Chief Learning Officer - April 2016 by Chief Learning Officer

April 2016 | CLOmedia.com

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EDITOR’S LETTER

Why Your Math Teacher Was Right A

s much as it pains me to say, after years of denial, I must admit my freshman-year algebra teacher was right. On the scale of high school priorities, algebra fell somewhere between waking up early and listening to a parental lecture. Something that needed to get done but usually as a last resort after all alternatives were fully and completely exhausted. It’s not that I was bad at math. I usually found the right answer to a tricky word problem or algebraic puzzle. It just took me twice as long to get there and followed a complicated path that made sense only to me. So I dreaded that inevitable moment when, piece of chalk in hand, the teacher said, “Show your work.” Many of you are familiar with the request. Showing your work is a staple of math teaching.

Knowing how we learn is just as important as what we learn.

of a freakish intellect. E=MC-bored. Educational theorists call this process of learning about learning meta-learning. And it is the key to learning that truly lasts. Meta-learning makes explicit something many of us already know: Education is more than the acquisition of knowledge, development of skills and formation of habits. I need to know algebra and I also need to be able to apply it to real situations and persist despite the difficulty I might have in learning it. Perhaps most importantly, I need to be able to reflect on how I learn and adapt it to new situations. That process of reflection and thinking about how I think contextualizes learning and makes it real and lasting. It’s why our most powerful learning experiences seem to happen in Technicolor. We vividly remember where we were, who we were with and what we were doing at the moment we learned something profound or moving. These are not grayed out experiences with a vague context. They are powerful and memorable. We might have learned some new fact or skill. More importantly, we learned something about ourselves and others. Showing your work is fundamental not just to math and science. It’s essential to leadership and career development. Helping others learn how they learn and making that transparent to others is what makes learning last and drives higher engagement. While this kind of powerful learning can happen in many ways, it gets a powerful boost from face-to-face experience. It’s what makes events like this month’s Chief Learning Officer Spring Symposium, taking place at The Ritz-Carlton, Amelia Island in Florida from April 6-8 such a moving experience. It’s one of the few places CLOs can get together to share their experiences and learn from one another. It packs a punch as a learning experience exactly because those three days are filled with stories from learning leaders at companies big and small, global and local. And unlike my high school math class, showing your work becomes a genuine pleasure. CLO

It’s a crucial part of the scientific method, too. When they submit findings to a scholarly journal, researchers provide their conclusion as well as their methodology — how they arrived at that result so others can repeat their study and confirm the results. I think we can all agree that we’d like our doctors to prescribe a treatment that’s more than just a hunch. As it turns out, showing your work is more than sound science. It’s solid life advice. Seeing not just how others did their work but also how they struggled along the way is a powerful learning method. According to a recent study by researchers at Columbia University, high school students who learn about the personal struggles of great scientists such as Albert Einstein outperform their peers who learn only about his achievements. Learning what great scientists like Einstein and Marie Curie had to overcome helped students relate to them as real people. Learning about Einstein’s escape from Nazi Germany or about other scientists’ long labors and failures pushed them to see their achievements as the culmination of consistent effort. Knowing more about Einstein the man helps students better understand Einstein the scientist. On the flip side, students who only learned about scientists’ achievements were less motivated Mike Prokopeak and earned lower grades. If they were interested at Editor in Chief all, they saw Einstein’s achievements as the product mikep@CLOmedia.com 4 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

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Adrienne Way

LEADERS

April 2016 | Volume 15, Issue 4 PRESIDENT John R. Taggart jrtag@CLOmedia.com

Provide PROOF of Performance

John R. Taggart

Gwen Connelly

Kevin A. Simpson

PRESIDENT

EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER

Norman B. Kamikow CO-FOUNDER (1943-2014)

CHIEF LEARNING OFFICER EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Cushing Anderson, Program Director, Learning Ser vices, IDC Frank J. Anderson Jr., ( Ret.) President, Defense Acquisition Universit y Cedric Coco, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Lowe’s Cos. Inc. Lisa Doyle, Vice President, Learning and Development, Lowe’s Cos. Inc. Tamar Elkeles, Chief People Of ficer, Quixey Thomas Evans, ( Ret.) Chief Learning Of ficer, PricewaterhouseCoopers Ted Henson, Senior Strategist, Oracle Gerry Hudson-Martin, Director, Corporate Learning Strategies, Business Architects Rob Lauber, Vice President, Chief Learning Of ficer, McDonald’s Corp. Maj. Gen. Erwin F. Lessel, ( Ret.) U.S. Air Force, Director, Deloit te Consulting Justin Lombardo, Interim Chief Learning Of ficer, Baptist Health Alan Malinchak, Executive Advisor, Talent and Learning Practice, Deltek Universit y Lee Maxey, CEO, MindMax Jeanne C. Meister, Author and Independent Learning Consultant Bob Mosher, Senior Par tner and Chief Learning Evangelist, APPLY Synergies Rebecca Ray, Executive Vice President, The Conference Board Allison Rossett, ( Ret.) Professor of Educational Technology, San Diego State Universit y Diana Thomas, Former Vice President, U.S. Training, McDonald’s Corp. Annette Thompson, Senior Vice President and Chief Learning Of ficer, Farmers Insurance David Vance, Former President, Caterpillar Universit y Kevin D. Wilde, Executive Leadership Fellow, Carlson School of Management, Universit y of Minnesota

ROI METRICS that show how learning programs impact performance...and that go a long way in the C-Suite.

Let’s build your learning program today – with PROOF of PERFORMANCE built in.

Chief Learning Officer (ISSN 1935-8148) is published monthly by MediaTec Publishing Inc., 111 E. Wacker Dr., Suite 1200, Chicago IL 60601. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago, IL and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Chief Learning Officer, P.O. Box 8712 Lowell, MA 01853. Subscriptions are free to qualified professionals within the US and Canada. Digital free subscriptions are available worldwide. Nonqualified paid subscriptions are available at the subscription price of $199 for 12 issues. All countries outside the US and Canada must be prepaid in US funds with an additional $33 postage surcharge. Single price copy is $29.95 Chief Learning Officer and CLOmedia.com are the trademarks of MediaTec Publishing Inc. Copyright © 2016, MediaTec Publishing Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Reproduction of material published in Chief Learning Officer is forbidden without permission. Printed by: Quad/Graphics, Sussex, WI

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TABLE OF CONTENTS APRIL 2016

Features

22 ON THE WEB

All You Need Is Trust

Meet Our ‘Mind Over Matter’ Blogger

Randy Conley Successful leadership is not as complicated as it’s made out to be. One thing determines whether people follow a leader: trust.

Bravetta Hassell dives into the science behind how the brain learns, thinks and performs. Read the ‘whys’ to improve the ‘hows’ in your learning programs.

The Maturian Candidate

Is Your Organization a Survivor?

46 52

‘Increasingly empowered by science and technology, organizations can not only peek into human behavior … but also use insights about behavior to their tangible or intangible benefit.’

Alan A. Malinchak Employees have decades of valuable knowledge and experience by the time they retire. Savvy companies will tap into their value before their last day rolls around.

Bravetta Hassell In today’s fast-paced environment, organizations have to be on top of their learning game. Employees must be quick, smart and able to strategically pivot as needed.

Innovation’s Winning Combination Dorothy Leonard The key to innovation isn’t a relentless quest for something different. It’s bringing old and new perspectives together to make something better.

TAP Into Tuition Benefits Adrienne Way Tuition assistance has benefits that go beyond development into recruitment and retention, but many companies don’t know just how helpful it can be.

8 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

— Bravetta Hassell, associate editor, Chief Learning Officer magazine COVER PHOTO BY TIM LAMPE

TABLE OF CONTENTS APRIL 2016

Departments

Experts 10 BUSINESS IMPACT

22 Profile Winning Through People Bravetta Hassell For IHG’s Gary Whitney, there’s certainly no ‘I’ in team, but there’s absolutely a ‘team’ in success.

58 Case Study ’Tis the Season to Be Training Sarah Fister Gale GameStop ramps up its seasonal employee training with a game-based virtual learning environment to make temporary staff feel like part of the team.

62 Business Intelligence The Right Vendor Makes All the Difference Cushing Anderson To maximize value from vendor partnerships, learning leaders must use a wide array of sources to vet providers and demand continual innovation.

Michael E. Echols Learning and Recruitment’s Partnership

12 PERSPECTIVES

Rosina L. Racioppi Mentoring Women Matters

14 BEST PRACTICES

Josh Bersin Learning’s Pivotal Role in Diversity

16 ACCOUNTABILITY

Jack J. Phillips and Patti P. Phillips Create an Executive-Friendly Scorecard

66 IN CONCLUSION

Bruce Tulgan Bridging the Soft Skills Gap

Resources 4 Editor’s Letter

Why Your Math Teacher Was Right

65 Advertisers’ Index

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Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

BUSINESS IMPACT

Learning and Recruitment’s Partnership CLOs have the opportunity to create an integrated talent strategy • BY MICHAEL E. ECHOLS

Michael E. Echols is the vice president of strategic initiatives at Bellevue University and the author of “Your Future is Calling.” To comment, email editor@ CLOmedia.com.

he U.S. Labor Department reported 5.6 million unfilled American jobs at the end of December 2015 — a record. A month later the unemployment rate was 4.9 percent. Corporate learning and development has great potential to affect their companies as they struggle with this human capital reality. Learning is the human capital accelerant of the enterprise. Human capital formation involves three important verbs: recruit, develop and retain. But there are silos in corporate America that perpetuate a belief that learning’s role is only to deal with the middle verb, leaving others with responsibility for the recruit and retain. While it might be comfortable to hold onto these beliefs, the reality of the numbers makes it all of our jobs to contribute to an integrated human capital strategy.

Knock down those silos and invite yourself to make learning and development a recruitment tool as well as a retention tool. Let’s begin with the 5.6 million unfilled jobs. The focus here is on the heart of the L&D mission — the skills gap. The unfilled positions data tells us that candidates’ skills do not align with those needed for the unfilled positions. Because the information is highly sensitive and proprietary, it is impossible to tell you exactly what the unfilled position status is within your own organization. What I can tell you is that unfilled positions and the related skills gaps within your company look very similar to what data from the open-job market are telling us. Recruiting takes place in the open-job market because the skills are not available in your current employee population. If you had the skills internally, your organization would not recruit for those positions in the open market. And remember, L&D’s primary 10 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

mission is to provide the learning and development needed to close identified skills gaps. To see specifics about the skills gaps we need to examine to data on the jobs market from Burning Glass Technologies. Until recently, the skills gap conversation focused on having the right technical skills, such as more Java programmers or cybersecurity experts. Burning Glass found that employers are increasingly seeking employees with so-called soft or baseline skills, such as writing, communication, problem-solving and organization. Burning Glass data shows 1 in 3 job postings seek these skills. Some assert these skills should have been developed in college and university education programs. Maybe, but the reality is the massive number of unfilled job postings show the required supply of such skills isn’t available. The opportunity for learning leaders is huge. Further, the combination of 5.6 million unfilled and a 4.9 percent unemployment rate adds significant urgency to expand the L&D scope. To correct the gap, a common approach might be to find an external vendor who can give a two-day communications and writing seminar — two days max because operations likely cannot afford to have attendees off of their real jobs any longer. A two-day intervention will also cost less money. These cost concerns are common, but taking a budget-cutting knife to the L&D budget while recruiting costs are exploding is not a particularly prudent solution. Preserving silos around recruitment serves no one. The unfilled positions data validate the reality of the skills gap, both in the external lab markets and within your organization. Knock down those silos, and invite yourself to make learning and development a recruitment tool as well as a retention tool. By doing so, L&D becomes a far greater value contributor to your CEOs mantra that “our people are our most important asset.” Before the learning function can be a credible strategic contributor to the full human capital equation, our profession has to bust some myth. Start with the myth that states: “If you develop them, they will leave.” L&D has to implement a strategy that creates a new reality. The new reality has to become: “If we develop them, it increases their value and increases the likelihood that they will stay.” CLO

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PERSPECTIVES

Mentoring Women Matters To advance, high-potentials need to build new skills and attitudes • BY ROSINA L. RACIOPPI

Rosina L. Racioppi is president and CEO of Women Unlimited Inc. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com. All contributors to Perspectives are current students or alumni of the PennCLO Program, the University of Pennsylvania’s doctoral program for senior-level talent and learning executives.

