Chief Learning Officer - November 2007 - (Page 56)

case study Besides building skills and knowledge, the learning offerings help promote employee engagement through interactivity. tioned strategically for success,” Vallee said. “Even more important, it drives alignment between our corporate goals, our board and our senior leaders who are responsible for executing the day-to-day functions that help us achieve our goals. “It also gives me a chance to interact personally with members of our leadership team. The class is very conversational — there’s a lot of sharing of ideas. So, for me and for the leaders attending the class, we spend quality time together, away from the demands of a regular workday, talking about and thinking about Avnet’s strategies, why we do what we do and where we’re going in the future. The leaders also have a chance to meet and connect with leaders from other parts of the business they might not work with on a regular basis, so there’s also a networking benefit for them.” The LEAD program follows more or less the same model of delivery but is more concerned with the fundamentals of management, Church said. “It’s pretty practical. It starts with things like how to deal with pay plans, performance appraisals and how to interview and select,” he said. “The key class for middle management is one that we co-developed with The Ken Blanchard Cos. called ‘Situational Leadership and Coaching for Performance.’ It’s cornerstone because when you think about what we’re trying to do, it’s really all about performance management. We’re trying to give feedback to improve the performance of every employee because that’s how the company improves. It’s designed to provide them with the skills they need to have meaningful discussions with their employees, evaluate their performance and build a development plan that will continuously improve performance and develop careers.” LEAD and GOLD, along with PRO (a program designed for Avnet’s individual contributors) tie together to form a holistic learning experience throughout the employee life cycle. “The goal is that they build on one another,” Church said. “If you came into Avnet as an individual contributor and were promoted to middle manager and then executive, your training would build on itself and be connected as you moved through your career.” Besides building skills and knowledge, the learning offerings help promote employee engagement through interactivity. “It’s mostly interaction,” Church said. “My classes are breakout sessions, exercises, case studies and even role-playing. We have to do that because we can’t take people who are highly active during the day and put them in a class where they just sit there for two days. We could hire people to teach these classes, but they’ll probably do a lot of lecturing, and they probably won’t be able to relate a lot of things to Avnet’s business, which we’re obviously able to do.” This concept of engagement is central to the learning function, to the point where it’s actually a key indicator for its success. Avnet does a global employee survey annually, and Church pays more attention to the employee commitment index than anything else. “It’s a series of questions that get at the level of engagement we currently have with our employees,” he said. “Obviously, our goal is improvement. The good news is that over the last three years — and we’ve asked the same questions each year — we’ve improved three points each year in employee engagement.” Of course, that’s not the only thing measured. Church also tracks the company’s bottom line to determine the efficacy of employee education. “This is an area where having been a business leader probably gives me a bit of an advantage,” he said. “Our key metric for productivity (which I realize might be different from other companies’) is that we measure operating expenses as a percentage of gross profit. We’re buying our product from a supplier, and our margin is the difference between what we buy it for and what we sell it for. “In the last three years, we’ve improved on that metric by 20 percent, and our stock price has responded accordingly. During that period of time, we increased training and development as a percent of payroll from 1.5 percent to 2.5 percent. That helps me justify the investment. We believe that’s making our employees more productive and engaged.” Vallee has no trouble making that connection either. “Learning and development has a direct impact on our team’s ability to serve our customers in the best, most efficient way possible, and that drives value to our partners, and it helps drive profitable growth for the corporation,” he said. “We have invested in the development of our people because it improves morale and helps our people grow, and in turn, they help our partners and Avnet grow. It’s really quite a simple equation, if you think about it — the more we invest in our team, the better equipped they are to grow personally and to serve our customers, who will, in turn, reward us with their loyalty and their business.” — Brian Summerfield, bsummerfield@clomedia.com November 2007 I www.clomedia.com I Chief Learning Officer 56 http://www.clomedia.com

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

Chief Learning Officer - November 2007 Editor's Letter Table of Contents Imperatives Selling Up, Selling Down Strategies Take Five Rediscovering the Essence of Learning Cornell University Maintains Productivity While Pursuing Higher Education CLO Profile How Loyalty and Employee Engagement Add Up to Corporate Profits A Strategic Foundation The Evolution of the LMS Ariba: Growing Sales Skills in Conjunction with LMS Technology Leveraging Change to Build Productivity Equinox Fitness: Leveraging Change to Build Productivity Tangibles or Intangibles: Where’s Your Value? Raising the Stakes: The Strategic Role of the CLO Case Study Business Intelligence Case Study Advertisers' Index Editorial Resources In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - November 2007

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