Author: Garry Kranz

As a former teacher, Greg Schoenborn is experienced at helping others learn. Schoenborn also is proving to be an apt pupil. Since joining Chevron Corp. a decade ago following an academic career in his native Switzerland, Schoenborn, a structural geologist, is evolving into a new breed of leader at the San Ramon, California-based energy company.

Several times a year, Schoenborn serves as a mentor to a select number of top performers throughout Chevron. He recently joined one team on group outings to the National Renewable Energy Lab in Denver.

Schoenborn is coming full circle. Before being selected as a mentor, he was one of the first technical employees chosen for Chevron’s Mentoring Excellence in Technology program.

Upon entering the program as a mentee, Schoenborn’s first goal was to learn what made Chevron’s top scientists tick. “I wanted to see how they approach their jobs and what makes them happy doing the same job for so many years,” he says.

He learned that enjoying his job ultimately meant sharing his knowledge with others, particularly in ways that aid Chevron’s business. It is a lesson the 48-year-old says he is trying to convey to other Chevron employees in his role as mentor.

“Being generous with your time is a good long-term strategy, even if it doesn’t come back to benefit you right away,” Schoenborn says.

Mentoring Excellence in Technology originated with Texaco, which merged with Chevron in 2001. Oversight comes from a group of Chevron Fellows: technical leaders whose expertise is recognized companywide for helping to build value. The Fellows Program consists of 19 Chevron leaders, as well as six retirees who are active mentors.

It provides leadership development geared toward people with a high degree of technical competence, says David Wisch, a Chevron Fellow with Chevron Energy Technologies Program in Bellaire, Texas.

“We’re asking for the business lines to nominate people in the eight-to 10-year range whom they think are going to be technical ‘thought leaders’ in the future,” Wisch says.

Each year, 60 to 65 top performers, just a fraction of Chevron’s 65,000-person global workforce, are tabbed to participate in the program. It initially lasted about a year, but Chevron recently shortened the time frame to between nine and 10 months to accommodate an increasing number of nominees.

Most of those chosen are in a technical capacity within Chevron’s vast network of business units. The groups average 10 to 12 people. They meet at least once a month to pursue chosen learning activities and monitor their progress toward specific goals.

Each group is assigned two or three mentors who preside over introductory and year-end meetings. The rest of the monthly get-togethers, however, are the sole province of the participants, including the selection of learning topics and the specific activities.

Activities often include field trips, speeches from experts, or presentations to other internal groups within Chevron. Mentoring is based the idea that the mentees learn by doing, which means mentors usually wind up being observers, intervening only if a group begins to get off track.

“If everything goes well, as a mentor you have as great a chance to learn as does a mentee,” Schoenborn says.

Individuals can lobby for inclusion in the program, although most people are proposed by their team leaders.

“You have to be pretty good at what you do, because this is a pat on the back, not a promotion,” Schoenborn says.

But Chevron does use mentoring to fill its pipeline and address a number of tactical concerns. Offering people the chance to receive ongoing coaching and development probably aids retention, but also gives employees time to decide if they wish to pursue a managerial career or remain in purely technical positions, Wisch says.

Chevron is an old-time energy heavyweight with a market capitalization approaching $146 billion. The company operates refineries and other facilities in more than 100 countries. Its global refining capacity is estimated at more than 2 million barrels of oil per day.

Chevron is the second-largest U.S.-based energy company (Exxon Mobil ranks No. 1), with annual revenue of $214 billion. Much of that money gets plowed into finding new sources of energy: Chevron in 2008 spent $22.9 billion on capital and exploration, a one-year jump of 15 percent, according to its annual financial report.

Like other big energy companies, Chevron has benefited from soaring prices for fuel. The 129-year-old company in October posted record-setting profit of $7.89 billion for the 2008 third-quarter, more than doubling the previous year’s $3.7 billion quarterly profit.

The scope and diversity of Chevron’s work make it difficult for employees to know everything that their employer does, so mentoring is vital, company officials say. It enables people of varying experience levels and different business units to acquire a broader working knowledge of how Chevron’s vast services and products interconnect.

For example, Wisch is mentoring a group of employees who are pursuing a project to increase awareness of how Chevron’s “upstream” activities of exploration and production affect the “downstream” efforts of refining, selling and distributing natural gas and oil. Fostering that kind of knowledge is crucial in light of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission regulations that require that publicly traded energy companies to keep the two business activities separate and distinct.