eorge Washington University professor Gelaye Debebe found that internal change is a critical aspect of fostering women’s leadership development. Her research, titled “Creating a Safe Environment for Women’s Leadership Transformation” and published in 2011 in the Journal of Management Education, showed that women must get past deeply ingrained habits and behaviors including: believing job performance is enough to get ahead, avoiding risk, keeping a low profile in seeking out feedback, or volunteering for high-profile assignments. In that context, mentoring relationships matter and making these kinds of changes is never easy; it’s virtually impossible to do alone. As experienced corporate executives and trusted advisers, mentors are high-potential women’s ideal resource to understand how to use their strengths and identify development opportunities that support their career goals. There are three areas that can be vital to ensure long-term mentoring success: transformational learning, intentional mentees and a mentor’s openness to change. To ensure mentoring takes hold and succeeds, mentoring programs need to create an environment that allows transformational learning to occur; and it begins with both parties feeling safe to share their perspectives. In this trust-based environment, rooted in honest conversation, the mentee discusses career goals and concerns, and the mentor provides the needed feedback to help the mentee develop an action plan. Through these interactions, both mentor and mentee assess the mentee’s progress and deal with setbacks. Then, the transformation is underway. My research, which focused on understanding how midcareer women used mentoring relationships to support their career growth and leadership development, revealed that mentoring worked best when it was intentional in these three areas: 1. Preparing for their mentoring relationship: The most effective preparations were multifaceted and involved the mentee clarifying her own goals so the mentoring could focus on her aims and ambitions. A strategy to ensure the relationship was open and productive also enhanced the mentoring experience. 2. Using their mentor’s insights: Applying mentors’ insights and perspectives allowed mentees to “show

12 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

up” in new ways that advanced their growth and development. They enhanced their visibility, better navigated the corporate landscape, pinpointed the right time to take the right risks, and developed an effective style that was true to them. 3. Building relationships: Mentees who transferred what they learned from their mentor relationships

Mentoring programs should create an environment that allows transformational learning to occur. to build organizational relationships enjoyed increased success in their careers. They better understood how to develop relationships with key people. They were less reluctant to approach those who could be of help to their advancement. Research from Debebe and others like the late American professor and sociologist Jack Mezirow support my observations that growth, development and transformational learning are rarely a one-way street. When the mentoring relationship is effective, ongoing and resilient, both mentors and mentees feel comfortable discussing their experiences, their successes and their setbacks, and both parties almost always benefit as they learn from each other. Male mentors are especially affected by these mentoring relationships as they gain a better understanding of the subtle differences in how women experience organizations and how, as male executives, they can help female talent better navigate the corporate landscape. The bottom line is mentoring does matter. It matters to corporations who need an ongoing and vigorous pipeline of diverse talent, especially as the numbers keep telling us that organizations do better across the board when there is diversity at the top. It matters to the women themselves as a cornerstone to change, grow and achieve their goals. It matters for all mentors, who hone and grow their own relationship building skills as a result of their mentoring. CLO

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Enterprise, for showing

employees’ education

BEST PRACTICES

Learning’s Pivotal Role in Diversity Learning leaders can build a truly inclusive talent system — and they should • BY JOSH BERSIN

Josh Bersin is founder of Bersin, known as Bersin by Deloitte, and a principal with Deloitte Consulting. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia. com.

his year, our most comprehensive new research on that fall directly into L&D’s hands. Consider: talent management, “High-Impact Talent Manage- • How well do you include diversity and inclusive ment 2015,” found the most differentiating, predicthinking in your onboarding and overall employtive practices that directly correlate with high performment brand? ing global companies are those which focus on • How inclusive is your leadership assessment and diversity, inclusion and fairness. training for new leaders? While programs like leadership development, on- • Is unconscious bias a topic you teach managers boarding, sales training and succession management are and team leaders, and do you use it in recruitvaluable, it is how they drive inclusion and a feeling of ment practices? openness that create the greatest business results of all. • How well do you train and coach senior leaders We can all understand why this might be true. We as role models for inclusive thinking and diverlive and work in highly diverse environments. The worksity practices? place contains different ages, genders, sexual orientations, • Does your project management, team leadership cultures, backgrounds and physical abilities, and when and functional training include topics about fairany one of us feels left out, not included or discriminated ness, collaboration and diversity? against, we simply can’t contribute our best. Much of our • Do you, as a learning leader, truly understand all new research shows that traditional hierarchical leaderthe ways diversity can and should be embedded ship models are being replaced with networks of in your learning programs, and are your programs diverse and inclusive in their design? We recently had TD Bank, one of the leading financial institutions in Canada, present on its diversity and inclusion journey. In 2004, the CEO studied this issue and found a workplace that did not let employees bring their true selves to work every day. Since then, the company has embarked on a variety of employee experience programs and put in place a diversity leadership council with multiyear metrics to improve the bank’s inclusive culture. teams — so if people on the team don’t feel included As we discussed the bank’s 10-year journey, the team and respected, the team itself will underperform. told us about diversity and inclusion topics included in Our research revealed some astounding things. the onboarding program, the first-line manager proAmong the 450 global companies we studied, the ones gram and, of course, the senior leadership program. with a highly inclusive environment generated signifi- TD now has more than 300 executives signed up to cantly higher cash flow, profitability and employee re- promote inclusive thinking throughout the bank, and tention over a three-year period. they infuse diverse and inclusive thinking into every The reason I’m bringing this up here is the biggest communication and training program they roll out. thing we found was not that these companies had a Today this is a critically important topic. Diversity great diversity and inclusion program, but that they strategies not only improve representation and fairness as had managed to build what we call a truly inclusive an employer but also open up the organization to respect talent system. These top companies — this represents the strengths, ideas and passions of every employee at only 10 percent of our sample — had gone well be- every level. What company wouldn’t want to unlock that yond building a diversity program and creating diver- incredible well of energy among its workforce? sity measures and benchmarks. They had embedded Our role in L&D is to help lead this charge. Take inclusive thinking and diversity conversations into ev- some time to think and learn about diversity, incluery part of their talent system. sion, fairness and unconscious bias in your own proAs a learning leader, you hold the keys to the king- grams — you’ll discover that your role as a learning dom. Most of the differentiating practices are things leader is more important than ever. CLO

Take some time to think about diversity, inclusion, fairness and unconscious bias in your learning programs.

14 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

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ACCOUNTABILITY

Create an Executive-Friendly Scorecard Metrics have to appeal to the CEO • BY JACK J. PHILLIPS AND PATTI P. PHILLIPS

Jack J. Phillips is the chairman, and Patti P. Phillips is president and CEO of the ROI Institute. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

ost chief learning officers have some type of learning scorecard. Three important trends create the need for an executive-friendly scorecard: 1. Most reporting has focused on input and reaction data, revealing program satisfaction. Scorecards failed to connect learning to the business. 2. CEOs want to see learning connect to the business; they want to see learning return on investment. 3. The learning scorecard is usually sent to the next level, usually the HR executive, and stops there. But top executives need this information because learning is vital to growth, and most CEOs approve the learning budget with input from others. What follows is an executive-friendly learning scorecard, built around issues that will attract top executives attention. Most of the entries are self-explanatory, with some reporting on the inputs, the focus on the five outcome levels, and emphasis on reaching the higher levels to satisfy executives. Level 1 is important but must attract executives’ attention. In this example, the perceived value index is a combination of relevance, importance and intent to use. More importantly, it includes questions for participants to indicate the extent that this program will influence the variety of important business measures. Learning measures, Level 2, often vary by program. One or two measures are needed that apply for all programs, such as the two in the example. More attention is placed on Level 3, which captures skills use, perhaps using the three measures indicated in the example and presented as an average. The top barriers are captured with a forced-choice option question each time there is a follow-up. For best practice, we suggest 30 percent of the programs be evaluated at this level each year. For Level 4, the business link likely should be captured by using participants’ perception of impact. At Level 5, ROI studies conducted at this level are attached as a one-page summary. For these levels, report the percent of programs evaluated at each level. Sometimes the softer measures are captured when business linkage data are captured. This executive-friendly approach shows more of the business connection, can be automated without much difficulty, and can generate substantial interest among executives. If you need more detail on how to develop this scorecard, please let us know. CLO

16 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

Scoring Your Learning Program Inputs 1. Programs conducted 2. People served 3. Hours per person 4. Cost per person

1 Reaction 1. Perceived value index (5-point scale) A. Relevant to my work B. Important to my success C. Intend to use 2. Business impact linkage (5-point scale) This program will influence: sales, cost control, productivity, quality of work, process times, customer satisfaction.

2 Learning 1. Percent of programs evaluated at this level 2. Learning index (5-point scale) A. I learned the knowledge/skills in this program. B. I learned how to make this program successful.

3 Application 1. Percent of programs evaluated at this level 2. Application index (5-point scale) A. The extent of use B. Frequency of use C. Success with use 3. Top barriers to learning transfer A. Lack of management involvement B. Not enough time C. No opportunity to use D. Didn’t have resources to use it E. Doesn’t fit our culture

4 Business Impact 1. Percent of programs evaluated at this level 2. Business impact linkage (5-point scale) This program influences: sales, productivity, cost control, quality of work, process times, customer satisfaction. 3. Attach one-page summary of impact studies.

5 ROI 1. Percent of programs evaluated at this level 2. Attach one-page summary of ROI studies.

Intangibles Top intangibles: brand, reputation, teamwork and innovation.

Awards Industry and professional awards

A L L YOU N EED IS

18 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

BY RANDY CONLEY

Successful leadership is not as complicated as it’s made out to be. There is one thing that determines whether people follow a leader: trust.

relationship. Without it, leadership is doomed. Creativity is stifled, innovation grinds to a halt, and reasoned risk-taking is abandoned. Without trust, direct reports check their hearts and minds at the door, leaving managers with staff who have quit mentally and emotionally but stayed on the payroll, sucking precious resources from the organization.

Trust, the Missing Link

eadership can be a complex endeavor — but it doesn’t have to be. People tend to make things more convoluted than they need to be. To prove the point, go to Amazon.com and search their book listings for the word “leadership.” More than 180,000 entries will come up. Browsing the titles of some popular best-sellers might lead some to believe that to be a successful leader, they need to find the magical keys, take the right steps, follow the proper laws, figure out the dysfunctions, embrace the challenge, ascend the levels, look within themselves, look outside themselves, form a tribe, develop the right habits, know the rules, break the rules, be obsessed, learn the new science, or discover the ancient wisdom. In other words, overcomplicate things. What if successful leadership isn’t really that complicated? What if there is just one thing — not a title, power or position — that determines whether people followed a leader? What if one aspect of leadership is a non-negotiable, musthave characteristic that needs to be in place for people to pledge their loyalty and commitment to a leader? What if one single element defines how people experience working for a leader? Can it really be as simple as one thing? Yes. And that one thing is trust. It’s the foundation of any successful, healthy and thriving

With trust, all things are possible. Energy, progress, productivity and ingenuity flourish. Commitment, engagement, loyalty and excellence become more than empty words in a company mission statement; they become reality. Trust can be the magic ingredient in organizational life. It simultaneously acts as the bonding agent that holds everything together and as the lubricant that keeps things moving smoothly. Stephen M.R. Covey, author of “Speed of Trust,” said that while high trust won’t necessarily rescue a poor strategy, low trust will almost always derail a good one. Surveys and studies report chronic levels of low trust in leadership and organizations. Interaction Associates’ “Building Workplace Trust 2014/15” report states only 40 percent of employees have a high level of trust in their management and organization. Yet the research states that while employees said trust in their bosses and senior leadership is critical to be effective in their jobs, 25 percent reported lower levels of trust in those two groups than they did two years before. Statistics are trending in the wrong direction. Trust is essential for leadership success, yet business seems stuck in an environment of cynicism, suspicion and low trust. What is a leader to do? Leaders have to build trust at the interpersonal level before it can radiate out to teams and affect an organization’s culture.

High levels of trust between leaders and employees foster engagement and vitality in an organization’s culture.

Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

Karen Adams is president and CEO of Alberta Pension Services in Canada, which administers pension services for Alberta’s public sector pension plans. She said trust is of primary importance in how her organization operates and deals with its members and pensioners because trust is at the core of building strong relationships. “Trust is established between two people over time,” she said. “You can’t build trust with a team, although many people talk about teams in this way. The way you build trust is through one-on-one relationships, individual to individual. Managers who learn this lesson early in their careers are more likely to build strong relationships with their people and create the foundation of trust that is at the core of an effective organization.” Trust doesn’t come easy, however, and it doesn’t happen by accident. It’s a characteristic of advanced leadership that leaders must continually work to maintain. A challenge in building trust is that it is based on perceptions. One person’s idea of what trust looks like in a relationship can be different from another’s, so it’s critically important for leaders and organizations to establish a shared definition for, and understanding of, trust.

