Chief Learning Officer - December 2007 - (Page 64) BUSINESS IMPACT Silver, Division 1 Sharon Smart, Director of Training, Mattress Giant Building on last year’s goal to implement a new hire training program that was updated to mirror today’s consultative selling standards and to shorten the learning curve of all new hires, Sharon Smart, director of training for Mattress Giant, kept pushing her organization’s learning forward. This year Smart added to her program more sales management and operations management training — realizing that if the company isn’t managing its human assets with care, employees won’t stay with it as a part of its team, and it will not be able to meet its company initiatives. The benchmarks for the implementation of each were to lower the turnover for commission-based sales associates, increase the margin of products sold through and increase customer service by using a new consultative selling process. As a result of the implementation, turnover was lowered to 67 percent, a continued improvement over past years, where turnover reached as high as 300 percent, and the average ticket size increased by an average of about 5 percent. Bonuses paid to store managers increased by 15 percent, while revenue per store for the year increased by approximately $134,000. Customer service scores continue to improve year after year — from 85 percent in '04 to 86 percent in '05 and 88 percent in '06, and the goal for 2007 was 92 percent. Silver, Division 2 D’Anne Carpenter, Executive Director, Organizational Learning and Development, Trinity Health Many of Trinity Health’s managers come from clinical backgrounds — such as practicing nurses promoted to nurse managers — and have never had any leadership training or experience. A trend was noticed in workforce and retention issues attributable to this lack of training. In a climate of severe nursing shortages, Trinity Health needed to better engage, and thus retain its nurses, creating optimally functioning work groups and providing excellent patient care experiences. D’Anne Carpenter, executive director of organizational learning and development, and her team developed the Trinity Health Leadership Development series to provide vision and strategic direction for the talent management and leadership development of Trinity Health’s 5,000 leaders. The first program, initiated in 2002, is Foundations in Leadership, the goal of which is to equip the approximately 3,000 supervisors and managers with the skills and confidence they need to effectively execute their responsibilities. On the whole, turnover at Mattress Giant is down, not coincidently because commission-based employees are making more per sale after the implementation. As part of their training, Foundations participants select action learning projects that are strategically aligned and address a need or challenge of the organization. Concurrently, the new leaders participate in eight or nine separate one- or two-day classroom-based modules taught by faculty from throughout the United States. The modules cover personal effectiveness, facilitating process improvement, ethics and values-based decision making, accountability and commitments, teams, human resources, labor relations, communication and conflict, and finance. The action learning project outcomes represent a minimum of 400 percent to 500 percent return on investment. For example, one project was on decreasing line draw blood culture contamination. In five months, the hospital saved more than $55,000 and projects an estimated annual savings, once implemented throughout its organization, of $540,000. Another project, which focused on reducing missing doses, led to a savings of almost $40,000 annually. December 2007 I www.clomedia.com I Chief Learning Officer 64 On the whole, turnover at Mattress Giant is down, not coincidently because commission-based employees are making more per sale after the implementation. The increase in positive customer relations also affects the bottom line, as fewer mattresses returned means more profit. Smart’s work at Mattress Giant has shown persistence in learning implementation is a major success factor, especially with a small business. http://lomedia.com
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