Chief Learning Officer - December 2007 - (Page 77) VENDOR: CONTENT Gold Ninth House Silver Allen Interactions Leadership at American Express, a $64 billion financial services company with 65,000 employees throughout 45 countries worldwide, means creating exceptional outcomes for shareholders, customers and employees. They have built a talent strategy and leadership model that is intrinsically tied to their key leadership values: integrity, customer commitment, quality, personal accountability, teamwork, respect and citizenship. Senior leaders are held accountable to create goals and plans for their employees, engage and develop key talent for retention, and inspire a culture of diversity. However, as an organization in the service industry, American Express realized that part of its overall talent strategy must include the ongoing development of employees at all levels of the organization. It is their people on the front lines who ultimately create the American Express customer experience. A greater focus was needed to deliver training and development to more than just their top-tier leaders. They needed a solution targeted to their 20,000-plus directors and people managers that would truly effect behavioral change across the entire organization. Additionally, the program needed to be scalable to reach their widely geographically dispersed audience. American Express turned to Ninth House to help them build a program to achieve these goals. With their Situational Leadership II course as an anchor, Ninth House designed a solution using a blended-learning approach. Written by leadership expert Ken Blanchard, Situational Leadership II teaches leaders the right management and coaching skills to assist in building their employees’ competence and productivity. It provides a model whereby leaders partner with direct reports and diagnose and develop unique action plans, which empowers managers with the techniques to adjust their leadership style to their employees’ individual development levels. The integrated, blended delivery of the solution involved several components: • First the participants attended a classroom-type kickoff event where they discussed the focus of the program, the learning process and expectations, as well as how to apply the learning to their business. • Participants then took the self-directed online SLII course. • Following completion of the course, participants attended a wrap-up event that was a virtual classroom experience. During this event, participants were encouraged to talk about what they had learned with their teams and their managers and how best to apply this learning, and they also were given an internally developed sustainability tool to facilitate one-on-one follow-up conversations with their leaders. To gauge the sustained effectiveness of the program and quantify ROI, American Express implemented a rigorous measurement plan. They used the Kirkpatrick/Phillips five levels of learning, which was augmented by a sixth level: Transfer Climate. This level was developed by American Express researcher Paul Leone, and it measures the extent to which factors in a participant’s immediate work environment were either helping or hindering the “transfer” of the learning back to the job. Their findings concluded that the blended-learning approach offered significantly higher impact than online courses alone and at a much lower cost than classroom-based training. In fact, the blended approach achieved a productivity increase 2.4 times greater than stand-alone online classes. At half the cost, it also achieved more than double the ROI than that of the classroom-based training. Ecolab is a world leader in commercial cleaning and sanitizing, with 23,000 associates in 160 countries who help organizations in the food service, food and beverage, health care, hospitality, government and education, retail, commercial facilities, textile care and vehicle care industries. Prior to developing a blended learning solution that included technology, Ecolab trained new managers with an instructor-led curriculum and self-study workbooks. Under the leadership of Dave Hooker, vice president of sales training, the company analyzed the curriculum and performance of its field sales managers. This analysis determined that the existing curriculum was outdated, very expensive, passive and lengthy. Gap analysis in the field also indicated performance issues on product knowledge and the ability to solution sell. At the same time this analysis was occurring, Ecolab was developing a new electronic system to manage data flow and processing for all of its clients. Field sales representatives each received a tablet PC with the new system to manage all parts of their clients’ business including service calls, ordering and territory management. With technology in the field, Ecolab hired Allen Interactions as a consultant and a custom learning solutions development partner. They analyzed the entire new-hire curriculum and developed a new strategy for new-hire training. Hooker and Allen Interactions put together a four-year learning strategy to address the needs of the existing territory managers and district managers and met with the company’s executive leadership. Their strategy outlined how costs would be reduced with a oneyear payback and how sales performance would increase as a result of the new training. Ecolab partnered with Allen Interactions to develop 26 courses that would become part of the new blended learning solution for the new hire workplace learning curriculum. The courses were developed in Flash and delivered in multiple formats (CDs, on the tablet PC and through a corporate LMS). Now in year two, costs have been reduced with a one-year payback, as was presented to the Ecolab executive team. Initial metrics indicate the new blended curriculum has led to higher performance. In the study of one course, sales increased 119 percent in the groups that received that training versus the ones that did not. 77 December 2007 I www.clomedia.com I Chief Learning Officer http://www.clomedia.com
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