The Mechanics of Trust The ABCD Trust Model is a helpful tool to provide a common language and framework to understand four elements of trust and specific behaviors associated with trustworthy leaders (Figure 1). Leaders build trust when they are: Able: Being able is about demonstrating capability. One way that leaders demonstrate their capability is by having the expertise needed to do their jobs. Expertise comes from possessing the right skills, education or credentials to establish credibility with others. Leaders also demonstrate their capability when they achieve results. Consistently meeting goals and having a track record of success builds trust with others and inspires confidence in a leader’s ability. Able leaders are also skilled at facilitating work getting done in the organization. They develop credible project plans, systems and processes to FIGURE 1: BEHAVIORS ASSOCIATED WITH TRUST Trust Boosters:

Trust Busters:

• Displaying capability in their role • Having a track record of success • Acting honestly, ethically and legally • Admitting mistakes • Asking for and receiving feedback openly • Listening with the intent of being influenced • Being consistent in word and deed: walking the talk • Following through on commitments

• Not following through on commitments • Being unorganized and unresponsive • Playing favorites or treating people unfairly • Not recognizing and rewarding others’ contributions • Hoarding information • Gossiping or not keeping confidences • Not having or developing the skills needed for their role • Avoiding conflict or not holding people accountable

Source: The Ken Blanchard Cos., 2016

20 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

Reader Reaction If you had to name one thing that contributes most to a leader’s success, what would it be?

Kyle McClure: One of the key components of successful leadership is humility. Every leader answers to a leader above him. The trick is to learn how to help your boss get to where he wants to go and be willing to submit to his vision. It’s seems counterintuitive, but as you gain the trust and favor of the one you serve, you find that more will be given to you.

Jeff McLanahan: If I had to name the one thing that contributes to a leaders success, I would say it is team building. Great leaders achieve success through the results of their people, and teamwork is crucial to this success. Select members who are the right fit for your specific team, and then continue their development, even if it means they eventually leave you to do “bigger and better” results.

Barry Shields: Maybe two things. It’s about knowing yourself and your team. How can I bring my best self, and how can I help my team be their best together?

Shanita Williams: If you were to ask my team my favorite saying, they’d say that I always state: “It’s not personal, but it is.” Most would say that it is a bad idea to take things personally at work. In my opinion, a successful leader must take leading personally. They must care about others development so they take deliberate steps to teach, coach, guide and stretch those around them. I feel as though I have an ethical and social responsibility to be honest with my team about where they are in their development and show them how they can improve.

James Camic: One thing that contributes to a leader’s success is vision. They need to know where they want to go, and then rally their team around that vision. Great leaders are able to show everyone on the team how they contribute to the vision and show them that they are integral to the team’s success. People who authentically belong, are valued and their contributions matter will be engaged and want to see the team succeed.

Jennifer Olson: The most successful leaders have the ability to make an emotional connection with their followers. This is critical to a leaders success because it lays the foundation for trust, teamwork and engagement. What do you think? Join the discussion at CLOmedia.com/ LeaderSuccess, follow us on Twitter @CLOmedia

help team members accomplish their goals. Believable: A believable leader acts with integrity. Dealing with people in an honest fashion by keeping promises, not lying or stretching the truth and not gossiping demonstrates integrity. Believable leaders also have a clear set of values that they articulate to their direct reports, and they behave consistently with those values — they walk the talk. Treating people fairly and equitably is another key component to being a believable leader. Being fair doesn’t necessarily mean treating people the same in all circumstances; rather, it’s about treating people appropriately and justly based on their own unique situation. Connected: Connected leaders show care and concern for people, which builds trust and helps create an engaging work environment. Leaders create a sense of connection by openly sharing information about themselves and the organization and by trusting employees to use that information responsibly. Leaders also build trust by having a people-first mentality and building rapport with those they lead. Taking an interest in people as individuals, not nameless workers, shows that leaders value and respect their team mem-

bers. Recognition is a vital component of being a connected leader, and praising and rewarding employees’ contributions builds trust and goodwill. Dependable: Being dependable and maintaining reliability is the fourth element of trustworthiness. One of the quickest ways leaders can erode trust is by not following through on commitments. Conversely, leaders who do what they say will earn a reputation of being consistent and trustworthy. Maintaining reliability requires leaders to be organized so that they can follow through on commitments, be on time for appointments and meetings, and get back to people in a timely fashion. Dependable leaders also hold themselves and others accountable for following through on commitments and taking responsibility for their work.

The Value of Trust “Having a common framework and definition of trust is essential for our organization,” said Howard Kummerman, dean of institutional research and planning at Rio Hondo College in Whittier, California. TRUST continued on page 64

Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

PROFILE Gary Whitney

Winning Through People BY BRAVETTA HASSELL

For InterContinental Hotels Group’s Gary Whitney, there’s certainly no ‘I’ in team, but there’s absolutely a ‘team’ in success.

ome summer, Gary Whitney will be sitting in a 16-foot fishing boat waiting out halibut on a remote, quiet body of water in Alaska. It will be the exact opposite of how the vice president of learning spends most of his days: collaborating, discussing, strategizing and leading learning and development for the InterContinental Hotels Group, an organization whose business is steeped in the quality and breadth of service its employees deliver to customers. His boss might not care too much about his penchant for fishing in obscure habitats, the 42-year-old said. But Whitney’s emphasis on service likely won’t be an issue. At IHG, where the business strategy is “winning through people,” Whitney’s vision for learning and all that it touches align seamlessly. The way people think and feel, their knowledge and skills, these things are what will set the company apart from the competition, he said. Learning at IHG exists to enable hotels to drive performance in revenue and service. It exists to help people deliver on company priorities and help employees learn and grow. This team, Whitney said, is among his greatest successes. “They’re diverse in their interests, in background and passions, but when we all come together, the things that we’ve accomplished have been fantastic.”

Where It All Began Whitney had just finished up a Purdue University master’s program in hospitality management with every intention of transitioning into a doctoral program when a short inquiry into operations at IHG evolved into a career. Initially brought in on the revenue systems side of the business, Whitney helped hotels look at their revenue management systems tools and practices, introduced new technology and then, brought all the pieces back together. He’s spent the past 15 years in the learning space managing learning design, delivery and range of regional responsibilities, and has been a vice president at IHG since 2008. He speaks with appreciation about IHG and the work he gets to do. “Most people are always searching 22 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

out what’s the meaning and purpose of their work and how that connects to their lives,” he said. “We’re really fortunate — all of us in the learning field — we get to make a difference every day.” During his tenure, Whitney has observed and helped to guide the evolution of IHG’s learning function. Once a handful of basic classes, it now contains a robust pipeline of courses to meet operational and certification needs for more than 5,000 hotels across the group’s 12 brands, which include Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Hotel Indigo and InterContinental Hotels and Resorts. Whitney, a self-professed farm kid from southern

‘It’s a joy to work. And if you do — working hard and working with people you care about — then it doesn’t seem like work.’ —Gary Whitney, vice president of learning, Intercontinental Hotels Group Minnesota, said his early experiences influenced the path he followed into the hospitality sector, and his mother helped to create his passion for learning. “Mom has always been very curious. She’s very analytical, and she really instilled a sense of, ‘You should always learn something new,’ ” Whitney said. He said he gets his attitude on working together as a family and helping others from his father. Growing up on a multigenerational farm, Whitney worked alongside his brothers, parents, and, early on, his grandfather baling hay, fixing farm equipment and working with livestock. Other children got to sleep in as long as they could before going to school, but the Whitney boys were up early taking care of chores. “It was just one of those things you did,” he said. He knew hard work, he had responsibilities, he col-

PHOTOS BY TIM LAMPE

Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

PROFILE Gary Whitney

laborated with his family members to get things done and worked independently when necessary. “The thing I appreciated the most from that upbringing was that it’s a joy to work,” Whitney said. “And if you do — working hard and working with people you care about — then it doesn’t seem like work.”

IHG’s Learning Family Whitney’s work family is roughly 75 people strong. While much of Whitney’s energy and time is spent on about a quarter of IHG’s workforce, his team members work together to drive line-level initiatives that touch all of the company’s 300,000 employees in one way or another.“Probably the thing I’m most proud of at IHG has been how I was able to build and empower a great team,” he said. He said he has learned to give his team members guardrails and parameters — outcomes to reach but also room to develop — to use their unique approaches and take ownership of what they’re doing. The team is also commercially relevant. Whether it’s a new inventory strategy, a quality initiative or a need for different tools and resources to ensure hotels are clean, the team is there with learning to help support business needs. “We focus learning and training on what matters most to the business.” He said the team has spent several years building out and offering targeted programming to specific audiences through appropriate channels at just the right time. Now, with a substantial set of programs available, IHG’s learning function is agile and able to adapt to market conditions. For example, if one region needs to focus on group sales and another region needs to focus on guest feedback, the team can tweak its delivery strategy to maximize the effect, relevance and learning offered to different hotels. Whitney said balancing the needs of so many different stakeholders is a continuous challenge for him

As vice president of learning, Gary Whitney oversees 300,000 employees at IHG’s various hotel brands.

24 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

and his team. “If Holiday Inn wants one thing and Crowne Plaza wants another, how many resources will it take? What commitment can I make to meet the range of needs? Or, something that works great in Iowa might not work great in Mexico.” The team considers a variety of inputs when deciding how to best prioritize and sequence its activities and commitments, including hotel performance trends, regional and global priorities, brand needs, and hotel owner interests. It assesses the effect and effort for each element and looks across stakeholders for common themes and needs. “By going through this analysis, we know how to best apply our training effort to enable hotels to better drive guest satisfaction, quality and revenue,” Whitney said. For instance, problem-handling and problem-resolution training was a priority last year, and it received extra emphasis in variety of ways including department head certifications and skill-building programs for executive housekeepers and guest service managers. Whitney said navigating requests and resulting solutions requires a delicate conversation, so he and his team are careful to be transparent about their process. It helps that the team is already deeply engaged with partners across the organization. IHG learning leaders not only have substantial learning expertise but also understand the brands. It is not uncommon for different divisions to ask if a particular learning team member can sit in on early discussions about a new project. “Sometimes we’re contributing to things well beyond the normal learning contribution,” Whitney said. “It takes time and effort, but it is well worth it because when you get to the learning part of the conversation, it’s not a surprise. We already understand … what we’re trying to solve for, and we can give good advice on how to enable people to deliver what they’re working on. We’ve been very fortunate that way.” The learning team stays connected through relationships like this, as well as through things like Whitney’s regular attendance at IHG’s chief operating officer meetings. Being part of early decision-making processes adds to the effectiveness of the company’s learning function and creates a smooth, transparent pathway to build and deliver learning. When leaders determined that hotels needed a basic and shared understanding of general principles in revenue management, Whitney’s team worked with Patty Larsen, director of revenue management training and implementation at IHG, to create the Revenue Management Essentials Certification program. No two collaboration processes look the same, but once the learning team and the client have a good underPROFILE continued on page 26

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PROFILE Gary Whitney

PROFILE continued from page 24 standing of the need and the goal, Whitney said, “We kind of divide and conquer.” Of course, project delivery is largely dependent upon stakeholder preferences, and the IHG learning team uses a variation of ADDIE — analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation — model for instructional design. To address revenue system needs, the team created a combination of e-learning that managers could complete at their leisure with a certification class where they could come together to discuss best practices, challenges and paths to solutions. Larsen said at least 3,000 people have gone through the program since its start last year. She counts it as a success for herself and for Whitney. With this base understanding established at the hotels, their teams now continue collaborating on offering new programs on advanced commercial topics related to segmentation, forecasting and inventory management strategies. Larsen said she has a lot of respect for Whitney and his team. In front of the hotels, she said the team knows what’s effective and what’s not, what training works best, and what’s relevant. She attributes the quality of the team’s work to Whitney’s leadership. “He’s very thoughtful about the way he approaches all of the work that he and his team does. And he’s hired some really good people that work on his team — not only hired but retained. He does a really good job at keeping his team motivated and engaged.” Whitney said it takes a few things to foster an environment where people feel comfortable learning, experimenting, failing, collaborating and growing: trust, honesty with compassion and a goal. “Whether it’s a revenue trend or service quality, everything we do has a connection back to the business,” he said. “If you’re honest and direct, if they can see how what they’re doing is part of something bigger, if you can create that culture of trust within the team, those things come together to create that family atmosphere. It also creates a high-performing team that can create great results.” He recalled a time in Las Vegas when the team trained 1,500 Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express general managers in “one swipe” to become brand managers. It wasn’t a team-building activity exactly, but it took everything the team had to deliver a high-quality event. They knocked it out of the park, Whitney said. He said he was amazed to watch how everybody helped each other out, whether it was content or learning techniques or strategy. But first one must build the right team. A leader can have the greatest strategy, but without the right people executing it, that strategy could be impossi26 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

“My mom’s curiosity and my dad’s spirit of helping others, those two things carried with me and I knew in my work, when I grew up, it was going to be something around helping others.” —Gary Whitney

ble. Fortunately, Keith Goudy, managing partner at Vantage Leadership Consulting, said people are socialized for teamwork at an early age. It has value; it is a means to an end. “For companies, it can mean: better or faster go-to market strategies, better customer backed innovation, or simply a more engaged and cohesive workforce,” Goudy said. Whitney said it’s also how you win. He said he takes great care to show it is OK to have a little fun while working. “I’m a little goofy, and I can turn a very serious situation into something rather silly — whether that’s appropriate or not can be debatable.” He said he makes sure his team knows the work that they are doing matters, and he gives members room to do things themselves. Too often, he said leaders — himself included — micromanage. Now he gives his leaders a lot of room to truly own their work. “We miss that too often, and there’s plenty of projects you can … give them space to succeed, and they take an extra amount of engagement, and an extra amount of joy because they did it themselves.” That extra discretionary effort, empowered by leadership support, all rallying for a shared goal and given some autonomy to reach it can separate a good team from a great team. Discretionary effort, Whitney said, is the secret sauce. “If you want to have a great learning organization, it’s got to come from your team,” he said. “Are they willing to reach back in those key moments and give that extra effort for something that matters? I’m pretty lucky that my team will.” CLO Bravetta Hassell is a Chief Learning Officer associate editor. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

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The

Maturian

Candidate

Employees have decades of valuable knowledge and experience by the time they retire. Savvy companies will tap into their value before their last day rolls around.

