agreement regarding measures of success in which they proactively set the stage for the analysis to come, in turn, ensuring openness to a meaningful post-program conversation.•y Finally, in contracting, learning leaders take a consistent ap-

proach to that of other organizational cost centers that are expected to justify the value of their initiatives using tangible estimates of ROI (e.g., Marketing and IT.) In much the same way, that these depart-ments are often successful in obtaining funding by proposing projects in tandem with anticipated ROI, Learning can expect to enjoy the same opportunity for success!

In short, while learning professionals have been traditionally inclined to discuss program outcomes in terms of incremental improvements in learner knowledge and/ or competency performance, executives are more comfortable discussing the business in less theoretical (and more applied) ways. By understanding the practical outcomes that execu-tive leaders value, the learning team is far better prepared to gather the information that will have the most impact on the business, the

strategy, and--ultimately the executive’s impression of the program and its value to the Company.

So, by all means, utilize a detailed analysis of Kirkpatrick’s four levels to demonstrate how a learning platform achieves its objectives, but be sure to do it in the context of what your keysstakeholders’ value! TEL

Learning Initiatives

Amy Bladen Shatto, Ph.D. is Senior Vice President, Learning and Develop-ment at Ketchum PR and President of Leadership Variations, a management development consultancy specializing in talent development solutions. Amy.Email bladenshatto@ketchum.comThomas Walk, Ph.D. is the Director of Sales Training Operations and Tech-nology at MetLife, a Fortune 50 Insurance firm, specializing in insurance and financial service for over 140 years. Email twalk@metlife.com

The term ‘Talent Management’ most often refers to the lifecycle of an employee. This begins with recruitment and selection, continues through to exit interviews and retiree support, and covers everything in between.

To one degree or another, the processes and programs that manage each phase of the talent cycle, are interdependent. However, one aspect of this cycle has stronger and more varied connections. Learning is

the top talent management priority and is integrated into all aspects of the business, both formally and informally.LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT

In today’s fast-paced global business environment, companies are challenged to adopt and respond to new business and compliance requirements quicker than ever. New technologies provide alterna-tives to traditional corporate learning. A learning management system (LMS) should include all the functionality an organization needs to implement, manage and execute enterprise-learning programs.

Whether employees are based in one location or worldwide, an LMS that supports multiple languages will manage personalized training, compliance initiatives, licensing and certification require-ments, competencies, collaborative learning and external training for the extended enterprise. A language neutral architecture will enable a global LMS to support many user-selected languages simultaneously.

ON-BOARDINGAfter the recruitment phase, the on-boarding process is the first real

interaction a new hire has with the organization. It is crucial to get this right and learning plays a huge role. It is not enough to simply ensure the employee’s data is entered into the system and move on.

If learning is properly hooked into on-boarding, it can reduce the time it takes for an employee to become fully productive. Properly executed by leveraging learning, on-boarding can ensure a new hire feels like a part of the team before setting a foot in the door.

Both formally and informally By David Wentworth & Alex Poulos

Learning at the Core of Global Talent Management

▶

▶ ▶

▶ ▶

▶

▶

▶ LEARNING

On-boarding Certification/Competency levels

Development ooportunities

Coursecompletions

Recruitment/Selection

Compensation/Rewards

Succession Planning

Performance Management

New learners

Recognition/Incentives Skill/Competency

gaps

Gaps in breachstrength

• Gettingnewemployeesintocompliance

• Gettingnewemployeesupandrunning

• Firstinteractionwithcompany

• Employeeprofiles

• Customizedlearningplans

• Feedbackoninitiallearningexperiences

Learning On-boarding

Interactive

10Technology Enabled Learning excellence presented by HR.com | 03.2014

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENTAnnual performance reviews are no longer relevant in today’s fast-

paced business environment. There is a need for ongoing dialogue between managers and employees, focused on incrementally engaging employees and improving performance throughout the reporting year. An agile talent management system should help organizations manage performance throughout the year, not just once a year.

