Winning
Organizations Focus on Business Alignment, Metrics, Social Networking, and
Simplicity
Oakland, CA – Feb 8, 2012 –
Bersin & Associates, the premier research and consulting firm empowering
Human Resources (HR) organizations to drive bottom-line impact, today announced
the winners of the Bersin
& Associates 2012 Learning Leaders™ Program[LE1] ,
now in its sixth year. The firm also announced the availability of its report
on the 31 winners, titled Learning Leaders™ 2012: Lessons from the Best.
The complimentary, [# of pages placeholder] report details how
winners improved their businesses with innovative, efficient and effective
approaches to employee learning and talent management. This year’s Learning
Leaders™ winners emerged from hundreds of applicants – including industry
leaders in management consulting, hospitality, business-process and document
management, financial services, and wind power. Executed the face of a
challenging economic recovery, winning programs focused on business alignment,
measurement, social networking, and simplicity.
As in past years, Bersin & Associates conducted the awards program
in partnership with Elearning! magazine. [LE2]
“This year’s Learning Leaders demonstrate that the focus of
learning has evolved from simply building a skill set to driving the right
skills for competitive business advantage,” said Kim Lamoureux, Senior Director of
Research Practices and Principal Analyst. “Learning teams increasingly measure
how training and development contribute to the top and bottom lines of their
organization. Social networking for the first time played a role in almost
every entry, enabling learning and talent leaders to leverage the expertise of
their people to find new talent and train current employees without creating
formal programs. ”
Another core theme: simplicity. “At a time when rapid change is commonplace and
employees must juggle conflicting priorities, simplicity is becoming really
important,” Lamoureux said. “Finding ways to deliver simple solutions requires
innovative thinking, and this year’s winners demonstrated a drive to make it
very easy to meet one critical learning or talent need successfully.”
Bersin & Associates’ report explains winning strategies and best
practices for employee learning and development. For example, it tells how Cisco’s new year-long training
program for new sales representatives uses virtual delivery, rather than
in-person classroom sessions, and blends formal training with on-the-job
experience. The program has made associates 10 percent more efficient upon
moving into the field, which translates to $111 million in increased bookings
for the year. Elearning!
magazine features winners in its February special issue.
“True innovation
is the differentiator of high performing organizations,” said Catherine Upton,
CEO and Publisher, Elearning! Media
Group. “Despite a challenging business environment, the 2012 Learning Leaders
have embraced new business processes and technologies to build competitive
advantage. We are honored to present the 2012 Learning Leaders to the global
community via Elearning! and Government Elearning! magazines.”
Learning Leaders™ categories and winners
include:
Leadership Development Strategy Excellence
- AT&T, for a strategy anchored by a portfolio
of learning offerings known as Leading with Distinction (LwD). This
program helps leaders at all levels to enhance their capabilities,
challenging
participants to identify opportunities for driving
significant business success, and encouraging collaboration across
business units and geographic boundaries.
- Grant Thornton, for its LEADS
leadership development strategy, designed to develop leaders who live
Grant Thornton’s global vision and values. Participants in just one
element of LEADS – the Senior Manager Development Program – attributed
more than $17 million in new revenue over the past 18 months to the
effective implementation of the strategy.
- IRS, for a strategy that addresses the
impending retirement of 65 percent of its senior leaders. The agency has
developed a mix of formal and informal learning opportunities, including
coaching and mentoring, to shorten the leadership development process so
that a potential leader could progress to executive readiness in about
half the approximate 18 years it now takes.
- Marriott International, for a leadership
development program and strategy that leverages a global framework while
permitting adaptation as needed. One year after implementing the program,
Marriott saw the time to fill senior leadership roles decline by 25
percent to 55 days.
Learning, Leadership and Talent Initiative
Excellence: Informal Learning
- Accenture, for its newly integrated
content and community site. By making resources available in one place,
the organization achieved a 42 percent increase in the number of employees
engaging in collaboration activities.
- Booz Allen
Hamilton, for its enhanced, multi-faceted mentoring program.
The program
aligns with business goals and talent strategies; meets employees’ needs
for affiliation, connection and development; gives employees greater
control; and helps the organization build its talent pipeline.
- Marriott International, for a self-service
program that helped 130,000 associates worldwide prepare for a transition
to Windows 7/Office 2010. The organization saved $50,000 by repurposing
existing e-Learning resources. Feedback on the relevance, appearance and
cost-effectiveness of offerings and tools has been positive.
Learning, Leadership and Talent Initiative
Excellence: Leadership Development Programs
- CA
Technologies, for its Management Academy curriculum. Presented via a modular set
of more than 100 formal and informal learning offerings, the curriculum
advances managers’ skills and allows them to choose the tools that will
benefit them most. . The
performance-management compliance rate improved an average of 7 percent.
- PwC, for a global
leadership development program known as Genesis Park. The program uses
blended learning and social networking and culminates in an intensive
10-week residential experience. It accelerates the development of top managers into
resilient, responsible and authentic leaders.
- SunTrust, for its “Play to Win”
high-impact
approach to executive development. The company’s Advanced Leadership
Program has an exceptional reputation among senior leaders, earning an
average overall rating of 4.75 on a scale of 5.0.
Learning, Leadership, and Talent Initiative
Excellence: Learning and Talent Technology
- AT&T, for a learning management system
consolidation that brought all leader-led learning, virtual classrooms,
simulations and Web-based training onto one platform. The new system has
generated millions of dollars worth of savings in headcount and IT
infrastructure.
- Hewlett-Packard, for its Social Learning
Center for Sales Skills, an environment that supports a wide variety of
learning assets, including video, documents, discussions, blogs, polls,
events and games. HP introduced the approach first to its Imaging and
Printing Group and has now rolled out the platform to its entire sales
force.