28 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

BY ALAN A. MALINCHAK

n Robert DeNiro’s 2015 movie “The Intern,” he played a 70-yearold widower looking to get back into the work game. This scenario is more true to life than we think. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, some 10,000 citizens become eligible for retirement benefits every day, but many older employees choose to retire later and later. Developing these workers is an important talent consideration to ensure today’s workforce remains competitive. Programmatically and strategically, chief learning officers can help to reinvent who mature workers are, what they mean to the workforce, and their effect on future business productivity. Older workers, known also as Maturians, become an untapped “value add” if learning leaders are prepared to relinquish antiquated thoughts aligned to chronological age, the ethnocentric attitude that exists in the United States, and embrace an international focus to address business needs

PHOTO COURTESY OF ADOBE STOCK

Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

now and into the future with employees who have “plenty of runway” left. Although past workforce history in the U.S. has seen employees retiring when they reached the age of eligibility for Social Security benefits, this activity has been tempered by the economic downturn. Lost 401(k) and other retirement savings have to be replenished, turning age into a chronological number that neither represents per-

CLOs need to identify how many of their employees 55 and older plan on remaining actively employed. formance nor productivity. Further, many older workers shy away from the idea of retirement in general, choosing instead to remain active at work. CLOs are aware of the “brain trust” of knowledge and experience retiring Maturians contain. The problem is how to extract and share it with those who need it. Leaders in knowledge management are well aware of this dilemma and are connecting those who know with those who don’t as fast as humanly possible. “For many organizations, over 50 percent of employees will retire in the next 5 to 8 years,” said John Hovell, organizational development lead for U.K.based BAE Systems. “Which knowledge transfer technique have they experimented and proven effective in their culture to ensure workforce capability and organizational memory is not lost?” FIGURE 1: RETURN OF THE OLDER WORKER After 1995, full-time employment among workers 65 and older rose sharply. ■ Work full-time

60%

■ Work part-time

55%

50%

45%

40%

1977

Available For Work According to surveys from Deloitte, McKinsey, MBO Partners and Freelancers Union, outsourcing task work is currently a $4 billion industry, with approximately 35 percent of all work performance accomplished by nonemployees. Maturians are available to help, and according to the U.S. Labor Department, the return of the older worker is trending (Figure 1). In 2008, the Department of Labor projected growth in labor force participation from seniors between 65 and 74 to rise 83 percent and slightly higher for those 75 and older between 2006 and 2016 (Figure 2, p. 32). That prediction seems to be holding up no matter where the numbers come from, and multiple, reputable entities are monitoring the situation. For instance, according to the BLS Employment Projections program, this year, workers 65 and over are expected to account for 6.1 percent of the total labor force, up sharply from their 2006 share of 3.6 percent. In 2014, the U.S. Department of Labor projected those 55 and older will become 26 percent of the workforce by 2022. Having established their availability, the challenge is how leaders keep them engaged so they don’t leave/ retire. Further, if they do leave, how can employers lure them back? Once they’re in house, how can leaders utilize their knowledge, skills and abilities to mentor and coach other workers? How can they use the Maturians experience on projects aligned to business metrics, high-potential development programs, etc.? Many Maturians are ready for their next career opportunity. They appreciate independence and nonstructured roles, and a creative CLO can use them to address business, human resource and learning and development challenges within their organizations. To find the right fit for this experienced work cohort, learning leaders might want to embrace more of an international perspective. “Everyone is valued for their uniqueness and contribution — roles are created based on need and filled based on experience — with movement from job-based roles to task-based networks of people,” Hovell said. The high-performing networks common in global business environments might be the perfect platform for Maturians to add value. These employees are ideal at the front of the talent market where tasks and passions can be aligned to supply and demand and simultaneously insure unique and critical knowledge is not lost because of a retirement or attrition.

The Right Fit 1980

1983

1986

1989

1992

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2008

30 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

1995

1998

2001

2004

2007

Learning leaders with a keen awareness of talent management know the Maturians represent a substantial knowledge base that likely will not be filled MATURIANS continued on page 32

Join our Learning Movement at SarderTV.com

MATURIANS continued from page 30 by any market influx of college grads and MBAs. Mike Hammer, author of “Boomerville: Getting Off the Corporate Merry-Go-Round,” said, “No matter which future course your enterprise plots, success may hinge on the knowledge veteran em-

truly capitalizes on Maturians’ skills and expertise.” Change happens. Learning leaders are responsible to CEOs, who are tracking everything from performance to cost. The benefits of employing Maturians as consultants, for instance, are logical and cost-effective. For example, currently retired or soon eligible to

‘CLOs need to look beyond traditional job roles for Maturians by leveraging their talents for the right work at the right time.’ —Dan Carusi, chief learning officer, Deltek ployees have accrued over years of learning, knowledge which may be critical to future decisions [companies will] make about talent replacement and retention … A good first step is to let boomer supervisors make an honest and objective list of what abilities they believe their team[s] might lose … similarly, what abilities would be needed if the position opened tomorrow?” CLOs need to identify how many of their employees 55 and older plan on remaining actively employed. They need to know if there is an opportunity to remain with the company, how would they fit and be utilized within the workforce — full-time, part-time or as a consultant with a flexible work arrangement. This information will inform any development necessary as well as what knowledge sharing practices — action learning, stretch assignments, formal or informal mentoring or reverse-mentoring engagements — should be employed to retain valuable Maturian knowledge. “CLOs need to look beyond traditional job roles for Maturians by leveraging their talents for the right work at the right time,” said Dan Carusi, chief learning officer at Deltek. “A flexible, project-based work approach FIGURE 2: MATURIANS IN THE WORKFORCE The number of workers between the ages of 65 and 84 is predicted to increase by 84 percent between 2006 and 2016. 16 to 24

84.3 %

25 to 54

83.4 % 36.5 %

55 to 64 65 to 74 75 and older

2.4 % -6.9 %

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2008

32 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

be retired Maturians armed with years of knowledge, skills and abilities can coach, mentor and complete important projects they are passionate about —– on a schedule convenient for them — at a pay rate that is less than an organization might incur hiring a fulltime employee attached to an expensive total compensation package. Hammer said this employment approach for aging workers is neither a training nor learning strategy, but rather a transformation strategy using on-demand Maturians to bridge challenging knowledge and performance gaps. Further, if the CLO can identify Maturians as the best people with the knowledge to perform and execute the responsibilities of a role, they have identified and potentially found an answer to the challenge. “Recent data shows that 30 percent of the gig [on-demand] workers are baby boomers,” Hammer said. “Predictions suggest as much as 50 percent of all work processes will be performed by ‘gig’ers,’ or nonemployees.” To succeed in business, being lean and agile is no longer enough. Leaders must learn how to anticipate tomorrow’s business today — before their competitors do. Chief learning officers understand that those who can envision the future most accurately will have the biggest advantage. They know they cannot change the past, but they can shape the future with their present actions. Chief learning officers can embrace the fact that many future disruptions, problems and game-changing opportunities are predictable and represent unprecedented opportunities to gain advantage. Maturians present one such advantage. CLO Alan A. Malinchak is talent evangelist and executive adviser for Deltek University’s Talent and Learning Practice. He is also the CEO of Eclat Transitions and STRATactical. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

Is Your Organization a

Survivor? BY BRAVETTA HASSELL

In today’s fast-paced environment, organizations have to be on top of their learning game. That means employees must be quick, smart and able to strategically pivot as needed.

usinesses could stand to learn a thing or two from this year’s election season. Successful political campaign teams are like visibly potent learning organizations. They move with agility — constantly generating ideas, monitoring and feeding the news, solving problems, negotiating relationships, and always learning — and are driven by a single purpose: surviving. “If you can survive campaigning, it might be easier to survive in business,” said Mark Kennedy, political management professor and director of the George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management. In today’s volatile global environment, survival doesn’t come standard with legacy or even the smartest business strategy. Survival requires a leadership style adjustable to today’s realities, and organizations must operate in an optimized, smart, almost campaign-like manner to survive and thrive. For Kennedy, a former senior vice president and treasurer for Macy’s and once a U.S. congressman, operating a business is like running a campaign. After all, these special interest groups constantly campaign against business. If organizations “don’t think they’re in a campaign, they’re going to find themselves progressively in a challenge.”

Moving Right Along A confluence of events has contributed to today’s pressurized work environment, said Kieran King, global vice president of loyalty strategy at Skillsoft. Overworked, overwhelmed and exasperated, today’s knowledge worker is at a deficit when it comes to dedicated learning time as it is, she said. During the global economic crisis, many organizations downsized the size and structure of their different functions to stay afloat and navigate the sea of change in business.

36 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

Learning functions were often among the first cut, and many organizations never fully recovered. King said by not rehiring to pre-economic meltdown levels, many organizations placed new pressures on the employees who remained. With their development stopped or limited, these often over-burdened employees lacked the skills needed to deal with their new reality. At the same time, business practices around bringing personal digital devices to the office were loosening up — blurring the line between work and home life. “Work never got shut off,” King said. The rise of digital, cloud and mobile technology created opportunities for more agile companies to upset the big business giants that had led the market for years. “If you think about all industries, business agility has replaced market dominance in terms of surviving and thriving into the next new era and certainly to try to combat competition,” she said. As Cisco Systems Inc.’s vice president and general manager, Jeanne Beliveau-Dunn’s work revolves around the agility of her company. With technology moving faster, it’s been imperative that Cisco move at “lightning speed” with being able to provide people information of what is going on in technology, how it should be used and what to stay away from, as well as the things to do. Roughly 20 years ago when Cisco first started helping create the networking that enabled the power of the Internet, Beliveau-Dunn said the company had a big challenge: a brand new industry and a lack of talent to plan, design and implement its customers’ networks. She likened the challenge to building a city without the roads needed to support the operation — or the road builders. Further, the Cisco population wasn’t the only group to consider. Beliveau-Dunn said the company had to think about how to get its customers and partners set up to build so the networking could truly take off.

Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

At the time, the global tech company was holding in-person and online training but leaders realized that real learning was accomplished not only through development and certification programs but also from everyday experiences on the job. “We wanted to make sure that as we upskilled and created this new talent in the industry, we went from about 200,000 people back then to needing about 3 million of them to be able to make the curve and be able to grow networking and the Internet to the scale it is today,” Beliveau-Dunn said. This development of network builders began with job-role courses, curriculum and certification programs mapped to the best practices in the industry. No sooner had the team realized a need to build a support system where tech workers could go to ask questions, get answers, and collaborate and learn from one another — that the company realized expecting the community to learn just from Cisco was untenable; the company accounted for only 2 or 3 percent of the whole networking workforce population. With the rest of the population sitting outside of Cisco, it needed to build, develop and foster a sense of community to scale.

‘… Business agility has replaced market dominance in terms of surviving and thriving into the next new era and certainly to try to combat competition.’ —Kieran King, global vice president of loyalty strategy, Skillsoft When the company introduced the social learning platform Cisco Learning Network about eight years ago, it brought tech workers together to get to know each other, network, find jobs and, ultimately, to learn how to be agile. “The thing is, no matter how good you are at building training and curricula, there’s always a new thing that you found out today that you didn’t know yesterday that you want to make sure gets out there in terms of information,” Beliveau-Dunn said. “Learning communities bring that real-time information to the center of learning within the community.” In the past two years, Cisco has accelerated learning by taking connectivity to another level by opening up an environment where employees can quickly and easily find experts and engage with them via chat or other applications. Cisco Collaborative Knowledge has all 38 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

the capabilities of the older platform but with more collaboration tools. Further, it uses data analytics to make searches for experts simpler. Beliveau-Dunn said someone can plug in a few keywords and gain access to a wealth of information from white papers and training as well as people blogging about a given topic or giving classes on it. The company launched the platform internally in late 2015, with 14,000 users and counting. It also sells the solution to customers as a way to build a more agile workforce. Beliveau-Dunn said with so much of learning coming from daily work, learning tools and capability needed to be built within the work itself to be effective. “That’s going to be the next generation of learning. It’s going to take social … collaborative learning to a whole new dimension to really agile learning.”

