collective voices of employees, and plan to continue the “Do It Right” initiative, with a new focus for 2018. In total, 98 action plans have been developed and are being executed throughout the company.

West Marine, the world’s largest retailer of everything needed for life on the water, believes the soul of adventure is in the willingness to face challenges. Knowing it had to change to thrive in a new retail environment, the company made a business decision to create a culture that supports continuous learning, growth and development. Helen Rossiter, senior talent development specialist at West Marine, led the senior team to the conclusion that individual development plans would help build a culture of personal development. The IDP process was eventually expanded to create supporting resources for the program, such as a district manager development program, badges, internal job postings, social collaboration groups to develop skills such as visual merchandising and more. In the short-term, associates are more engaged in their day-to-day development. Those on a path to development now have a clearer line of sight to achieve their personal and professional goals. In the long term, IDPs have been successful in the rebranding of West Marine as a company with a culture that supports the continuous learning and development of its employees.

— Ave Rio

Under Executive Director Jim Whiteford, Ally Auto Finance executed an employee engagement initiative to integrate that brand slogan into company culture. The company captured innovative ideas and uncovered process inefficiencies by asking each employee for suggestions for improvement. To listen to the ideas and suggestions of more than 3,800 Ally Auto Finance employees across the country, 169 workshops were held at 11 job sites. Remote and offshore employee recommendations were captured virtually. In total, more than 3,300 employees (88 percent) participated, which led to more than 1,700 recommendations, many of which are currently being executed. In the collections department, for example, employees asked for a better coaching and feedback model to improve interaction with their team leads. In response, Ally made a significant financial investment in the CBS Management Operating System and 1,199 employees transitioned into this new working call model, which included a training effort to launch and additional departmental training going forward to maintain post-launch.

KATHLEEN McCUTCHEON VP, Human Resources, Tokio Marine HCC Kathleen McCutcheon, vice president of human resources for Tokio Marine HCC, recognized the need to create a robust talent development function in the company. She knew building leadership development programs was critical to the continued growth and health of the organization, which had no leadership development programs or strategies in place. Her initiative, Leadership Excellence and Development, or LEaD for short, developed a comprehensive framework for leadership development programs where none previously existed. The program is used to develop and deliver development programs for employees from individual contributors to the C-suite. Two leadership development programs have been implemented and a third is in final development. — Ave Rio

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Helen Rossiter

Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

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TECHNOLOGY DIV. 1 JOHN KUSI-MENSAH Assistant Vice President, Distribution Capability Center of Expertise, MetLife When MetLife found its salesforce productivity wasn’t increasing significantly over time, the company realized it needed to find a more profitable way to handle training. The Distribution Academy was created by John Kusi-Mensah, assistant vice president of the Distribution Capability Center of Expertise at MetLife. It focuses on the training and development of MetLife and partner sales associates through learning and performance solutions. The main goal is to enhance salesforce proficiency, productivity and performance. The program is a working partnership between global, regional and local units. The Distribution Academy comprises an online core curriculum, a sales curriculum and practical practice of executing a sales task, among others. The training tools provided help employees since they have access to online tools when meeting with customers. A part of the program also includes one-to-one sales skills coaching meetings. These meetings are used for sales managers to review the progress the sales associate has made and whether or not they’ve grasped the key learning points in the online modules. The Distribution Advantage Platform is the backbone of the program. The platform encourages interactions that enable learners to collaborate for social learning and knowledge exchange, according to the company’s application. It does this through the digital platform that is built on artificial intelligence engines providing users with a unique experience. Before the introduction of the Distribution Academy, training organizations at the company operated separately from overall enterprise strategy. Learning and development solutions were duplicative and cost the company more than $80 million annually. By integrating the training organizations and making the necessary changes, performance and productivity of sales associates has improved with retention increasing by 10 percent. — Aysha Ashley Househ

44 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

Edward Bell, left, and Kei Tsuda

▲ EDWARD BELL

PAUL LUTMER

Director, Dell EMC Education Services

Global Commercial Learning Leader, GE Corporate

When senior leadership in Education Services at Dell EMC asked the team to expand their knowledge-sharing capabilities to educate more people, they proved they were up to the task. Companies that have been involved with MOOCs are usually involved externally. Dell EMC Education Services, however, used the EdCast platform to develop and host its own MOOCs. The company was faced with learning and development challenges such as amplifying innovative industry-leading education and reaching a broader audience globally. The team has produced its learning content through instructor-led training and e-learning. But senior leadership wanted Edward Bell, director of Dell EMC Eductaion Services, and the rest of the technology team to expand educational reach. On a quarterly basis, sales and technical professionals take part in courses. The team realized they could broaden their learning audience by appealing to EMC customers and college students. Now, they learn through recorded videos within modules.

GE Corporate didn’t want its learning program to be generalized. It wanted one that could deliver personalized learning to employees. To achieve that goal, GE’s learning team, led by Paul Lutmer, global commercial learning leader, uses four learning strategies: going through a decision-based simulation that follows the path of a sales deal flow, receiving feedback for their decisions submitted through the simulation, receiving additional microlearning assets if they get low scores and generating results to show which subskills need more learning investment.

The team also created the Global Services Associate Program — a recruitment, training and mentoring program to provide learning for the next generation of service professionals.

The business moved to unbiased behavioral assessments and provided a learning solution that applies to global employees at a low cost.

— Aysha Ashley Househ

• Learning In Practice Awards •

TECHNOLOGY DIV. 2 ▼ WALTER DAVIS

BRENT BOECKMAN

Global Learning Systems and Delivery Manager, Aggreko

Global Learning and Development Manager, Malwarebytes

Swap out the heavy binders and bring in the digital platform. That’s what Aggreko did in an effort to transition from a training-focused organization to a learning-focused one. The company realized they needed to begin embracing technology. The Houston-based company created its Be Your Future learning program to create a digital learning experience that is collaborative and engaging, according to its application. To build upon the program, Aggreko teamed up with Guidebook to create “My Guide.” This phone app allows employees to build connections, socialize and collaborate, while allowing them to “be together,” which is one of the company’s core values in the learning journey. Now any learning handouts, handbooks and courses are easily accessible on the app. The transition from paper to digital has not only helped employees in terms of learning, but it’s also made their meetings with clients easier and more efficient. Instead of carrying a heavy binder with multiple training manuals as they previously did, all the Aggreko employee needs is a digital device when meeting with a client. “This is an exciting time of digital transformation,” said Walter Davis, global learning and talent technologies manager at Aggreko. “With Guidebook, we’re investing in a smarter, more strategic way. We’re investing in our employees’ futures.” By the end of the year, Aggreko is on track to offer more than 3,000 courses to more than 2,000 employees across the globe. While they are increasing the number of courses, they are decreasing the amount of print costs thanks to their transition to digital. It hopes to further decrease printing volume 50 to 60 percent by 2020. — Aysha Ashley Househ

