Chief Learning Officer - March 2019

March 2019 | CLOmedia.com

Tennessee’s

Trish Holliday

L&D’s Diversity Dilemma - Creating Conscious Capital - Banishing Evaluation Fears Preparing for Human-Machine Partnerships - Cognizant Closes Its Tech Talent Gap

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I N PA R T N E R S H I P W I T H

EDITOR’S LETTER

Pardon the Interruption

H

ere’s a fun experiment. Pick someone at work — preferably a person with a looming deadline or even better someone heading up a big project. Ask if they’ve got a couple of hours for training.

If you’re lucky, you walk away with all your body parts intact. The reality is even people in less stressful positions wouldn’t look favorably on that same request.

As should be expected, learning professionals spend a lot of time on learning. They talk to people about it, research it, test it, implement it, measure the results of it, and then talk to people some more about it.

The average worker? Not so much. To them, learning is more often an inconvenience. Most simply struggle to find the time to get their job done any given day. Studies comparing workers to their counterparts a couple of decades ago find today’s worker bees putting in significantly more hours at the hive. It’s not lack of interest or desire to learn that’s the problem.

There’s simply not enough time.

newly promoted leaders unprepared to take on the demands of managing a team. Think of the company that fails to anticipate the skills needed to compete in the future.

Whether they’re planned for or not, the lessons will come. Learning can be impolite that way. While you’re debating whether or not to open the door, it comes barging in. It’s inevitable. We can’t help but learn. The question is how uncomfortable the lesson will be.

Failing to invest in development — and a learning function to carry it out effectively — is a surefire way to make it as painful as possible. But having a learning function is no panacea either.

The challenge is to make learning a seamless part of the job. It’s hard work but it’s not complicated. After all, modern work is learning — collaborative, iterative and ever-changing. Technology can personalize learning and connect workers to each other.

But even with the best technology and experience, there’s still a time when you’re going to ask people to take time away from the job. It could be as headline-grabbing as Starbucks shuttering all its stores to deliver training on unconscious bias. Or it could be as quiet as asking a young employee to step back from a critical project for a couple days to develop their leadership philosophy so when they’re called to lead they’re That’s one reason just-in-time learning and learning ready for it. at the moment of need have become so popular. It’s why Either way, when you make that call it requires learning experience platforms have become the technol- credibility. The employee needs to know you’re not googy du jour. Few workers have time to cast about for the ing to waste their time. Their boss needs to see that the information they need to get the job done. They want benefits outweigh the cost of not having them there. If their learning organizations and the technology they use you’ve calculated right, they’ll willingly give the time. to anticipate their needs, not just respond to them.

You can interrupt them, be inconvenient and even imBut despite that progress learning at work remains polite and they’ll still listen. You have their confidence. an imposition for too many, an interruption to the Think back to that earlier scenario. How would regular flow to be tolerated at best or mocked at worst. your co-worker react to a request for their time? DisLearning professionals only have themselves to blame may? Curiosity? Excitement? If you’re in doubt, it’s a for this state of affairs. good time to reevaluate the opportunity cost of your Workers up and down the organization weigh the learning programs. opportunity costs of their time constantly. Helping It’s an inconvenient but essential interruption to a co-worker with their project means less time to ac- your work. CLO complish your own tasks. Attending that mandatory all-hands meeting subtracts a precious hour from a limited daily balance. Once an hour is gone, it doesn’t come back. That makes the opportunity cost for learning seem high. Time away is less time to plow through that ever-expanding to-do list.

Mike Prokopeak The cost of learning may be high but the cost of Editor in Chief not doing it is much higher. Think of a cohort of mikep@CLOmedia.com

Learning is often inconvenient.

It can even be impolite. But it’s always inevitable.

4 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

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CONTENTS M

arch

2019 10 Your Career Kathleen Gallo of Northwell Health shares her career journey; Kellogg School of Management’s Fred Harburg talks about facilitating a growth mindset; and what people are reading these days.

28 Profile Trish Holliday Teaches Tennessee a Lesson

Sarah Fister Gale Service-focused CLO Trish “Doc” Holliday is transforming her state’s government into a leading-edge learning organization.

48 Case Study Building a Talent Pool

Sarah Fister Gale Cognizant is partnering with nonprofit Per Scholas to close its tech talent gap.

50 Business Intelligence Measurement Efforts Don’t Quite Measure Up

Ashley St. John A disconnect between learning and tangible business outcomes is partially to blame for dissatisfaction with measurement practices.

ON THE COVER: PHOTO BY ABIGAIL BOBO

8 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

M arch 2019

CONTENTS

44 38

22

Features

22 32 38

Experts

L&D’s Diversity Dilemma

14 IMPERATIVES

Ave Rio Lack of representation poses a problem for corporate learning teams often viewed as ambassadors of culture and organizational strategy.

16 SELLING UP, SELLING DOWN

Creating Conscious Capital

Elliott Masie Cybersecurity: Learning’s Imperative

Bob Mosher Sick and Tired of Trends

18 LEADERSHIP

Sarah Fister Gale Big corporations are partnering with universities to help employees get their degrees.

Ken Blanchard The Power of Beliefs

20 MAKING THE GRADE

Banishing Evaluation Fears

James D. Kirkpatrick and Wendy Kayser Kirkpatrick Fear and lack of discipline can cost a learning function respect, budget, jobs and, in the end, its own existence.

44

32

Lee Maxey You Want Student Athletes on Your Team

54 IN CONCLUSION

Working Arm in Arm

Nick Morgan Is This Thing On?

Resources

Mark Marone The workforce needs to be prepared for the human-machine partnerships of the future. When the discussion turns to AI, L&D leaders should be speaking up — not stepping out.

4 Editor’s Letter

Pardon the Interruption

53 Advertisers’ Index

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YOUR CAREER

Career Advice from

Kathleen Gallo SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF LEARNING OFFICER, NORTHWELL HEALTH

Kathleen Gallo, senior vice president and chief learning officer for Northwell Health, shares her career journey and how she came into L&D. What’s been your career path?

I am formally educated in nursing as well as in business. My clinical expertise was in emergency and trauma nursing — so for the first 25 years of my career, I was in emergency medicine as well as emergency management and emergency medical services. I spent many years on the frontline and went from a staff nurse all the way up to a vice president. It prepared me for my chief learning officer role because I came from operations and understand the health care culture and exactly what it’s like to deliver our services to our communities.

What about learning and development attracted you? What keeps you doing it?

Interestingly enough, I wasn’t attracted to it. I believe my CEO wanted to create this strategic structure and

Various 1976 – 2001: Emergency and trauma nursing/ management

1976

offered me the opportunity to help do that, but once I became involved in it, I really came to find the passion in it, since one of the major goals of a chief learning officer is to create strategy with the stakeholders to facilitate the success of an organization. In the beginning, I never thought 17 years later I would still be the chief learning officer, but here I am today, and it’s been quite a trip from my first nursing job over 40 years ago.

What lessons have helped you?

One is organizational readiness. In my younger years as a chief learning officer, coming out of spending years working in emergency medicine or emergency management, you have a tendency to collect your data very quickly and respond to it. You don’t need to do that when you’re a strategist. I had to learn about ensuring that the organization was ready for change, to build coalitions to help you execute strategy and to take feedback from key stakeholders. I had to learn that there’s not much we can do by ourselves, that we really need to work in a team.

What will the role look like in five or 10 years?

I came from operations and learned and developed the role in our organization. I think one of

Northwell Health 2001 – present: Senior vice president and chief learning officer; under her leadership, the Center for Learning and Innnovation, Northwell Health’s corporate university, and the Patient Safety Institute were created 2001

Hofstra University 2015 – present: Founding dean and professor, Hofstra Northwell School of Graduate Nursing and Physician Assistant Studies

2015 2019

10 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

SM

S E T I B ALL

ns. questio e r fi id p s our ra answer o ll a G n Kathlee

the most important things is the role needs to be connected to the senior leadership of the organization. I’m fortunate — I actually report right to the chief executive officer. I sit at the table, I’m always connected to the strategy of the organization and what my role is in executing that strategy.

For chief learning officers, their role should always be relevant to what the business objectives are. I also think chief learning officers should not be off in a silo creating strategy without understanding the culture of the organization, exactly what that boundary employee is delivering in terms of products and services to their customers or, in our case, to our communities. They need to be very much engaged in the business of their organization as well.

What’s the most important career advice you can share with CLOs? Chief learning officers need to have — as part of their professional and personal philosophy — the desire to be a lifelong learner. There is no finish line when it comes to the work we do. We have to continually learn about our roles and keep up with the new innovations around learning. To learn from other industries, to get out and network to see what others are doing, to see if there’s any application to something that another organization or another industry is doing that you can bring in to your own organization. My advice to future chief learning officers is look to other industries to see what they have done that could be innovative and could be brought into your organizations or adapted to your organizations. CLO

The most important part of learning is …

That the pedagogy needs to be evidence-based and anchored in the science of learning.

The most overrated trend in L&D is …

Thinking people are actually learning through lectures or e-learning exclusively.

The most underrated trend in L&D is …

That bringing people from operations into the learning space is extremely valuable to organizational development.

Learning is essential to an organization because …

“Learning organizations” are nimble and flexible and can respond to their stakeholders’ changing requirements quickly.

The biggest misconception about our industry is …

That it is a “training” industry, not a learning industry.

I got into the L&D space because …

My CEO selected me as the first CLO in the health care industry.

Know someone with an incredible career journey?

Chief Learning Officer wants to hear from you.

Send your nomination to Ave Rio at ario@CLOmedia.com.

Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

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YOUR CAREER

What Are You Reading?

Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

By Patty McCord McCord writes from her perspective working at Netflix and other businesses in Silicon Valley. She discusses the issues that Netflix faced both as a company as well as from a personnel standpoint and how others can learn from the growing pains that Netflix faced. This book can help executives enhance their leadership skills, foster innovation and drive transformational change throughout their organizations.

— Kenneth Boxer, Boxer Advisors LLC

Multipliers

By Liz Wiseman As a professional learning specialist, I support and manage several instructional coaches across the United States. As a supporter/manager, I always look for ways to increase sustainability and scalability within their schools.

Multipliers has helped me explore and understand more deeply what it means to be a strategic thinker and to enroll my team of coaches into being strategic thinkers.

— Courtney L. Teague, professional learning engineer, Digital Promise

Think Wrong

by John Bielenberg, Mike Burn and Greg Galle with Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson The authors provide agile tips, tools and exercise drills for teams to conquer the status quo and do work that matters in their organizations. It is very relevant to CLOs and L&D teams.

— Marina Theodotou, learning faculty, Defense Acquisition University

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 • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

The Miracle Morning

By Hal Elrod I am going through a career transition and this book is helping me be more accountable for taking control of my mornings. Sometimes I feel I am in the movie “Groundhog Day” with each day producing the same result. This book is a great motivator to move your days (and life) in a productive direction so you feel your best, produce your best and give your best! What am I learning? Here are three key takeaways from this book: • Find the time to focus on your personal development. Leverage the morning to create habits for fulfillment by taking dedicated time prior to each day.

• Have an impactful circle of influence. Seek out people who provide positivity to your life and support you in your journey. Then, support them in the same way.

• Be clear on your deepest “whys” to move toward the life you want. To help with moving toward your whys, create affirmations and read them daily.

This book continues to offer such insight since I am a full-time working mom. I am slowly integrating concepts from the book to make the most of my day. I am a work in progress.

— Chanda L. Frenton, learning and development vice president, Park National Bank

Top of Mind The Growth Mindset Culture for Leadership Development By Fred Harburg Fred Harburg is a clinical professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the former executive director of the Kellogg Executive Leadership Institute.