Getting There Skillsoft’s King said the smart way to go about building a fast-moving learning organization that is positioned to meet the challenges unfolding in today’s fast-paced business landscape requires executives to be conscious of the need to develop a culture of highly engaged employees who can help the business adapt. But executives often struggle with culture and engagement. In the Bersin by Deloitte report “Global Human Capital Trends 2015: Leading in the New World of Work,” culture and engagement rank highest among pressing business challenges globally. To foster a nimble and engaged learning environment, King said organizations will have to dismantle a lot of the friction points that are weighing down human resources. For instance, the walls isolating talent and learning into disparate pieces have to be torn down. “CEOs must act with a sense of urgency because of the skill shortage across the entire globe,” she said. “Tens of millions of jobs are going to maintain a vacancy unless we can create a culture of engaged employees that tracks talent and also helps retain and flourish the talent inside the organization.” Business leaders should intentionally examine themselves from the outside in, then focus on the interior of the organization. Essentially, King said to prevent disruption from wreaking havoc in an organization, leaders have to pay close attention to competitors with new concepts but currently might be at the fringe. “But you can see that if they have a little bit … more capital injected into their financial structure, they could become a serious threat,” she said. Who could be a fringe disruptor, and how would they pose a threat? Is it because they have better, more AGILITY continued on page 40

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AGILITY continued from page 38 innovative business models? Are they more adaptable and responsive to customer expectations? Are their operational infrastructures or supply chains more fluid? Learning leaders have to intimately understand these answers as well. Employees will have specific and related developmental needs, and the learning organization must enable them to respond quickly during times of change or to any strategic business shift. Learning leaders must learn what employees want and need, what skills they currently possess and what skills the organizations will need them to develop for tomorrow. “These are some basic things that learning and development professionals must get a better handle on,” King said. “Pretty soon, we’re going to be facing a very serious talent gap. We’re simply not going to have enough skilled professionals to satisfy the number of positions that will be created. “We’re going to have to really create ingenious ways to develop from within. How can we take the existing talent we have and pivot really quickly, when we need to, and make it malleable so that we have that agility?” Learning leaders also will need their executive peers’ ear if they are to make progress developing a culture capable of supporting a highly agile workforce. King called this necessary communication “table stakes.” The problem is, she said, things tend to fall apart as strategy trickles down. Chief learning officers can navigate this and demonstrate that investments in learning pay off big dividends by immersing themselves and their solutions in the lines of business. Learning leaders need to intimately understand each of the business functions they support, such as marketing, sales and finance. Their respective key performance indicators are pretty standard, King said. “If the CLO can understand what those key performance indicators are and then cascade them out as key performance indicators for the learning team, then we inherit the very same principles, the very same objectives, of those we’re trying to serve,” King said. “We shouldn’t have separate and independent key performance indicators for just the learning function. It should be extremely business relevant.” When using their insights about employee and organizational needs, learning leaders need to be open to exploring learning delivery options that support learning agility. King said to focus on a specific modality is to put all of one’s eggs into one basket, and organizations risk being able to confidently address all learning moments of need. Instead, Beliveau-Dunn said, it’s more important 40 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

Portrait of an Agile Worker

art of building a fast-paced learning organization is fostering a learning mindset.

It’s a managerial thing, said Jeanne Beliveau-Dunn, vice president and general manager at Cisco Systems Inc. “We find that if you hire leaders who are learners, they’ll hire more learners. An agile workforce takes people with a mindset that they’re good to learn.” Agile workers are OK with failing, she said. Or with not being terrific at something right out of the gate. Better, they’re open to trying new things, and they are resilient and willing to learn and work hard. The following employee characteristics are also important when building an agile organization: • Self-directed • Purpose-driven • Adaptable • Creative thinker • Innovative • Problem-solver • Leader through influence • Collaborative

—Bravetta Hassell to keep key qualities in mind when creating learning solutions. Best-in-class learning modalities combine relevance, convenience and interactivity. Today’s learning is not just about the functionality when employees read an important white paper on their smartphone or enroll in a virtual classroom experience, but also about the mentoring, community-building and knowledge-sharing implicit in these intentionally social environments. Social networks run as continuously growing threads through many facets of contemporary society’s fabric. To extend their reach to workplace learning is natural, advantageous even — particularly to a business campaigning to have the public clamoring for its products or services. In a rapidly moving and continuously changing business environment, it’s imperative that organizations access, share and use what they’ve learned with others. Today, learning is no longer discreet, to be attended to at designated place and time, Beliveau-Dunn said. It is part of the business, and it has to be continuous. CLO Bravetta Hassell is a Chief Learning Officer associate editor. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

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a d v e r t i s e m e n t

BEST PRACTICES IN WORKFORCE EDUCATION

Three Reasons to Invest in the Mature Workforce BY ME L ISSA GOL D B E R G & L O R I S T R A U S S S en ior Workforce S tra teg ist of College for Ame rica a t S ou th ern New Ha m p sh ire University

Learning and development leaders have been focused on bridging the knowledge and skills gap that retiring baby boomers are leaving behind. Yet, not all 50-andover workers are in a position to retire—or perhaps have any desire to do so. In fact, by 2020, 41.4 million employees will be age 55 and older. That’s one in every four workers.1 Meanwhile, learning and development efforts are often focused on executive leadership, succession planning, and millenials who have many years in the workforce to give. Frontline employees who have served in the workforce for decades are often not considered for upskilling and development because of their proximity to retirement relative to younger workers, and, in some cases, lack of technology savvy. Yet, a learning investment strategy that leaves out the baby boomer population may lead to missed opportunities. Baby boomers possess institutional knowledge and skills which businesses fear losing. Education, particularly liberal arts higher education that focuses on building business and personal skills, can offer a cost effective way of continuing their development. Here are three reasons to consider investing in your mature frontline and hourly wage workers. You’ll create a high-functioning multigenerational workforce.

Millennials are native (or nearly native) technologists and provide tremendous value by intuitively

Program Manager of the Income Impact Area at AARP Foundation

understanding how software, social, and systems work. While more mature workers may not excel in technology, they typically do have the experience, credibility, and wisdom in their favor from being in the workforce for decades.2 Perceived rifts among the groups may be myth, not fact. In a recent study, the IBM Institute for Business Value uncovered that the wants and needs of the generations are aligned,3 showing that collaborative efforts need not be strained. It is important however, to make sure the groups can communicate with each other effectively. By investing in workers across your organization with training and education, you can improve the likelihood that each generation will have the skill sets needed to communicate and collaborate effectively. A liberal arts education can develop soft skills as well as business acumen needed across generations to succeed in today’s marketplaces. You’ll engage a hard-to-engage group with a meaningful higher education experience.

According the Gallup report, “The 2013 State of the American Workplace,” baby boomers are the most actively disengaged generation of today’s workforce. Gallup estimates that active disengagement costs U.S. businesses $450 billion to $550 billion a year.4 One way to engage this group is to help them identify and capitalize on their strengths. People over 50 in

a d v e r t i s e m e n t

BEST PRACTICES IN WORKFORCE EDUCATION

particular have a difficult time pinpointing natural skills and talents, and are more likely to point out flaws and shortcomings.4 Offering personalized training and education environments can help baby boomers overcome this confidence issue. Allowing the employee to control the pace of training and linking education content to prior knowledge whenever possible can increase learning and self-efficacy.5 You’ll retain hard-to-find skills and institutional knowledge.

Baby boomers (and now Generation X) possess institutional knowledge and skills that businesses want to maintain. By working to keep aging employees not only on the job but engaged, the speed of “organizational brain drain” is slowed. Furthermore, given our growing war for talent, skilled workers are in demand in areas such as in healthcare, skilled labor, and STEM occupations—our mature workers and their competencies are needed to keep these jobs filled. By investing in education for your 50-plus workforce, you can encourage these employees to stay engaged in their work, rather than long for retirement. Education also gives them the means to document their knowledge and experience to share with

younger workers via policies, presentations, or other knowledge transfer methods. You can emphasize the importance of teaching younger generations so that, even when your boomers do retire, the knowledge and organizational prowess stays with the company. Note that an educational investment indicates to the older employees that you value their work and contributions well beyond their institutional knowledge. With this reassurance, they will be more likely to share what they know and not try to hold onto it to protect their value. By Melissa Goldberg, Senior Workforce Strategist of College for America at Southern New Hampshire University and Lori Strauss, Program Manager of the Income Impact Area at AARP Foundation

Learn about business-education partnerships with College for America at Southern New Hampshire University—a nonprofit, accredited college specifically designed for employers and working adults of all ages: Visit collegeforamerica.org/boomer-education or email Martha Rush-Mueller at m.rush-mueller@snhu.edu.

bls.gov/opub/mlr/2012/01/art3full.pdf

forbes.com/sites/cywakeman/2015/04/23/the-perks-and-importance-of-embracing-a-multigenerational-workplace/2/#1b8400b332f5

public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/gb/en/gbe03637usen/GBE03637USEN.PDF?

nextavenue.org/boomers-americas-least-engaged-employees/

shrm.org/Research/Documents/SHRM-SIOP%20Engaging%20and%20Retaining%20Mature%20Workers.pdf

COMPANY PROFILES Those who are 50 and over and struggling need a voice and an advocate now more than ever. AARP Foundation — a charitable affiliate of AARP — serves that purpose. Building on AARP’s reputation and expertise, AARP Foundation has the ability to support and work with local organizations and programs nationwide to coordinate, fill in the gaps and help effective initiatives grow. aarp.org/aarp-foundation College for America at Southern New Hampshire University is an accredited, nonprofit college that helps employers upskill their workforce through competency-based associate’s and bachelor’s degrees—ones that are extraordinarily low cost, built for working adults, and uniquely applicable in the workplace. Our college is dedicated to better connecting workforce research, higher education, and labor market needs. collegeforamerica.org

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BEST PRACTICES IN HR TECHNOLOGY

The Opportunity Cost of Neglecting Video BY PANOPTO

CLOs have reason to be optimistic. According to an October 2015 HCM Advisory Group report, training budgets are up for the third year running, with investments in learning technology and content seeing the largest year-over-year increases.1 Yet, among these investments, CLOs often overlook video learning technology in favor of traditional learning management systems and assessment software. This relative ranking is at odds with shifting workforce demographics that drive higher demand for video, and it reflects dated views on the challenges and cost of working with video technology. Boomers and Millennials Make Video Imperative Two coinciding changes in workforce composition are driving a spike in video demand: the exodus of baby boomers and the influx of millennials. As boomers continue to retire, businesses grapple with the loss of institutional knowledge that has often been acquired over decades. As the New York Times reports,2 video provides an efficient tool for capturing the knowledge of exiting employees. Using their laptop or smartphone, these employees can record video presentations that detail job-specific knowledge and best practices. The recordings can then be shared in a secure video library where other team members can reference them for years to come. Video also provides an effective onboarding tool for millennials, who now make up the largest age demographic in the workforce.3 This generation isn’t simply comfortable with video, having grown up using YouTube, Vine, Skype, and Snapchat.

Millennials expect to use video as a learning resource based on their experience at universities. For the past decade, lecture capture and flipped classroom technologies have become a mainstay at higher ed institutions, enabling students to review course material when and where they need it. The technology has been shown to improve knowledge retention and academic achievement, and its availability has become a factor in which classes students choose to take.

At both ends of the employee lifecycle, CLOs who don’t invest in video face an opportunity cost that will only continue to grow in the coming years. Upon entering the workforce, these students now expect to have similar technology available for ondemand and just-in-time learning. This trend is highlighted by recent Cisco research, in which 87 percent of young executives said that they would choose to work for a video-enabled organization over one that hadn’t invested in the technology. At both ends of the employee lifecycle, then, CLOs who don’t invest in video face an opportunity cost that will only continue to grow in the coming years.

a d v e r t i s e m e n t

BEST PRACTICES IN HR TECHNOLOGY

New Technology Tackles Traditional Video Challenges The rise of video among millennials and universities is due partly to the plummeting costs and improved usability of video equipment and software. Within the enterprise, this commoditization has the potential to expand the reach and impact of every dollar spent on learning.

The result is a learning environment in which it’s often easier to share knowledge with video than it is with text.

For example, video search technology now enables employees to find content inside videos as easily as they search documents and email. Through the use of automatic speech recognition (ASR), employees can find any word spoken during a presentation, and then fast forward to the precise moment where the word was mentioned. For most organizations, this unlocks hundreds or thousands of hours of valuable information stored within existing media archives. As a result, on-demand video can be used as a justin-time learning resource.

For example, IBM switched half of its training to an online format after realizing that 40% of its classroom training costs were spent on travel and lodging. As a result, the company saved $579 million over a two-year period. Likewise, when Microsoft introduced an internal video portal to replace some in-class training and smaller events, the company saw training costs fall from $320 per hour per employee to just $17.