Walter Davis

Malwarebytes realized it needed to increase productivity and efficiency. To do this, it upskilled its team with new technology through Udemy for Business, an effort led by Brent Boeckman, global learning and development manager. Malwarebytes partnered with Udemy for Business to provide employees with dynamic content from industry experts for continuous learning and growth, according to its application. The manager of the Quality Assurance team at the anti-malware software organization realized QA processes were too manual and slowing the team down. He proposed that new technology was needed, but with that came the need to learn a new programming language called Python. Even with this obstacle, the company provided the team with a budget to receive training and certification with the goal to finish in six months. In their search, they came across Udemy for Business and got training from their desks, and finished training in just 30 days versus the six-month goal. The QA team’s productivity improved while allowing the company to upskill its technology. — Aysha Ashley Househ

• Learning In Practice Awards •

TRAILBLAZER DIV. 1 ► PATRICIA AQUARO Managing Director and Head of Risk and Professional Excellence, BNY Mellon In an effort to assess and train 6,000 managers, Patricia Aquaro at BNY Mellon led a team to create EmpowerTheUser Simulations. The bank offers investment and investment services, meaning its workers must understand and manage risk to have continued success. After seeing the success of a 2015 session, “Managing Risk in Your Team,” BNY Mellon created its next program in 2017, Effective Risk Management for Managers, in three simulated sessions. The first taught them to act as relationship managers to meet with prospective clients to negotiate contracts and onboard the client. The second simulation acted as operations managers to onboard the client, take ownership of their issue and find next steps. The third had participants act as risk managers to examine an issue. These simulations helped staff understand their role in mitigating and managing risk. These simulations centered on the Kirkpatrick Model, following four levels: measure engagement and satisfaction, assess transfer of learning, determine behavioral change and quantify business impact. A new level of the model that uses neuroscience and artificial intelligence to predict future behavior was also created. To build this program, BNY Mellon had to host design workshops with stakeholders, consult on design, script the simulations, produce the simulations, edit them and launch the program to 6,000 managers globally.

Patricia Aquaro

CHARLES ATKINS Vice President, Dell EMC Education Services After Dell Inc. and EMC Corp. merged, their learning functions also needed to combine. Dell EMC Education Services then faced the challenge of having a globally dispersed team that must serve stakeholders efficiently. To do so, Charles Atkins led his team to open communication across silos and define a new operational model, while helping employees understand their roles in the new company. To start, the leadership in Education Services mapped out the learning function as it was, followed by identifying gaps and requirements from stakeholders. The operating model that came out of this needed to manage customer needs and portfolios of learning offerings, then develop and deliver courses. The organizational structure then needed revamping to support that model. The resulting plan, “Designing Our Success,” involved a leadership workshop, an online course and an ongoing communications plan with the goal of every member of the team fully understanding the new operating model and their individual role in the changing company and business unit. Results from these efforts include 99 percent of participants finding value in the leadership workshop and the intranet site having an 84 percent participation rate. — Lauren Dixon

DAVID SYLVESTER Principal, Leadership and Development, Booz Allen Hamilton

The simulations proved successful, saving more than $700,000 and rolling out 350 percent faster than industry benchmarks, according to the Learning In Practice application. User satisfaction was also high, with 80 percent of participants agreeing that the program delivery “was an effective way for me to learn the content.” Feedback included requests to deliver the training to direct reports, resulting in the program rolling out to an additional 10,000 participants in 2018.

When Booz Allen Hamilton wanted to become a leader in data science, the company needed to create a learning initiative and employee value proposition to both upskill current employees and retain them. The business decision meant retaining the existing 600 data scientists and training 3,500 data analysts at the company through a Data Science 5K Challenge, which featured a 110-hour course. This effort was in conjunction with the company launching its employee value proposition, which promises “to invest in employees’ career growth and satisfaction in return for their commitment to the firm’s success.” Although the DS5K is still in progress, a communication plan and partnership with 10 subject matter experts aided in making this multiyear effort an early success.

— Lauren Dixon

46 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

TRAILBLAZER DIV. 2 ► TIM TOBIN Vice President, Franchisee Onboarding and Learning, Choice Hotels International As a leading hospitality franchising firm, Choice Hotels International needed to better serve its nearly 50,000 franchisees through elective and required content about proprietary systems, operations and brand programs. The LMS, ChoiceU, originally launched in 2008 and has since grown to include videos and e-learning modules. Students of the platform grew frustrated with the ChoiceU experience, sparking a need to change while connecting learning and performance.

In stepped Tim Tobin, who joined Choice Hotels as dean of Choice University in 2016. His first assignment was to evaluate the program, finding out through more than 75 interviews that learners wanted user-friendly navigation and content that is short and aligns with their roles. To start on implementing these necessary changes, Tobin had a multiday offsite meeting with all 30 members of the Choice University team, working to identify a new vision for their program. The first priority was the LMS, and creating the new program involved regular communication with the company’s executive team, quarterly sessions with owner groups, creative sessions with the LMS provider and, finally, user experience testing. New features and functionality began to go through changes, resulting in new learning taxonomy organized in four areas: systems/operations, brand/service, leadership/management and functional topics. The new ChoiceU.com also features five language options, curriculum road maps and business solution maps. Videos, branded as ChoiceU TV, are between three and 15 minutes. Additionally, ChoiceU.com is mobile-enabled and has an enhanced search functionality, as well as many other add-ons and improvements. ChoiceU.com went live in May 2017. The results from these efforts include more than 47,000 active student accounts and an increased completion of content from 336,000 in 2015 to more than 1.7 million in 2017. — Lauren Dixon

Tim Tobin

ANIL SANTHAPURI Director, Learning and Development, Altisource

At the time of the application submission, RAMP had only 16 weeks of post-training data that already proved a 6.16-times return on investment.

Anil Santhapuri led Altisource’s L&D team to support initiatives at the real estate and mortgage services and technology provider. A learning initiative for more than 7,500 employees involved three main pillars, which aligned to business initiatives such as supporting objectives and key results, creating compelling learning experiences and launching a new-hire onboarding program. To accomplish necessary goals, Santhapuri’s team needed to shift company culture for the employee population spread across five countries, organize to reach all workers and redesign existing course material. This all proved successful, with participants reporting effectiveness scores of at least 4 out of 5 regarding the material and usefulness of training.