He previously served as chief learning officer and president of Motorola University, CLO at Williams Energy, and senior vice president for leadership and learning at Fidelity Investments.

L

eadership development efforts typically begin by honoring the ancient Greek exhortation to know thyself. Virtually all leadership development programs start with a self-assessment or personal reflection activity. However, these assessments can lead to a bias that places people in limiting boxes.

The self may be far more fluid than has been assumed, and we may have paid too little attention to organizational culture as a powerful molding influence on leadership development.

Environmental factors powerfully shape personality. Carol Dweck’s best-selling book, “Mindset,” provides a compelling argument dispelling the idea that personality and IQ are unchanging. Dweck’s position has strong support from the late Walter Mischel, famous for the Stanford Kindergarten marshmallow experiment. Mischel declared that the idea of an immutable personality type is a myth. Further evidence comes from a 2014 study by Nathan Hudson and Chris Fraley published in The Journal of Research in Personality, which demonstrates that meaningful and lasting “personality” development is possible with a shift in mindset, deliberate practice and a strong culture of support.

The proposition that one’s personality is malleable rather than fixed is a seismic shift for learning and development professionals and offers a great deal of hope for those desiring to grow leadership capability. The best development professionals have become sensitive to the significant risk of stereotyping, bias and preoccupation with personality type.

They focus instead on a meaningful commitment

According to

Fred

What is something you learned this week?

to a practical strategy for leadership development.

Current research findings of unconscious bias and the malleability of personality are accelerating the move to a growth mindset approach.

But how can this growth mindset approach be facilitated? If we can accept the evidence that personality drives behavior and that personality is malleable, it is crucial for us to ask how leadership personality changes. The data demonstrate that lasting behavioral change requires a strong commitment to specific goals, supported by personal help and accountability from others, in a culture that both supports growth and models the desired leadership behavior.

Contemporary research indicates that personality differences, while undeniable, are more learned than innate. Distinctive differences represent habituated patterns more than inherent qualities and are a product of the powerful shaping forces of environment and organizational culture. Sherman Epstein found that situational variables and environmental factors create potent shifts in leadership behaviors.

Leaders live in a social context. Judgment and influence are their most essential capabilities. The most powerful force we have for shaping leaders of sound judgment and positive impact is the leadership culture in which they live and grow.

While paying attention to personality type may help spotlight differences, we may miss the even more critical development force levered by culture.

If organizational culture has a strategy for breakfast, it also drives the leadership development menu. CLO

Fred Harburg Kellogg School of Management

Chief Learning Officer wants to hear from you: What are you thinking about? Send your thoughts to Ave Rio at ario@CLOmedia.com.

I had the chance to be in a cancer ward this week where I observed six nurses and 10 volunteers. The volunteers provided blankets, snacks, encouragement and occasional rubs for the cancer patients. All of the volunteers were former cancer patients themselves. Seeing these 16 people reminded me of the capability of human beings for goodness and kindness.

Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

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IMPERATIVES

Cybersecurity: Learning’s Imperative Cybersecurity-focused learning is on the horizon • BY ELLIOTT MASIE

W Elliott Masie is CEO of The Masie Center, an international think tank focused on learning and workplace productivity, and chairman and CLO of The Masie Center’s Learning Consortium.

He can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

ithin the next 24 months, your employees will need highly targeted and continuous learning and performance resources focused on cybersecurity.

This will be a significant and disruptive shift in the drivers and sponsorships of workplace learning. Currently most learning is triggered by compliance or regulatory needs, development of leadership candidates, new skills for employees and systems changes. But the dangerous world of cyberthreats will require learning and development departments to adjust and expand their focus, content, resources and expertise — to be on the front line of readiness to keep employees and the enterprise safe and secure.

However, we can’t teach “be safe” skills in an environment where the sources of threats change constantly and instantly. Consider the following.

Every week, employees receive very structured scam emails posing as alerts from banks or shipping organizations. They look and appear legitimate. How do we prepare or alert our workforce for these threats?

Mobile devices will be used more and more with our enterprise systems, opening up new risks and threats.

Do we allow our workers to attend a webinar from a laptop at an airport?

A customer may be reluctant to give personal information to the sales agent from your organization because they have experienced three instances where databases were hacked, exposing social security numbers, credit card info and more. How do we address this?

How can information be received weekly about the level of cybersecurity risk or readiness? Is there a display in the office or can information be delivered via text message that provides real-time scanning on risky behaviors?

How can we build a great level of safety and security within the digital side of our businesses and create a sense of safety and comfort for our employees? What are the new skills, certifications and assessments needed for IT, risk management and now learning professionals in cybersecurity readiness?

This is a topic without a single or easy-to-identify subject matter expert. Cyberthreats are changing so rapidly that we will need to source multiple resources, including tech companies (Google, Microsoft, Apple, Cisco), government security agencies (NSA, CIA, FBI) and human resource and talent groups, as well as consulting assets.

14 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

Adding to this complexity is the need to develop a global approach to cybersecurity. Recent changes in the data protection rules for the European Commission highlight the global aspect of this learning and support requirement: Data security requirements change based on the location of the data, the country of the employee and the nature of the cross-country transaction.

This is a topic without a single or easy-to-identify subject matter expert.

Cyberthreats are harder to sometimes detect or rule out when the language of an email or system is not the native language of the learner. I recently got an email from the French embassy in Spain and could not easily see if it was legitimate. Our cybersecurity threat information and learning resources will need to be provided in a wide range of languages.

Blockchain technology is another thing to consider.

Increasingly our data will be on multiple servers, often in a blockchain layout, which should have higher degrees of security. But this is an emerging and threatfilled model.

We must also be mindful of overlap in personal and enterprise data sources. An employee may be listed on LinkedIn indicating that they work for your organization. A person or group wanting to penetrate your security could find this employee on LinkedIn, start a social conversation, and, over time, subtly gain trust and perhaps access to corporate information.

Learning professionals will need to harness a new set of partners and design approaches for this urgent topic.

Let’s leverage user experience to test design models that work best to teach or support learners in their “moments of need.” We must increase our IT and cyber language familiarity and coach our colleagues in tech departments on better forms of embedded learning and support resources.

Finally, we must watch the overall level of employee awareness and the level of trust in the digital side of our enterprises. CLO

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SELLING UP, SELLING DOWN

Sick and Tired of Trends Five goals for L&D this year • BY BOB MOSHER

T

Bob Mosher is a senior partner and chief learning evangelist for APPLY Synergies, a strategic consulting firm.

He can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

rend articles, blogs and columns are like New Year’s resolutions. They come and go every January through April, approximately. I recently Googled “learning trends in 2019” and was met with 466,000 hits. I’m not faulting the effort or sincerity of the intent of these articles. I’m just sick of trends in general.

That’s no one’s fault. It’s a fault in our industry.

Here’s my issue with our industry and trends. They rarely truly change, and if they do, it’s way too slowly.

So in the spirit of bucking the trends (sorry for that), I’m simply going to offer five things I wish we’d take a leadership position on and actually do.

Stop overusing the term “blended learning.”

Blended learning has been around for a long time. It started out as a way to augment classroom instruction with online materials and frankly hasn’t changed a lot since. Shortening a five-day class to two days and using e-learning to supplement the missing three days is not blended learning. The word that I take issue with is “learning,” which encompasses a lot more than just the content covered in training. For a learner, it includes the entire journey of being trained, transferring what was learned to the workplace, and then sustaining the information over time as it changes and the learner matures in their ability to perform. Designing deliverables that encompass the entire journey is truly blended learning and often well beyond where our current efforts end. Let’s redefine the discipline and add a host of tools and approaches that go way beyond what we offer today.

Get out of the training business and into the performance improvement business. I had a colleague recently share with me that he wanted to get his L&D department out of the “order taking” business and be allowed to do more. If you want to take different orders, you have to change the menu. One of the drawbacks of our success over the years is that it’s painted us into a corner when it comes to how our deliverables are perceived. L&D has a long history of delivering great training. Who remembers brickand-mortar corporate universities? Some still exist and do amazing things. The problem with that success is that we have positioned ourselves as something removed from the business, offering deliverables that don’t map to the day-to-day workflow. Let’s keep offering training, but as a last resort. That doesn’t mean training will or should go away. It just

16 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

means that our focus and engagement with the business should be dramatically different. What if we build workflow performance-based deliverables first and supplement with as little training as possible?

Let’s throw down the gauntlet in 2019.

Let’s standardize terminology. This one drives me crazy! We’re in the education business. Our job is to unclutter the cluttered, simplify the complicated and bring structure to chaos. So can we please stop renaming things and inventing terms before we understand what they truly mean or how they’re best built and delivered? If we can’t clearly explain it, how can we build it? Case in point — I’m going to get hate mail for this one — can someone explain to me what microlearning really is? Not your definition, but our industry’s? If you visited 100 different L&D departments across the world and asked them to define microlearning, I’m afraid of what you might hear. Our inability to standardize terminology across our field is causing some serious confusion.

Put methodology ahead of technology. Learning technologies are growing at a rate that has surpassed our ability to keep up. On one hand, it’s the most exciting time to do what we do. On the other hand, we’re spending millions, if not billions, on platforms we have no idea how to use. This is where the vendor community could really step up and help. We’re not in the technology business — we’re in the instructional methodology business. These tools are enablers, not ends in and of themselves. We need to take a breath and better understand how to use the array of tools that exist and are coming at us at a record pace.

Research and understand how to analyze data to defend what we do. We have tons of data. Do we really know where it’s coming from, what it represents and what to do with it? I’m the first to admit that this is my blind spot. Analytics, and the constructive use of them, are key to our ability to get our arms around all I’ve described and to quantifying what we do.

Let’s throw down the gauntlet in 2019. Let’s move into a revolutionary time when we buck the trends and truly redefine what we do and how we do it. The time is now and well overdue. CLO

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LEADERSHIP

The Power of Beliefs

Adapting to change in work and life • BY KEN BLANCHARD

L Ken Blanchard is chief spiritual officer of The Ken Blanchard Cos. and co-author of “Servant Leadership in Action.”

He can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

ong before the term “mindset” became a business buzzword, Spencer Johnson, my co-author on “The One Minute Manager,” was preaching the power of beliefs and the impact they can have on behavior and the results you and your organization achieve.

Spencer used to tell audiences the story of two mouse-sized characters named Hem and Haw who lived in a maze and were faced with unexpected challenges when the cheese they loved suddenly disappeared. “Cheese” was a metaphor for whatever nourished you, whether it was a good job, a loving relationship, money, possessions, good health or peace of mind. The “maze” was a metaphor for whatever difficult situation was keeping you from finding and enjoying your cheese. How each character reacted to the missing cheese provided valuable lessons about fear and change.

Twenty years ago, I encouraged Spencer to put this story into book form so others could benefit from its profound wisdom. He followed my advice and “Who Moved My Cheese?” was published in 1999. A year and a half ago, Spencer passed away, but his latest thinking is available in his posthumously published new book “Out of the Maze,” a sequel to “Who Moved My Cheese,” in which Spencer focuses on the how of dealing with change. He encourages readers to think outside the box — or maze, as it were — showing readers a pathway for adapting to change in their lives and work.

net. “A year after I arrived, the whole operation shut down,” Brooke says. In other words, leaders with outdated beliefs might not only hold themselves as prisoners; their people might become hostages as well.

Given the dynamic society surrounding today’s organizations, change is no longer a probability; it is a certainty. Helping people understand the power of beliefs and adapt to the reality of change were Spencer’s gifts to the world. His books inspire people at all organizational levels and from all walks of life.

