Chief Learning Officer - February 2008 - (Page 26)

learning solutions in practice: Home Depot: Building Better Associates With an associate population that numbers in the hundreds of thousands, Home Depot is a formidable organization in the retail sector. What makes the company unique is not its sheer size, though, but rather the considerable knowledge of its workforce regarding the products it sells. “In general, in retail, I think [a learning and development strategy] is very important because customer expectations rise every year, and it becomes a clear, competitive differentiator from retailer to retailer,” said Leslie Joyce, Ph.D., vice president and chief learning officer of Home Depot. “The extent to which your associates are more knowledgeable, or more helpful, or more engaged makes a big difference in the business outcomes that occur. It’s very important to instill a sense of professionalism into the retail industry, and training and development is a big part of that.” Home Depot’s sales associates have a defined required curriculum that they must complete within the first nine months of employment, known as “Before the Apron.” Before receiving their apron, employees must complete a training session that lasts between two and five days. Then, there is a set of classes that must be completed within the first 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, six months and nine months of employment. “What we know is that those individuals who believe that they received the training that they needed to do their job within the first 90 days to six months tend to stay with us far longer than those that did not,” Joyce said. “We have tried to front-load curriculum as much as we can, which means we put as much learning as in the very early days of an associate’s tenure as we can without overloading them.” These initial learning experiences cover product knowledge, service and expectations, and safety and wellness. The centralized curriculum that Home Depot uses has been in place for about seven years. Prior to that, the stores handled it all themselves, Joyce said. However, she added that not all of the training is controlled by the corporate learning function. “The stores themselves create lots of learning opportunities for their associate population that reflect the customer expectations and the customer buying habits within that store,” she explained. “I think that the ability to localize other aspects of learning and development to the environment in which each associate works is equally important as consistency. The challenge is balancing both of those, knowing what needs to be consistent and what is best done with local flair.” For the learning that they develop and deliver, Joyce and her team rely on a wide array of tools to bring that content to Home Depot employees. “We try to match the learning method to the content and the desired outcome,” she said. “We use nearly every learning strategy, from self-paced to e-learning to coaching to mentoring to classroom based to video based to broadcast based. All of those are tools that we utilize to create a varied learning experience so our associates don’t get bored of the same old methodology. It ensures that things for us are scalable, so you’ve got to be able to get learning to associates any time, any place, and it ensures that the learning method and the content resonate with the associate.” Perhaps not surprisingly, Home Depot looks at customer feedback to determine how these development programs contribute to business success. “As do most retailers, we gather customer feedback electronically through our Web sites, and a couple of the questions deal directly with the knowledge level of our associates and the extent to which that helped or hindered the shopping experience,” Joyce said. “We know that the more knowledgeable an associate, the better the shopping experience, and the better the shopping experience, the better the likelihood of customer loyalty.” — Lindsay Edmonds Wickman, lwickman@clomedia.com three-hour mini-sessions when new products are launched, and every year all of the sales associates participate in a short training segment. Another company that provides its workers with multiple learning opportunities within the first few weeks of employment is Vans, a division of VF Outdoor Inc. and a leading actionsports lifestyle company. In previous years, Vans distributed a lot of its new-hire information via face-to-face narrative. Yet, knowledge absorption depended heavily on the person who was conducting the orientation, and there was no real consistency in learning delivery. An associate training under a store manager who had been in the company for a few years and really understood the culture, brand and heritage might get detailed anecdotes from the field, and thus would have a deeper understanding of what the company is about than an associate training under a less experienced manager. To provide associates with a foundational understanding of the company’s culture and heritage, Vans recently launched a DVD in all of its retail stores as part of new-hire orientation. As part of the onboarding process for all employees, the 13-minute piece offers a look back over highlights from the company’s history. This visual representation helps to convey an authenticity that is valuable to sustaining the brand, said Vans Director of Human Resources Amy Stern. “The most important thing to each and every associate is that every customer’s experience is to be a positive one,” Stern explained. “When the company was founded 40 years ago, founder Paul Van Doren instilled in retail employees this concept of ‘tell a friend.’ We want everyone to have a positive experience at Vans, so they’ll go out and tell a friend and keep the momentum going. Another piece is having that product knowledge to truly understand who your customer is, what their needs are and knowing our products well enough to know what’s a good fit for them and what they are truly looking for. The customer-service component is a very big part of ensuring their experience is positive.” In addition, Vans’ employees are required to complete the company’s customer service and training program, usually within the first 90 days of employment. Titled SKATE, the program’s material centers on culture, product knowledge and how employees create the Vans’ customer experience. Everyone from associates up through store managers must complete the program and attain certification. The certification is linked to Vans’ Secret Shop program to ensure SKATE principles also are February 2008 I www.clomedia.com I Chief Learning Officer 26 http://www.clomedia.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Chief Learning Officer - February 2008

Chief Learning Officer - February 2008 Editor's Letter Table of Contents Business Impact Trends Best Practices Effectiveness Guest Editorial Learning Solutions Home Depot: Building Better Associates CLO Profile Environment Realizing the Vision of “One Philips” Tactics Sun Microsystems’ Next-Generation Worker Video Game Recruiting Tool Productivity The Regence Group: Blended Measurement Human Capital NASA: A Case Study in Technical Leadership Development Case Study Business Intelligence Advertisers' Index Editorial Resources In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - February 2008

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