Wisch says the mentored teams could unlock technological breakthroughs within the energy industry, and he points to the learning program’s track record. Most of the groups have at least one activity relating to alternative energy.

The intense mentoring is used predominantly in North America, especially the U.S., where the bulk of Chevron’s technical workers reside. They include chemists, geologists, earth scientists and engineers. However, Wisch says Chevron is taking steps to make mentoring available to employees outside of North America.

No matter where it’s taking place, technical mentoring actually constitutes a tiny part of the learning, Wisch says.

“People in technical jobs frequently think ‘The more learning and experience I have, the more valuable I am to the company,’ ” he says. “We’re trying to change that to get people to learn the value of things like networking.”

When Kent Purvis has a question, he doesn’t take out Xerox Corp.’s product manual and flip through the troubleshooting guide. Nor does he chase down colleagues who might (but possibly won’t) know the answers.

    Purvis, a managing principal with Xerox’s global services division, is more likely to tap the collective wisdom of peers inside a special learning and development community. Consisting of the company’s 125 managing principals, the community was set up to help like-minded employees share information and work together on business projects.

The managing principals provide secondary sales support across three interconnected lines of business: document management, business process outsourcing and office services. Their job entails broad knowledge about an array of Xerox products and business services, including software and technical support to companies that run such Xerox office equipment as copiers, printers and components. The principals also are familiar with an individual customer’s specific needs.

    As is the case with physical communities, the learning community’s strength lies in the combined assets of individual members. All participants have the opportunity to contribute to an ongoing base of knowledge, including a wiki of online resources that continues to develop.

    The give and take within the community elevates learning to a highly effective social experience for employees, Purvis says. Equally important, it provides one central location where people can go to find information that previously might have been difficult to obtain.

    “We know there is a groundswell of knowledge among our managing principals, along all the lines of business. Now there is a structure in place for sharing it” that did not exist before, Purvis says.

    Xerox is in the midst of a three-year process of selectively launching targeted learning communities for people in vital “client-facing job roles,” says Gary Vastola, the company’s vice president of learning and development.

Purvis’ group is one of about 15 learning communities launched since 2007, encompassing more than 1,000 employees. Still, that is a fraction of the 15,000-person workforce of Xerox Global Services, which is a division of Oxford, Connecticut-based Xerox Corp.

Used by employees and supported by top executives, the communities attempt to build formal structures around the many informal ways that people learn on the job. The communities also provide a clear roadway to career growth by mapping out expectations, Vastola says.

“We’re promoting the notion that people need to be continuous learners, and it’s not all about being in a classroom or taking an e-learning course,” he says.

Instead, employees learn by participation. Social networking tools are seen as the best way to disseminate information and promote collaboration across a far-flung geographic workforce, company officials say.

A prime example is a wiki, developed by and for Xerox’s managing principals. It enables them to access the most relevant and current information in one online database. In addition to fostering greater collaboration, the wiki has implications for people’s career growth, says Kevin McPherson, a managing principal who oversees the community.

Prior to the wiki, managing principals often were “siloed” in their own lines of business, which stunted their career growth.

    “Our primary focus for the wiki was to make people better at selling our services. But we also wanted to give career development and recognition,” McPherson says.

Xerox is riding the crest of a wave sweeping over U.S. businesses. In its annual report on the training industry last spring, the American Society for Training & Development found that nearly two-thirds of large U.S. organizations said they rely on “knowledge sharing” among their employees, including communities of practice and in-house experts.

    Also, the Alexandria, Virginia-based organization says 98 percent of companies provide on-the-job learning aids, with nearly 91 percent of employees taking advantage of them.

Awful economic projections have companies in a tight squeeze, which could accelerate the trend toward collaborative learning.

    “As unpleasant as the financial environment is, one of the things it will do is force changes in how companies provide education to their employees. We’re always going to have classrooms, but companies that use technology for employee learning probably aren’t going to see their budgets cut,” says Claire Schooley, an employee-learning analyst with Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Forrester Research.

Perhaps, but Xerox Corp. has been buffeted by the gloomy conditions. The company said in October that it plans to trim 3,000 jobs, or roughly 5 percent of its workforce, because of slowing corporate demand for its printers and copiers. It’s not clear how that will affect the launch of future learning communities.