I am sometimes asked if Spencer only wrote about the power of beliefs and adapting to change, or if he also lived by those principles. I’m happy to say he did indeed walk his talk but sad to give you this example.

I lost my co-author and friend to pancreatic cancer in July 2017. As you might know, when you’re diagnosed with that form of cancer, it’s usually very bad news, as few people survive for long.

When Spencer got the word, he decided he could approach the rest of his life from a belief system based on fear or one based on love. If he chose fear, the focus would be on himself. If he chose love, the focus would be on others.

I was overjoyed with his choice to live in love.

He reached out not only to close family members and friends, but also to people with whom, for various reasons, he’d lost contact, some of whom he hadn’t spoken to in years.

The people I met during our final visits with Spencer were all struck by the way he focused on them and their feelings rather than on his own medical condition.

During my last visit with Spencer, we were joined by Margret McBride, who had been our literary agent for “The One Minute Manager.”

We called Larry Hughes, the former president of William Morrow, who had published our books, “A single stubborn belief can take down an en- to tell him how much we appreciated his role in tire company,” says Brooke, a character in “Out of our lives. It was a memorable, heartwarming conthe Maze.” She cites as an example a newspaper versation. As I was leaving, I gave Spencer a hug owner who refused to take his publication online, and told him how proud I was of him and the believing that print advertising would keep on positive beliefs he had chosen. paying the bills — even after the paper’s biggest Change is inevitable. It’s how we adapt and reaccounts had switched to advertising on the inter- act that matters most, in both work and life. CLO

Change is inevitable. It’s how we adapt and react that matters most.

18 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

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MAKING THE GRADE

You Want Student Athletes on Your Team Valuing the hustle, grit and determination of the student athlete • BY LEE MAXEY

M

Lee Maxey is CEO of MindMax, a marketing and enrollment management services company.

He can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

arch Madness is upon us. Each year at this time, the annual NCAA Division I college tournament determines which men’s and women’s basketball team will be crowned national champions. After the celebrations end and graduations pass, what happens to the athletes?

According to the NCAA, last year, there were 492,000 college student athletes across Divisions I, II and III; fewer than 2 percent go on to compete in professional sports. In 2018, the graduation rate for NCAA student athletes ranged from 72 percent among Division II to 87 percent among Divisions I and III — that’s a rate, on average, says the NCAA, higher than the general student body.

These statistics and my own experiences as a college athlete got me thinking about the potential a college student athlete brings to the workforce. For starters, college student athletes know what competition and overcoming adversity are all about. They also understand what it takes to manage competing priorities in pursuit of a goal, which for more than 98 percent of them is a professional life other than sports.

CLOs and talent officers are always looking for great sources of talent. In no way am I saying that college students who are not athletes are somehow lesser candidates. Most companies understand the importance of diversity, so they’re already selecting from a broad swath of talented individuals. I’m simply saying that the college student athlete brings a background and set of skills that employers may want to value purposely.

One company that recognizes this is InXAthlete, which Cody Ferraro and Max Wessell founded as an online job search site and community with tools for colleges, current and former college student athletes, and employers looking to fill jobs and internships. Ferraro and Wessell met in college and are former student athletes themselves. Ferraro suffered an injury during his last year of NCAA eligibility. As he contemplated his next steps, he and Wessell came up with the idea of finding an opportunity with a company that would value everything that a student athlete puts into competing.

“You don’t always have the time for career events and internships as a college athlete, and it can be a struggle to do the transition,” Ferraro said.

“Student athletes have an incredible set of skills,” Wessell added. “They often take failure and turn it into success. We’re not bashing someone who wasn’t an ath-

20 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

lete, but employers say they love the personal discipline that student athletes bring.”

Wanting to help student athletes connect with employers and vice versa, Ferraro and Wessell launched InXAthlete in a market they say is largely untapped.

Other sites that compete with InXAthlete are Athlete Network and GradLeaders, though the latter doesn’t focus on student athletes per se.

Student athletes know what competition and overcoming adversity are all about.

Anthony Zito, founder and president of Novus Surgical, a Pennsylvania distributor of medical products and services to surgeons, is an InXAthlete client.

“I’ve been in business for 14 years and hired over 100 employees, more than half student athletes,” said Zito, who was an NCAA Division I-AA student athlete. “Student athletes have a commitment to their sport, diet, health and training. Whether they’re part of a team or in a sport like tennis or golf, they’ve engaged in deliberate practice over thousands of hours; they know what it takes to succeed.”

It’s those qualities that Zito looks for in a new hire.

He said he’s been almost universally happy with the results from hiring college student athletes.

As an aside, through my research and interviews for this column, I learned that in 2017, 40 percent of Division I NCAA student athletes received no athletic scholarship. Many of the remaining athletes are on partial athletic scholarships, some quite meager. And 80 percent of the Division III student athletes receive some form of academic grant. While this information wasn’t what I expected initially, the result would seem to confirm that the experience and qualities of college student athletes, regardless of the level at which they compete, is more similar than different.

That’s good news for CLOs looking for college student athletes to join their team. CLO

L&D’s

DIVERSITY DILEMMA Lack of representation poses a problem for corporate learning teams viewed as ambassadors of culture and organizational strategy.

E

BY AVE RIO

lliott Masie was invited to give a keynote address in Taiwan at an Association for Talent Development leadership conference. When Masie arrived, he ran into leadership coach Marshall Goldsmith, who lives just three blocks from Masie in New York — only to find out that Goldsmith was the other keynote speaker at the same event.

Masie, CEO of The Masie Center, an international think tank focused on learning and workplace productivity, and a columnist for this publication, said the coincidence was funny but also sad. “Here we are in Taiwan, in Asia, where they were doing training and learning way before the U.S., and the two major keynoters they got were white guys over 60 from New York,” Masie said.

Masie’s experience highlights a lack of diversity in L&D, particularly among the thought leadership that represents the field. In fact, Chief Learning Officer data from its Talent Tracker service finds that 89 percent of learning and training managers are white. According to the data, 5.6 percent of learning managers are black, 9 percent are Hispanic or Latino, and 2.2 percent are Asian.

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Talent Tracker, an analytics service developed by the Human Capital Media Research and Advisory Group, integrates data from open sources including the U.S. Census, National Science Foundation, World Bank and Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Jayzen Patria, a diversity and inclusion thought leader and advocate in the learning industry, said this statistic validates what many understand to be true about the learning space — that L&D hasn’t attracted or cultivated a significant number of people of color in the field.

Patria said the lack of representation in the learning field poses a huge issue as corporate training teams are looked at to be ambassadors of culture and organizational strategy, which now typically include D&I in objectives or values.

Diverse? Not So Much Patria said the L&D field may have a false sense of diversity because the learning space has generally been an inclusive environment for women and individuals in the LGBTQ-plus communities. “But clearly the number of people of color working in the space is not reflective either of the communities that we serve or likely even the workforces that we serve internally,” Patria said.

He said he hasn’t seen a significant attraction and recruiting strategy in the learning space on par with those strategies in other company operations. “Most organizations, at least in the corporate space, are doing significant campus recruiting and have many early career programs for different functional areas or the core business or operation of their business,” he said. “Certainly, we’ve seen that a bit in the HR space, but I haven’t personally seen anything that truly targeted the folks in the education or learning field.”

Masie added that people of color entering the tal-

The business case for D&I is ensuring that companies can support and serve the markets they operate in more effectively. ent world are often pulled into benefits, recruitment or diversity itself. “Anybody who shows deep talent in learning today who has diversity is very much in the marketplace to be promoted,” he said.

He added that L&D leaders’ networks often are not diverse. “Your network needs to develop so that people of color are seen and given visibility,” he said.

“But right now, we’re still in the early days of accepting that diversity is important in the learning field.” Masie admitted that in his case, it’s easier to find male CLOs in his network than female CLOs, so he often asks col24 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

leagues to suggest female learning leaders to invite to his conferences and events.

Masie said learning professionals need to recruit, retain and promote diverse people and reduce obstacles preventing this. He recalled one company looking to hire a vice president for talent, but one of their screening qualifications was that the applicant have an MBA from a top-tier university.

“Ironically, by putting that in, they actually excluded some of the people they would want,” he said. “There may be somebody who’s perfect for that role but didn’t have an MBA because they didn’t have the money or the connections.” He said learning leaders need to look at their own unconscious bias to confront issues that make it difficult to increase diversity within the field.

JP Morgan Chase CLO Jesse Jackson said learning leaders should be loud and proud about their objective to recruit the best and brightest diverse talent. He said this process could involve recruitment at historically black colleges and an increased effort to create accessible pipelines from other fields to learning and development.

Who’s On Stage?

Masie said a big piece of the problem is that so much of learning content created today originates from older white men. “We have a whole bunch of white guys over 60 who are the content leaders or originators,” he said. “If we really want to get more diversity, which I think we must, we need to make sure that our content leadership is diverse as well.”

Patria said this issue stems from the fact that it was these men who were pioneering in the field in the 1960s and ’70s. “We have created, at least from a North American or a Western standpoint, an image of what the ultimate learning executive or guru in the learning space is,” he said. “And while clearly Elliott and his baby boomer peer group have contributed in incredible ways to the learning field, there is potentially a bias that we don’t want to look outside that population.”

Patria said L&D leaders should be thoughtful about who is on stage at a learning conference. “As we curate learning, as we curate events, are we curating in a way that we are thinking about inclusion and that we’re thinking about having diverse voices as part of the broader learning experience?” he said.

Masie said conference hosts need to reach out to a diversity of people, not necessarily to talk about D&I, but to talk about leadership and training from their point of view.

Patria added that there’s much to learn from the straight white male baby boomer generation as well — sometimes it’s just a matter of thoughtful curation of questions. “Are we asking folks who don’t seem to be diverse about what their impression of diversity is?” he asked. “How do they leverage and

lead for inclusion and diversity? Do we ask men how they balance work and life? Do we ask them about their interactions with their families?”

Patria said when people with non-white backgrounds are on the platform, suddenly those questions are fair game. “We’re going to ask them about their unique diverse experience,” he said. “But we don’t tend to ask those questions of straight white men and that can really open up the conversation and make it more comfortable for other people to share their stories when folks with privilege and power are also being vulnerable and sharing those challenges.”

Jackson agreed that those who dominate learning conferences and keynote addresses reflect the ethnicity mix of learning professionals — they are mostly white.

As a result, Jackson said this could have a negative effect in getting an accurate view of the D&I landscape — not having a diverse or broad set of voices around the diversity issue to help understand how to effectively fix it. “If those individuals incumbent in those seats are not reaching out to the right stakeholders to solicit and acquire greater thought diversity, from different genders and ethnicities, in terms of how we solve this, that’s a problem,” he said.

In addition to learning conferences, L&D leaders also need to be intentionally inclusive in deciding who to invite to the front of the classroom as subject matter experts or executives, Patria said.

L&D’s Role in D&I Patria said L&D is already focused on diversity, inclusion and belonging because the learning space is about helping people develop awareness. “We’re all about building skills that are inclusive for leading people, influencing people and communicating better with folks,” he said. “We have the obligation to build diversity, inclusion and belonging all the way through our initiatives and our experiences.”

But Patria said it’s difficult for L&D to effectively do that when learning professionals don’t reflect the workforce they serve. “Our L&D folks are on the platform, providing intervention and performance consulting with their internal clients all the time,” he said. “We really look to them to be ambassadors of the culture, the values of the organization and the leadership vision all the way around strategy. It’s difficult for our field to be an ambassador of that if we’re not representative of the workforce and the broader population.”

Patria said the people put on the platform in the L&D field are the equivalent of people seen in media.

