E-Learning Excellence in Practice
Each year the American Society for Training & Development recognizes individuals and teams who advance the knowledge of the workplace learning and performance profession and contribute to workforce capability and organizational competitiveness through their exemplary practices. Their work inspires and informs us all, and their accomplishments demonstrate how learning drives the performance of businesses and organizations worldwide.
The Excellence in Practice category recognizes organizations for results achieved through learning and performance solutions. Awards are presented for proven practices that have delivered measurable results, and Citations are presented for practices from which much can be learned.
Recognition is given this year in seven areas:
Here are this year’s winners and citations in the area of learning technology.
Winners
DIRECTV Boise, Idaho
Desktop Learning: Implementing Visual Fluency and Desktop Tools to Impact Learning and Performance
In the fast-paced telecommunications industry, reducing classroom training time while simultaneously increasing agent performance can be a challenge. Because employees must have large amounts of information at their fingertips, the solution for DIRECTV rests with a comprehensive desktop e-learning and performance strategy.
To start the process, learning leaders carefully collected data from interviews, focus groups, observations, surveys, and extant data reviews. This provided the foundation for restructuring desktop and e-learning tools to increase employee performance. As a result, the e-learning team and the intranet web team came together to create an online learning team to focus on all aspects of desktop learning.
A more robust on-demand learning and performance support tool was created, and existing online tools were re-designed to provide easy, onescreen access to information. The team members also replaced complicated text-only documents with online decision-support tools and flowchart job aids. In addition, they launched a learning management system to push and track multimedia, courseware, and assessments directly at the agent desktop.
The desktop learning project has produced dramatic business results for DIRECTV. More issues are resolved during the first call to customer service, and employees’ average call handle time has decreased. Moreover, other CBT, job aids, and agent briefings have helped to reduce training time and increase customer and employee satisfaction rates.
KPMG Montvale, New Jersey
NxLevel Solutions Hopewell, New Jersey
PIXELearning Conventry, United Kingdom
Pretty Liquid Simulated Audit
Getting new hires “up to speed” is a universal training challenge. But KPMG’s computerized simulation tool has effectively helped the organization address the challenge head-on. In 2005, the organization replaced its paper-based simulation with a virtual-reality tool designed to bring on-the-job experience to new hires who were learning audit fundamentals in the classroom.
Between lecture and demonstration modules, participants audit the fictitious Pretty Liquid cosmetics company via their laptops. They interview virtual people, gather financial data, execute specific audit tasks, conduct analyses, and document results. They also create audit workpapers that are reviewed by instructors who serve as supervisors during the activity. In follow-up evaluations, participants estimated that the simulation was the third highest contributor to their job performance— just behind on-the-job coaching from supervisors and the work experience itself.
Eighty-eight percent of the supervisors rated participants as “equal to” or “better” prepared than the ones supervised the year before. Participants, too, felt more confident as a result of the program. Using Phillip’s return-on-investment methodology, officials estimated that the training boosted overall productivity by more than 24 percent.
Agilent Technologies Santa Clara, California
BTS-USA San Francisco, California
Accelerating Leadership and Business Acumen
The actions of Agilent Technologies’s mid-level managers affect nearly 95 percent of its workforce and are key to the overall health of the business. Consequently, when the company underwent a major restructuring that required renewed business acumen, it was important to educate these 900 mid-level leaders on the financial levers that influence the company’s growth and profitability.
Officials wanted these leaders to gain real-world experience in making business decisions and witnessing their results—in a controlled environment. To satisfy this dichotomy of requirements, the learning team designed a customized simulation based on data collected from 45 hours of interviews with top managers. Within two months, team members developed a 3.5-day team simulation and follow-up activities. The intensive simulation divided participants into competing fictional companies and required them to make management and leadership decisions while competing for customers, market share, key talent, and revenue, and maximizing their return-on-investment.
