Chief Learning Officer - July 2008 - (Page 41)

years — the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is a good example of an agency tackling these issues head-on. DOL strives to keep employee engagement and morale high while strategically placing staff in roles in which they will contribute most optimally to the efﬁciency of the organization. Its training department owns employee learning and development and manages content for common-needs training that is required of every employee. Like many other federal agencies, DOL originally was using inefﬁcient and disparate systems to administer this training and was challenged by the logistics its government-wide technology initiatives. DOL manages and delivers required training, conducts continual skills assessments and supports its ongoing performance needs with its agency-wide LMS. DOL also adopted a centralized content management system that acts as the source of DOL course content for all its employees. Consolidating its legacy training systems into a single learning management system (LMS) proved to be a valuable exchange for DOL and can be applied to private-sector organizations, as well. By centralizing the content for its LMS, DOL has achieved The government has found success linking development programs to HCM and performance mandates and by preparing for impending retirements through improved knowledge retention, workforce development and succession planning programs. of training the annual inﬂux of new hires and evaluating and placing new hires in open and pending positions throughout all levels of the organization. With its top two strategic goals marked as creating a prepared workforce and creating a competitive workforce, DOL knew it needed a robust technology to propel its efforts in creating optimal productivity. DOL set out to establish a learning management system of record that would deliver required common-needs training, aid in skills assessments and support multiple learning, content development and learning needs. DOL needed a highly scalable and extensible solution that could enable the agency’s current initiatives and expand as needed to support future talent management requirements and technologies. After an evaluation of multiple systems, DOL implemented Plateau Systems’ learning management system (LMS), a solution that was able to consolidate DOL’s legacy training systems into a single, enterprise-wide LMS. In 2005, DOL became the ﬁrst government agency to receive the highest performance rating under the e-government initiatives across all ﬁve of cost savings by eliminating server-resource costs and improving productivity. Learning administrators and executives now can focus on implementing key strategic learning initiatives instead of managing the day-today processes of content and training administration. A Mandate for Change As DOL’s example highlights, learning strategies — whether in the public or private sector — deliver the most value when they are tied to broader human capital management initiatives. The government has found success linking training and development programs to HCM and performance mandates and by preparing for impending retirements through improved knowledge retention, workforce development and succession planning programs. By adopting the best practices identiﬁed by government agencies for their own initiatives, private-sector CLOs will be better prepared to proactively address the organizational challenges associated with a changing workforce as it affects their industries. CLO Shelly Heiden is executive vice president at Plateau Systems. She can be reached at editor@clomedia.com. Chief Learning Ofﬁcer • July 2008 • www.clomedia.com 41 http://www.clomedia.com

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

Chief Learning Officer - July 2008 Contents Imperatives Selling Up, Selling Down Strategies Take Five A Customer-Driven Approach to Molding Tomorrow’s Leaders The Home Depot: Accelerated Leadership CLO Profile Birth of a Salesman: Selling Learning to Solve Business Issues Selling Learning’s Potential at Siemens Transform Corporate Learning With a User Network Wiki Training Increases Productivity for RMC Vanguard Mortgage Lessons From the Feds: Mapping Learning to Strategic Initiatives Department of Labor Centralizes Content Synchronous and Asynchronous: What’s in a Name? Coping With Cultural Barriers to E-Learning The Manager’s Responsibility for Employee Learning Case Study Business Intelligence In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - July 2008

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