Video production technology has also evolved dramatically in recent years. These changes enable instructors to develop and publish formal training courses in a fraction of the time previously required. They also open new opportunities for informal, employee-generated learning content. Through the use of video training platforms,4 instructional designers and subject matter experts from across the company can use their laptop webcams to produce high-quality video presentations in a matter of minutes. These presentations are automatically uploaded to a secure YouTube-like portal, where they’re converted for playback on any device and indexed for search.

Video Delivers Tangible Training ROI Companies that embrace video stand to reduce their training cost per employee, a savings that can be reinvested in other learning initiatives.

Of course, the value of video-based learning goes far beyond cost savings. Its real potential lies in its ability to scale existing training efforts more broadly and consistently, and to enable every subject matter expert to share their knowledge with co-workers. For CLOs looking to invest in the technology and content that offer the most visible results, video can no longer be overlooked.

http://panop.to/hcm-2015-study

http://panop.to/nyt-2014

http://panop.to/pew-research-2015

http://www.panopto.com

COMPANY PROFILE Panopto provides video software for training, teaching, and presenting. Since 2007, we’ve helped businesses improve employee productivity and reduce costs through the use of video.Today, our software is used by Qualcomm, Siemens, New York Life and other leading companies to record training videos, live stream events, and manage their videos in a secure corporate YouTube. For two years running, Panopto has been recognized by Gartner as a leader in enterprise video content management, and by Deloitte as one of the fastestgrowing companies in North America. www.panopto.com

Innovation’s Winning Combination The key to innovation isn’t a relentless quest for something different. It’s bringing old and new perspectives together to make something better. BY DOROTHY LEONARD

hy would a company whose very existence depends on developing new products and services — many of them highly technical — hire recent graduates with degrees in music, history or pre-med along with industrial designers, engineers and MBA graduates? The management at IDEO, a Silicon Valley-based company revered for consistent, award-winning innovation, has long understood a basic principle: Creativity occurs at the intersection of different perspectives. When highly experienced personnel work with someone new to the organization or to the context, a combination of their different approaches can yield significant creative benefits. Why? One reason is experience. Deep experience in a given context is critical to innovation. Over years of working with a particular set of product lines, technology and clientele, long-term personnel develop a host of proven techniques, diagnostics and processes. Such individuals build up a valuable repository of experience they use to quickly diagnose problems and apply proven solutions. They know the nonobvious capabilities and frailties in the organization, and they have a network of experts they can call upon for help to augment their own abilities. They know the inner workings of products and the history behind services. All of these are good bases for

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Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

innovation. Companies such as 3M Co., IBM Corp. and Procter & Gamble Co. have been building on and expanding their capabilities for decades, and they rely on expertise from top talent to do so.

Welcoming a Technology Perspective Of course, the path to innovation is never straight ahead. By definition, innovation requires deviations from history. That is why a beginner’s mind is so valuable. A fresh perspective can come from a new hire or from a fellow employee with a different experience base. Such individuals are not really beginners because they bring their own expertise. But their minds are often free of preconceptions, assumptions or limitations their colleagues have. So they start with a fresh mental page. New hires fresh from school, for example, are often intimately familiar with tools that simply didn’t exist when older employees received their education. Teresa Roche, former vice president and chief learning officer at Agilent Technologies, said the highly experienced team she led knew they needed to use technology to better enable work. They were particularly intrigued by potential use for collaboration technology among farflung team members. Their starting point was the Emerging Leaders Program, in which 32 promising next-generation leaders around the world participated. While the team had experimented with technology, members thought it was a great opportunity to welcome a new perspective. They hired Nick Klute, who had a master’s degree in industrial and organizational psychology but only one year of work experience after college. A digital native, Klute was both competent and confident in his use of technology. It was not an add-on for him but simply the way work got done. One great advantage he held over his more experienced colleagues was, being new to the organization, he was unencumbered with history about the success or failure of earlier innovations. However, the team was not naive about how easily busy employees would embrace the opportunity to learn new collaboration tools. The innovation took root because of the team’s experience-based ability to navigate the organizational shoals as well as Klute helping the technology adopters and his grasp of the breadth of potential benefits. He saw opportunities for technology applications that were not obvious to his otherwise experienced col-

leagues. Further, he pushed the participants to use their iPads not just for email but also for voting, reflective journaling and a host of work-enabling and community-building applications. The organization was successful using the best of two knowledge bases — old and new. Brent Kedzierski, learning manager for Shell Upstream-Americas, told a somewhat similar story about a graduate intern who capitalized on a senior Shell technical expert’s deep smarts to deliver an unexpectedly innovative and valuable contribution. The senior Shell technical expert asked the new professional to build a dataset to feed into a high-resolution basin model being developed for the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin. The challenge was to use both Shell proprietary data and a vast amount of publicly available data. With a modest amount of guidance, the intern performed at a level of sophistication and refinement beyond expectations. Kedzierski said he was tenacious and imaginative — he not only applied various data manipulation techniques unfamiliar to his senior mentor but also sought out other experts for additional insights, an unusual and unexpected approach to data-collection not usually employed for this task.

The path to innovation is never straight ahead. By definition, innovation requires deviations from history.

48 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

Boeing Looks Within Sometimes a beginner’s mind already exists within a company; it might just reside in a different division. In large corporations, there are many opportunities to combine different types of expertise — if personnel recognize the potential. In 2013, Boeing Co. submitted an ultimately successful proposal to NASA for the design and development of a replacement vehicle for the obsolete space shuttle. While the immediate mission requirement was to ferry supplies and astronauts to the space station, ultimately such a reusable vehicle could carry space tourists. Boeing’s Space Exploration division, or SE, had decades of experience designing rockets and spacecraft, such as the famous Apollo spacecraft, for the U.S. government. The division was also the primary contractor for the International Space Station. Boeing’s Space Exploration engineers had considerable expertise designing vehicles to safely withstand the rigors of sending humans into space; however, they had alINNOVATION continued on page 50

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INNOVATION continued from page 48 ways designed for experienced astronauts. A relatively new Boeing hire brought a different perspective to the project. Rachelle Ornan-Stone had five years of experience designing interiors in commercial airliners in the Boeing Commercial Airplane division, or BCA. This role required a strong human factor and industrial design approach to passenger experience. Ornan-Stone set forth a challenge to a four-person core team as well as satellite participants, to translate Boeing’s recognizable airplane look and feel to the spacecraft interior while adhering to stringent design requirements.

New hires fresh from school are often intimately familiar with tools that didn’t exist when older employees received their education. The team adapted the successful Boeing Sky Interior lighting of the 787 aircraft for the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft baseline design. BCA and SE teams worked in tandem to ensure the new lighting system could meet requirements related to heat emission, energy usage, glare, off-gassing, flammability and fixture location for full-crew and crew-cargo missions. Once the lighting concept was installed in the Houston mockup, seasoned Space Exploration leadership members were enthusiastic. The lighting not only increased perceived spaciousness for the limited interior volume but also lifted their spirits. They could see and feel the difference. “This kind of collaboration across businesses is key to innovation at Boeing,” said Timothy Bridges, director of knowledge management.

Breaking Down Barriers All of these examples share a kind of creative fusion. The newcomers enter a well-established context with new assumptions, new insights and different approaches to accomplish work goals. In all cases, the newbies built on existing reservoirs of experience-based knowledge. Both are necessary in today’s organizations: fresh eyes and the wisdom born from decades of problem-solving. But there are often significant organizational barriers to putting those two perspectives together. Some of these are personal, some are institutional and others 50 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

are structural. First, some top talent might object to working with less-experienced people, doubting their ability to offer valuable input, or perhaps fearing competition from fresh minds. Further, working with inexperienced people requires valuable time to orient them to the context. For experts in their own domain, learning new technologies can be frustrating, time-consuming and humbling. If a team’s time is being charged to a client, the client might object to paying for less-experienced team members. None of these objections is an insurmountable barrier. Consider these strategies: • If experienced people are being asked to use new tools or technologies, provide easy access to learning support — more than junior employees might think is necessary. Experienced people might not want to ask for help, and some will not want to rely on reverse mentoring from younger people. However, some will; that is a cause for celebration because it creates an opportunity to bring experience and beginner’s minds together. • New hires might not appreciate how much experience underlies the organization’s success. Exposing new hires to the history of contributions by in-house experts to current and recent innovations can help everyone understand how critical the core capabilities of the organization are to sustained competitive advantage. • Look for more ways that junior employees can be included on project teams. An organization’s clients likely will understood the importance of developing younger talent. Perhaps even more important is helping clients understand the value of new perspectives to problem-solving. • Visibly celebrate any examples of successful creative fusion in the organization. It’s difficult to think of an organization that cannot benefit significantly from using decades of experience as well as new or different forms of expertise. Because of the speed of technological change, one might be tempted to over-emphasize the role of the beginner’s mind in organizational innovation. Or, on the other side of the coin, to believe that newcomers need to pay dues in the form of years of experience before they can make a significant contribution. Instead, we should instead challenge long-time experts to work effectively — and creatively — with newcomers. CLO Dorothy Leonard is professor emerita at Harvard Business School and chief adviser for the Leonard-Barton Group. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

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TAP Into Tuition ESSAY BY ADRIENNE WAY

Tuition assistance has benefits that go beyond development into recruitment and retention, but many companies don’t know just how helpful it can be.

52 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

Benefits T

uition benefits are a proven asset for many employers. They help organizations recruit qualified employees and contribute to long-term employee retention, and the dynamic administration of tuition assistance programs, or TAP, ensures the skills development required to meet immediate and future business needs will actually take place. TAP is a force for business and employee development. But most organizations arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t taking full advantage of this. Promoting this benefit is the first step in getting the most return from a tuition assistance program investment.

Chief Learning Officer â&#x20AC;˘ April 2016 â&#x20AC;˘ www.CLOmedia.com

TAP promotion needs to be a top-down effort. Employees will follow executives’ and managers’ leads if they position education as a path to career advancement and workforce development. Society for Human Resource Management data shows that in 2015, 56 percent of organizations offered undergraduate educational assistance, 52 percent offered graduate educational assistance, and overall 84 percent of organizations offered their staff some form of professional development opportunities. However, less than one-tenth of HR professionals said their employees were very knowledgeable about employer-sponsored benefits.

Offer Student Loan Repayment One of the most dynamic benefits employers can offer as part of a tuition assistance program is to help repay student loans. Student debt is not a new topic, and there are numerous studies showing that student debt affects personal lives by delaying major purchases like homes and cars or starting a family. It also can be a factor in postponing graduate school. Currently, only 3 percent of businesses offer student loan repayment as a benefit, according to the aforementioned SHRM report. Those companies are on track to make their TAP benefits one of their most valuable assets with which to recruit and retain talent. Loan repayment assistance is a preferred benefit for 80 percent of individuals with student debt, according to a July 2015 Iontuition survey. Some 55 percent of respondents said they would prefer the amount they are paying for health care go toward their student loan balance instead. Further, 49 percent of respondents said they would prefer student loan payment contributions over those for a 401(k) plan. Student loan repayment is especially important for employers involved in specific industries such as legal or health care professions, which require advanced education and degrees. For instance, the Association of American Medical Colleges Center for Workforce Studies estimates there will be a shortage of 90,000 doctors in the U.S. by 2025. Medical education is the most expensive graduate education in the U.S., and the average medical student debt is $176,348. Knowing the likely debt that will accrue might dissuade some students from attending medical school at all, particularly students from more diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. The American Medical Association recommends offering student debt relief through tuition assistance to help combat the predicted physician shortage. “Borrowers with less debt are more likely to start careers in medical education and research, practice medicine in medically underserved areas, or enter careers in public health service,” the AMA report states. 54 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

Student loan repayment also may encourage more diversity among medical students. “With recent health reforms seeking to eliminate health care disparities amongst the U.S. population, increasing the number of minority physicians is important to ensure a workforce more reflective of the general population,” the report stated. Health care facilities that can attract a diverse physician population will be best able to deliver services. Tuition assistance programs are a business investment, and the best way to make sure this investment yields the best return is to support it completely. The College Board estimates students can spend an average of $1,200 a year on textbooks and other course supplies. This creates a significant barrier for many. Tuition is already a major expense; if students have other barriers to performing their best in class, the investment won’t yield top return. Covering textbook purchases or rentals and other course fees as a complementary benefit gives students a better chance of success.

15 percent of employers offer career counseling as a tuition assistance benefit. A recent United States Public Interest Research Group survey showed 65 percent of students didn’t purchase an assigned textbook because it was too expensive, and 94 percent of those students worried their performance in the class would suffer as a result. These ancillary education costs can have an even broader effect — 48 percent of students said the cost of textbooks affected how many and which classes they took each semester. This directly affects an employer’s return on tuition assistance investment. Employees might not gain essential knowledge and skills, and business leaders might not emerge from school as quickly as they could, bringing their new skills back to work. The books and fees that appear to be “extras” are essential components employers can use to earn the highest return on investment for tuition benefits.

