The majority of learning hours at USAA are delivered to call center employees, who have recently been on the receiving end of workforce readiness strategy initiatives.
About four years ago, USAA began a transformation. Long known for its customer service (Business Week named it one of the top three), the company undertook a change in strategic direction from a service-based organization to a relationship sales organization. The learning organization, which is closely aligned to USAA's business strategy, was a key part of helping to build out the transformation plan and setting the path to make it happen. The workforce readiness strategy demanded new skill sets, curriculum to develop them, support via tools and processes for managers, and the implementation of a performance analytics solution.
"It is USAA's mission to facilitate the financial security of our members," says Steven Stone, vice president of member contact learning. "The transformation meant that our call center employees needed to be able to identify relevant and need-based solutions to protect our members' financial security. The transformation was a little scary for a lot of people. We had to build lots of new behaviors into the ranks. But one of the things I absolutely love about this organization is that learning was at the table from the very beginning and for the entire transformation journey."
USAA employs more than 25,500 people at major facilities in San Antonio, Texas; Tampa, Florida; Colorado Springs, Colorado; and Phoenix. Primary lines of business include banking, insurance, and investment products, and the company had more than $20 billion in revenue last year.
The vast majority of employees—16,000—work in the call center and receive 84 percent of the total learning hours delivered annually. The learning function employs 177 professionals who are aligned with the stages of the ADDIE model; the delivery group is the largest.
The role and scope of the learning organization is determined by key learning executives in partnership with senior business leaders. Learning is segmented into professional development, leadership development, call center training, and job-specific technical learning. Stone heads up call center training while his colleague Matt Stevens oversees leadership and professional development. Learning partners with lines of business to ensure that the operating environment sustains new skills post-learning events.
In addition to the transformation effort, another critical business issue facing USAA in 2012 was maintaining the strength and vitality of the company's unique culture across its increasingly dispersed workforce. Learning took a leadership role by creating a "spoke and hub" strategy that aligns remote employees with a local office within an hour's drive where they can attend company events and celebrations. Webcams and telepresence facilitate virtual face-to-face contact.
"Culture and employee engagement come under the talent management umbrella at USAA, and there is a tight link between learning and culture. This is a foundational element to ensure that new employees get an immediate feel for the culture, as well as ongoing reinforcement," says Stevens.
The learning organization works to equip managers and leaders with tips and strategies to reinforce cultural concepts with the dispersed workforce, and facilitates workshops about behavioral norms.
"We teach hub leaders to be cultural beacons for collaboration, teamwork, and communication," says Stevens. "This allows for the culture to become the way we do business and not just a poster campaign."
The learning organization plays a performance consulting role to ensure that initiatives are necessary and appropriate. Sometimes the solution is a nonlearning one. That was the case with a learning client that was experiencing a high volume of misdirected calls. The business unit planned to hire a manager and 15 new staff members to handle the misdirected calls and initially contacted the learning department to request a training plan. "Often learning is viewed as magical pixie dust," laughs Stone.
The learning performance consultant conducted a root cause analysis that revealed that, not only were the employees incorrectly forwarding calls, but workforce management principles were not being applied. This hampered their ability to manage staff resources efficiently.
After the learning consultant designed and delivered a job aid for the employees, misdirected calls dropped immediately by 53 percent. Better yet, the business unit employees reported an 83 percent increase in job satisfaction after the solution was implemented.
Call center employees also benefited from USAA's innovative Auto New Hire pipeline course. The course is high-volume, graduating 1,200 employees a year. One outcome of the sales and service transformation was the realization that multiweek, topic-based learning sessions were too much and didn't validate trainees' proficiency. Working with an external partner, the learning organization looked at call types and realized that 20 percent of calls were responsible for 80 percent of the volume.
The new solution used a critical mistake methodology to build a task-based, iterative course that immerses students in actual job tasks. Learners can attempt different assignments and learn from the ones that are successful. The solution blends branching simulations, role plays, technical simulations, self-study, and instructor-led sessions over 36 days. The course was previously 51 days; the shorter duration brought productivity gains of $682,000 in 2012. In 2013, Stone estimates that more than 1,600 students will graduate from the course, resulting in more than $5 million in productivity gains.
Time to proficiency is a key metric for this population: Previously, 33 percent of participants were proficient 10 weeks after the program. However, 10 weeks after the reinvented solution, 55 percent of employees were proficient. There are six more pipeline reinventions in progress.