“TV and film are constantly thinking about how to truly represent everyone — how to tell stories that are universal and bring people from multiple backgrounds in to be on stage or on screen,” he said. “In an organi-

Learning leaders should be loud and proud about their objective to recruit the best and brightest diverse talent. zation, folks in L&D are like your ‘on-air talent.’ So it really means that the optics count here.”

Further, Patria said the lack of diversity can affect the quality of the content curated by L&D professionals. He said regardless of the backgrounds of the learning content curators, L&D professionals must include diverse people from across the learning and HR functions in the content design.

Patria said one way to address this issue is through leveraging employee resource groups in the design and piloting process of materials. “They will be able to catch those things that either feel like they rub the wrong way in terms of language or potentially are not accessible to all populations,” he said. “Even from an imagery standpoint, to reflect if there are folks that look like them in the materials.” Patria added that everyone needs to go through some process to understand how their own experiences and biases affect the design and delivery of their learning content.

Jackson said L&D can play a pivotal role in ensuring that the workforce is aware of issues such as microinequities and unintentional bias. “Really having rigor around how we are caring for the ongoing training of our professionals and making sure microinequities, diversity and inclusion training is part of that for L&D, as it should be for the broader organization,” he said.

He said L&D can play a leadership role in the discussion about how firms move that agenda forward within the context of the business. “What are the right human capital practices that, if put in place, can help us create a more fair, more equitable platform for all employees to thrive in?”

Jackson said L&D can ensure it is incorporating the right visuals into its content, “outlining not just the monolithic customer set, but the true diversity of the markets we support in all corporate spaces. In many cases, they are growing more diverse in an accelerated fashion. Those companies that fail to do that will be going empty soon because the markets will leave them behind.”

He said L&D can model inclusive behavior by reflecting it. “How do we look as an organization?” Jackson said. “How does that culture show up in how we DIVERSITY continued on page 52 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

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mechanisms are vital to ensure positive momentum – or to redirect individuals or actions that are not aligned with the goal (see point #1). Again, start small and start early with habits of constructively reviewing what worked and where there was mis-alignment or missed deadlines. Mechanisms that are designed into the team process at the beginning of the team development ensure that all members feel comfortable and are expected to share what’s working and how things can be improved.

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Profile

Trish Holliday Teaches Tennessee a Lesson Service-focused CLO Trish ‘Doc’ Holliday is transforming her state’s government into a leading-edge learning organization.

BY SARAH FISTER GALE

I

n 2012, Tennessee became the first state in the country to establish an official chief learning officer role, appointing Trish Holliday to the position. It was a decision that transformed the state’s approach to learning and one that has helped it attract top talent in a tight hiring environment. “I came here to revamp, rebuild and rebrand training for the state of Tennessee,” Holliday said.

In many ways Holliday had been preparing for this role most of her life. Her father was a missionary, and after completing her bachelor’s degree in sociology and her master’s degree in divinity, she spent 18 years working with him at Mountain TOP Ministries in Tennessee Appalachia. “That’s where I began to understand that my life’s work was to help people reach their full potential,” she said. During that time she created programs for local youth and families and helped build clean water systems and repair homes so the people of the community could live a better life.

In 2005, Holliday left the ministry for a job as training officer with the state of Tennessee, where she quickly moved up the ranks to assistant director, then director, and ultimately CLO. “The work I did in ministry prepared me for government,” Holliday said.

In particular, her time at Mountain TOP showed her that she has a certain knack for working with executives and leaders, helping them identify the skills they need to thrive in their roles.

A Vision for Tennessee The Tennessee government is the largest employer in the state with more than 42,000 employees across 95 counties and 23 cabinet agencies, ranging from the departments of agriculture and education to health, human resources and the military. When Holliday first joined the organization it was a sprawling and highly compartmentalized place where training was viewed as an event — usually compliance related — rather than 28 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

an ongoing learning opportunity. “It was a ‘check the box’ environment,” she said.

When she was appointed CLO, she knew that if she could tear down silos and create a more collaborative and aligned learning experience with the backing of agency leaders, she could transform it into a place where people embraced learning as a career-long goal.

“My dream was to make the entire state of Tennessee a learning organization,” she said.

“Imagine if all employees had learning at their fingertips how engaged they would be.”

— Trish Holliday, assistant commissioner and CLO, Tennessee state government She got early support in achieving this goal when Bill Haslam was appointed governor in 2012. He and Rebecca Hunter, commissioner of the department of human resources, came to these roles with a plan to make Tennessee the No. 1 state in the Southeast for high-quality jobs. “That meant workforce development would be critical,” Holliday said.

Hunter recognized the value of having a state CLO, and in April of that year she asked Holliday if she’d be willing to help make Tennessee an employer of choice.

“I’ll never forget that day,” Holliday said. “It was the most impactful I’ve had since being in the ministry.”

As CLO, Hunter encouraged Holliday to rethink the state’s approach to learning and to create a more centralized and aligned learning department.

“Rebecca Hunter has been a true learning visionary,” said Stephanie Penney, assistant commissioner and chief services officer for the state — and one of Holliday’s close peers. Penney noted that Hunter set the stage for Holliday and the rest of the learning and

PHOTOS BY ABIGAIL BOBO

Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

29

Profile development team to take the necessary risks to transform the state’s learning experience. “We never have to sell her on an idea; she is always open to trying something new,” Penney said of Hunter.

Leading With Leaders

She found that the 1,100 graduates who’ve completed the program have higher rates of retention and promotion than other leaders, and 98 percent say the training helped them improve their performance on the job. Even better, a third-party study of the program found 91 percent of the department heads who sent their people to LEAD felt it was worth the cost to the department. That is significant considering the pressures state agencies face to justify expenses.

“LEAD is really making a difference for our leaders,” she said. “We’ve even had private-sector organizations ask us how they could replicate the model in their own organizations.”

Holliday’s initial directive as CLO was to create a more centralized learning and development environment that would allow the state to better leverage training resources, while creating a more collaborative space where departments could learn together and share best practices.

She began by revamping leadership development training for current and Lifelong Learning for All future leaders across state The LEAD program is limited to a handful of government. “We wanted leaders from each agency, which means dozens of to take an inside-out phi- promising candidates are turned away every year. losophy,” said Holliday. Holliday didn’t want these ambitious employees to get “If we want to promote discouraged, so she decided to create complimentary leaders from within we programs, called the Commissioner’s Leadership — Jennifer Harris-Brown, director of talent management, needed to grow our own.” Academy, giving each agency’s best people a chance to She began with supervi- advance their skills. She believed that an intensive inTennessee state government sors, who Holliday calls the ternal leadership development program targeting the “heartbeat of the organiza- specific needs of agency leaders would help increase tion.” Her team created a statewide four-level certifica- engagement, reduce attrition among the state’s high tion program for all supervisors to advance their lead- performers and better prepare them to move into the ership skills and to create a formal career ladder to LEAD program later in their careers. move up the ranks of leadership. The level 1 certificaTo create the CLA curriculum, Holliday’s strategic tion became mandatory for people moving into super- learning solutions team collaborates with each agency’s visory roles for the first time, and each additional level executive leadership to identify core competencies helped them build the skills to lead larger and more needed by their supervisors and to create customized complex teams. content using specific case studies and examples from Then she moved on to LEAD Tennessee. their work. “It is a way to provide candidates who LEAD was an existing state program for current don’t get into LEAD with the next level of training,” and emerging leaders that puts roughly 150 rising Penney said. leaders through 12 months of intense, high-impact development covering eight leadership core competencies.

Leaders participate in live programs, online training and one-on-one executive coaching throughout the year. The goal of the program is to build bench strength within agencies and create a pool of leadership talent to move into high-level positions in the years to come. “LEAD Tennessee is unique because it brings together executive leaders with midlevel managers to learn together,” Holliday said.

Holliday worked with the development team to hone the curriculum and track its impact — because in state government proving the value of a program Trish Holliday, CLO for the state of Tennessee, finds that helping people reach their full is key to maintaining support, she said. potential engages her, whether it’s her local ministry or the state’s thousands of employees.

“Trish is an extraordinary visionary. She always finds a way to push us past our own boundaries.”

30 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

Profile After they launched the first few academies, agency leaders quickly recognized the value of the training for their bench of rising leaders, said Jennifer Harris-Brown, director of talent management for the state. The state now runs 28 specific leadership academies, each of which is sponsored by the commissioners of those departments. “These are all voluntary programs, which shows how hungry they are for this kind of training,” Harris-Brown said.

Holliday’s department has also developed training for executive leaders and middle management, as well as cross-department academies targeting leaders with specialized leadership development needs. For example, the Leadership Academy for Excellence in Disabled Services offers training for leaders in any of the seven departments serving the 1.5 million state citizens with disabilities. These targeted training programs provide a centralized learning environment, where leaders from across these agencies can share best practices and problem-solve as a group, Holliday said. “A lot of these folks didn’t realize other agencies were offering the same services, so it is helping them to be more effective.”

Many of these graduates then go on to the state’s Black Belt Leadership Program, which is a self-directed six-level structured development opportunity where trainees advance by completing strategic development courses and performing service tasks. “Service is an important part of government,” Holliday said.

Amid creating all of these leadership programs and transforming the culture of learning for Tennessee, Holliday went back to school to get her doctorate in education in 2015, officially earning the title and nickname “Doc Holliday.” “I wanted to have the highest level of credentials to lead this office,” she said. “It is part of how I model a commitment to lifelong learning.”

A New Perspective All of these training programs, coupled with Holliday’s constant communication that learning is an inherent part of the state employment environment, have helped make the Tennessee government an employer of choice in the state, according to Harris-Brown. “I never would have considered working for state government before I heard what Trish was doing,” she said.

Harris-Brown had been working in the private sector as a director of human resources when she attended a Society for Human Resource Management event in 2012 and heard Holliday speak. “At the time I thought of state government as slow and not very cutting edge,” she said. But when Holliday started talking about the learning transformation efforts she was pursuing and the commitment she had to turning state government into a learning organization, Harris-Brown was intrigued.

Holliday’s focus for 2019 is to increase access to learning through improved digital and mobile opportunities.

Two years later when she went looking for a new job, she recalled Holliday’s presentation and sought out a role in her department. “At the time the department wasn’t even advertising jobs, so I had to make the effort to apply,” Harris-Brown said. “I wouldn’t have done that if I wasn’t excited about what Trish was doing.” Harris-Brown was hired as a facilitator in April 2014 and is now working with Holliday to deploy many of the state’s new training initiatives.

“Trish is an extraordinary visionary,” she said. She noted that she is always willing to take on any challenge that the state’s leaders throw her way. “She always finds a way to make it work and to push us past our own boundaries.”

Holliday’s enthusiasm and accomplishments are also regularly noted by agency leaders and commissioners, who credit her with creating a new learning culture for the Tennessee government. “Once they see the transformation that happens when their employees go to quality programs with quality curriculum, they all want more,” Harris-Brown said.

They also regularly invite Holliday to strategy meetings and reviews to get her input on how learning might help them address the challenges they face.

“When they reach out to me, it’s an indication that learning is appreciated,” Holliday said.

But she isn’t willing to rest on her laurels. In 2019, she’s focusing on creating more access to learning for all employees via a digital learning platform that offers mobile microlearning opportunities. “Imagine if all employees had learning at their fingertips how engaged they would be,” she marveled. That passion and willingness to tackle every challenge is giving the state of Tennessee an advantage that will help them attract talent for years to come. CLO Sarah Fister Gale is a writer based in Chicago. She can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

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32 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

Creating Conscious Capital Big corporations are partnering with universities to help employees get their degrees.