Launching communities involves a lot of analysis. Vastola says the planning process at Xerox usually takes about three months. It begins with brainstorming sessions between learning leaders and top executives. The goal is identify critical roles within sales, consulting, service delivery and consulting, and then methodically structure learning to help people measure up.

    The critical jobs are reviewed and defined by about a dozen competencies. Each person in the role is assessed according to one of three levels of proficiency: foundation, intermediate and advanced, “knowing full well that no two people are at the same stage in their development,” Vastola says.

    Classroom instruction, e-learning courses, suggested readings, or on-the-job activities all could be part of a person’s customized learning agenda.

“The beauty of it is that learning really gets integrated into a person’s day-to-day job,” Vastola says.

The targeted employees are asked to complete an online survey that includes questions about the type of information they seek and which sources of information they use.

    Vastola says employees spend about 15 percent of their time in some type of learning activity at work. The purpose of communities is to help employees use this learning time more productively.

Although participation is voluntary, Xerox executives are hoping that employees seize the opportunity to learn from their peers in a setting that is more immediate—not to mention less time-consuming and less costly—than traditional “one to many” training.

    Xerox has no immediate plans to launch learning communities for every job title, but Vastola says all employees are being encouraged to pursue learning through Xerox Global Services Academy, which includes thousands of online courses as well as traditional training options.

    Efforts during 2008 centered on implementing the new communities, with the company expecting to have measurable results by the end of 2009, Vastola says.

Withering economic conditions may once again pose a threat to employee learning and development. In an effort to slash discretionary spending, nearly half of U.S. firms plan to cut their training budgets in 2009, according to a November report by professional services firm Towers Perrin.

But while many companies see only crises ahead, Adecco Group North America is taking a more optimistic view. It sees the current financial turmoil as a prime opportunity to beef up the skills of its 6,000 permanent employees and position itself to “catch the first wave” of new business when conditions improve, says Rich Thompson, the Melville, New York-based staffing firm’s vice president of training and staff development. (The training is not intended for Adecco’s contingency staff that it finds for its corporate clients.)

Adecco Group North America is part of Adecco SA, a Fortune 500 company with headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland. It bills itself as the largest supplier of temporary workers in the world. Overall, the Swiss company generated revenue of $33 billion in 2007. In addition to the 6,000 people directly employed by the North American operation, it has about 120,000 temporary workers, and accounts for roughly 15 percent of the company’s revenue overall.

The global staffing company is feeling the impact of the financial crisis that is spreading like a virus to other sectors. Adecco’s revenue in the U.S. and Canada declined 8 percent, the company said in a financial report in November. But rather than curtailing development programs, Adecco North America is going ahead with a plan launched in 2006 that requires every new employee to complete a customized online learning program.

The intention is to centralize learning across Adecco’s 1,200 North American branches, which previously was “at best ad hoc, cost-prohibitive and inconsistent,” Thompson says. In addition, he says the on-demand system enables employees to learn in their offices during the workday when it is convenient for them.

Newly hired Adecco employees are expected to complete at least one or two courses per day during their first 90 days, and completing the program is a prerequisite to taking more advanced exercises.

Employees are lining up behind the mandate. Since its inception, Adecco says the number of courses completed online soared from 78 in 2006 to nearly 60,000 thus far in 2008.

That number includes courses taken by longtime Adecco employees, although Thompson attributes most of the uptick to newer employees. He says 86 percent of newcomers thus far have fulfilled all the requirements of their individual learning agendas.

“We know those people hear the same message in the same way,” Thompson says.

The company took its existing classroom material and broke it into bite-size chunks that employees could complete online in about 15 minutes. It uses a learning management system created by GeoLearning Inc. in West Des Moines, Iowa.

Adecco-specific learning requirements are divided according to geographic region, lines of business or job function. For example, the skills expected of recruiters who place financial professionals are different from those who recruit and place clerical or support staff.

Adecco hasn’t eliminated instructor-led classes. Instead, the company uses them as a reward. Only employees who fully complete their online learning requirements are eligible to participate in Adecco’s instructor-led “High-Impact Training” courses.

The arrangement not only helps cut back on airfare, lodging and related travel expenses, but also lets Adecco classroom instructors focus on strategy and execution, Thompson says.