— Lauren Dixon

ROSS McLEAN Global Program Manager, Veeam Veeam Software, a company that develops backup, disaster recovery and intelligent data management software, is growing quickly. Between 2016 and 2018, the team swelled from 2,000 to 3,500 employees. This, along with customer growth, meant the sellers needed a strong onboarding program. Ross McLean, global program manager, faced creating onboarding for salespeople that meets the following criteria: flexible to various hire dates, unique to different geographies and roles, provides critical knowledge, reduces travel costs and more. The program, called RAMP, features an LMS and knowledge reinforcement app, which is released at 30, 60 and 90 days after employee start-dates to remind new salespeople of key topics.

Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

EXCELLENCE IN ACADEMIC PARTNERSHIPS ► DAVENPORT UNIVERSITY Research conducted by direct sales business Amway in 2008 revealed a significant gap in development opportunities for midlevel and functional leaders who wanted to improve their leadership knowledge and skills. Amway identified five areas that servant leaders would need to master: difficult interactions, engagement and influence, global collaboration, innovation and creativity, and the ability to lead people. Then it searched for an outside team to serve as a partner in developing, organizing and implementing a leadership development certification program that could deliver these skillsets. Davenport University, with its Institute for Professional Excellence, was the answer. Together, Davenport University and Amway designed the Amway Leadership Certification Program, which blends self-guided instruction, discussion-based learning and live engagement. An annual program, the ALCP lasts for seven months and requires about two to three hours of self-paced work per week. Instructors include members of Davenport University MBA faculty and Amway experts and leaders. Amway facilitates learning on key concepts of corporate leadership philosophy. Davenport faculty teaches the five key people-leadership topics using a four-week learning cycle for each, called the FLARE cycle — Fuel, Learn, Apply, Reflect, Evaluate. Throughout the program’s 10 years, 665 participants have come from all regions in which Amway operates, with leaders joining the program from 21 countries. In 2017, of the 76 program participants, 92 percent passed the program and received academic credit and 83 percent passed with excellence and were on the program’s honor roll. Amway research shows 98 percent of participants report that the program has had a positive impact on their leadership performance. — Ashley St. John

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Julie Milanowski, Daniel Rundhaug and Angie Wittkowski

▼ PENN STATE SMEAL COLLEGE OF

BUSINESS / PENN STATE EXECUTIVE PROGRAMS / CorpU In 2015, Agilent Technologies Inc., a public company focused on life sciences, diagnostics and applied chemical markets, spun off its electronic measurement business to focus exclusively on life science technologies. To ensure the success of this new direction, Agilent CEO Mike McMullen launched a massive restructuring to make the company more efficient, nimble and customer-focused. Agilent supply chain teams that had been supporting individual product lines were consolidated into a global organization that required tight alignment of purpose, capabilities and best practices. Agilent engaged Penn State’s Smeal College of Business and CorpU, which partnered in 2015 to launch the Supply Chain Leadership Academy, a program that helps supply chain leaders of tomorrow apply leadership concepts and best practices in supply chain management. The SCLA program for Agilent was renamed OFS Supply Chain Program and used a two-prong approach that involved strategy sprints for department heads and managers and secondary learning sprints for a broader range of employees. As a result of the program, Agilent saw a reduced time for its strategy rollout for 150 leaders from four months to nine days. Ninety-two percent of manufacturing and supply chain employees confirmed understanding how their work contributed to strategy and how their organization contributed to company success, and 91 percent understood how the strategy supports customers’ needs, according to survey results.

Steve Tracey

48 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

— Ashley St. John

LD • Learning In Practice Awards •

EXCELLENCE IN BLENDED LEARNING ▼ GP STRATEGIES Aishah Davis and Benjamin Joseph

▲ LEARNLIGHT Deutsche Telekom faced multiple challenges with its language training programs due to high costs, lack of flexibility, inefficient face-to-face programs and outdated training methods. The company wanted its staff to improve on English and decided to partner with Learnlight. Learnlight is an education technology company aimed at delivering language and skills training online and on the ground to learners in more than 150 countries. Its curriculum is developed for adult professionals working in an international environment. It has a unique classroom methodology, where students do activities before class instead of homework. According to the nomination application, this is done so “students can take full advantage of their time with their trainer and focus on practicing and producing the language acquired.” Then, after the session, students can complete additional activities and focus on areas where they need extra help. In February 2016, the Global English digital transformation initiative was introduced, aimed at implementing an online blended language learning solution that would support self-paced and tutored digital language learning. The initiative led to the introduction of two new services: Learnlight Academy, an open-group virtual service where students can enroll at any time of the year and choose a group, and Learnlight Café, a virtual meeting space open all day to build fluency and improve communication skills. Additionally, “Single Sign-On” was integrated, allowing learners to access training courses from a personalized page.

RITE-SOLUTIONS

Bristol-Myers Squibb underwent a transformation from a pharmaceutical to a global biopharma company. It needed to implement a blended learning people strategy focused on developing performance for its employees, specifically its 4,500 managers. BMS wanted learning to be easily consumed; to capture managers’ attention and engage them in skill development like coaching, giving and receiving feedback. BMS partnered with BlessingWhite, a division of GP Strategies, in developing manager performance. GP Strategies is a global performance improvement company focused on: sales and technical training, eLearning solutions, management consulting and engineering services. GP Strategies introduced an online learning platform to help managers improve their skills in coaching and drive performance. The team created two streamlined paths that managers could access directly, one for new managers and one for established managers.

Boeing Co.’s Capture Team Leader onsite instructor-led training course was offered in St. Louis with no prework and with guest speakers canceling at the last minute. Thus, Boeing decided to redesign the course using a blended learning approach addressing several of the company’s business challenges and accessible to any qualified CTL.

This resulted in a learning solution that was flexible, relevant and reflected the speed and agility that BMS expects from managers. According to the nomination application, “Managers were more inclined to engage in the improvement of their leadership and talent development skills.”

Rite-Solutions was contracted to design, develop and support the launch. The company’s learning consultants designed an effort that was undertaken through virtual learning objectives and an ILT case study. It impacted 250 participants and provided them with valuable knowledge.