More than 618 mid-level managers worldwide have completed the program, and the company reports that participants are applying the skills they learned. Product launch dates have been accelerated, customer satisfaction goals have been surpassed, and the majority of participants report that they teach the key learnings to their teams.
AlliedBarton Security Services King of Prussia, Pennslyvania
GuardTek Inspector
In early 2006, AlliedBarton Security Services began investigating mobile data technologies to find a simple learning solution to improve the quality of field inspections. Because the company has more than 50,000 employees in more than 100 cities, leaders wanted an easily accessible, distance-learning program that was also cost effective.
Officials enlisted the help of a software development company to build a web-based assessment and training tool with an internal report module. Managers and clients, who have varying levels of pre-designated access, can create and review field reports and then follow up with training that’s appropriate for the job. Employees at the company’s field offices and thousands of service locations are trained through an online distance-learning application. Information is also deployed to field supervisors via smart phones equipped with a Microsoft desktop format. Further, project teams share documents and project calendars as well as gather feedback from vendor user groups and company managers via a web-based collaboration site.
So far, more than 6,000 employees participate in the practice, and the company has experienced positive results from the initiative. Productivity has increased, there are more one-on-one learning opportunities at the job level, and employee and client communication and retention rates have improved.
Citations
Chrysler Auburn Hills, Michigan
ES3 Rochester Hills, Michigan
New Vehicle Sales Workshop
Learning leaders at Chrysler have combined simulation-based learning, performance-improvement methodologies, and a structured field-support process into an effective franchise-dealer development regimen. Rather than typical frontline staff training, the Dealer Performance Workshop allows dealership senior management to direct the learning and performance improvement process.
At the kick-off workshop event, management teams participate in a computer simulation based on a composite profile of profitable dealers. Veteran dealership consultants then provide resources for more effective marketing, merchandising, and customer service. Teams enter their own financial data into the model, which allows them to plan subsequent improvements and gauge bottom-line results. Implementation is supported by field support staff who work with the teams to set goals and create an action plan. The staff supports participants through a structured 30-, 60-, and 90-day consulting process while tracking and documenting financial results using the computer simulation. Course facilitators and retail subject matter experts also provide assistance through video-based email and an embedded “Ask the Expert” support tool.
Because of these innovative approaches, organizational learning at Chrysler is connected to performance and profitable business results. The dealers benefit from the improved performance and can readily document learning’s return-on-investment using the financial simulation methodology.
Hewlett-Packard Company Marlboro, Massachusetts
Global Content Model
The Global Content Model is a set of guidelines used to develop product-based training content for Hewlett-Packard’s technical support personnel and customers. It was developed to standardize how training courses are structured and presented so they can be re-used or customized efficiently for additional learning solutions.
To make the model, HP’s learning staff interviewed employees who are responsible for creating and customizing course content. They also examined the competency areas of target audiences. From there, the development of the guidelines was divided into phases that focus on the training needs of a specific audience. In addition to a core group of learning professionals who were involved in the entire process, leaders brought in employees with specific audience expertise for each phase’s development.
The Global Content Model identifies lesson topics, based on audience-specific best practices, and presents them in a logical sequence. The model also guides users on how to integrate soft skills into product-based training and how to develop effective virtual and classroom lab exercises.
Although the model development guidelines were just recently implemented, they are already showing significant time-savings benefits for the company. Content developed according to this model is also significantly easier to customize because of its modular, uniform structure.
Hewlett-Packard Company Palo Alto, California
RAIL – Remotely Assisted Instructional Learning
For information technology professionals, education is a never-ending process that requires the mastery of new skills as IT infrastructure changes. Traveling to training sessions, however, can be time consuming and expensive, and scheduling several days away from the office and one’s family can be difficult for IT professionals who run mission-critical systems.