Each class participant is given a coaching guide that outlines specific steps they need to take to be successful in their job. Classes revolve not around lectures, but instead thrust learners into group settings and role-playing exercises that foster teamwork and communication. “We’re using the classroom now for building confidence, not for introducing content,” Thompson says.

Nearly one-third of corporate training in the U.S. occurs online, and the percentage will grow as companies hasten to further reduce costs, says Josh Bersin, whose Oakland, California, research firm, Bersin & Associates, tracks trends in corporate training.

Large companies in particular are turning to e-learning to get more bang for their training dollar, Bersin says.

“The content-development process forces companies to think about their core competency models ahead of time, instead of just having an instructor stand up and start talking,” Bersin says.

Some of Adecco’s newcomers are farther along the development path than others. Jacqueline Chen joined the company in 2007 as vice president of public relations and communications and had previously represented Adecco when the company was a client of a PR firm for which she worked.

As part of the required corporate training, Chen has completed courses in diversity training and preventing sexual harassment. More significantly, Chen is among a select group of human resources professionals at Adecco to receive specialized training pertaining to an “internal reorganization.”

“It helped me understand why we’re making the changes, in layman’s terms and not corporate-speak. It also helped me understand how I could potentially play a role in ensuring the success of these changes,” Chen says.

In developing her personal learning agenda, Chen is considering courses to strengthen her grasp of business and financial knowledge.

“Some companies have the methodology for mapping out a career path but then never give any follow-up. Being a human resources company, I imagine that’s not going to be the case here,” Chen says.

Meanwhile, Adecco plans to continue using the classroom not only to practice execution, but also to monitor people’s progress. Students are given surveys before and after completing the class work. The surveys shed light on whether employees are using what they have learned, Thompson says.

Although Thompson declined to be specific, he says the program has exerted a “moderate effect” on Adecco’s overall turnover. “We know if we get people through our program, we have a better chance of retaining them than [those employees] that don’t go through it.”

Hospitality executives may not openly express it, but the bumpy U.S. economy has them on edge. Consumers are cutting back on vacation travel, more worried about putting food on the table or buying their children’s schoolbooks than enjoying a week or even weekend away.

Occupancy rates were down 2.6 percent during the first half of 2008, according to hospitality research firm Market Metrix in San Rafael, California. With their margins thinning and customers increasingly miserly, U.S.-based hotel chains are trying to boost service scores— and hence profits—by improving their employee training.

Hilton Hotels Corp., Ramada Worldwide Inc. and Best Western International are among major brands to unveil intensive service training that emphasizes the pivotal role that courteous, knowledgeable employees play in creating customer loyalty.

These efforts typically combine behavioral training and “on demand” technologies to motivate employees as advocates for guests, rather than merely working the front desk or changing the sheets. It’s too soon to tell whether the training can reverse the business slide, but industry observers say renewed zeal for contented customers has been quietly but steadily building, in lock step with declining economic conditions.

“Customer service is a huge focus of training now for hospitality companies. Customers are sick and tired of not being treated right” during hotel stays, says Deborah Curtis, director of the Hospitality Training and Research Center at Niagara University in upstate New York.

Curtis says her organization is fielding an increasing number of calls from hoteliers asking for help, prompted especially by the softening hospitality market. Their interest goes beyond training for staff that interacts with the public and includes back-office, support and maintenance people.

“When times are good, mistakes are easier to cover up. But when you lose even a few unhappy customers, the impact can be devastating,” Curtis says.

An annual study in July by J.D. Power and Associates determined that hotel visitors are more disenchanted than ever. Overall guest satisfaction with hotel stays fell notably across all segments in 2008, the first such dip in five years, according to J.D. Power.

Hilton is revamping service and quality training for its workforce of more than 100,000 people around the world. The move was spurred by a series of organizational changes. Hilton in 2005 acquired the lodging assets of Hilton International, a separate company consisting of Hilton properties outside the U.S. Just two years later, New York-based financial firm the Blackstone Group swooped in to acquire the newly merged Hilton companies for a record $26 billion.

Amid the upheaval, one of the biggest challenges is getting globally dispersed employees to read from the same playbook. The effort includes translating customized learning material into at least 16 and as many as 27 languages. The Beverly Hills, California-based chain is zeroing in on employee behaviors that provide guests with “hassle-free, personalized and informational service,” says Mark Keidash, Hilton’s director of brand education.