— Rocio Villaseñor

Scott Mason and Judy Kelley

According to the nomination application, 4,000 individuals in more than 30 countries have had English training. Enhancing cross-border team collaboration, ensuring effective communication with growing international customer-base, and reducing training spend considerably for Deutsche Telekom. — Rocio Villaseñor

Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

EXCELLENCE IN COMMUNITY SERVICE TTEC When TTEC employees were searching for a way to give back to their community, the company responded by starting their own search for a school where a significant impact could be made. TTEC’s TeleTech Community Foundation, founded in 2007, was set up to provide company resources to the educational experience for students of greatest need. In 2009, the company decided to eliminate their annual holiday party in favor of “Spirit of the Season,” an event that focuses on a needy and worthy elementary school instead. Although they participated in these community initiatives, employees felt the need to give back on a long-term basis. That’s when the Colorado-based company sought out a school in 2012 and came across University Prep. University Prep at Arapahoe Street is a tuition-free, elementary public charter school, founded to serve the diverse and economically challenged families in the Five Points neighborhood of Denver, according to the application. One of the reasons TTEC partnered with University Prep is because of its motto, “college starts in kindergarten,” teaching children from a young age that a college degree is possible. TTEC employees spend time reading with students and the company hosts professional development sessions for teachers.

▼ COREAXIS CONSULTING LLC Eckerd Connects, a youth services organization, needed an effective tool to deliver emotionally challenging content to employees, so it turned to CoreAxis Consulting LLC to develop learning modules. The main goal for Eckerd Connects is to “make a difference in the lives of youth, families and communities.” Even though the company embraces industry-leading tools, systems and processes, it felt like it didn’t have an efficient training program. That’s when it turned to CoreAxis for help. Because of sensitive content such as photos of trauma and child abuse, it was critical to have a design that presented the material in an empathetic and understanding way. CoreAxis created four modules, the first of which was an introduction to Eckerd Connects’ mission, vision and values. The other three consisted of content on how to handle trauma and child abuse. While painful, the way the new training platform is structured solved the challenge of “delivering difficult material in a personal way, while maintaining an action-oriented approach.” The modules teach the learner how to recognize signs of trauma and abuse and what steps to take. — Aysha Ashley Househ

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Since TTEC partnered with University Prep, it has been able to help the school provide funding for technology and human capital resources. It’s also been able to get a second campus up, University Prep at Steele Street. The greatest challenge the school faced was low academic performance. Eventually, it was able to turn it around, and University Prep has grown from a single campus with 180 students to two campuses with 585. — Aysha Ashley Househ

50 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

Mark Zides

• Learning In Practice Awards •

EXCELLENCE IN CONTENT RAYTHEON PROFESSIONAL SERVICES LLC ► Raytheon Professional Services LLC not only has to think about U.S. rules and regulations, it also has a responsibility to follow international laws. The U.S. defense contractor is looking to expand its sales products and services domestically and internationally. To do this, it needs to be diligent when dealing with Export/Import, or EX/IM, regulations, especially with the U.S. Department of State International Traffic in Arms Regulations and the U.S. Department of Commerce Export Administration Regulations. Noncompliance can negatively impact the success of the business by driving up costs, slowing its responsiveness and, in the worst case, preventing international business. With this in mind, Raytheon designed and implemented an EX/IM compliance learning program with the help of its global trade organization. Over a period of several months, the global trade team worked to create an effective learning program that met the company’s needs. Courses are divided into three categories: all employees, global trade professionals and role-specific.

Kenneth Mattern, Todd Mercer and Gary Hedlund

IMPACT With the business environment continuously and rapidly changing, Johnson Matthey, a global sciences and chemical company, realized it needed to work on developing “ready now” midlevel leaders. The company turned to Impact, a global leadership development consultancy, to create a new program: the Mid-Level Leaders Development Program. When Impact did an analysis to figure out key areas to target, it found midlevel leaders didn’t have the skills to transition from leading others to leading managers.

THE PRESENTATION COMPANY When Boston Scientific saw that its teams weren’t communicating effectively internally and externally, the company realized it needed some help. It turned to The Presentation Company to improve its workers’ communication skills.

The program takes the learner on a six-month learning journey, spread across nine days, with three face-to-face modules with pre- and post-work and two inter-module bridge sessions facilitated virtually, according to the application. The goal is to teach leadership development, provide participants with the knowledge, skills and behaviors to increase their leadership effectiveness, create and deepen alignment with future leaders, and navigate change, complexity and ambiguity with agility.

Not only were things getting lost in translation, but presentations by Boston Scientific to its audience wasn’t customer-centric, leaving attendees confused with many technical terms they did not understand. To be able to present its information more effectively, The Presentation Company proposed a program that combined storytelling and data visualization to get messages across.

Since implementing the new curriculum, the company has seen a reduction in violations. Where it had more than 300 violations per quarter, it is now down to 10.

Since the introduction of the program, participants at Johnson Matthey feel that the MLDP has helped them build professional success by learning effective leadership skills.

Since completing the program, communication has improved within the team and to the company audience.

— Aysha Ashley Househ

A key aspect that was important to Raytheon when constructing its new learning program was that it didn’t only consist of regulations. It also wanted material that explained what Raytheon does to comply, how it operates and what it means for any individual performing a specific role. Currently, the curriculum includes 58 modules and almost 500 distinct topics.

Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

EXCELLENCE IN E-LEARNING ► EASYGENERATOR Why not directly put the creation of learning in the hands of your employees? Nielsen Holdings PLC needed an effective solution to meet the L&D needs of its workers and found the answer with Easygenerator. Nielsen was searching for a cost-effective strategy to meet some of its L&D challenges, including keeping up with the rapid pace of a changing market, a shortage of up-to-date knowledge and the mistake of subject matter experts training employees on an individual level rather than a larger scale. With these challenges, Nielsen asked for a home-grown, employee-driven solution to harness internal expertise, according to the application. That’s where Easygenerator came in to advance an employee-generated learning model to help solve these challenges. EGLs are “driven by L&D but co-owned and managed by employees,” allowing employees to create e-learning courses on topics in which they are experts and share their knowledge with colleagues. This new model allowed Nielsen to target each of its challenges in a cost-effective way and on a tight budget.

SCRIMMAGE Smith & Nephew understood it couldn’t have a learning program that’s one-size-fitsall. It knew training needed to be flexible so it sought out Scrimmage to build an effective learning program. The global medical device company wanted a training initiative for its sales department that was engaging, varied and interesting. Scrimmage created the electronic point of access, or ePOA, as a 12-week training program on its mobile platform. It can be accessed on any device and contains various modalities, including content pieces, videos and quizzes. The ideal learning program had to provide sales reps on-demand answers for clients, develop selling skills, mitigate common issues and improve product knowledge to increase the company’s overall sales effectiveness.