Implemented in 2002, Remotely Assisted Instructional Learning program provides a virtual learning environment for thousands of students from myriad countries. RAIL eliminates the hassle and expense of traveling to a training session by providing participants with live, real-time interaction with an expert instructor and class members. It also provides hands-on lab activities with live products and multi-vendor datacenter configurations. In addition, classes can be browsed, reserved, and paid for by accessing the RAIL website or talking to a call center consultant. RAIL instructors complete an intensive orientation process that covers best practices for managing a virtual classroom and maximizing the interactive experience for participants.
The program offers participants immediate hands-on experience to reinforce the classroom experience, and is an improvement over HP’s traditional instructor-led training in many ways. It is more cost-effective, flexible, and convenient for participants. It also helps employees learn about rapidly evolving technologies more quickly.
Hewlett-Packard Company Houston, Texas
Sales Recruiter & Hiring Manager Online Training
One of Hewlett-Packard’s strategic initiatives is to acquire the best salesforce in the information technology industry and secure a talent pipeline for the future. Leaders believe that having a high-performance sales team will accelerate growth and enable go-to-market success.
To ensure that the company’s recruiting professionals were fully prepared to support the strategy, the learning and development team created a learning solution that consisted of two specialized web-based training modules designed to help recruiting staff more effectively identify, qualify, and select high-performing candidates.
The Recruiter Dynamics Module outlines staffing priorities, defines targeted candidates, and explains how hiring roles fit into the company’s field structure. The Recruiter Skill Development Module illustrates how to qualify candidates, match candidate skills to role requirements, and establish a service-level agreement with hiring managers. While designing the recruiter training, the team discovered that hiring managers needed to be better prepared to select candidates.
Consequently, the team created the Hiring Manager Skill Development Module, which focuses on HR guidelines and recruiter partnerships, diversity benefits, and effective interviewing techniques. Because of the new training, performance gaps are closing. The sales team, whose members were hired because of the new recruiting methodology, boosted revenue by increasing sales 16 percent.
Rockwell Collins Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Triple Creek Associates Greenwood Village, Colorado
Enterprise Mentoring Program
Mentoring and coaching are critical components of Rockwell Collins’s organizational goal of developing more capable leaders to guide its 19,000 employees in 27 countries. Yet when the company expanded its mentoring and coaching offerings to reach more employees, the programs became increasingly difficult to manage as the number of participants increased.
Officials found that managing these mentoring programs manually was turning into an administrative nightmare. The organization needed a way to consolidate the multiple mentoring initiatives, reduce the number of hours required to administer the programs, and make the mentoring program available to all employees globally. The solution was to employ a web-based mentoring process that
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enables mentoring for all employees
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integrates mentoring into existing people programs
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implements continuous improvement processes
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develops mentor education and training
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reinforces the company’s culture, which makes mentoring a priority
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develops an effective and consistent matching process.
The company just completed a pilot of the web-based mentoring program that involved more than 2,200 employees, but required only two administrators. That’s a great improvement from its original program, which reached only 500 participants but required 12 administrators. Because of this success, the company recently implemented the program across the entire organization.
The Hong Kong Police Force Hong Kong, SAR, China
Scenario-Based Interactive Multiplayer Simulation
Because of recent events such as the SARS outbreak and terrorist attacks, leaders at Hong Kong’s Police Force wanted to train senior- and middle-ranking officers to handle critical events. Each year, the force’s emergency response team runs territory-wide training exercises that simulate critical incidents. However, this kind of scenario-based learning involves multiple units, props, and actors from various locations, and therefore is time consuming and expensive to conduct.
Consequently, the organization could not afford to train all of its more than 2,000 senior- and middle-ranking officers. Officials knew that a more cost-effective training solution was needed, so they developed a computer-based interactive system that offers a scenario-based desktop exercise. Because of its simple, user-friendly design, the program is easily accessed by anyone with an Internet connection. It is also less expensive to deploy because the organization does not have to pay for props or actors.
Within eight months of the rollout, more than 170 officers were trained. That success inspired leaders to expand the system so other training units and law enforcement agencies in Hong Kong could use it.