Hilton this year unveiled an online tool kit of learning content made accessible through a special intranet portal. The tool kit supplements the company’s formal orientation programs and periodic refresher courses offered on property.

Hilton employees at more than 500 hotels and resorts use it to quickly review quality and service standards, regardless of their job role, department or geographic location. Someone in room service, for instance, could click on interactive checklists to make sure they have fulfilled all required job duties, operating procedures and service standards. Managers likewise hand out “brand service cards” to their employees to reinforce the service standards.

“These global brand standards are our attempt to make sure there is some form of consistent interaction that happens with customers, no matter where in the world they are staying with us,” Keidash says.

Ramada Worldwide Inc., a midscale franchise based in Parsippany, New Jersey, is using the slowdown to capture new business from the hard-hit luxury segment, says senior vice president Mark F. Young. But Ramada isn’t alone in this approach. Competition for business has intensified. And since its competitors offer comparable amenities, Ramada hopes to distinguish itself on the basis of its people. (Midscale hotels are those priced between luxury and budget/economy properties. Some midscale properties offer full service like food and beverages, while other midscale chains offer limited services.)

“Customer service is the most important part of a stay,” Young says.

As part of the company’s “I Am Ramada” campaign, employees at Ramada’s 850 hotel properties around the globe sign pledge cards to exhibit “six pillars” of customer service. The idea is to create “caring experiences” for each guest, Young says.

The Ramada corporate name serves as an acronym: Employees are expected to be Ready, Anticipating, Making a Connection, Aware, Delightful and Appreciative (of customers). Training on the first three “commitments” was delivered during regional meetings in fall 2007. The final three were emphasized in a separate session earlier this year, Young says.

General managers reinforce the lessons with daily reminders, including posters and other printed material. Interactive tools also play a vital role. Employees learn at their own pace, using content that includes a streaming video game in which they must choose the best options for resolving any number of likely customer issues.

Since inception of the training in 2007, overall satisfaction rose 2.5 percent, based on 90,000 customer surveys. Customers gave high marks for overall service, knowledge and helpfulness of staffers who work with guests, Young says. Also, customer intent to return—a key measure of loyalty and satisfaction—climbed 4 percent.

Companies that fail to adequately prepare their people to serve customers put their reputations and revenue at risk, says Renie Cavallari, who runs Phoenix-based training company Aspire Marketing.

For every customer who complains, there are another 25 who remain silent but spread their dissatisfaction by word-of-mouth, Cavallari says, citing a study by the White House Office of Consumer Affairs.

Conversely, Cavallari points out that companies with solid training usually post gains in two key metrics: revenue per available room and gross operating profit per available room.

Best Western International’s five-year vision is to lead the midscale segment in customer care, says Ron Pohl, vice president of brand management for the Phoenix-based chain of 2,300 North American properties. By the close of 2008, Best Western expects to complete the initial rollout of its “I Care” program, which targets its roughly 50,000 employees across different groups. More than 70 percent of Best Western’s hotels are run by owners and operators.

“All our hotels are unique and there is no cookie-cutter approach. We wanted to create training that supports that,” Pohl says.

Rather than standardized behaviors across all properties, Pohl says employees are encouraged to tailor service that reflects their individual hotel’s regional flavor, giving it a “bed and breakfast feel.” One of the main goals is to get hotel staff thinking creatively by anticipating customer needs.

“It’s based on the golden rule: treating people as you would want to be treated,” Pohl says.

The economic slowdown was not directly responsible for the new program, although Pohl acknowledges it provides an opportunity for Best Western to shore up weak spots. The first phase involves implementing the practices at all hotels by the end of 2008, with the next rollout during the first quarter of 2009.

Hotel managers undergo “train the trainer” sessions to help them implement the “I Care” practices at their individual hotels.

Much of the training will be required, and its completion can be tracked online, Pohl says.

Finally, though, nifty slogans and one-time training programs aren’t enough, experts say. Hotels operators that mistakenly think of new service training as a special event will find that their efforts will fall flat in the long run. Instead, Cavallari says, a hotel company’s culture “is what delivers great customer service.”