Ongoing performance management allows HR management to build a comprehensive view of the organization’s jobs, skills, objectives and progress. It provides the tools needed to determine strengths and weaknesses, to better direct and measure individual as well as team performance.COMPETENCY MANAGEMENT

When competencies are used for talent management, they act as a powerful tool for communicating and reinforcing company values. The categorization of sets of skills, knowledge, and behaviors provides a comprehensive overview of organizational talent, which enables strategic HR planning.

Each competency can be linked to one or more learning modules to show which combination of training, assessments or exams can be used to attain or improve an employee’s rating.

When a particular set of competencies is mapped to a job profile and the target rating for each competency for the job is defined, or-ganizations can profile any role in the company and build job profiles to cover both current and future roles. By listing and defining the competencies and ratings needed for roles, employees receive clear measurable objectives.

Once corporate goals are set, they are cascaded through the orga-nizational hierarchy and broken down into lower level goals for each business unit, functional area, managers and employees.

Integrating learning and performance makes it easier to link orga-nizational objectives to an employee’s personal goals. Managers and employees gain a better understanding of how their activities support the business. This approach helps align company, manager, team, and employee goals; and promotes better accountability and buy-in.CAREER AND SUCCESSION PLANNING

Effective succession management enables organizations to seam-lessly merge career aspirations with business strategy. It is important to establish competency-based employee development and career plans – focused on both current and future jobs. This enables em-ployees to identify their strengths and weaknesses compared to their existing and targeted positions. This helps employees to improve for progressing into future roles.

HR professionals can then develop sets of learning activities and

tasks within tailored development plans to cascade to key employees. This reduces attrition, develops organizational bench strength and ensures continuity, especially in critical positions.WORKFORCE PLANNING

The learning function gives organizations more insight into their talent pools than they realize. By analyzing where employees are in their development paths and how well they are doing in various de-velopment programs, gaps in bench strength become much clearer. Gaps identified via workforce planning processes highlight areas where the learning function may need to deploy more resources. Integra-tion between these two systems can make the ‘build or buy’ decision around talent much easier to make.

LEARNING & PERFORMANCE AT COREA truly integrated global talent management ecosystem has learn-

ing and performance at its core. It provides organizations with a practical approach to support an innovative model of ongoing talent development.

An integrated approach enables managers to tie employee activi-ties to corporate objectives; then measure the impact of training on employee performance. This results in an engaged workforce that drives the business forward.•y The connections among talent management components exist,

regardless of technology•y If systems can’t share data, organizations can’t possibly know

everything•y The connections make it even easier for learning to meet other

talent management objectives, not just learning•y Having learning integrated into talent management can make

it more effective, more engaging, and more responsive

Learning at the Core of Global Talent Management

• Improvementonperformancemeasures

• Increasedcompetencylevels

• Developmentpathsmatchedtoperformancegoals

• effectivenessoflearningprogrammes

• Identificationofskillsgap

• Adjustmentofdevelopmentpaths

Learning Performance

• ensuringskillsexistwithinorganisation

• Keepingemployeesincompliance

• Identificationofpotentialissues

• Identificationofskillsgaps

• Identificationofhighpotentials

• Identificationofcourseandcontentneeds

Learning Workforceplanning

11 Excellence Essentials presented by HR.com | 03.2014

• Identificationofcareerpotential

• Armslearnersforspecificcareerpaths

• Developmentpathsmatchedtocareerpaths

• Coursesandcontentmatchedtocareers

• Competencymodelsbasedoncareers

• Adjustmentofcareerpaths

Learning Career

Integrated talent management – with learning and performance at its core – gives employees, managers, and HR professionals the tools and insights to inspire people to perform to the best of their ability and potential.SIDEBARCASE STUDY: Global compliance and workforce readiness

A global life sciences company based in Europe is rolling out global learning management for tens of thousands of employees worldwide.

The company identified the need for a single training and em-ployee development platform globally, while maintaining the ability for customized functionality in the different regions (to cover local regulations, labor legislations, or competency models).