BY SAR AH FISTER GALE

I

n November 2018 Uber announced a surprising new partnership with Arizona State University. The global ride-hailing service will now offer access to a fully funded college degree for Uber Pro drivers — and their families. That means drivers who meet the criteria of driving a certain number of hours per month and receive top passenger ratings can complete a full undergraduate degree through ASU Online or take part in non-degree courses through ASU’s Continuing and Professional Education program. They can also provide this benefit to a partner, child, grandchild or other family member.

This initiative didn’t begin as an education program, said Ali Wiezbowski, Uber’s head of driver engagement. Early in 2018, Uber announced a new corporate mission to “ignite opportunities that put the world in motion.”

“We realized that if we were going to stand behind that mission, we needed to bring it to life for drivers,” Wiezbowski said. So her team spent weeks interviewing hundreds of drivers about why they drove and what they aspired to achieve from the experience. Throughout those interviews two themes emerged, she said. “They come to the platform to provide for their families or to build a foundation for their own future.”

Fully 50 percent of drivers reported that they planned to start a new business in the next five years, and many older or retired drivers were doing it to support their extended families. That led Uber to the idea of providing a college education

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33

and business training as a benefit to its most loyal team members. “It is a way for Uber to demonstrate its appreciation for drivers who are on the road every day and to make Uber the platform of choice,” Wiezbowski said.

The program launched in eight cities, but they expect to roll it out nationwide this spring.

Beyond Tuition Reimbursement Global corporations have supported employees pursuing secondary education for years. However, most of these programs have been built around tuition reimbursement for employees learning a relevant workplace skill or pursuing an MBA. And such reimbursement programs have been historically underused for a variety of reasons. Many companies don’t actively market them to employees or track the impact of the investment, and they often require employees to cover the cost of tuition up front and only reimburse them when the course is complete.

Collaborating directly with universities to offer a full degree with little or no up-front investment could turn the tuition reimbursement model on its head, said Robert Kelchen, assistant professor of higher education at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. “It’s definitely a trend to watch,” he said. Paying for everything up front and providing employees with centralized, quality online education that can be completed in a more flexible environment could increase use of these programs and their benefit to employees and employers.

Collaborating directly with universities to offer a full degree with no up-front investment could turn the tuition reimbursement model on its head.

“It’s interesting to see the shift from companies partnering with local community colleges to large online academic institutions,” Kelchen said. It means employees will get the same quality of education no matter where they are based, and companies can negotiate tuition discounts. It can also lower in-house training costs, he said. “If you don’t have enough people to justify a full program, partnering with an academic institution may make sense.”

These collaborations also tend to target entry-level employees and focus more on their personal aspira34 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

tions than job skills. “It’s more of a benefit than a training and development effort,” said Daniel Szpiro, dean of the school of professional programs at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York. “It is viewed as a tool to attract and retain talent and a PR move.” Indeed, when multinational corporations offer workers access to a free college education, it does win them a lot of publicity. Uber, Walmart, Starbucks and Ford have all garnered a lot of positive public attention for similar college funding initiatives.

But even if these programs are more of a benefit than a corporate learning strategy, they deliver significant value for employees and employers, said Haley Glover, strategy director for Lumina Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Indianapolis that focuses on making post-high school education more accessible.

“We are in a hot economy and the skills gap is real,” she said. “Companies need to exercise all the tools in their toolbox to keep and attract talent, and one way is through education benefits.”

This can be especially impactful when those benefits target front-line hires. “We encourage companies to focus on these workers because that is where they will get the greatest returns,” Glover said. “That’s where talent management issues and risk of turnover are the highest, and it is a great opportunity to provide a benefit that they will value for a lifetime.”

Starbucks Leads the Way Starbucks became the leader of this trend in 2014, when it launched its College Achievement Program — also in partnership with ASU. The program offers employees 100 percent tuition coverage for a bachelor’s degree at ASU Online with no requirements to stay with the company post-graduation.

Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz came up with the idea after meeting the head of ASU at a conference on solving 21st century problems, explained Phil Regier, dean of educational initiatives and head of ASU Online. At the time, 70 percent of the coffee chain’s employees had no college degree, and Schultz wanted to help them close that gap. “Howard’s vision for the company has always been about creating amazing interactions between customers and baristas,” Regier said. Providing these customer-facing employees with a free education is one more way to create an environment where they are happy to come to work. “It was groundbreaking,” Regier said. “No one had done anything like this to scale before.”

And it has had the desired result. Thousands of employees have now gone through the program, including 8,600 in 2018 alone, and retention of these students is higher than the general population of ASU Online students, Regier said. Even though employees don’t have to stay with Starbucks after they graduate,

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the company has seen higher retention among these employees, and they are three times more likely to be promoted, according to Regier. “Through this program, Starbucks is creating conscious capital that benefits employees, customers and the business,” he said.

However, industry experts warn that these programs can just as easily flop if they are not carefully managed and marketed. Kelchen noted that graduation rates among online universities are historically low — roughly 55 percent for first-time full-time students and 39 percent for first-time part-time students, according to the Department of Education.

Going to school while working can be overwhelming, and the lack of college community and support structure can make it difficult to complete, Regier said. However, many nonprofit academic institutions now cater to these nontraditional students to try and address the issues that cause high dropout rates. This can help corporations interested in providing college degrees to employees achieve a higher rate of success.

Nontraditional Students Need a Different Approach In May 2018 Walmart announced a partnership with Guild Education to offer employees access to online courses to complete their high school degrees or pursue an associate or bachelor’s degree in business or supply chain management. It will eventually be made available to all Walmart U.S. and Sam’s Club employees, and they only pay $1 a day to participate. “Our research found that when people have an investment in their education they are more likely to complete it,” said Michelle Malashock, head of media relations for Walmart.

Guild works with Fortune 1000 companies to create academic programs that give employees access to advanced education through a number of nonprofit universities. One of the reasons Walmart chose Guild is because it caters to nontraditional adult students. “Our number one goal is helping employees complete their degrees,” Malashock said. Along with providing access to courses, Guild helps students figure out how to secure college credit for past schooling and company training, and they provide coaching on how to apply, choose courses and stay enrolled.

“The needs of nontraditional students are very different from those coming straight from high school,” said Gary Brahm, chancellor of Brandman University, one of the institutions participating in the Walmart program through Guild. Brandman, which is part of Chapman University, focuses solely on nontraditional student populations. “Many of them are first-generation citizens, low income, and 36 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

These programs can just as easily flop if they are not carefully managed and marketed. they don’t have experience choosing a college or picking courses,” Brahm said.

To ease the transition to college, Brandman uses a competency-based approach in which students complete courses at their “pace of learning” rather than following a structured semester format. “Once they master a skill, they move on,” Brahm said. This prevents learners from getting overwhelmed and allows those with existing skills to prove what they know and move on. “It gives them a sense of confidence, and it makes every credit count.”

As part of the partnership, Brandman has worked closely with Walmart Academy to understand how its courses can translate to college credits and to incorporate Walmart-relevant case studies into some of the business and supply chain management courses.

While Malashock acknowledged that the program is definitely a perk, Walmart also sees it as a learning and development opportunity that will empower employees to deliver better service while advancing their careers. “A bachelor’s degree might not be relevant for a cashier’s job, but that cashier might be our next CEO,” she said. “This program gives them the opportunity to take that journey.”

Make it Easy Walmart and Uber are still too early in their programs to have measurable results, but both are optimistic that they will be viewed as an attractive benefit and learning opportunity for employees and their managers.

“It’s an extraordinary thing for a corporation to do for its employees,” Regier said. “They can get a free degree while earning an income, and they will become better employees in the process.” He urges companies to be thoughtful about the academic partners they choose and how they manage and market these investments, however. “A university education is hard to start, and it’s hard to stay with,” Regier said. Making it easy for employees to apply and providing them with the guidance they need to stay engaged could be the difference between a groundbreaking academic program that attracts and retain talent and a PR stunt that quickly gets forgotten. CLO Sarah Fister Gale is a writer based in Chicago. She can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

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38 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

Fear and lack of discipline can cost a learning function respect, budget, jobs and, in the end, its own existence.

But this spiral can be avoided.

BY JAMES D. KIRKPATRICK AND WENDY K AYSER KIRKPATRICK

E

ighty percent of training professionals believe that evaluating training results is important to their organization, according to the Association for Talent Development’s 2016 research report “Evaluating Learning: Getting to Measurements That Matter.” However, only 35 percent are confident that their training evaluation efforts meet organizational business goals.

The dramatic disparity between what learning professionals believe the business wants and what they deliver has been a relatively invariable dilemma for decades. Countless articles, white papers and programs address this issue and provide solutions that range from simple to complicated. So why does the problem still exist?

Two causes are frequently cited: a lack of discipline surrounding evaluation and a fear of evaluation among some professionals.

Lack of discipline in evaluation is most of-

ten seen in corporations. A learning department receives an annual budget and uses it to deliver pleasant, professional experiences.

However, they often are not asked to provide meaningful data to show how those experiences support the business, so they don’t. This carries on for a while, but eventually learning receives a summons to show how they contribute to the business. Generally, this results in continual budget slashing and other cost-cutting measures.

Fear of evaluation is more often seen among learning professionals in government and military organizations. On the positive side, these organizations have strict written regulations or doctrine that require value to be documented and reported. Therefore, these professionals are hungry for ways to show the value. However, there is fear of what might happen if value cannot be shown, so instead of evaluating how training improves performance and contributes to agency mission ac-

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complishment, they select metrics that are easier to demonstrate. They water down goals to things that are easier to control, such as presentation of skill and recitation of knowledge at the end of training.

There is also reticence to evaluate the degree to which participants apply what they learned in training when they are back on the job, or what we refer to as behavior (level 3) in the Kirkpatrick Model (see figure on p. 41), a method for evaluating the effectiveness of learning solutions. Common excuses to avoid it are the perceived difficulty and expense of monitoring what happens on the job. While there are often logistical realities to address, the real issue could be the fear that evaluation efforts might reveal that the training alone has done little to improve performance or related company results.

The key to showing the organizational value of training is the pre-training plan.

Lack of discipline to evaluate and fear of evaluating what is truly important share a commonality: They both can cost the learning function of an organization respect, budget, jobs and, in the end, its own existence. But this death spiral can be avoided.

A straightforward set of tactics to use before, during and after training can make an immediate and measurable difference in the value that learning delivers to an organization.

The End Is the Beginning When you receive a request for training, your goal is to discover and understand the underlying problem that generated the request so you can recommend an appropriate intervention that will solve it. The true purpose of learning is to improve on-the-job performance and measurably contribute to key organizational results (level 4), so you need to find out what might be lacking in those areas.

Following are sample questions to ask the requestor or stakeholder to discover their needs and design a program that will meet those needs and deliver results: • What outcomes do you wish to see after this program? How do they differ from what you are seeing today?

• Are there key metrics that should be improved as a result of this program?

• What would make this program a success in your eyes?

40 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

Brandon Huff, learning and performance manager for Nationwide Insurance, asks stakeholders, “What is an appropriate sample size from the business to confirm that the program was a success?” and, “With whom should we partner to gather the business results necessary to review the program?”

Additionally, here are some questions to ask the requestor or stakeholder to establish what success will look like in the behavior of participants. You might also ask trusted line managers and supervisors these questions.

• Can you describe what training graduates should actually do on the job as a result of this program?

• What would be considered “good performance,” and how does that compare with what is occurring today?

• What support and accountability resources are available after training?

• What will we need to do to ensure that training graduates do what they are supposed to do after training?

Huff takes this opportunity to obtain buy-in for leadership participation after the training by asking, “What commitments are you able to make as it pertains to reinforcing the behaviors necessary to drive success in the business outcomes?”

