Chief Learning Officer - September 2007 - (Page 43)

tactics If executed correctly, a quality learning program will provide your employees with the requisite skills they need to do their jobs well, thus increasing their motivation to work more efficiently, effectively and successfully. People don’t come to work to fail — they come to succeed, and we need to help them do that. The benefits of more knowledgeable, more effective employees to your bottom line are obvious (increased revenue, projects delivered on time and on budget, etc.), but this investment in your employees will also yield less turnover, making you an employer of choice rather than a place where people come to pick up a paycheck. Providing such opportunities shows your employees you care about their development and that you’re willing to invest to provide them with the chance to grow. Deciding to embrace quality learning within your organization is an essential step toward success, but that’s not enough. There are many common pitfalls that organizations encounter on the long, fretful road to launching organizationwide learning initiatives — from communication and planning troubles to a lack of awareness and executive buy in. To help you avoid these problems, ESI International spent more than a year analyzing some of the most successful performance improvement programs developed for various Global Fortune 500 firms over the last 25 years. ESI analyzed multinational companies that had 100 to 5,000 employees and were within the financial services, pharmaceutical, enterprise IT and telecommunications industries. Through this research, five essential guidelines have been identified that can build high-quality learning. When implemented in a systematic, outcome-oriented way, these guidelines can act as a blueprint to achieve the greatest return on performance-improvement investment. tion among your executives from the beginning of a learning engagement, strategizing on the best approaches to get things going. In short, your executives and managers should be just as interested in and knowledgeable about your learning program’s goals and details as those who are signing up for and taking the actual courses. Just as essential is making sure your executives understand the learning’s realities and process. By nature, executives often demand quick, even instant results, but as anyone who has ever tried to learn how to drive a golf ball straighter or learn to speak another language can tell you, learning new skills takes time. Learning (and, more important, the application of new knowledge) is an exercise that requires constant practice. Therefore, executives and managers should be willing to help their employees move from learning to application by setting realistic expectations for success and offering additional learning, mentoring and support as needed. Your executives and managers should be just as interested in and knowledgeable about your learning program’s goals and details as those who are signing up for and taking the actual courses. Relevance and the Evolution of Needs Managers ask employees to attend many events each year such as internal seminars, conferences, trade shows and, of course, countless meetings. With so much competing for their time and attention, one thing is certain: The moment employees sense they’ve been asked to attend a learning program that seemingly doesn’t apply to them, they’re going to tune out, take out their BlackBerries and start responding to e-mails. Some participants will simply get up and leave. As obvious as relevance might seem when developing a learning program, it is one of the most common pitfalls to success. Employees need to understand right away that the program is valuable to them and the organization in a tangible way. It must be made perfectly clear that they should expect the learning to Executive and Midlevel Management Involvement Fundamentally, executive and management support will be one of the primary drivers for promoting learning and ensuring its acceptance within your organization. It is absolutely essential that you facilitate open communica- 43 September 2007 I www.clomedia.com I Chief Learning Officer http://www.clomedia.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Chief Learning Officer - September 2007

Editor's Letter Contents Letters to the Editor Strategies Selling up, Selling Down Take Five Imperatives Guest Editorial Learning Solutions Embarking on a Learning Journey Clo Profile Environment CIGNA Service Operations: Making Strategic Change Happen, and Making It Stick Tactics Black & Decker: On-Demand Learning Creation and Consumption Productivity The Army You Have Human Capital Holiday Inn Express: Delivering Critical Training Globally Case Study: Tegan Jones Business Intelligence Case Study: Lisa Rummler Advertisers' Index Editorial Resources In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - September 2007

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