Now there are more than 1,000 modules available to Nielsen’s employees and the L&D department runs more efficiently. Future plans include the building of an artificial intelligence coach to continue building relevant and efficient content for the company. — Aysha Ashley Househ

— Aysha Ashley Househ

52 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

▼ HT2 LABS Villeroy & Bock has a global workforce, and it asked HT2 to build a learning program that could be applied to stores in both London and Shanghai. The Brand Ambassador program is a learning initiative that is cost-effective, impactful and increases sales effectiveness. The program is blended, providing online social learning and real-life sales situations. V&B has retail units globally, so it needed to deliver the same training to every colleague. With logistical constraints, not all stores could receive the blended program. However, this was an advantage for V&B, comparing results between online learning versus blended learning. — Aysha Ashley Househ

Smith & Nephew’s reporting tools also needed a makeover since results weren’t clear. With the help of Scrimmage, it developed the Matrix Reporting tool. Results showed those who completed the ePOA program increased their sales average by 13 percent compared with the 5 percent increase for those who didn’t finish it in its entirety. By making the necessary upgrades, the company has been able to provide employees a “sales training journey.”

It could keep up with a changing market since employees were sharing knowledge in a continuous cycle. A shortage of up-to-date knowledge was swept out since employees create their training content. And, rather than training individuals such as new employees one by one, SMEs no longer needed to put in long hours. New employees can find all the training content in one place.

Kasper Spiro

Nicole Kastner

• Learning In Practice Awards •

EXCELLENCE IN EXECUTIVE EDUCATION THE REGIS CO. Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co.’s business model is based on having a strong field presence in communities where its district and field offices support financial representatives. These representatives are responsible for developing relationships with customers who ultimately purchase the Milwaukee-based company’s products and services. With the goal of expanding its sales force, Northwestern Mutual was looking to increase development efforts to build the skills of its emerging leaders to be able to lead the growing organization. To create this leadership pipeline, the company came up with Leadership NEXT. The invitation-only, three-year, high-potential program debuted in 2014 and includes simulations and experiences that allow participants the opportunity to improve and focus on their leadership skills. These experiences include real-world applications focusing on the financial acumen of running a small business, leadership development, and other leadership competencies in a peer-to-peer setting, according to the company’s application. Initially, to help determine the needs and strengths of Northwestern Mutual’s financial representatives, The Regis Co., a developer of custom simulation-based experiences, conducted interviews that were then codified in a needs document. Next, a cross-functional design session was held with financial representatives, leadership and stakeholders. Finally, working with Regis, Northwestern Mutual designed the NEXT Simulation Board Game, the primary activity in the Leadership NEXT program. The game is designed for six teams, with each team representing the leadership in an Northwestern Mutual office. As the teams play the game, they encounter tasks that emulate running an office, including making investments and ROI impact, as well as situations in which leaders must make financial decisions unique to running an office. The game is delivered in a live, facilitated session to prompt discussion among participants. Each year, the game can be updated to reflect new challenges facing Northwestern Mutual.

NOVOED As part of its Strategy 2020 goal, Clorox wanted to gain a competitive advantage by developing an industry-leading supply chain. The company enlisted the help of Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech, which was already providing successful executive education to senior leaders for the company. These senior leaders felt that in order to execute changes in the business, lower-level managers needed to be properly trained as well. But bringing in Clorox managers for a two-week offsite program was not feasible for both logistical and budgetary reasons. To meet this need, Scheller created a blended online program, Global Operations Leadership Forum. The program utilizes the NovoEd learning platform to incorporate online learning with an onsite residential component at the Georgia Tech campus, allowing participants to interact with Georgia Tech faculty and network. The GOLF program focuses on three areas crucial to implementing an industry-leading supply chain — strategic thinking, operational excellence and leadership development — and lasts eight weeks. The first two weeks are completed online. Participants learn about basic topics, divide into small groups and work on team assignments. Week three is held in-person and consists of three days on campus at the Scheller School of Business, with seminars led by faculty and subject matter experts. The final four weeks are held online and consist of a continuation of learning content and one team assignment per week.

While it’s too early to tell whether the program has made an impact in market share and improved financial representative performance, behaviors have changed among its target audience, according to the company’s application. Observations by Northwestern Mutual executive leadership share that participants are making fewer decisions alone. They are engaging more people in their offices when making difficult decisions, which will hopefully create better change-management processes and clearer communication in the long term.

The program requires three to four hours per week spent in the NovoEd learning platform. Each week, the teams are expected to meet via video conference at a time of their choosing to work on and submit their team assignment. In the platform, each team has its own private workspace in which they can schedule times to meet virtually, have discussions and share documents. Team assignments receive feedback from instructors and staff so participants are receiving both peer and expert feedback during the program.

Northwestern Mutual has also experienced an increase in its executive leader succession pool. Due to the NEXT program, more sales leaders are expressing interest in becoming a managing partner; Northwestern Mutual reports a 400 percent increase in interest among sales leaders to continue to executive roles in the company.

By building a greater sense of accountability and relying on each other in teams, the initiative has garnered a nearly 100 percent completion rate. Based on survey feedback, participants reported a high level of impact on their activities and management of supply chain initiatives.

— Brooke Pawling

Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

EXCELLENCE IN PARTNERSHIP ► SCRIMMAGE Gilead, a global top-five biopharmaceutical firm, enlisted the help of Scrimmage, a long-standing partner, to help train 2,000 U.S., U.K. and European sales personnel with an innovative concept of integrating various LMSs under one access point, available on any mobile device. Employees were being required to access each system individually to locate, view and complete assignments, tasks or review/re-read materials. Along with recognizing that it wasn’t aligned with today’s mobile standards, it became clear to the company that a technology partner was needed to address its issues and devise complementary learning strategies — and so it turned to Scrimmage. The commercial learning and development team and IT team at Gilead went to Scrimmage with a wish: for their learners to be able to access all of the content, curriculums, activities and assets located in the various repositories and applications in one place — via the Scrimmage mobile learning platform. Sharon Steeley and Nate Kahl

— Brooke Pawling

◄ LITMOS

ER V IL

In response to discouraging comments and scores made on a recent employee engagement survey, TTEC put its focus on enhancing its current leadership program, which would address employee concerns. These concerns, according to the company, include lack of employee development, limited career development conversations and minimal evidence of company values being demonstrated. With its employees on different experience and tenure levels, TTEC partnered with the Litmos engagement team to develop a custom and gamified learning interface to encourage development of key competency areas. The five key metrics it influenced included employee Net Promotor Score, rational engagement, emotional engagement, job satisfaction and intent to stay.