Typically, businesspeople will be most interested in data from levels 3 and 4 — employee and department performance and organizational results. Focus your evaluation efforts on these areas.

You also probably will want to know a few things about the program itself and how it is received by participants — levels 2 and 1, respectively. Instead of using the same old post-program evaluation, list out the key information that will be most useful to you and use it as a guide for the evaluation you conduct and specific questions you ask.

Once you are clear on the overall program goal and the performance expectations, you can start to design the intervention. Training will likely only be one part of an effective program plan. As you build the content, build the evaluation plan and related collection tools.

Formative Evaluation Saves Resources A good evaluation plan takes advantage of formative evaluation, meaning that which occurs during the program. Data related to learning and reaction (levels 2 and 1) can be gathered during the program with minimal time and effort, saving resources to support and evaluate the more important studies of behavior and results (levels 3 and 4).

Collecting data during the program also reserves the post-program evaluation form for only the most important data that will be utilized, tracked and reported.

Sara Henderson, an Atlanta-based instructional designer, offers this list of fun activities that are also effective level 2 formative evaluation techniques: • Teachback: Assign students a topic and ask them to teach it to the class.

•C aption This: Present an image and ask learners to create a caption. The images should depict scenarios where prior skills could be applied.

• Think-Pair-Share: Learners respond to a question prompt, then discuss in pairs. They share results with the group.

•D oodle It: Ask learners to draw a concept or skill instead of explaining it. This is particularly good for virtual sessions, and it usually gets lots of laughs.

•R ed Light/Green Light: Use a polling technique and ask a series of yes/no or agree/disagree questions, and discuss learner responses. This works for both in-person and virtual instructor-led sessions.

Examples of level 1 formative evaluation include: • An instructor asking during the program how things are going for participants.

• A question in an asynchronous online module asking participants to document the degree to which they are engaged by the content.

• A “ticket out” system in which participants are asked to comment on how they might use what they are learning in class when they return to work.

self-monitoring and reporting system. Find a fun way to share this information, such as a dashboard, to create friendly competition.

Reinforcing: How can you, supervisors and stakeholders communicate that the outcome of this program is important? Find out if you can get a message into the company newsletter, on a bulletin board or in an intranet message. See if you can schedule email reminders for graduates. If the content is complicated, add additional education, such as lunch-and-learns or refresher modules.

THE KIRKPATRICK MODEL

Level 1: Reaction

Level 2: Learning

The degree to which participants acquire the intended knowledge, skills, attitude, confidence and commitment based on their participation in the training.

Level 3: Behavior

The degree to which participants apply what they learned during training when they are back on the job.

Level 4: Results

The degree to which targeted program outcomes occur and contribute to the organization’s highest-level result.

Focus Resources on Post-Training Support Most of your evaluation resources should be focused on what happens after the training, during the critical time when your graduates are attempting to apply what they learned in their actual work.

Just over half of organizations evaluate behavior to any extent, according to ATD’s “Evaluating Learning: Getting to Measurements That Matter” report, so great improvement can and should be made in this area.

Evaluation is not synonymous with a post-program survey. While 74 percent of those who do any evaluation at all choose it as their main tool, it can generally only gather one-dimensional data related to what is and is not occurring. For important initiatives, create a plan that addresses all four types of required drivers — or processes and systems that monitor, reinforce, encourage and reward performance. When training builds and helps to implement the driver package, it increases value in the eyes of stakeholders and contributes meaningfully to organizational performance and results.

Monitoring: How will you know that graduates are doing what they learned? Find out if their supervisors are willing to monitor and report on their performance. If not, consider building a peer-to-peer or a

The degree to which participants find the training favorable, engaging and relevant to their jobs.

Source: Kirkpatrick Partners.

Encouraging: Who might be able to help graduates and keep them going if they get stuck? If supervisors are willing, provide talking points for their regular employee touch-bases and team meetings. Additionally, try to set up another method, such as a buddy system assigned during training or peer mentor/mentee pairs.

Rewarding: For major initiatives, check if formal reward systems are in line with what graduates are being asked to do on the job. For example, if they do what they are supposed to do, will they get a good performance appraisal and perhaps an annual pay increase? Also consider small, informal methods of reward, such as a team lunch or casual Friday for the department with the highest performance or results EVALUATION continued on page 53 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

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S

hane Snow is an award-winning journalist, celebrated entrepreneur and the best-selling author of the books “Smartcuts: The Breakthrough Power of Lateral Thinking” and “DREAM TEAMS: Working Together Without Falling Apart,” as well as the co-author of “The Storytelling Edge.” He is founder-at-large of the content technology company Contently, and is a board member of The Hatch Institute, a nonprofit for investigative journalism in the public interest.

OFFICIAL KEYNOTE SPEAKER OF SYMPOSIUM

Dream Teams and the Science of Breakthrough Collaboration TUE | APRIL 2 8:15 A.M.

WHAT MAKES A DREAM TEAM? HOW IS IT DIFFERENT FROM AN ORDINARY TEAM? I call it a dream team when a group’s members add up to more than the sum of their parts. It’s a team where everyone gets better together, instead of just a group getting bigger.

WHAT QUESTIONS SHOULD LEADERS BE ASKING WHEN TRYING TO CREATE A DREAM TEAM? Leaders need to stop asking “Who will fit this team?” and start asking “Who will add to this team?” The starting point for dream teams is different ways of thinking.

TENSIONS CAN OCCUR IN GROUPS THAT INTERRUPT THE FLOW AND SYNERGY OF WORK AND MAY ULTIMATELY DAMAGE THE TEAM’S DYNAMICS. HOW CAN A LEADER REBUILD A BROKEN TEAM? Often it starts with assessing who is on the team, where there are redundancies in perspective, where there could be diversity of it, and where do you have a lack of intellectual humility. Too often we resist changing who’s on our team for reasons that don’t have to do with optimizing our team’s chance of success (e.g., keeping people out of loyalty or for political reasons). The other thing I’d say is that just because there is tension doesn’t mean there’s a problem. Tension is a key ingredient of a dream team. You need to have different ideas and ways of thinking do battle if you want to find smarter ways of doing things than you’ve already got. What leaders need to do is harness that tension and divert it away from the personal and toward tension between ideas. Debates lose their effectiveness once they get personal, but a good debate about ideas can be far more effective than a happy brainstorm session.

WHAT PART DOES COMPANY CULTURE PLAY IN A DREAM TEAM? The more a culture allows for people to think and operate the way they want to, the more that culture will allow for dream team dynamics. In my definition, the difference between a cult and a culture is in a cult you’re not allowed to do or think any way but the “official” way, whereas a culture welcomes additional perspectives.

PLAY AND STORYTELLING ARE METHODS YOU TALK ABOUT IN YOUR BOOK THAT MAY RESOLVE CONFLICT. WHAT ARE SOME OTHER METHODS YOU SWEAR BY? Play and sharing our personal stories are about taking the pressure out of a relationship, so we can work more effectively even though we’re different. Besides those, I think every team player should work on developing intellectual humility, which you can do by learning about your own ego and emotional personality, by traveling and experiencing different cultures, and by reading more. Check out shanesnow.com/ articles/intellectual-humility for more on how to do that!

WHAT DOES LEADERSHIP MEAN TO YOU? CAN YOU DEFINE LEADERSHIP IN YOUR OWN WORDS? To me, leadership is helping a group to be better than its strongest or smartest member. That’s different than the

historical idea of a leader, which has been to be the strongest or smartest. But this is how leadership needs to change if we want to solve the challenges of tomorrow.

WHAT IS THE BIGGEST MISTAKE NON-DREAM TEAMS MAKE? They conflate getting along and having similar interests with being a better team. In reality, the best teams push boundaries by combining their differences. And that often means they’re full of people with different personalities and interests. Which is great!

YOU SPEAK ABOUT HOW LEVERAGING COGNITIVE DIVERSITY CAN HELP AN ORGANIZATION OUTMATCH ITS COMPETITORS. HOW CAN A LEADER TAP INTO THAT COGNITIVE DIVERSITY AMONG THEIR TEAM? That’s what the whole book “Dream Teams” is about. :) But it starts with recognizing the proxies that indicate cognitive diversity is there: the different experiences that people have been through in their life’s journey. Learning about this is often more important than that checklist of “right answers” in a job interview that everyone prepares for.

HOW CAN LEADERS ENHANCE A TEAM’S CREATIVITY WITHOUT ADDING/HIRING MORE MEMBERS? Learn to host productive debates, encourage dissent and invite outside perspectives that shake things up. Pushing your team into an ideal zone of cognitive friction, then learning how to pull things back when they get too tense or personal — that’s the skillset of great creative leaders.

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44 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

WORKING

ARM IN ARM The workforce needs to be prepared for the human-machine partnerships of the future. When the discussion turns to AI, L&D leaders should be speaking up — not stepping out.

BY MARK MARONE

A

rtificial intelligence is changing the way people live and work, promising massive advances in accuracy, productivity and personalization by replicating human capabilities with information technology systems that can sense, reason, comprehend, learn and act.

Organizations are eager to employ it, but business leaders who hope to benefit from the full potential of AI — including those responsible for developing human capital — have a lot to think about.

Expectations are high, but there is an undercurrent of skepticism. Technology has a history of producing unintended consequences. While AI has the capacity to transform work experiences for the better, it can also threaten the trust that underpins a healthy corporate culture and strong employee engagement.

Where Are We Now? AI use is becoming widespread, including in automated logistics and warehousing systems, routine medical procedures, robotic manufacturing, chatbot technology, investment analysis, reporting and decision-making. Advances continue toward autonomous vehicles, Alexa and Siri have become like family, and music-streaming apps play our favorite new artists before we’ve ever heard of them.

Even areas once considered invulnerable are beginning to yield to AI. Complex human resources activities such as generating performance reviews, gauging potential for promotion and succession planning are all being explored. Already software can assess job applicants via video, comparing their responses — both verbal and nonverbal — with the predetermined ideal for a given position. Personalized learning platforms offer training recommenda-

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tions at relevant points in the learner’s journey tailored to an employee’s position, experience and the task at hand. The list seems to grow daily.

Should Organizations Adopt AI? The short answer is “yes.” Over time, the insights and productivity gains that AI promises will likely provide an invaluable edge for organizations that have implemented it effectively.

Experts recommend beginning by evaluating which business functions could most easily benefit from AI and which analytical techniques would be required.

Another critical step is ensuring the availability of current, quality data and attending to processes involved in managing it.

At this point in the discussion, many HR and L&D leaders begin to check out. What do they have to do with any of this? In fact, AI experts suggest that how well analytical techniques scale up in reality will depend heavily on the quality of a company’s human skills and capabilities.

There are important aspects of successful AI project planning that many organizations are missing, and HR and L&D professionals are in the perfect position to lend a hand. One of them is evaluating a project’s impact on the corporate culture, employee experience and, ultimately, employee engagement.

In July 2018, Dale Carnegie & Associates conducted an online survey on the impact of AI on the workplace. (Editor’s note: The author is an employee of Dale Carnegie & Associates.) The 752 respondents, all full-time employees, represented a range of leadership levels and industries in both the United States and Japan, two countries on the leading edge of AI adoption.

Seventy-five percent believe that AI will “fundamentally change the way we work and live in the next 10 years,” and the vast majority expect those changes to be for the good. The survey also found that 58 percent feel positive about AI’s potential to take on routine tasks and allow them to focus on more meaningful work.

At the same time, nearly a quarter (24 percent) of respondents (and 30 percent of those at director level or above) said they were very or extremely worried about the potential impact of AI on their organization’s culture, with another half of respondents expressing concern to a lesser degree (see Figure 1).