Raul Garcia has been on both sides of the fence in the accounting world. The 20-year industry veteran spent the early part of his career with Deloitte, one of the largest professional services firms in the world. But for the past 11 years Garcia has plied his trade at Kaufman Rossin & Co., a smaller, Miami-based organization that quietly has built a reputation as one of the most respected firms in the industry.

Although Garcia has fond memories of his time at Deloitte, it is in the more intimate setting at Kaufman Rossin that he is emerging as a leader. “At a smaller firm, you run the whole gamut and get involved in many aspects of the company,” says Garcia, a manager with the company’s audit financial services division in Miami.

That includes getting involved with learning and development. In addition to managing his own staff, Garcia, 41, helps other professionals prepare for continuing-education requirements related to the complex hedge fund industry. He helps design curricula, prepares coursework and delivers in-person training through the company’s Kaufman Rossin University.

Being able to share his technical knowledge with others contributes to his own job satisfaction, Garcia says. “With 20 years under my belt, if I can help somebody learn from my experience, then I feel I’m doing my part.”

Kaufman Rossin, which posted $50 million in revenue in 2007, is noted for its historically low turnover and exceptional retention. Nearly 20 percent of its employees have spent at least two decades with the firm. The firm’s family-style corporate culture is something of a mini-legend in the accounting industry.

Experts say the company’s aggressive stance on learning is a key factor in its ability to compete with bigger firms in wooing talented people like Garcia. In particular, the accounting practice’s in-house university is designed to encourage and instill learning across all levels of the organization, from senior partners down to support staff.

“It’s a phenomenal company with a phenomenal culture,” says Bruce Tulgan, founder of Rainmaker Thinking, a New Haven, Connecticut-based consulting firm that helped Kaufman Rossin design management and staff training for its in-house university.

“Jim Kaufman’s employees think the world of him,” Tulgan says, referring to one of the firm’s co-founders.

A corporate university may seem like overkill for a company with only 280 employees. It is a learning structure usually associated with complex organizations with large, globally dispersed workforces. Yet few industries depend as much on sustained knowledge development as accounting, where laws are constantly in flux and complex, new regulations must be digested, understood and implemented to help customers.

     “We felt one of the benefits, both to our firm and our employees, would be the creation of a more formal, dedicated and deeper education program,” says Janet Altman, a marketing principal with Kaufman Rossin in Miami.

The company’s professional staff, including accountants, auditors and tax specialists, routinely pursues ongoing training for certification to stay current in their respective fields. But there was concern that some people weren’t getting enough detailed training in technical and other strategic skills, Altman says.

The in-house university provides four categories of learning: technical and professional certifications, technology training, management and life-enrichment classes. The last category includes foreign-language instruction, yoga, a book club and art appreciation.

“We think of our university as something that enriches the lives of our employees, and it’s one reason we are [considered] one of the best places to work in South Florida,” Altman says, referring to an honor conferred three years in a row by the South Florida Business Journal.

A sizable chunk of the curriculum is devoted to helping white-collar professionals grow into management and leadership roles, specifically by helping them “learn how to manage, and [help] staffers learn how to be managed,” says Samantha Snyder, the director of Kaufman Rossin University.

Unlike most U.S. industries, the accounting profession is seeing its ranks swell as new college graduates enter the field. According to a survey by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, more than 64,000 students in 2007 graduated with either a bachelor’s or master’s degree in accounting. That is 19 percent higher than the trade group’s last survey in 2005, and also marks the largest one-year number of new accounting graduates since it began tracking the data 36 years ago.

Fueling the surge are tougher reforms like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which imposes stricter corporate governance requirements on U.S. companies.

Identifying potential leaders among this crop of newly minted professionals remains a problem for professional services organizations, which often promote their best people without first assessing their managerial skills.

As a result, fledgling managers often take a hands-off approach and “end up managing only by special occasion, when things go wrong,” says Tulgan, the Rainmaker Thinking consultant.

Moreover, the grueling pace of the professional services sector creates an ethos of “chewing people up and spitting them out,” not one that focuses on individual development or growth, Tulgan says.

Kaufman Rossin University’s curriculum exposes managers to some fundamentals intended to boost their success rate. Most of these skills seem intuitive, yet learning them can seem daunting to people who have never managed others.

“Coming from other industries, we realized that management is a skill that can be taught … and that it’s vital to the success of the organization,” Altman says.

