Chief Learning Officer - May 2006 - (Page 34)

CO0506.qxd 4/18/06 1:22 PM Page 34 clo profile Allstate's Ensuring Opportunities Cari McLean Adding value to the business is extremely important at Allstate Insurance Company. In fact, senior executives want evidence that the company's learning and development programs are providing measurable value to the business. Approximately two years ago, Allstate Chief Learning Officer Dave Groff set out to do just that. With more than 20 years of experience, Groff has held similar roles with Deere & Company, Kodak and Corning. But as chief learning officer for Allstate, Groff is not only responsible for enterprise-wide learning and development, but also succession planning, organization- al development and effectiveness, performance management, and integration with staffing, selection and compensation. Therefore, it is no surprise that he developed a strategic architecture to guide improvements and investments for all talent manage- ment initiatives at Allstate. In order to prove the program's value as well as improve the overall vision and per- formance of Allstate's comprehensive learning and development program for the orga- nization's 38,000 employees, 14,000 agents, financial specialists and their licensed sales professionals, Groff decided that simply examining the learning and development organization was not enough. Thus, he developed an all-encompassing proposal for a new vision and performance plan for Allstate's entire talent management system to uncover opportunities for improvement. We reframed the original question of how we could try to improve the way in which we deliver education and training to looking at the broader opportunities. We wanted to find the opportunities to deliver education and training better, and how to better manage the flow of people from entry-level positions on up, Groff explained. So that entailed what we call the Talent Management Architecture. Allstate's Talent Management Architecture integrates seven key processes affecting the management and development of talent. The strategic seven components include the overall business needs, capability requirements, assessment practices, development planning practices, education and training practices, work-related learning practices, and progression and mobility practices. According to Groff, under each of these seven strategic components, the human processes associated with them are identified as well. For example, under assessment practices, we may have something like performance May 2006 management, multi-rater tools, assessment centers, team assessments, self assessments, etc., Groff explained. Also, under work-related learning, for example, we have things I www.clomedia.com I Chief Learning Officer like action learning, mentoring, taskforce participation, board participation, commu- nities of practice and more. Groff said Allstate is in its second year of realizing the integration among a wide range of these human capital processes. We started with articulating and getting a clearer view of the strategies of the company and then articulating the sets of capabilities that would be required to reach those set business strategies successfully, Groff said. So we developed competency models for key roles within the organization, and we are now in the process of embedding these models into the various human capital processes in the company. 34 34  http://www.clomedia.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chief Learning Officer - May 2006

Editor's Note
Table of Contents
Letters to the Editor
Take Five
Selling Up, Selling Down
Imperatives
Strategies
Guest Editorial
Learning Solutions
Robbins-Gioia University
Environment
Deloitte & Touche USA
CLO Profile
Productivity
Washington Gas
Case Study
Human Capital
Health Care Service Corp.
Tactics
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida
Business Intelligence
In Conclusion
Advertiser's Index
Editorial Resources

Chief Learning Officer - May 2006

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