These leaders recognize that the gains from AI are at risk of being offset by losses, at least in part, if the resulting changes to corporate culture have the effect of disengaging employees. And there are already warning bells. Global mega-retailer Amazon is on the cutting-edge of AI and recently received patents for the technology behind the development of a wristband that would track employees’ every move, vibrating when its algorithms judge they are doing something 46 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

Technology has a history of producing unintended consequences. wrong. It would be an upgrade to similar tracking technology already in use. In an article that vividly illustrates the potential impact on employee engagement, one former Amazon warehouse worker told The New York Times, “After a year working on the floor, I felt like I had become a version of the robots I was working with.”

While optimism prevails in Dale Carnegie’s reFIGURE 1: AI CONCERNS Extremely or very worried Not at all worried

Moderately or slightly worried

Cybersecurity concerns 51%

34%

15%

Legal issues related to responsibility for problems with AI 32%

17%

51%

Biases built into AI systems by humans 30%

53%

17%

53%

18%

Privacy concerns 30%

Impact of AI on our corporate culture 24%

52%

24%

Possibility of my job being eliminated 16%

42%

41%

Source: Dale Carnegie & Associates research, July 2018

search, people do worry about losing their jobs due to advances in AI. More than half of respondents expressed at least some degree of concern. HR leaders don’t need a lecture on the negative impact that impending job cuts — or even rumors of them — have on a workforce’s performance. As Carnegie observed decades ago, “One of the worst features about worrying is that it destroys our ability to concentrate.”

Most who study the issue predict job creation will

largely compensate for losses, yet anecdotes suggest fears of pink slips aren’t unfounded. The World Economic Forum reported a telling example in 2017: A Chinese mobile phone manufacturer cut its workforce of 650 people by 90 percent, replacing them with 60 robotic arms. Only 60 people are still employed there — three to maintain the production lines and the others to monitor AI-controlled systems. The factory’s general manager predicts the number of employees could fall to 20.

But predictable physical activity is one of the easiest work forms to automate; many occupations involve skills much harder to mechanize with available technologies. That said, McKinsey asserts that a significant proportion of tasks involving collecting and processing data, interfacing with stakeholders, and applying expertise to decision-making are also near-term candidates for automation.

Experts disagree on the timeline and magnitude of the expected impact. What is clear is that companies’ decisions about what to automate and how will have profound effects on the relationship between leadership and the remaining human workforce.

derstand technology, they originally set their applicant screening algorithms to sort for computer science students with top grades from elite universities. In 2013, Google decided to test its hiring hypothesis. Codenamed Project Oxygen, it analyzed the entirety of its hiring, firing and promotion data since the company’s incorporation in 1998. The results were shocking: Among the most important qualities of Google’s best employees, hard skills such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics were rated last.

It’s less likely that entire occupations will be automated than that some activities will be automated across many occupations.

Breaking Down Resistance Outside of the technological expertise it requires, the biggest obstacle to successfully implementing AI is trust.

It’s not surprising given the lack of transparency often involved with machine learning applications, the potential for bias, and fears stemming from AI-induced dystopias in pop culture. Only recently, Amazon made headlines again when it had to shut down its AI-based hiring application because it showed bias against women.

The industry is trying to address some of these fears: IBM recently announced the launch of AI OpenScale, a service that promises to “infuse AI with trust and transparency, explain outcomes and automatically eliminate bias.”

But technological solutions, however sophisticated, won’t resolve the trust problem entirely. Company leaders who hope to retain the goodwill of their remaining human workforce will need to strengthen and protect trust. Doing so hinges on effective communication and honesty but also on behaving in ways that are consistent with the principles and values they espouse. Imagine the resulting cynicism when organizations that claim to “put employees first” are forced to admit to biased AI-generated performance assessments or privacy breaches resulting from AI projects or announce unexpected layoffs as their need for human employees decreases.

Maximizing the Human Contribution Several years ago, Google’s founders experienced an epiphany that radically altered their hiring philosophy. Believing that only technologists can un-

Instead, the project determined that the top characteristics of successful Google employees were all soft skills, which meant being a good coach and communicator, gaining insight by listening to differing points of view, having empathy and being supportive of colleagues, critical thinking, problem solving and being able to make connections across complex ideas.

FIGURE 2: SOFT SKILLS EMPLOYEES EXPECT TO NEED TO AVOID JOB LOSS TO AI 57%

52%

51% 42%

42% 35% 29%

9% Com Team m work skills unication

Crea tivity

Critic think al ing

Lead Emo t e skills rship intell ional igen ce

Emp athy

None of th ese

Source: Dale Carnegie & Associates research, July 2018

This type of evidence suggests that the human contribution to the machine-human partnership will continue to be crucial. People sense this, as the Dale Carnegie survey confirmed. While there is no doubt the MACHINE-HUMAN continued on page 52 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

47

Case Study

Building A Talent Pool

BY SARAH FISTER GALE ur society has a problem. College has gotten so prohibitively expensive that young people are losing access to the education they need to build the skills to launch a career. At the same time companies are struggling to find talent in an almost zero-unemployment economy. But Cognizant may have found a solution. The global technology services company has partnered with Per Scholas, a nonprofit IT training program in New York City, to provide adults from underserved communities with the training they need to fill jobs in the technology industry.

“We see this as an opportunity to find new talent to fuel our rapid growth,” said Eric Westphal, Cognizant’s senior director of global corporate affairs. Since 2010, Cognizant has grown from roughly 100,000 global employees to more than 270,000 and $14.8 billion in revenues, making it one of the largest companies in the world. That has created an ongoing challenge to find talent who can meet clients’ needs.

Hidden Talent In 2016, Westphal began researching potential partners who might help them build a training program to fill those gaps, and he discovered Per Scholas, which was founded in the 1990s to train high-potential individuals from overlooked communities in basic tech skills.

The organization originally trained candidates to refurThe Bronx Training Center features modern technology, shared bish computers for people work spaces, a cafe, conference rooms and classrooms. who couldn’t afford to buy new ones, explained Plinio Ayala, president and CEO of Per Scholas. But as hardware costs fell, they shifted to a workforce development model. “Now we design programs through the lens of the employer,” he said.

It’s a unique program in which the Per Scholas team partners with organizations like Cognizant to create specific curriculum to meet their hiring needs.

“This employer-driven model is fast and effective,” Ayala said. Per Scholas finds promising candidates and 48 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

SNAPSHOT Cognizant is partnering with nonprofit Per Scholas to close its tech talent gap.

provides them with the exact training and guidance the company is looking for.

The program addresses Cognizant’s hiring needs while giving individuals with excellent core skills but limited educational resources a chance to build a career, Ayala said. It also addresses the need for greater diversity in the tech world. Most Per Scholas students are people of color, a third of them are women, and a third are disconnected young adults — all groups that are largely underrepresented in IT employment today, he said. The students range from people with associate degrees who haven’t been able to find a good job, to stay-at-home mothers who have been out of the workforce for a period of time, to high school graduates who can’t afford further education. “We find people who are not typically considered by corporate recruiters and develop them into an alternative pipeline of talent,” Ayala said.

In 2016 Per Scholas began working with Cognizant to create tuition-free customized hands-on training programs in cybersecurity, IT support, systems administration and web development. Once students graduate they are guaranteed an interview with Cognizant or another local business. Cognizant has committed to hiring hundreds of graduates from the training programs to support clients across New York, and Per Scholas is working with other employers in the region to help program graduates find jobs.

State-of-the-Art Training Center Per Scholas and Cognizant ran an initial pilot in July 2017, which helped them identify areas that needed adjustments, said Westphal. They expanded the initial training time and honed the assessment process to ensure selected candidates could handle the rigorous curriculum. Candidates are still only required to have a high school diploma or GED, he said. “The assessment is more about their aptitude and attitude than

PHOTOS BY RANDALL GARNICK PHOTOGRAPHY

O

their education.” The students will be expected to work full time in a highly technical training environment, so they have to have a subset of skills and a willingness to commit, Ayala added. “Our expectations are very high.”

In September 2017, Per Scholas and Cognizant officially opened the 15,000-square-foot Bronx Training Center for Platform by Per Scholas, a dedicated training center for students participating in the program.

The space features modern technology, lots of shared work spaces, a cafe, conference rooms and many classrooms. “We wanted it to feel like a Cognizant office space,” Westphal said. Cognizant covered the cost of the $6 million center, which was offset by $2 million in performance-based tax credits through the Excelsior Jobs Program.

Once candidates are accepted into the program, the training lasts about three months and requires them to be on-site eight hours a day, five days a week. They also have additional homework and projects to complete outside of class.

Along with hands-on technical training, which incorporates case studies and examples from the Cognizant workplace, students complete business and soft skills courses and have access to career coaches and counselors to help them address any personal or professional roadblocks, Westphal said.

“The soft skills training was really helpful,” said Mauricio Velasquez, who graduated from the program in early 2018 and now works for Cognizant.

He said the time spent prepping for interviews, giving mock presentations and learning how to write business emails gave him the confidence to work on client projects.

Velasquez had been working as a counselor at the YMCA and going to college part-time but was struggling to cover tuition when he heard about the Per Scholas program. He was accepted into the programming track after a two-step interview process with a panel of experts from Cognizant and Per Scholas, and he quit his job to focus full time on the training while staying with friends. “It was a tough three months,” he said.

Velasquez found the full-time approach to training helpful because it forced him to stay totally focused on his education rather than going back and forth from work to school. “We covered a lot of material, but it was very appropriate,” he said.

Juhyun So had a similar experience. She was accepted to the data engineering track in fall of 2018, where she’s learning Java, SQL, Java Database Connectivity and other big data concepts. She noted that while many of these skills can be learned online through tutorials, having access to specific datasets, project assignments and working with a cohort of stu-

dents gave her greater insights and incentive to keep going. “The curriculum helped me gain a sense of how these skills will be used in a real company,” she said.

Ready to Work Velasquez was hired by Cognizant within a week of graduating, and while he may not have a conventional four-year computer science degree, he found that his new programming skills put him on par with or ahead of others in his cadre of new hires. He was immediately assigned to a client project, where he was able to apply his SQL training from day one.

“There is a lot of merit to a bachelor’s or master’s degree, but there is also a lot of value in hiring someone who’s gone through specialized training for that role,” he said. “Employers need to see that value.”

Westphal agreed. The program had trained more than 600 candidates by the end of 2018, 80 percent of whom completed the program — which is one of the measures of its success. More important, Cognizant managers working with Per Scholas graduates consistently report that they bring a strong foundation of skills that can be readily applied on the job.

“It’s given them a foundation for lifelong learning, and it has given us a new source of talent,” he said.

Indeed, the program has been such a success that Cognizant opened another center in Texas in 2018 and expects to double the number of students who go through both programs by 2020. “It has become an important part of our talent strategy,” Westphal said.

Westphal encourages other large companies to consider replicating the model if they have a need.

“As an organization, we didn’t have the relationships in the community to find this talent on our own,” he said. The Bronx Training Center’s Periodic Table of Innovation.

But by partnering with Per Scholas, and investing the time and resources to create a specialized training program and center, they have been able to address their local talent gaps.

“It is an opportunity to disrupt the way you find and develop talent,” he said. And any up-front investments that it requires are more than returned in having access to quality people. CLO Sarah Fister Gale is a writer based in Chicago. She can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

49

Business Intelligence

Measurement Efforts Don’t Quite Measure Up A disconnect between learning and tangible business outcomes as well as lagging technology may be contributing to dissatisfaction with measurement and metrics practices.