- Vestas Wind Systems, for developing an
approach called achievement-based
learning in which learners choose pathways for achieving specified goals.
Options include taking a class, consulting a colleague or finding another
way “unlock the achievement.”
Forty-two percent of the learners studied unlocked all achievements
that they attempted, vs. an estimated 30 percent for standard e-learning
courses.
Learning, Leadership, and Talent Initiative
Excellence: Operational Training and Development
- AT&T, for a two-pronged training program
that helped with to unite separate collections organizations after a
merger. One workshop series for collections representatives built skills
through audio examples, learning activities and role-playing. A second
series helped managers to build coaching skills and effectiveness. The
initiative resulted in a
5 percent increase in overall dollars collected per call.
- Xerox, for its Service Delivery eXcellence
initiative. This blended training program included on-demand course
materials, instructor-led virtual classrooms, a wiki site and other online
resources that helped the company deliver consistent learning effectively
across regions and time zones, and in different languages.
Learning Organizations and Governance
Excellence
- AT&T, for a learning organization that
consists of two primary branches – its corporate AT&T University and
Learning Services – governed by multiple learning councils and task
teams. The approach helps to
promote productivity, ensure business alignment and build credibility with
senior leaders.
- HCL Technologies, for the collaborative
work of TechCEED, the company’s technical training team, and 13
Business-Aligned Training Academies. This collaborative model has promoted
agility and innovation, reduced the cycle time for processing training
requests, and enabled business units to direct resources to their highest
priorities.
- Jiffy Lube, for the
collaborative work of its centralized training department, Jiffy Lube
University (JLU); and the Training Committee of the Jiffy Lube Association
of Franchisees. JLU provides learning content and promotes best practices,
while Training Committee members provide a broad perspective on the needs
of employee learners across the enterprise.
- Xerox, for optimizing a federated
organizational model through its Global Learning Network. The corporate
Global Learning organization provides process leadership and governance,
and sets enterprise-wide learning strategies. Other members of the network
are empowered
to translate the direction set by the Global Learning Network into
practices and programs that best meet business needs.
Vendor Innovation in Learning and Talent
Management: Business Solutions/Content
- Capital Analytics, for its Business
Impact and Optimization Methodology, a collaborative and statistically
rigorous process for isolating and improving the business impact of human
capital investments.
- Dextro, for its work with the
government-sponsored México Emprende Initiative. Over the course of a
year, Dextro provided training to 3,000 Mexican micro businesses on an
array of topics to promote long-term sustainability. At the time it
applied, the company planned to reach another 5,000 businesses.
- GlobalEnglish, for its Corporate
Learning Service™ platform. The
platform helps to develop long-term proficiency in business English and
provides real-time performance support for learners on-the-job.
- Korn/Ferry, for its Korn/Ferry
Navigator™, a modular leadership development program that helps clients
direct resources to development of the skills and characteristics that are
most crucial, in greatest demand or best suited to their specific needs
and goals.
- Vangent, for a turnkey talent- and
operations-management solution it provided to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Vangent played a vital role in operations, processing more than 75 million
forms, handling more than 11.5 million citizen contact calls, and
providing key human capital solutions to ensure high productivity and
exceptional contract performance.
Vendor Innovation in Learning and Talent
Management: Platform/Tools
- Allen Communications Learning Services, for DesignJot, an
Apple iPad application designed as a tool for instructional designers and
professionals in the learning and development industry. It facilitates
collaboration between designers and stakeholders.
- KnowledgeAdvisors, for it Talent
Development Reporting Principles (TDRP), a standardized framework for
reporting on the current state of talent development within an organization.
The company
hopes the framework will be broadly adopted, providing a common
terminology and measures that will promote understanding of successful
practices and enable meaningful comparisons across organizations.
- TripleCreek, for Open Mentoring,
a Web-based, Software-as-a-Service product that offers a configurable,
scalable system for enterprise mentoring and structured social learning in
dispersed organizations.
- Work4Labs, for Work for Us,
an application that helps recruiters to leverage social media. Work
for Us enables recruiters to post jobs directly on their company’s
Facebook page, to socialize distribution and referrals through candidate
connections and to automatically create job ads to reach relevant
candidates based on their education, interests and location.
Vendor Innovation in Learning and Talent
Management: Informal
- Bloomfire, for its social
learning suite, a platform for social learning using PC and mobile
devices. Knowledge-givers can use its simple authoring and uploading tools
to package what they have to share in videos, documents, text messages and
other formats. Knowledge receivers can search and browse, and get answers
from questions submitted to their peers.
- SuccessFactors, for Jam, an
enterprise social software platform, and SuccessFactors Social Learning
(SFSL), a social learning solution powered by Jam. SFSL facilitates the
creation and sharing of video, embedded screen captures, communities,
wikis and blogs, and supports native mobile apps for iPhone/iPad, Android
and Blackberry.
Learning Leaders™ winners will be recognized at Bersin &
Associates’ research conference, IMPACT 2012: The
Business of Talent, April 10-13. In addition, HR, learning and talent
practitioners from winning organizations – past and present – will participate
in panel discussions and present case studies on a wide range of topics.
Organizations to be represented include [placeholder].
To receive a complimentary copy of the Bersin &
Associates Learning Leaders™ 2012: Lessons from the Best report,
go to [placeholder for landing page link] For more information
on the Learning Leaders™ Program, go to www.bersin.com/leaders. To join the mailing list for Learning
Leaders™ Program news, updates, and the next call for applications, contact LearningLeaders@bersin.com.
To learn more about Bersin & Associates or its
WhatWorks® membership, e-mail info@bersin.com
or call (510) 251-4400.
E-mail media queries to laura.evenson@bersin.com
or call (415) 465-2711.
About Bersin & Associates
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