Chief Learning Officer - January 2009 - (Page 56) listening to and mediating employee behavior issues. Using the tools learned in his course, the manager applied the skills and worked with his team to develop behavior guidelines. The guidelines have resulted in increased collaboration among the team and have dramatically reduced employee interruptions to 25 minutes per day. What does this mean to KP? Instead of mediating employee issues, this manager has more time to assist KP patients in the pharmacy and take care of issues relating to patient care. The results are tangible — saved time and labor costs — and equally important, intangible contributions further our mission of providing outstanding patient care. Another example of a goal that is helping to improve the way KP does business is one participant’s pledge to “work through the steps for facilitating agreement in at least five meetings so that our meetings are more effective and meeting outcomes are reached 95 percent of the time.” Prior to attending her course, this project manager discovered that poor communication during meetings resulted in one and a half wasted hours per week, or 68 hours a year. Once this individual set her goal and started following-through on the steps she learned in class, she achieved 95 percent of her meeting objectives. This represents a savings of 68 hours a year that this project manager is able to spend on productive and higher-value items. KP has discovered the effective implementation of small goals can result in big savings to the organization. For example, a pharmacy manager attends a class, learns a new management technique and makes a small change to a process. This change results in a decrease in employee mediations. Subsequently, he saves approximately 95 minutes a day. Now he can use this time in the pharmacy assisting KP patients. The L&D team would then determine the value of 95 minutes of his time, or the ROI for the organization. In this example, 95 minutes equals $718 in pay and benefits per day. The cost of the class is $2,000. The L&D team estimates that the isolated benefit from the course is 65 percent. Therefore, the cost savings to KP for this one change is $21,117 annually. The Road Ahead The L&D team is creating the KP-wide scorecard detailing ROI estimates based on individuals’ goals and accomplishments. The total of a large number of individual successes like those above will add up to significant savings and improved patient care. The key is to ensure that programs and goals are well-crafted, that there is a system to ensure follow-through and application, and that the results are recorded and rigorously analyzed. KP’s learning team knows that organizations improve one goal at a time, and it’s committed to driving individual changes that add up to large rewards and big improvements. CLO Susan Chai, MBA, is the manager of operations and publications for the learning solutions team at Kaiser Permanente. She can be reached at editor@clomedia.com. 56 Chief Learning Officer • January 2009 • www.clomedia.com J.H. COHN continued from page 51 Implementation For companies considering implementing or extending a program that offers enabling skills, as well as technical skills development, consider these guidelines: • Get support from senior management. Buy-in from senior management is instrumental to any successful program; yet, it’s important to recognize that you may be introducing a significant culture change. Build in time to introduce the concept gradually. • Assess needs. Understand which enabling skills are most needed by your workforce and in your industry. Meet with employees and conduct surveys to determine the skill gaps. You may not need to concentrate on all of the top enabling skills. • Establish goals. Have long-term and short-term objectives in place to help keep the program on track. • Develop gradually. Start by offering a few courses as a test run. It will be easier to improve and grow the program. • Evaluate progress. At minimum, have a strong feedback system in place to identify what is working and what needs to improve. Since enabling skills may be seen as less critical than technical skills, clearly identify the desired results and how they will be measured. J.H. Cohn has Level 1 and Level 2 evaluation in place. In addition, the company conducts follow-up interviews and focus groups to gather specific results and learn how its people have used enabling skills, internally and externally. • Evaluate progress at a higher level. Once the program is established, consider selectively implementing Level 3 (behavior change) evaluation. Level 3 allows for a more in-depth look at the success of an enabling-skills program. Companies can determine, for example, whether a leadership program actually had an impact on a manager’s day-to-day activities. Looking Ahead Enabling-skills development will continue to increase. As more and more companies become global, the need for this type of training will become especially relevant. More businesses will adopt global enabling-skills models. For the most part, the priority on enabling skills should eventually level off as companies find the right balance. However, there likely will be a growing emphasis on blended solutions in this area and leveraging e-learning for enabling-skills training. The Bottom Line Making a true commitment to enabling-skills development can reap many rewards, including employee retention and competitive advantage. Companies will continue to find that the development of employees’ enabling skills is a worthwhile use of time and resources. CLO Chuck Kovach is director of the learning and development department at J.H. Cohn LLP. He can be reached at editor@clomedia.com. http://www.clomedia.com
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