For example, managers are encouraged to have daily one-on-one sessions with employees, learn to clearly communicate expectations, and provide performance coaching to prevent small issues from turning into major crises.

“I’ve learned a lot more patience,” Garcia says of his exposure to management training. “You learn to walk yourself through [managing] a difficult situation, rather than flying by the seat of your pants.”

Another beneficiary is Meredith Tucker, who joined Kaufman Rossin as an intern in 2003 while pursuing a master’s degree in accounting. Upon graduating from Florida State University, she was hired at the firm and now serves as a supervisor of accounting services at its Fort Lauderdale branch.

Tucker’s job duties begin to change once the annual tax season closes. In addition to her regular job duties, Tucker, 28, carries the title of part-time faculty at the corporate university. She says she spends “20 percent to 30 percent of any given week during the summer reading about changes in accounting laws, preparing lesson plans and developing courses that teach use of commonly used accounting software and other tools. The courses are aimed at both accounting professionals and support staff.

Aside from teaching them how to use the software, Tucker helps people “understand things from a client’s perspective,” including anticipating commonly asked questions and providing knowledgeable replies, she says.

Last year, Kaufman Rossin introduced a mentoring program and upgraded its performance evaluations around a set of leadership competencies. “We’ve identified for the first time specifically what it takes for a person to perform not only in their current job, but also jobs at the next level,” Snyder says.

The company plans to offer a leadership program through its university later this year, consisting of two tracks. One track will provide basic management training— the “how to manage and how to be managed” philosophy—to all employees. The second targets a select group of managers whose performance suggests they could emerge as the company’s future partners and senior leaders.

The initiative grew out of internal discussions regarding the need to create specific succession plans for key positions.

“Our partner track gives back to the program by [producing] the mentors that will assist people moving up the ranks,” Snyder says.

At the other end of the experience spectrum is the firm’s 12-week internship program for college graduates. Those selected as interns spend three weeks each in the company’s tax, accounting, auditing and litigation consulting departments.

Interns receive traditional coursework in each area, but the more important material is learned through hands-on assignments. The program is “extremely effective,” Altman says, since many new graduates aren’t sure which discipline they want to pursue.

It seems only logical for Agilent Technologies to apply rigorous metrics to a leader’s capabilities. The Santa Clara, California-based company is, after all, in the business of measurement.

Nowhere is the assessment of leaders more crucial than in China, which accounts for a growing portion of Agilent’s Asia Pacific market. China is poised to surpass the U.S. as Agilent’s chief growth engine during the next decade, says country HR manager Gordon Xing, who is based in Beijing.

There is a caveat, however.

“Without a strong leadership team, we will not be able to outpace market growth. That [realization] is the driving force for us to develop local leaders at a faster pace than ever before,” he says.

Agilent specializes in hardware and software tools that help organizations collect, analyze, interpret and integrate data into a useful system. The equipment is used across a spectrum of industries, including aerospace, electronics, defense, food safety, health care, nanotechnology and telecommunications.

The company operates in 110 countries in Asia, Europe and North America and employs 19,400 people around the world, including 8,500 workers in Asian Pacific Rim countries. Its Chinese workforce is at 1,500 people and counting. In one notable example of its Chinese presence, Agilent is providing a variety of products and services at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, including drug-testing equipment for athletes.

Like many other large companies, Agilent is looking to China’s booming economy to neutralize the effects of sluggishness in the U.S. Agilent recorded net revenue of $5.4 million in 2007, a 9 percent increase from 2006, according to its annual report in January. Roughly two-thirds of Agilent’s net revenue originates outside the U.S.

To guide its growing cohort of young Chinese professionals, Agilent needs managers who think globally and act locally, Xing says. In particular, they must be able to work across cultures, coach and motivate, identify top performers and recruit for critical positions—all while monitoring changing business conditions in local and global markets.

China-specific leadership training is geared toward improving three critical skills: strategic thinking, financial and business acumen, and “increasing their influential power” through coaching and communications, Xing says.

China’s challenge
Companies with aspirations in China are presented with a mixture of business opportunities and management challenges. On the one hand, growth seems assured. Some economists predict that China will knock the U.S. off its perch as the world’s leading economy during the next half-century.

A study released in June by researchers at Georgia Tech University in Atlanta found that China’s aggressive push to foster scientists and engineers puts it in position to leapfrog the U.S. as the world’s dominant innovator of products and services. Multinational companies, tempted by China’s still relatively cheap labor and an ascending middle class, are staking out territory there.

