Chief Learning Officer - December 2007 - (Page 68) INNOVATION Silver, Division 1 Jim Brolley, Director, Organizational Development and Training, Harley-Davidson Harley-Davidson faces a challenge to recruit, develop and retain its workforce. The demands of a rapidly growing and changing business mean that employees are stretched thin and need to have very effective learning experiences. After multiple attempts at more traditional learning fell short of engaging learning, Harley-Davidson was determined to put its brand of thinking to work on the learning plan for onboarding new human resources hires and developing skills for current HR employees. The result was HR EDGE, an integrated learning experience that consists of self-guided study and activities, topical modules, online gaming, face-to-face events, and both live and e-seminar action learning. The HR EDGE program addresses the challenges of navigating through a unique and new culture and helps to ensure that each HR employee feels connected to the company. Designed to resemble a motorcycle road trip, it reflects the products and culture of Harley-Davidson. Participants interview colleagues and bosses, explore many Harley-Davidson online systems and get to know the business. Each section includes completing “Scheduled Maintenance” with their supervisors and knowledge testing using the online HR EDGE “Poker Run” multimedia game. “Roundup” provides additional skills and networking. At this point, HR EDGE is relatively new, and statistical data continues to be collected. However, thus far 88 percent of the participants found the HR EDGE program timely, relevant and helpful in acclimating them to HR at Harley-Davidson. Also, 88 percent also found the tools — including the Knowledge Warehouse and Poker Run game — easy to access and use. To date, the HR EDGE initiative has reached multiple sectors of Harley-Davidson’s organization, including the top-tier leadership group and several sectors beyond HR. The senior leadership has been so impressed with the character and nature of the program that they have recommended adopting it as the onboarding process for the firm globally, moving the process from being primarily an HR system into making it the organizational model. Silver, Division 2 Lesley Hoare, Vice President of Talent Management, Diversity and Inclusion, Kimberly-Clark Every year, personal care and health care products provider Kimberly-Clark holds a three-day meeting for its top 100 executives. This year, for the first time, they replaced most of the typical presentation-based content with a business simulation that would work to align these executives around a Total Shareholder return (TSR) strategy devised by their CEO and CSO. This simulation was devised by Lesley Hoare, vice president of talent management, diversity and inclusion. “Many of our leaders said the simulation experience made this ‘our best leadership conference yet.’” — Thomas J. Falk, CEO, Kimberly-Clark This initiative took 10 hours out of the entire meeting. Specifically, Hoare sought an approach that would make participants viscerally feel why TSR should be something that matters to them in their daily roles and in what ways they directly impact it. She knew that the simulation would do more than tell them what they should do — it would allow them to practice the kind of decisions they make every day and show how investment decisions and trade-offs directly impact TSR. Due to the high level of the audience and complexity of the desired learning objectives, Hoare decided to use a board simulation combined with the power of an IT-based market model. This simulation became a planning tool where participants could allocate people and money across different innovation opportunities, branding, go-tomarket strategies and developing enterprise capabilities. Reactions from participants were overwhelmingly positive, and many have suggested delivery of the simulation to the next level of leadership in the organization. “It was a hit with our senior leaders, and sustained a high degree of active engagement over the course of our conference,” said Thomas J. Falk, CEO of Kimberly-Clark. “Many of our leaders said the simulation experience made this ‘our best leadership conference yet.’ Ultimately, the simulation created an exciting communication platform that allowed me to quickly align Kimberly-Clark’s senior team around enterprise value creation.” December 2007 I www.clomedia.com I Chief Learning Officer 68 http://www.clomedia.com
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