M

easuring the impact of learning and development efforts is an important practice among L&D departments.

Learning professionals have been using Donald Kirkpatrick’s training evaluation model, or some variation of it, for 60 years, since it was first introduced in 1959. Through a variety of post-training assessments, gathering and analyzing learning outputs has become a big part of the day to day in L&D. And yet, the majority of learning leaders report dissatisfaction in this area.

According to a survey of the Chief Learning Officer Business Intelligence Board, conducted from June to July 2018, a staggering 58 percent of learning professionals are unsatisfied with the extent of learning measurement that occurs within their organization (Figure 1). This is up from 55 percent who reported dissatisfaction with their organization’s learning measurement in 2017.

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.

So, what’s fueling this growing dissatisfaction?

Survey results suggest that one contributing factor could be frustration with process. Only 58 percent of respondents said their measurement and metrics are fully aligned with learning strategy. And only 45 percent report externally benchmarking their measurement and metrics practices.

It also could be a failure to tie learning efforts to tangible business outcomes. While 74 percent 50 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

of respondents said they currently measure employee response to training, only 37 percent measure learning’s impact on sales (Figure 2). While 58 percent measure impact on employee engagement, a mere 28 percent measure impact on Net Promoter Score. And only 27 percent measure the formal ROI for learning.

Technology — or, rather, the lack of it — may also be a factor contributing to learning leaders’ frustration and dissatisfaction. Only 18 percent of respondents report that their organization has the technology to collect, aggregate, integrate and analyze data from multiple HR systems, otherwise known as big data. Forty-five percent say they are able to do so to some extent, and 38 percent say not at all (Figure 3).

Additionally, when it comes to learning metrics process, the vast majority of organizations are struggling with integration. Thirty-seven percent are manually generating metrics, 20 percent are automating metrics from their learning management system and 14 percent have no formal metrics in place (Figure 4). Without an integrated LMS and enterprise resource planning, learning professionals face greater difficulty in effectively and quickly analyzing data.

On the bright side, 71 percent of learning professionals say their organization plans to increase its learning analytics capability over the next two years.

What exactly that entails, and the effects it may have on learning professionals’ satisfaction with measurement practices, remains to be seen. CLO Ashley St. John is Chief Learning Officer’s managing editor. She can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

Figures’ Source: Chief Learning Officer Business Intelligence Board, N=500. All percentages rounded.

BY ASHLEY ST. JOHN

FIGURE 1: SATISFACTION WITH LEARNING MEASUREMENT Satisfied

42%

Dissatisfied

58%

FIGURE 2: PLANS TO MEASURE LEARNING IMPACT Already do it

Plan to within 12 months

Plan to within 12-24 months

Plan to – no time frame

No plans

Employee response to training

74%

11%

3%

6%

7%

Employee engagement

58%

21%

6%

7%

9%

7%

8%

7%

Increase in knowledge or skills

56%

22%

Overall business performance

47%

23%

8%

8%

15%

Product or service quality

47%

19%

7%

9%

18%

Sales

37%

13%

4%

7%

39%

Net Promoter Score

28%

18%

4%

8%

43%

ROI

27%

28%

12%

10%

23%

FIGURE 4: LEARNING METRICS PROCESS

FIGURE 3: ABILITY TO ANALYZE BIG DATA

Manually generated

Yes

37%

18% Combination of LMS and enterprise resource planning

22%

To some extent

45%

Automated from LMS

20% No

No formal metrics in place

38%

14%

Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

51

DIVERSITY continued from page 25

MACHINE-HUMAN continued from page 47

execute?” He said the ability to deliver excellence and serve as a role model is a critical part of L&D’s role within the business.

However, Jackson said no organization has effectively cracked the code on how to truly make underrepresented groups feel whole and included, but that responsibility shouldn’t fall solely on L&D. “It can’t be stood up exclusively on learning’s ability to move the needle on diversity, representation and inclusion,” Jackson said. “It has to acknowledge that training is one element in a multiple-element engagement strategy to drive greater representation, diversity and inclusion in an enterprise.”

demand for advanced technical skills will grow, when asked which skills respondents believe they would need to avoid job loss to AI, 70 percent chose soft skills over hard skills. (Figure 2 shows which soft skills respondents expect to need most.) And they are looking to their employers to train them.

The Big Picture As is widely documented, the issue of representation and diversity isn’t unique to L&D. In fact, according to a 2017 Fortune article by Grace Donnelly, only 16 Fortune 500 companies share demographic information about their employees. Of the ones that do, 80 percent of high-ranking officials are men and 72 percent of those men are white, according to another 2017 Fortune report by Stacy Jones.

Jackson said D&I is a business problem, not a learning problem. “As with other business problems, there is a key element that as L&D, we are responsible for driving, but we need alignment with the rest of the C-suite,” Jackson said. “We can have the most capable, engaged L&D department, but if that view is not one that is fostered or cared about by the CEO, it will be even more difficult to shift the culture.”

It’s also well recognized that a diverse workforce has dramatic effects on business. According to a 2015 McKinsey & Co. study, “Why Diversity Matters,” companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35 percent more likely to have returns above national industry medians.

Jackson said L&D should articulate the business case for D&I. “Those companies that do in fact have a diverse workforce are more profitable, are more effective in supporting customers, are more resilient and are more agile in respect to moving at the speed of business,” he said.

Jackson said the business case for D&I is about ensuring that companies can support and serve the markets they operate in more effectively. “The extent to which individuals within the learning and development ecosystem don’t understand that, in many respects, they sub-optimize their ability to deliver value to their enterprise — that shows up on their balance sheet and on their income statements in favor of those companies that do in fact have greater diversity.” CLO Ave Rio is a Chief Learning Officer associate editor.

She can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

52 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

Looking Ahead While predictions vary, it’s less likely that entire occupations will be automated than that some activities will be automated across many occupations. Roles for humans will remain as long as there are areas where employees aren’t ready for AI to take over. For instance, fewer than half of survey respondents are willing to accept a performance review conducted by AI — even if they knew the exact criteria being used. The time when AI-generated recognition will suffice hasn’t yet arrived either: Nearly 6 in 10 say it would be less valuable if they knew it wasn’t coming from a real human.

HR and L&D can contribute to successful implementation of AI by adopting the following three steps.

Stay attentive to trust. It forms the foundation of a competitive and healthy corporate culture. As Carnegie said, “Evidence defeats doubt.” Develop confidence in AI among employees by creating awareness of how it is being used successfully elsewhere. Assess, protect and build trust in senior leadership so that stakeholders can rest assured they will do the right thing when dealing with issues that will inevitably arise, such as ethics, security and privacy.

Bring a people-focused perspective to discussions about the implications of AI on the employee experience and engagement. HR and L&D leaders can sound the alarm when they see potential pitfalls, ensuring they are addressed early in the project. Also, they can look for opportunities to redesign the remaining work in ways that will strengthen employees’ connection to the organization’s purpose. Company leaders must clearly outline the value proposition in AI for their workforce.

Lay the foundation for success with the right training strategy. With AI’s implications in mind, now is the time for L&D leaders to assess skills gaps and identify how they can help their entire organization level up in the areas that will complement AI’s proficiencies.

There is unquestionably great promise for what can be achieved when people and machines combine their capabilities. Yet despite AI’s potential, most work — at least in the near-term — will still require a combination of human skills and technology, so when the discussion turns to AI, L&D leaders should be speaking up — not stepping out of the conversation. CLO Mark Marone is director of research and thought leadership for Dale Carnegie & Associates. He can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

EVALUATION continued from page 41 scores after training. Praise from executives can also be a powerful reward.

Taking the First Step The key to showing the organizational value of training is the pre-training plan. If you wait until after training to consider how to show that the training was successful, you might be too busy, it may be difficult to gain the support you will need from others, and much of the data you should have collected will already be gone.

Establish a standardized planning process for creating and updating training programs. For major initiatives, create the evaluation plan and build the tools and systems to gather the necessary data on all four levels as you build the content. Have conversations with stakeholders during the planning process to determine how much support you can

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Overcome the fear of levels 3 and 4 with a pilot program. You will likely find instances of sub-par application, but you may also find graduates who are applying what they learned and seeing positive outcomes. Sharing and acting on these truths will move initiatives forward and earn you trust as a strategic business partner.

As John F. Kennedy said, “There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.” CLO

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53

IN CONCLUSION

Is This Thing On?

Adding emotional subtext back into virtual communications • BY NICK MORGAN

W

Nick Morgan is a speaking coach and author. His most recent book is “Can You Hear Me? How to Connect with People in a Virtual World.” He can be reached at editor@ CLOmedia.com.

e are all participants in a massive social experiment that began slowly in the 1970s and gathered speed in the past decade with the introduction of the smart phone. We have created a wide variety of digital means of communicating that replace older, slower face-to-face interactions.

But this has a downside. We are worrying about shorter attention spans and wondering if the internet makes us stupid. Worst of all, we are realizing how emotionally empty virtual communications can be. In transferring many of our human interactions to the virtual world, we no longer get the emotional information, support and reinforcement we used to when communicating face-to-face. In business, this leads to miscommunication, misunderstandings, and a great deal of doovers, workarounds and relationships to repair.

It’s expensive. It’s inefficient. And the cost in fractured relationships, missed opportunities and lost connections is incalculable.

What’s to be done? Too much of our personal and work lives today rely on the virtual. Most organizations with an international reach couldn’t function without the digital means of communication they use every day.

To survive in this brave new digital world, we must begin consciously adding emotional subtext back into our virtual communications. CLOs can take a number of actions to help drive this effort.

First, champion virtual training programs in the necessary technologies. Employees need to be trained to use text-based communication modes more astutely, especially when they are the primary means of communication. Establish hierarchies of use among the various kinds of text-based communications and norms to enable each one to be used more precisely. Currently the research shows the error rate of text-based communications is more than 60 percent — that’s too high.

CLOs also can establish a companywide program to determine the right balance of virtual technologies for intra- and inter-company communications. Both managers and employees need to be trained in the right times to use various technologies for maximum effectiveness. For many organizations and teams, this may mean greater use of videoconferencing.

Introduce organizational norms for the length of virtual meetings. Meetings tend to get scheduled in halfhour and hour-long increments out of habit. But many organizations are experimenting with shorter formats

54 Chief Learning Officer • March 2019 • www.CLOmedia.com

for virtual meetings. What can you accomplish in a nine-minute virtual call? How often should a team schedule them? What are the advantages and disadvantages of rethinking the format?

We no longer get the support and reinforcement we used to when communicating face-to-face.

Begin regularly measuring employee engagement against the use of virtual technology. The research shows that as use of virtual technology and remote working goes up, engagement goes down. What does the research show for your company? What can you do to ensure that the shifts in work and communication patterns don’t cause similar problems in your organization?

Champion the habit of learning a new virtual language for the company — one that is consistent with company norms and values. Lacking visual cues, we have a hard time reading other people’s feelings, so make yours clear verbally and train other people to do the same. Say, “I’m excited about everything we’re accomplishing!” Or, “I’m concerned that you don’t seem confident in the third-quarter numbers. How are you really feeling about them?”

Finally, embrace the power of video messages. Faceto-face meetings allow a group to share underlying emotional intent easily. This keeps groups aligned and connected. That connection breaks down in audio meetings. Train leaders to regularly send out 30-second or minute-long video clips of what they’re up to, what’s going on with the organization, and what should be top of mind for employees. This can mean teaching them an informal style and vernacular that doesn’t feel bureaucratic or insincere.

Just as we must learn to be savvy citizens of the “real” business world, we also need to learn the rules and effective behaviors of the virtual business world. CLO

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