Allison Levy

54 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

GP STRATEGIES

After a year, every aspect of engagement measured by the employee NPS saw a double-digit percentage point increase.

Bristol-Myers Squibb, a leader in the pharmaceutical industry, was looking to transform its approach to learning that would reflect how learners today want to engage with material. BMS came up with an initiative titled Reimagining Learning @ BMS, spearheading a more immediate, interactive, integrated and individualized learning experience for its employees. To help conceptualize this initiative, the company partnered with BlessingWhite, a division of GP Strategies, which then taught them how to integrate technology, focus on critical skills and messages, socialize the concept and turn out the new approach. The successful initiative saw a 67 percent increase in use of online digital resources and has been accepted across BMS as the company standard for all learning efforts.

— Brooke Pawling

• Learning In Practice Awards •

EXCELLENCE IN TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION SWEETRUSH Hilton knew it needed to modernize its approach to design experiential learning in order to build empathy for roles that are often overlooked, as well as deliver a more cost- and time-effective way to introduce the value of hospitality to new team members. Hilton decided to work with SweetRush’s emerging technologies team SPARK to create a virtual-reality-based learning experience. Hilton received assistance navigating how to evaluate and select VR technology for the Business Immersion learning program. Once the complex process of creating VR began, SweetRush and Hilton went through a series of phases, including allowing learners to move their body in a virtual space. Within this interactive experience, the learner must do the work of others, including kitchen workers, housekeeping and the front desk. Throughout, understanding and empathy is built for those who fulfill these demanding roles. Additionally, the virtual environment can give guided help.

CHRONUS

▼ STRIVR STRIVR helped 200 Walmart Academies out with the old and in with the new through implementation of virtual reality training to teach and train employees after the company began facing business challenges. Those challenges revolved around preparing store associates and store managers for their first six months on the job. Not to mention, training methods were getting costly, and the turnover rates were high among store associates. That’s where STRIVR came in. After identifying its learning strategies, the two collaborated to design the training scenarios and curriculum. While Walmart brought the SMEs, STRIVR brought the VR expertise. The development included STRIVR’s team of solutions architects, data scientists and engineers creating the training curriculum in four weeks. The initial test occurred at 30 Walmart academies where employees were trained on how to use VR software and devices, with STRIVR going onsite for accurate set-up. Now, employee satisfaction has improved by 30 percent and Walmart has expanded the VR program to reach 140,000 employees per year with plans to expand training to encompass soft skills training such as conflict resolution for managers.

After Paychex executives noticed a distinct lack of women in leadership roles at its organization, it launched a career mentoring program by matching women in leadership roles to high-potential women at the company. The framework, facilitated by Chronus mentoring software, focused on ways to design, attract, connect, guide and measure potential leaders. The program was monitored on an admin dashboard allowing feedback by way of surveys so Paychex could see what aspects were thriving and what needed to be corrected efficiently. In just two years, according to the company, participants have achieved a 94 percent retention rate and are 12 percent more likely to see a change in position. — Brooke Pawling

D2L

Learners tested positively — 85 percent agreed or strongly agreed that they gained more empathy/ appreciation for hotel team members, the company said. Additionally, 79 percent stated they agree or strongly agree the experience will impact their corporate work.

To help children and adults gain a better musical education, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra partnered with D2L to design video teaching resources to put students in the middle of the orchestra while also providing a comfortable lesson plan for the teacher. After enlisting the help of D2L’s Learning and Creative Services, which helped create the digital design and build the video player technology, the two recorded 10 concerts from multiple camera angles with more than 100 musicians and distributed it to Canada Mosaic, a digital learning site. The format featured embedded videos, easily digestible learning modules and integrated lesson plans. As a result, more than 40 TSO performances have been recorded for future use and 10 teaching modules have been created for schools.

— Brooke Pawling

Derek Belch

Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

Case Study

Welcome to Wichita BY SARAH FISTER GALE

ichita, Kansas, is best known for being a center of aviation manufacturing. The city, which refers to itself as the “Air Capital of the World,” is home to multiple major aircraft companies and industry suppliers, including Textron Aviation, Spirit AeroSystems Holdings and Airbus Americas Engineering. But what the city is increasingly short of is talent to work at these companies. “It’s a constant struggle for Wichita,” said Sheree Utash, president of Wichita State University Tech. “There are a lot of job openings and not enough talent. We need a bigger pipeline to fill these jobs.” It’s an ongoing problem that city leaders have attempted to address through high school training programs, internship opportunities and scholarships to local students. But none of these programs have made a big enough impact. Last May, Utash was talking with members of the Wichita Community Foundation, which helps people manage charitable giving, and they came up with an idea. Instead of just offering scholarships, what if the city paid all of the relocation, academic and living expenses for students to come to Wichita and complete an Aviation certification training program — then helped them find jobs? “It was a Saturday morning ‘write it on a napkin’ kind of idea, but it ended up having legs,” Utash said. Foundation leaders thought it was an innovative approach to addressing one of the challenges outlined in its Chung Report, a deep dive study of Wichita’s economic development needs, created by James Chung, a former Wichita resident and current head of Reach Advisors, a New York-based strategy and research firm. The report identified the lack of human capital and training for advanced manufacturing as major obstacles to the city’s economic growth, said Shelly Prichard, president and CEO of the foundation. Her organization had earmarked $1 million to support talent development, so when she heard Utash’s idea she was immediately on board. “We need more people here to keep up with demand, and this was a way to get people to come,” Prichard said. 56 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

SNAPSHOT The city of Wichita, Kansas, through its Wichita Promise MOVE program, is attracting talent from across the nation to fill its industry talent gap.

All Expenses Paid By July, the foundation committed the first $500,000 to Wichita Promise MOVE with plans to invest more if the program takes off. “It was the largest grant the foundation has ever made,” Utash said. The core goal of WPM is to remove all the barriers that keep people from getting training to start a new career. “It’s not enough just to give them a scholarship,” Prichard pointed out. People need to live, eat and support their families, and they can’t do that if they have to quit their jobs to go to school full-time. “Wichita Promise MOVE removes those barriers.” The program covers relocation costs, housing, food and transportation along with tuition and fees for students to complete one of two WSU Tech certification programs, in sheet metal assembly or process mechanics. The training lasts six to eight weeks. To be eligible, students must reside at least 75 miles outside of Wichita and pass basic enrollment criteria, including a math assessment and a drug test. Once they complete the training, they are guaranteed an interview with at least one local aviation company, with the potential for a sign-on bonus.