Seek Diversity in All Demographics The U.S. population is changing rapidly, and the business world and the economy will both benefit when workforce and population demographics match. Businesses that encourage minorities and diverse groups to develop leadership skills will find their tuition benefits act as a valuable tool for growth. TUITION continued on page 56

Running Training like a Business

Proven Approach, Transformative Results. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no secret that corporate executives today want to radically change the way training is managed. According to industry experts, learning transformation therefore is no longer optional. At NIIT, our principles of running training like a business are at the core of helping organizations transform training to dramatically improve effectiveness and efficiency. Learn how running training like a business can work for you: www.niit.com/rtlab.

TUITION continued from page 54 Advancing diverse employees’ skills and talents strengthens the business talent pool. It also increases business potential. Multiple and diverse perspectives bring businesses opportunities for growth, development and strong competition in a diverse marketplace. Therefore, making TAP benefits available to all generations can yield value for employers. Consider, millennials will be the largest segment of the workforce for years to come. They tend to want transparency in the businesses where they work, and they often seek opportunities for professional development. According to “What Millennials Want from Work, Charted Across the World,” an article published in February 2015 in Harvard Business Review, 40 percent of millennials in North America want managers who empower their employees.

49 percent say they would prefer student loan payment contributions over a 401(k) plan. Baby boomers are also an important part of the knowledge base in most businesses. According to Center on Aging and Work at Boston College fact sheet, 69 percent of employers say they will try to keep older workers on as part-time workers or consultants, and 46 percent will encourage older workers to stay as fulltime workers. Baby boomers are used to being leaders. Those who stay in the workforce will want and need the opportunity to learn new skills so they can remain at the forefront of business and technology.

Align Career Opportunities With Company Goals Employers should counsel all employees on which career paths align directly with business needs and goals. The third Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte’s Skills Gap study — “The skills gap in U.S. manufacturing 2015 and beyond” — shows business needs can and should translate to career opportunities for employees. Some 82 percent of surveyed executives indicate they believe the skills gap will affect their ability to handle customer demands, specifically customer service, new product development and any plans for international expansion. Some 78 percent believe it will affect how they implement new technology and whether they can increase productivity. Further, the report suggests that many people who could fill businesses’ skills gaps are often already employees. To take advantage of existing internal re56 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

sources, companies can focus on how to close the skills gap by thinking about their employees as a cluster of skills — some in use, others latent. Career counseling is one option leaders can use to develop those latent employees’ skills. Currently, only 15 percent of employers offer career counseling, according to SHRM’s 2015 Employee Benefits report. Companies that use this strategic practice will see a great return on investment by averting business losses, and benefiting from employees who reach their career potential. Today the paths to education completion are varied, and tuition assistance programs can expand to cover a lot. Employees may be able to benefit from earning Credit by Exam, taking Prior Learning Assessments or earning a certificate or license. Expanding TAPs can help businesses respond more quickly to rapid changes in technology and market demands. Covering certificates is one way to achieve this quick response. The Georgetown Center on Workforce and Education’s 2012 report “Certificates: Gateway to Gainful Employment and College Degrees” states that certificates’ value is flexible. They can serve as a stepping stone to additional education and training or provide a learning supplement to workers who already have a college degree. According to the report, one-third of certificate holders also have an associate, bachelor’s or master’s degree. Of these workers, 2 out of 3 earned their certificates first, while 1 in 3 earned a degree first. Tuition assistance benefits also can cover cross-training to develop skills that aren’t directly related to an employee’s job but that can have a positive, if indirect, effect on the business. For instance, a broader employee knowledge base will result in better problem-solving and communication skills, which many employers need but find difficult to hire externally. Again, tuition assistance is a proven asset for many employers. According to “The Role of Business in Promoting Educational Attainment: A National Imperative,” a report by the Committee for Economic Development of the Conference Board, “employer-provided tuition assistance programs allow companies to hire better-quality, more-educated and more-productive employees whose increased productivity offsets most of the cost of tuition benefits. Further, employees who receive tuition assistance tend to stay at their companies longer.” TAP also can help identify current and prospective employees with strong potential for advancement. It doesn’t always mean a degree, even the most basic-skills training — if needed — can create a positive organizational effect. That includes increasing morale and productivity, and reducing waste and on-the-job errors, all of which are boon to any organizations’ bottom line. CLO Adrienne L. Way is the owner, president and CEO of Edcor Data Services. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

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CASE STUDY

’Tis the Season to Be Training BY SARAH FISTER GALE

nyone who knows a gamer knows about GameStop. The global retailer, headquartered outside of Dallas, sells video games, consumer electronics and wireless services, and offers a unique buy-sell-trade program that allows customers to trade in old electronics and software for credit to buy new technology. There are nearly 7,000 GameStop stores globally, and they are never busier than during the holiday season when the company hires and trains up to 25,000 additional temporary staff. It’s the company’s most profitable season, and it’s also when many game developers release the new versions customers clamor to get. “We nearly double our workforce at the holidays, and it is a big challenge to help prepare these associates for the work,” said Jason Cochran, senior vice president of U.S. stores. It’s not enough to teach them the basics and put them to work. GameStop feels strongly that part-time staffers should feel like the company is invested in their success, said Matthew Hirst, senior director of organizational development, talent and learning. “Many organizations focus most of their development efforts on full-time staff; we think that is a strategic mistake.” GameStop differentiates itself from big-box retailers through its passionate employees who love gaming, have a deep knowledge of the company, and are eager to answer questions and help customers. Temporary staffers must be just as passionate as their full-time peers, which means they need the same training and support, Hirst said. “People do their best work in an environment where they feel valued equal to the rest of the team.” Seasonal hires are also a vital recruiting pipeline. Every year, the company retains about 15 percent; the rest are potential customers, Hirst said. “Even if they never work for us again, we want them to have a favorable impression of the company and their experience here.”

Take It Up a Level In a matter of weeks, temporary workers need to learn everything there is to know about the company, the products and its approach to customer service. GameStop has its Grow & Go seasonal training offering for new hires, which included a combination of videos, paper-based training content and multimedia courses. 58 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

SNAPSHOT GameStop ramps up its seasonal employees with a game-based virtual learning environment — designed by one of its own passionate gamers — to make temporary staff feel like part of the team.

But it had many shortcomings, said Adam Scott, former manager and current information technology engineer in charge of developing training videos. Until two years ago, managers had to rely on time-consuming paper checklists and information sheets to track completion rates. “It had low visibility, so it was difficult to determine whether employees were finishing the training,” Scott said. “We needed a better way to hold people accountable.” Scott said he originally suggested they move content to a learning management system, but solutions were either cost-prohibitive, or they didn’t fit how the company wanted to train employees. “I figured I could build my own system from scratch and make it scalable to meet our needs.” In late 2012, Scott, who started as a seasonal hire, pitched the idea to build an online learning platform called Level Up. On it new employees could do their training in a fully gamified environment, complete with points, badges, avatars and learning quests. “It was a great example of cross generational collaboration,” Hirst said. “Adam built the application, and I and other leaders in the company helped make sure he could get it done.” It took Scott eight months to build the first version of Level Up working alone, mostly full time, while teaching himself to program. In early 2014, the company piloted the training in 10 stores, and when it was well received, rolled it out to the rest of the company later that year.

Minecraft for Employees The Level Up platform, which is part of the overall Grow & Go program, uses classic gaming strategies to make it compelling. “As a gamer, you know that what CASE STUDY continued on page 60

“I networked with so many colleagues and local CLOs. We talked about all the different ways they’re evolving their learning organizations for the future.” —2015 CLO BC Attendee

“I discovered some really smart solutions I can use immediately to better integrate my company’s L&D initiatives with its talent management strategies.” —2015 CLO BC Attendee

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CASE STUDY continued from page 58 a makes a game successful isn’t shiny graphics and sound effects. It is engagement that makes you come back,” Scott said. “That means making sure users are always wondering what comes next? Am I succeeding? What do I need to do to earn more points?” With that in mind, Scott built an environment where trainees receive points and badges for everything they do, such as logging on and taking a quiz or finishing a learning mission or leaving feedback. They also get bonus points for perfect scores on quizzes. As

while they are on the job,” Scott said. Seasonal hires are expected to complete all basic training missions in the first weeks of employment. Once they achieve the expert level for seasonal training, it unlocks the next level of training for associate advisers, which they are encouraged to take if they have interest. All training levels are open to all associates. It is one way the company lets seasonal workers know they are valued, and that they can grow in the company if they want to come back. Because the Level Up environment tracks and reports completion rates for all users, management

‘… when these employees look back on their time at GameStop, they will remember that we gave them the skills to be successful, to work well with others, and to value great service.’ —Matthew Hirst, senior director of organizational development, talent and learning, GameStop they receive points, their progress bar fills. Once it is full, they move up to the next level, which unlocks new badges, avatars and learning quests. They also can see where they stand on the leader board, both as individuals and as a store. “That creates a sense of teamwork because the store moves up the leaderboard as a unit,” Scott said. The Level Up environment creates a lot of healthy competition, with trainees competing for the top spot in their store, region and even the world. That is especially appealing for GameStop’s employees, who are usually gamers themselves. Trainees also can post comments and feedback on the platform, which further reinforces the GameStop culture. “It makes it more of a community experience, like playing Minecraft,” Scott said. The learning missions are fairly traditional online learning. Trainees read documents, view images and videos, and take short quizzes as they proceed through the content. The courses cover everything from how to deliver excellent customer service, and how the buy-sell-trade program works, to information about specific products and services. Scott’s team also rolls out “side quests” every few weeks to teach associates about new products or games about to be released, to be sure they can answer customers questions. No mission lasts longer than 30 minutes, and trainees can stop at any point, save their work, and come back to it on any GameStop computer. “This is crucial as most training is completed 60 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

knows which seasonal hires have the greatest ambitions to stay and this helps them determine who to bring on full-time once the season is over.

Where the Magic Happens Level Up has made it easier to ensure every new hire has the baseline training they need to do the job, though Hirst and Cochran said the platform is only part of the training. “The rest of the developmental magic occurs between the associate and the leader,” Hirst said. At the start of every holiday season, GameStop flies all managers to a conference where they complete a train-the-trainer program teaching them how to mentor and coach seasonal hires. “For about 30 percent of our managers, it will be their first holiday season, so it’s important to cover all the basics,” Cochran said. Managers learn how to explain the customer service process and create shadow opportunities for new hires, and how to coach them when they make mistakes, said Erin Wisdom, store manager. “It is important to create an environment where associates can practice what they learned in Level Up so they are confident on the floor,” said Wisdom, who is a manager in Arlington, Texas, and a mentor to other managers in her region. The mentoring piece of new hire training ensures every employee understands what’s expected CASE STUDY continued on page 65

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BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

The Right Vendor Makes All the Difference BY CUSHING ANDERSON

To maximize value from vendor partnerships, learning leaders must use a wide array of information sources to vet providers, and demand continual innovation.

earning and development organizations are increasingly complicated. Typically, chief learning officers are responsible for learning technology, content development, delivery, and measurement. With the expanding responsibilities, often constrained by budget and expertise, many CLOs use external partners for help with important activities. How CLOs use partners is almost as complex as learning and development itself. But a deeper understanding about the priorities and pitfalls in learning-business partner dynamics can help CLOs and their partners build more effective relationships. Every other month, IDC surveys Chief Learning Officer magazine’s Business Intelligence Board to gauge the issues, opportunities and attitudes important to senior training executives. Some 308 members gave their perceptions on how they choose vendors and where they are satisfied and dissatisfied with training partners.

Finding a Quality Learning Partner CLOs use all available information when looking for a new learning partner: white papers, analysts, trade shows and professional organizations. Some 67 percent of CLOs also report using use colleagues to identify appropriate learning partners; 46 percent of CLOs use professional organizations; 46 percent use trade shows and events (Figure 1). While there are many secondary sources to identify appropriate training partners, those sources are frequently used in conjunction with the more personal, trusted sources from their personal and professional networks. Those secondary sources might represent a CLO’s first look at new products, services or vendors, which are then vetted, validated or discarded by recommendations or opinions from trusted sources. The secondary sources also provide CLOs with context for solutions, or they support the selection process. One CLO said she values partners who “share case studies, experience, lessons learned.” 62 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

CLOs also use various criteria to assess a particular vendor or product for a relationship after the initial vetting process. While the most important factor in selecting a vendor is the quality of the product or service, three other characteristics are in that top tier: the value, the results produced, and the ease of working with the vendor (Figure 2). Similar to last year’s results, in the second tier are three characteristics that CLOs value: customization, problem-solving and innovation. Each represents a product or service-enabled approach. Getting the job done matters most, followed closely by the method or approach used to achieve results. The third-tier characteristics are supporting capabilities that lend credibility to the product or services and are tangential to recommendations; related services or support; and the partner’s brand reputation. While it might be easy to recommend learning partners solely based on quality or results, the secondand third-tier characteristics are also important. Customization, innovation and problem-solving abilities give credit to vendors who stretch the bounds of known solutions.