The company also had to meet strict compliance regulations. It relied on a flexible reporting capability based on users’ job roles and competencies to involve business line managers and enable them to track and report pro- actively on workforce readiness levels and, fur-thermore, provide automated training plans to fix competency gaps.SIDEBARCASE STUDY: Mobile on-boarding

A Fortune 500 company, drug retailer and pharmacy chain in North America, was developing and executing their mobile learning strategy. The company evaluated and selected their mobile device and deployed a mobile learning delivery platform for iPads (one iPad per retail store). These were used for new hire on-boarding compliance training and can potentially be rolled out to 7,100 stores.

The lessons learned? The ability for both online and offline use is important as connectivity is not always ubiquitous. Complete synchro-

nization with the corporate LMS (instead of a standalone solution) is key, in order to allow tracking of on-boarding for all employees. Finally, an ‘evolutionary’ approach to mobile learning can help with new technology adoption.TEL

Learning at the Core of Global Talent Management

David Wentworth is Sr. Learning Analyst at Brandon Hall Group. He has authored several reports and articles on various human capital subjects with an emphasis on workforce technologyTwitter - @DavidMWentworthAlex Poulos is Chief Marketing Officer at NetDimensions. He has been working in the high technology sector for over 15 years in both the US and EMEA in the areas of marketing and business development.Twitter - @alexpoulos

‘First published in Learning Technologies & Skills Magazine’

The Tell, Then Test approach is like that which you experienced in school. Teachers teach a subject for a number of days and then test students on what they were supposed to learn. A lot of eLearning in the past has imitated this approach. To be sure, most eLearning today continues this trend. It is a natural outcome of our experience growing up and attending school and of not knowing that eLearning can, in many cases, is not only different, but much better.

In fact, eLearning that emulates this approach is worse than the classroom experience, because at least in the latter you can raise your hand and ask the teacher questions. In addition, a good instructor will call on students and interact with them, not drone on and on as a passive linear presentation might. We’ve had those kinds of boring teachers on occasion and how many of us found our attention wavering?

Most often we see this in eLearning lessons that have several screens of information covering a topic, sometimes as many as 50 or more. The topic is then followed by a quiz. The quiz measures short-term memory, much as quizzes in school do. How much of what you learned do you remember later? This is akin to throwing money out the window and waiting for some of it to be blown back to you by the wind. Try it: throw $20,000 out your nearest window and see

what kind of return on your investment you get.Why present eLearning in a way that makes learners want to hit

Next, Next, Next until they reach the quiz? Bored learners do not learn. Some organizations will force the learner to stay on a slide for a certain amount of time before hitting the Next button. That leads to learners who are not only bored, but angry too. Believe me when I tell you that most will wait out the timer while checking email or performing another task.So why so much eLearning is created this way?

1. It usually costs less in the short term while leading to losses in the longer term. When focusing on this quarter’s financials only, it’s very tempting to see eLearning as a cost center rather than the profit center it should be. How can eLearning make profit? It’s profitable when it increases productivity to the point where work is being done faster and at less expense. More productive employees lead to happier clients and to higher profits.

2. Most of us who work in offices know PowerPoint, at least as much as we need to put together a presentation. Why not use what we know? The answer is that the results tend to be just like the pre-sentations we build: linear, non-interactive, and all too often boring.

3. The importance of Instructional Design is often not under-estimated or not even considered and therein may lie the biggest problem. Instructional Designers understand the principles behind computer-person interactivity and what works (and what doesn’t work) in helping people learn.

The only time a PowerPoint approach should be considered is when a sudden directive comes down the pike that all employees have to know a new policy or procedure by this coming Tuesday. However, waiting until the last minute to plan a more substantive learning experience should never be an excuse.

What’s the better way?

By Joe Ganci

Tell, Then Test vs. Test, Then Tell

12Technology Enabled Learning excellence presented by HR.com | 03.2014