Chief Learning Officer - June 2008 - (Page 56) “We’re trying to start a dialogue before employees leave: How can we put young grads in touch with retirees and assist employees who haven’t spoken to these experts in extracting their knowledge?” – Louis Gale, Mercer The KnowledgePlanet infrastructure helps with that, as well as the registrations and the different tasks needed to deliver such programs.” “We have a set of competencies that cross the business and cross the world; we’re able to align the development we offer people globally so these are consistent,” Wheelock added. “It’s very helpful to be able to roll out a new program in a variety of languages and then report on the activity. This speeds the knowledge to our consultants. It’s efficient, and this is key for us.” Part of the team’s challenge is blurring the line between learning and work through seamless integration, including linking to development materials through Mercer’s intranet and IT group. “We don’t want employees to have to make a conscious decision to stop working and start learning,” Wheelock said. Enabling employees to artfully blend learning and work is becoming increasingly relevant as workplace demographics begin shifting. Like most companies, Mercer faces the challenges associated with retiring baby boomers and the resulting anticipated workforce shortages. Mercer recognizes it has to address the issue of an aging workforce, and with many senior employees approaching retirement, that’s shaping the company’s road map for learning delivery and performance. The company’s strategy, according to Wheelock, is two-pronged. “We want to be smart about how we leverage retiring employees’ knowledge and how we do that creatively. On the other end, we’re recognizing that younger people will force us to change our approaches. We feel we need to push our company, IT and management to think differently about how we invest in technology and the ways we traditionally move people through their careers.” Gale concurred. “My passion is how we use technology to facilitate this,” she said. “We’re trying to start a dialogue before 56 Chief Learning Officer • June 2008 • www.clomedia.com employees leave: How can we put young grads in touch with retirees and assist employees who haven’t spoken to these experts in extracting their knowledge?” The answer, according to Gale, may lie in the Mercer community itself, which could potentially expand to include a Learning 2.0 vision for the KnowledgePlanet learning management system. “We are continuing to create a holistic experience around learning,” Gale said. “We’re looking at new ways of connecting employees to advance our learning goals, such as social networking and community. We’re such a virtual company, so how can we connect those people to each other to share knowledge and learning experiences? We’re talking about using social media to attract the right people before we even recruit them. Then we’ll have the infrastructure to enable those connections even though these people might never meet the people they work with on projects.” With social media, the team hopes to attract new talent, as well as welcome alumni back to the fold. The focus, Gale said, ultimately is on engaging people. “Engaged employees are more productive and deliver higher-quality results for our clients. We want to encourage them to meet others in other businesses and locations. People coming into the firm are used to organizing their social lives this way. It’s part of their makeup, so we want to ensure that part of the infrastructure is present for them.” According to Wheelock, however, implementing social learning comes with its own set of challenges, including possible prejudices. “Part of the way you secure investment for anything new in learning is to build the business case,” she explained. “We plan to show how the benefits of extending learning in the long term will impact performance and be worth that investment. We’re trying to CASE STUDY continued on page 64 http://www.clomedia.com
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