What Makes a Great Business Partner? Repeatedly, when asked to describe the challenges learning leaders encounter with their vendors, the issues often revolve around vendor flexibility and the vendor’s ability to listen and respond to specific enterprise issues and customize their solution if necessary. One CLO said in a partner he looks for: “Flexibility and willingness to understand our business and needs vs. sell ‘off the shelf’ material.” Another agreed — it is important that the vendor “understands my business, brings insight, able to work somewhat autonomously with agility and flexibility.” The third-tier characteristics — recommendations, services and support, and brand recognition — reflect

characteristics that can help sell internal stakeholders on the selection. Recommendations can help demonstrate a vendor’s credibility, and support services such as process or outsourcing support, demonstrate a vendor’s confidence making a solution work in the real world. Several CLOs mentioned customization explicitly when describing their priorities for selecting a learning partner: Willing to customize and help solve the ‘problem,’ not just offer previously used content,” said a CLO at a midsize firm. Another CLO looks for partners who customize and design solutions “to meet specific organizational structures/constraints in a way that best achieves the required end result for the learner.” This makes sense. Even the best relationship is doomed if the product or service is inferior, or fails to provide organizational benefits. A partners’ ability to create products that stretch beyond standard offerings is essential to a CLOs long-term satisfaction. While it is easy to first find a product and search for just the right circumstance in which to deploy it, that approach is backward. The first step to identify a high-quality product is to first understand precisely what problem should be solved and what the users’ expectations are. Expecting a solution to work outside of that defined set of problems and contexts is a recipe for dissatisfaction. No matter how well a provider’s solution solves the wrong problem, end users will be dissatisfied. CLO comments on what makes a great business partner reflect the need for alignment between vendor and problem. One CLO said a great partner “aligns appropriate solutions with my organizational needs vs. having a solution looking for a problem to solve.” Understanding specific industry constraints was also a recurring theme. CLOs said: • “The learning vendor must offer training in areas specific to this industry …” • “The ability to customize solutions to meet our industry needs and cost …” • “Experience in our industry sector …” • “A vendor who really knows our industry …” • “A vendor familiar with our industry and our needs …” • “One that takes the time to understand our industry and our culture …” That need for alignments points to one of the most frequently cited characteristics for a valued partner: A vendor who asks the right questions — and listens to the answers. “Listening to the needs of the client and follows an agile learning development approach.” Another CLO said: “They listen to the needs, learn about the culture and deliver a product that will meet the needs and be accepted.” But the implication is that it goes beyond listening: “Listens

FIGURE 1: HOW TO IDENTIFY LEARNING PARTNERS Certain sources are more consistently credible, trustworthy and reliable than others when it comes to finding the right vendor to partner with. Network (colleagues, friends, etc.)

67%

Professional organizations

46 % Conferences, trade shows and events 46 % Internet research 38 % Research organizations in the learning industry 28 % Industry publications 27% Live demos 22% Webinars 22% Note: Multiple answers accepted. Source: Human Capital Media Advisory Group, October 2015

FIGURE 2: A HIGH-QUALITY LEARNING PARTNER The following characteristics make successful vendor partnerships more likely. Quality of product 59 % Easy to work with 57% Value 54

36 % 36 % 38 %

Product results 49 %

41%

Customization 23 %

44 %

Thought leadership/innovation 22%

39 %

Problem-solving 17

43 %

Recommendations 11 36 % %

Process/outsourcing support 11% 35 % Availability of related services 10 %27%

■ Essential ■ High priority

Brand recognition/reputation 7% 21% Source: Human Capital Media Advisory Group, October 2015

FIGURE 3: CLO SATISFACTION Learning leaders like their vendors more in some areas than others. Learning delivery

44 %

47%

Executive education, coaching

42%

41%

Content development

38 %

47%

Learning consultants

37%

43 %

Learning technologies

30 %

Learning analytics

25 %

45 % 43 %

■ Very satisfied ■ Satisfied Source: Human Capital Media Advisory Group, October 2015

THE RIGHT VENDOR continued on page 64 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

TRUST continued from page 21

THE RIGHT VENDOR continued from page 63

“Our leadership academy, an internal leadership development program for current and future leaders at the college, focuses specifically on trust as a foundational skill to enable people to communicate and lead initiatives with faculty, classified staff and administrators in a shared governance environment.” A common language of trust opens up communication at all levels in an organization, said Stacy Fenner, director of human resources at Charter Steel in Mequon, Wisconsin. Further, having a model to explain what trustworthy behavior looks like can foster a more open dialogue between leaders and their teams and between peers. “Spending dedicated time adapting the model in multiple levels in the organization has given everyone a common language and understanding of how we can build trust and hold each other accountable in an engaged work environment,” Fenner said. Building trust in relationships and organizations is often mischaracterized as a soft skill primarily focused on creating warm and fuzzy relationships with employees. The reality is trust has hard, bottom-line benefits for organizations. Barbara Kimmel, founder and executive editor of Trust! magazine, said in the spring 2015 issue that “nothing impacts an organization’s bottom line more than trust. Our research has shown the most trustworthy companies have produced an 82.9 percent return vs. S&P’s 42.2 percent since August 2012. Companies that proactively build trust into their DNA see expenses decrease and profitability increase.” Research from the Great Place to Work Institute shows that high-trust companies perform nearly two times better than the general market on the S&P 500 and Russell 3000 indexes. Beyond the financial benefits, high levels of trust between leaders and employees foster engagement and vitality in an organization’s culture. The 2015 “Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement” report from the Society for Human Resource Management showed the top two contributors to employee satisfaction were respectful treatment of all employees at all levels (72 percent) and trust between employees and senior management (64 percent). The aforementioned Great Place to Work Institute reported that committed and engaged employees in high-trust companies perform 20 percent better and are 87 percent less likely to leave the organization compared with employees in low trust organizations. It would be an oversimplification to state that trust is the only requirement for leadership success. Leadership is a complex recipe that requires many ingredients, but trust is one must-have factor. Do you have it? CLO

and translates needs into a needed outcome.”

Randy Conley is the vice president of client services and trust practice leader for The Ken Blanchard Cos. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

Cushing Anderson is program director for learning services at market intelligence firm IDC. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

64 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

In General, Learning Vendor Partnerships Are Successful CLOs understand the risks of getting highly visible solutions wrong, and many vendors appear to understand it too. Generally, CLOs are quite satisfied with their learning business partners. Nine out of 10 enterprises use external partners/providers for some aspect of their learning and development function — from learning technology, content development or delivery to learning measurement. And more than 88 percent of CLOs report they are satisfied with those providers. In some learning and development areas, CLOs report even greater satisfaction. In learning delivery, 91 percent report being satisfied with their business partner. More than 80 percent report being satisfied with their executive education/coaching content development, and learning strategy/organization consulting vendors. Far fewer CLOs are as satisfied with their learning analytics providers (Figure 3). While satisfaction numbers are strong, and learning leaders appear to be satisfied with partner performance, there is room for improvement. While 75 percent of CLOs are either satisfied or very satisfied with their learning technology provider, only 30 percent are “very satisfied.” Worse yet, in learning analytics only 25 percent are “very satisfied,” and another 43 percent are “satisfied.” For most CLOs, working with learning partners — either for content, technology or services — is a necessary strategy. Maximizing the value of these relationships is essential. The Business Intelligence Board research suggests several strategies for CLOs considering working with vendors: • Before selecting a product or a service provider, it is essential to ensure the organizational requirements are clear in all stakeholders’ minds. • Cultivate a variety of sources and maintain a smaller set of connections to help thoroughly vet a new learning partner. Then, formally and thoroughly assess learning partners before signing a contract. • Finally, even if satisfied with the current team of providers, expect more. There is often more insight, more innovation and more opportunity for value than might be apparent in the first draft of a solution. By using a wide array of information sources, vetting providers thoroughly and demanding continual insight and innovation from learning providers, CLOs can maximize the value they receive from their learning partners. CLO

CASE STUDY continued from page 60 of them, and it helps them get over new job jitters. “Seasonal employees can easily get overwhelmed when they realize how much foot traffic we see during the holidays,” she said. “But Level Up and mentoring give them the tools they need to handle it.” All seasonal employees for the 2014 and 2015 holidays have used Level Up, and feedback remains positive. Managers like the transparency and ability to more easily track where employees are in their training, and customer surveys show high levels of satisfaction during the busies times of the year, Cochran said. “This year alone, we’ve had 1,200 letters from customers recognizing memorable experiences in the store.” Trainees also report loving the program. Scott has seen several temporary workers log in to take training on their last day of work, and leave feedback that they were going to miss the training when they were gone.

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The platform also has delivered financial and strategic benefits. The 3,000-plus seasonal hires who stay or return to the company have already finished their basic training, and in some cases taken additional courses, which means they ramp up faster than a brand new employee. “It saves us time and money in training them,” Cochran said. Most importantly, Level Up and the manager mentoring ensures employees feel prepared to do their job with confidence, Hirst said. “We are very proud of the fact that when these employees look back on their time at GameStop they will remember that we gave them the skills to be successful, to work well with others and to value great service. Wherever they end up, we hope they will always be passionate evangelists for the brand.” CLO

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Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

IN CONCLUSION

Bridging the Soft Skills Gap The problem is getting worse, and it’s holding back key talent cohorts • BY BRUCE TULGAN

Bruce Tulgan is CEO of RainmakerThinking, Inc and RainmakerThinking.Training. His latest book is “Bridging the Soft Skills Gap: How to Teach the Missing Basics to Today’s Young Talent.” To comment, email editor@ CLOmedia.com.

oday’s newest young people in the workplace have has bad customer service interactions. so much to offer — new technical skills, new ideas, If you are chief learning officer in an organization new perspective and new energy. Yet too many are with a substantial percentage of younger employees, held back, and driving the grown-ups crazy, because of the soft skills gap is your problem. Here’s how to be their weakness in old-fashioned soft skills. These soft part of the solution: skills, in contrast with hard or technical skills, encom- • Recognize the incredible power of soft skills. Unpass a variety of things such as self-awareness, people locking the power of soft skills can give your orgaskills, problem-solving nization a huge straand teamwork. tegic advantage Like the technical when it comes to skill gap, the soft skills hiring the best gap in the workforce young talent, gethas been developing ting them on board slowly for decades, but and up-to-speed it has become much faster, with better worse in recent years. performance manThe soft skills gap runs across the workforce — among agement, improved relationships and greater reworkers with technical skills who are in great demand tention rates. and workers without them. • Make sure leaders are asking and answering this Of course, we all know some young people who critical question: What are the high priority have great soft skills. It’s just that there are not enough soft-skills behaviors that are most important in of them — it’s a supply and demand thing. The costs your organization? Whatever they are, focus on are great, the opportunity costs are even greater, and them relentlessly. the problem stands right there in plain sight. • Because you cannot hire your way around the soft There are three reasons the problem evades solutions: skills gap, you need to make sure that key soft1. You can’t hire your way around the soft skills skills criteria are systematically built-in to every gap, at least not entirely. If you’re hiring for a aspect of your staffing strategy and hiring process. low-supply high-demand technical-skill job, you • Build soft skills training into your onboarding probably won’t be able to select out all who have process and up-to-speed training. Take the time weak soft skills. If you’re hiring for nontechnical to get employees to buy in to soft skills developjobs, soft skills are among the only criteria, makment by making the case for why the skills you ing the demand very high, despite the low supply. want them to learn are not just good for the busi2. Soft skills cannot be spoon fed to young peoness, but for them as well. Help them own the ple or forced upon them. Soft skills are all about learning by getting them actively involved in softself-regulation. Young people must be fully emskills training. brace soft skills to learn them. You have to get • Make sure your employees have plenty of opporyoung workers to care enough about soft skills tunities to practice the soft skills they learn on the that their self-building drive turns on and focuses job and gain recognition, reward and advanceon mastering the missing skills. ment through active participation. 3. You probably don’t have a bunch of extra time • Don’t fall for the myth that young workers toor resources to pull new young workers out of day only want to learn from computers. Rework and send them for soft skills training. Or member: They want to learn from people. create your own boot camp to break down new Make sure managers at all levels understand workers and systematically rebuild them. Most that they need to talk about the high-priority managers deal with soft skill gap issues when they soft skills in team meetings, and talk about arise — when an employee is late, is inapproprithem in their ongoing one-on-one dialogues ate, makes an error in judgment, has conflicts or with their direct reports. CLO

66 Chief Learning Officer • April 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

You can’t hire your way around the soft skills gap, at least not entirely.

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