Finding Candidates WSU Tech is using the money to cover all of the students’ costs and to support a national marketing campaign via traditional and social media channels. It is the first national marketing effort WSU Tech has ever undertaken, and it was a steep learning curve, Utash said. But the initial response has been promising. Utash’s initial goal was to find 50 candidates to put through the program by the end of 2018, and they were close to meeting that target at the time this article was written. Since launching the campaign, they’ve had more than 1,000 inquiries from every state in the nation, and 91 people started the application process. Twelve stu-

dents were selected for the first cohort, and 31 were being considered for the second program, which began in October. Several students from the first group were offered jobs before they even began the training, based on their initial screenings. “Local companies are fighting to hire these students,” said James Hall, dean of aviation technologies at WSU Tech. “They are very excited about the program.” The students in the first two cohorts range in age from late teens to mid-30s, with varying education and work experience. “They don’t need to have prior experience in manufacturing to be eligible, but we included the math test because math skills have been a barrier in the past,” Hall said. The instruction focuses on knowledge accumulation and practice. While the training is only six to eight weeks, it is full-time, Hall noted. “Our students are with us eight hours a day, five days a week, just like a traditional work environment. Over the course of six weeks, that translates to 240 hours in class, plus homework and online assignments. The sheet metal program was already part of WSU Tech’s curriculum, though Dean’s team adapted it to be shorter and more intensive, so the students could be ready to work sooner. The process mechanics course was developed specifically for the WPM program. In both cases, WSU Tech faculty worked with industry leaders to understand the knowledge and skills they want these candidates to have and the kinds of projects they will be working on. “Industry feedback helped to shape a lot of the curriculum,” Hall said. The faculty are also open to tweaking the program as industry needs evolve. For example, Spirit AeroSystems is currently building a very large structure for Boeing, so they asked that students practice with larger fasteners. Instructors also implemented a new device provided by the company to time how fast students can complete certain tasks.

A Helping Hand Industry involvement doesn’t end in the classroom. Business owners throughout Wichita are getting involved by pitching in to host student dinners and offering deals on hotels and transportation. One real estate company even donated $80,000 worth of furnished apartments for students to use while they are training to help stretch the grant further, Prichard said. “The whole community wants it to be successful.” To further ensure the students stay on track, the school has hired a success coach to work with them every step of the way. “It’s like career counseling on steroids,” Utash said. The coach makes sure they get settled into their new homes, encourages them to attend

weekly student dinners, and checks up on them regularly to make sure they are attending classes and finding their way around the city. She also gets involved if they start to fall behind. In one case, the coach followed up with two students who failed to sign up for an online occupational safety course after checking in with their professor. In another, she stepped in to comfort a student who was scared and homesick after arriving “She has added a human touch to this process to make sure every student is successful,” Utash said.

“It’s a feel-good program for students, with absolute economic benefits.” — Shelly Prichard, president and CEO, Wichita Community Foundation

It’s Not a Job, it’s a Career Assuming students complete the program and land jobs, they can expect starting salaries of $13 to $15 per hour with raises every 90 days, getting to about $20 an hour within a year, Hall said. “That is a livable salary in Wichita.” Utash doesn’t see that as the end goal, however. “It’s a first step for these kids to build a career in aviation,” she said. If they stay in the industry they will have opportunities for promotion, and many companies offer tuition reimbursement programs, allowing students to build on the initial certification toward an associates or bachelor’s degree. “Some kids have a hard time figuring out how to get started,” she said. “This program gets them there.” Prichard is equally optimistic about WPM’s success and hopes the foundation will find additional donors to keep it going beyond the initial investments. “It’s a feel-good program for students, with absolute economic benefits,” she said. And while the model may be unusual, it appears to be solving a significant talent need in the community. “I hope we’ve shown people that this can work and they should want to be a part of it.” She believes this model could be replicated in other communities — if industry, academia and community foundations work together toward common goals. “You have to find people you can trust and who are willing to experiment with new ideas,” she said. While there are no guarantees that this program will pay off for Wichita or any other city, it has the potential to change lives while delivering a positive economic impact, she said. “That makes it worth taking the risk.” CLO Sarah Fister Gale is a writer based in Chicago. She can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com. Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

Business Intelligence

Reason for Optimism Plans for the coming year indicate CLOs are feeling good about the road ahead.

hief learning officers tend to be an optimistic bunch. So it’s not surprising their expectations for the future often come with a rosy tint. With intervention, bad outcomes can be turned to good. A struggling worker can be transformed into a high performer. The same sunny disposition holds true for their outlook on learning and development in 2019. According to a survey of the Chief Learning Officer Business Intelligence Board, a majority (65 percent) of CLOs say their outlook for 2019 is more optimistic than 2018, with 26 percent saying their outlook is the same and 10 percent less optimistic (Figure 1). The Chief Learning Officer Business Intelligence Board is a group of 1,500 professionals in the learning and development industry who have agreed to be surveyed by the Human Capital Media Research and Advisory Group, the research and advisory arm of Chief Learning Officer magazine. This survey was conducted in June 2018. It’s not hard to understand why CLOs are feeling so good. The U.S. economy continues to hum along with GDP growth of 3.5 percent in third quarter 2018. Unemployment is near historic lows. Tax cuts for businesses delivered by Congress have corporate coffers brimming with cash and bosses feeling peppy. That’s all despite the warnings of some economists that we are due for a correction in the not-too-distant future. In fact, this year’s good feelings build on top of a multiyear trend. In the same survey last year, a solid majority (59 percent) of CLOs reported feeling more optimistic about the year ahead. A closer look at the responses reveals CLOs expect continued improvements and positive movement in a number of core talent areas (Figure 2). For example, a vast majority (86 percent) of CLOs are not taking the good times for granted and expect the learning function to be more aligned with company business objectives.

