Chief Learning Officer - December 2008 - (Page 53)

EXCELLENCE IN E-LEARNING • GOLD • PROVIDER AWARD NIIT Cognitive Arts Allstate Insurance Co. is known for its “You’re in Good Hands” slogan. Ensuring those metaphorical hands are steady enough to craft accurate initial price quotes is critical: An excessive quote threatens customer loss, and a quote set too low can produce ﬁnancial loss and liability. As it turns out, the process of deriving an initial quote is complex. It involves entering data with a very high degree of accuracy into a software application that calculates the value of the quote based on a proprietary algorithm, with many dependencies from product veriﬁcations and state laws. To address the intricacy of the quoting process and improve accuracy, Allstate changed its auto product by introducing customized programs on a state-by-state basis that incorporated rating, product and system changes. Allstate ran a scenario-based quoting contest in Texas for agency support staff to determine how accurately staff could quote with the changes incorporated. Eighty percent of the agencies that participated in the test provided quotes higher than the accurate quote, and 90 percent quoted annual rates that were higher by $100 or more. The need for a learning solution was evident to make sure agents and agency staff could understand the process of online quoting and transactions to produce accurate quotes. NIIT Cognitive Arts developed a blend of e-learning and performance support for Allstate. The instructional design followed a task-based approach. To accelerate course development, the learning solution was developed synchronously with the implementation schedule of each state. Over a period of about nine months, the learning was deployed on a rolling schedule as the product, process and system changes were released to 39 states. Allstate ran a second scenario-based test to understand how well agencies in Texas could quote with state-speciﬁc changes and the education in place: 189 participants quoted incorrectly and were invited to take the education. Of those, 15 were asked to participate in another quoting test after the education: 14 out of the 15 participants quoted accurately in the follow-up test. “The learning development was particularly innovative, robust in blend, accessible across 39 states and included market personalization,” said Karen Scott, Allstate senior manager for learning and organizational effectiveness. “We required an aggressive timeline, and NIIT delivered.” EXCELLENCE IN E-LEARNING • SILVER • PROVIDER AWARD Allen Communication Learning Services To keep moving forward, Toyota must continually develop team members and coach them through Toyota business practices (TBP). When Toyota embarked on an attempt to enhance supervisors’ abilities to properly model the Toyota Way to team members, learning leaders discovered supervisors were not properly developing their people through meaningful work. This discovery led to the creation and pilot of a three-day, instructor-led on-the-job development (OJD) course that then led to the realization that participants were not prepared to utilize and learn from the instructor-led case study — it seemed they needed more preparation beforehand. Further, it seemed the time allotted for instructor-led training (ILT) needed to be signiﬁcantly reduced — to one day. Brian Bichey, Toyota Team Member Development Center manager, and Tracy Howell, Toyota instructional design lead and technologist, partnered with Allen Communication Learning Services to design and develop the online portion of the OJD e-learning program to better equip participants before the instructor-led course. The project aimed to develop a culture in which the Toyota Way was understood and valued, and TBP was implemented and properly coached. To meet these goals, Allen created simulations using its Simulations Development Kit. This produced multidimensional branching based on learners’ choices, with realistic conversations and interactions, and a way to track OJD competency scores. The OJD e-learning component consisted of a 30-minute OJD overview, an introduction to Web-based training. Following was a 60-minute manufacturing simulation, a “cold case scenario” with no coaching and three paths: expert, medium and low. OJD Steps followed and involved a 50-minute overview of the steps in the OJD process. Learners agreed the scenarios were realistic, and they were able to understand how their decisions affected team members. As a result, e-learning allowed learners to better prepare for the ILT session and successfully use the skills acquired from e-learning. Also, through the learning portal, users could access various parts of the training, check their progress and review courses on an as-needed basis after the ﬁrst run-through. 53

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Chief Learning Officer - December 2008

Chief Learning Officer - December 2008 Editor’s Letter Contents Connections Business Impact Best Practices Effectiveness Guest Editorial The Future of Learning CLO Profile Learning Opportunities Embedded in Social Networking ManTech Leverages Knowledge Management Approaches for Social Networking Agility Training for the Learning Organization Creating an Agile Organization With Learning 2.0 2008 Learning In Practice Awards Corporate Social Responsibility: How Can Learning Contribute? Union Fenosa Corporate University: How CSR Education Impacted the Bottom Line Training in the 21st Century: Everything Old Is New Again Zions Bancorp.: Connecting the Dots Case Study Business Intelligence Advertisers’ Index Editorial Resources In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - December 2008

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