58 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

Nearly 3 out of 4 (74 percent) are experimenting and expect to adopt new techniques in 2019. A majority (65 percent) think learning will be better integrated with other talent management functions in the coming year. Nine out of 10 expect to either maintain high quality or have even better quality learning offerings. All that good feeling isn’t to say there’s not a note of caution as CLOs look ahead. Less than half (43 percent) expect the learning budget to increase next year and 28 percent expect their budget will actually decrease, up from 45 percent and 24 percent respectively in 2017. As always, cost plays a significant role in plans for the year ahead. Plans for using external vendors are a useful proxy for where priorities lie in 2019 (Figure 3). The accelerating pace of change in business and the need for agile, well-rounded leaders is pushing a majority of CLOs (88 percent) to either increase their use of executive education or keep investment the same. Informal learning is the second highest area of expected change. According to the survey, 43 percent of learning leaders plan to use more external support and 39 percent plan to keep use about the same, reflecting the ongoing shift from traditional classroom-type learning to more flexible learning resources and platforms. Custom content design came in at No. 4, with 78 percent of CLOs reporting plans to increase or maintain their use of external vendors. Given the highly specialized nature of business, CLOs appear to be looking beyond off-the-shelf options. Continuing a multiyear decline, CLOs plan to cut their use of external vendors for books and printed materials. A significant majority (74 percent) plan to use these services less or keep their use steady. CLO Mike Prokopeak is vice president and editor in chief at Chief Learning Officer magazine. He can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

Figures’ Source: Chief Learning Officer Business Intelligence Board, N=419. All percentages rounded.

BY MIKE PROKOPEAK

FIGURE 1: LEARNING OUTLOOK FOR NEXT 12 TO 18 MONTHS

More optimistic

Same

FIGURE 3 : EXPECTED USE OF EXTERNAL VENDORS

Less optimistic

Same

Less

Executive education/leadership development

10%

54%

34%

5% Informal learning solutions

26%

43% 39% 9%

7% Business skills training

42% 42% 11% 41%

65% 9%

11%

Custom content design 39% 39%

11% Virtual classroom system

FIGURE 2: LEARNING OUTLOOK FOR NEXT 12 TO 18 MONTHS

33%

Agree

No change

Disagree

38%

Certification training 30%

More aligned with company objectives

86%

47%

4% IT training

11%

27%

47%

10%

Adopt new techniques

18%

74%

Simulation design 27%

49%

10%

Better quality of learning offerings

71%

20%

Assessment and testing 27%

47%

10%

Develop more custom content

Learning management systems

71%

18%

11%

27%

49%

10%

Better integrated with talent management

Knowledge management system

65%

25%

26%

11% 9%

Blend of training modalities will change

46%

Online referenceware

61%

23%

11%

28%

8% Budget is expected to increase

43%

Learning consulting services

43%

30%

22%

28% 13%

Purchase more off-the-shelf content

44%

HRIS system

31%

35%

21%

34%

53%

9% Content authoring systems

Acquiring a new LMS or changing providers

31%

29%

40%

34%

53%

9% Books/printed materials

Outsourcing more training activities

24%

21%

16%

42%

25%

49%

Chief Learning Officer â&#x20AC;˘ December 2018 â&#x20AC;˘ www.CLOmedia.com

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Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

IN CONCLUSION

Impact and Learning Span the Generations

Today’s best teams share these common motivators • BY CHESTER ELTON AND ADRIAN GOSTICK

Chester Elton and Adrian Gostick are The New York Times best-selling authors of “The Best Team Wins,” “All In” and “The Carrot Principle.” They can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

e are smack-dab in the middle of a massive shift toward more teamwork in the workplace. In the average company, up to 80 percent of employees’ days are spent working collaboratively, and yet only 14 percent of leaders are satisfied with their ability to collaborate and make decisions as teams. Sounds like an opportunity for L&D. Let’s face it: Leading a team has never been harder. We have five generations at work, many of whom are global, remote or gig employees. We are told to break down silos and work cross-functionally, but no one has taught us how. We used to have a year to bring a new employee up to speed; now we have weeks. And so on. That’s why, in writing “The Best Team Wins,” we drew on our surveys of more than 850,000 people to identify the traits of today’s most successful team leaders — those who are facing and overcoming these obstacles. Included in our data are 50,000 people who have completed our Motivators Assessment, a 100-question test that ranks human motivators (out of 23 possible choices) from the strongest to weakest. As our research team sorted through this database, one of the most striking findings was that the most common top two motivators are the same across all generations in the workplace today: (1) impact and (2) learning. The desire for impact is the need to know that your work is important and makes a positive difference in the world. The desire for learning is the wish to keep developing your talents and increasing your knowledge. These two drivers are paramount to a majority of employees from their 20s to their 60s. While the importance of learning has been highlighted in other surveys, we looked under the hood to find that similar labels can mask important differences based on age. The most effective learning for millennials, the majority said, is often collaborative and tech-forward. For boomers, the best learning typically builds on their experience and knowledge (versus being completely new to them) and should be immediately applicable to their work. While younger workers often value team-based classroom or online training, the most effective learning for older employees comes through variety in their daily work. Variety as a motivator grows substantially in importance as we age — from a middle-of-the-pack concept for millennials to one of the strongest motivators for people later in their careers. Thus, for older workers — who many leaders

62 Chief Learning Officer • December 2018 • www.CLOmedia.com

unfortunately take for granted — a sure way to disconnect them is to have their work become rote. These generational differences have helped construction giant Skanska USA change the way its people learn. CEO Rich Cavallaro explained, “If the taillight goes out on my wife’s Jeep Cherokee, how do I fix it? I watch a video on YouTube and in 10 minutes I can do the job. If I didn’t have that, it would take me three hours to figure out how to remove all the parts.” As such, Skanska’s process to bring people up to speed has become much more video-based, offered in bite-sized increments.

Let’s face it: Leading a team has never been harder. Mitch Snyder, CEO of Bell Helicopter, said these generational understandings have prompted his company to focus more learning on career development: “Millennials value nurturing and constant high-level engagement with their leaders, as well as being challenged and making a difference. They need to feel there is a path for their career.” Thus, Bell has become more transparent about career development and lateral and promotional opportunities and has empowered team managers to hold mentoring sessions with employees to help them take each step forward. Something similarly fascinating is taking place at Michigan Medicine (formerly the University of Michigan Health System), where a group of L&D professionals and others throughout the system started MicroMentors. The idea was to provide early- and midcareer professionals at this organization a way to spend up to 60 minutes of undivided attention with a senior leader. These short, one-time bursts of mentoring assist emerging leaders in working through issues. There’s no longterm relationship expected. Topics offered include everything from managing disruptive employee behavior to salary negotiation. The most oft-requested micromentoring sessions have revolved around career development — with younger professionals asking questions about pursuing additional education or trying new things in their careers. It’s a terrific idea, and just one of many we found in researching today’s best teams. CLO

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