Despite foreign investment and a population of 1.3 billion people, China faces an acute shortage of managerial talent, according to two other reports.

McKinsey Global Institute predicts that companies in China will need 75,000 business leaders during the next decade. By contrast, McKinsey estimates that only 3,000 to 5,000 people possess the leadership skills needed to succeed in an increasingly complex global economy.

Although technical workers are abundant, homegrown leaders are in especially short supply and hard to retain in China, where managerial turnover is 25 percent greater than the global average, according to a 2007 report by Pittsburgh-based Development Dimensions International and the Society for Human Resources Development.

The survey of 215 global HR and business leaders found that the average multinational firm sees 30 percent to 40 percent of senior managers changing jobs in China every year. Lack of career development is cited as the primary reason.

Labor leader
Agilent is trying to go against that grain, and it has at least one advantage. Although it is less than a decade old, Agilent has a history in China, thanks to the fact that it was once part of computer giant Hewlett-Packard. H-P in 1985 became the first U.S. high-tech company to participate in a joint venture with the Chinese government.

Agilent was spun off from H-P in 1999, going public in a celebrated stock sale that netted $2.1 billion in proceeds.

Being an outgrowth of H-P gave Agilent mature products with market acceptance. More important, Agilent’s learning leaders in Asia—including Xing and James Cheng, the learning and development manager for China— started their careers with H-P.

Their move up the ranks underscores one of the values inherited from H-P.

    “When developing leaders, we definitely look from within first,” going outside only for skills that are “pretty unique and specific,” says Christopher Goh, who directs learning and development for Agilent’s Asia Pacific region. Goh also formerly worked at H-P.

Typical of organizations based in the West, Agilent’s on-the-ground leaders in China primarily gained experience in sales, marketing, engineering or other operational functions.

“Therefore, they know how to drive an order or execute a task, but in general, leaders lack an understanding of P&L issues” and often struggle when trying to coach others, Xing says. Those are skill gaps the company seeks to fill.

In addition to general leadership skills for China, individual business units are encouraged to propose customized leadership training that targets high-potential employees. All training is based on the Agilent Leadership Competency, a framework that is “embedded throughout our HR processes and systems, from onboarding to performance management,” Goh says.

It consists of roughly a dozen character traits that are common to successful leaders. To reinforce those values, core training programs are targeted to each level of leadership, from middle managers to general managers who run business units, Goh says.

For example, managers at all levels shoulder three broad responsibilities, regardless of location: assess and align strategies, mentor their people to grow and develop, and drive results in their respective local markets. The last item is heavily dependent on the first two.

The three dimensions of learning give top leaders a clear view of the organization’s skills, knowledge and areas of need, Goh says.

‘Ready now, ready later’
At Agilent, managers are responsible for employee professional development and craft learning agendas that help workers plot career milestones. They also provide performance support along the way, Xing says.

Aside from technical skills and knowledge, the career development reviews examine an individual’s capacity to assume roles of increased responsibility. Agilent’s most immediate need is to ensure that critical positions are filled by the best available candidates, but the succession plans create a pool of “ready now, ready later” workers to fill out the leadership depth chart, Xing says.

People with managerial potential have a chance to fortify skills gaps and mark their progress through periodic 360-degree assessments, Cheng says.

“Based on that, we fine-tune each learning program to address those areas of needs,” he says.

What Agilent does in China is but one demonstration of its almost obsessive attention to cultivating influential new leaders.

Every three months, all 19,400 employees worldwide are asked to participate in “leadership audits” that define the attributes of successful managers. Questions focus on “behaviors known to drive engagement and accountability,” says Teresa Roche, Agilent’s U.S.-based vice president of global learning and leadership development.

The quarterly audits were instituted shortly after William Sullivan took over as CEO in March 2005. Employees apparently welcome the chance to share their views, with 82 percent participating in the most recent survey, Roche says.

It’s more than merely a feel-good tool for employees, though. The results are compared with normative data compiled by groups such as Corporate Leadership Council and Gallup, she says.

This year, line managers began receiving individualized reports to compare their performance against industry norms as well as Agilent’s top 100 leaders. The reports provide a way “to measure progress and hold our leaders accountable for improvement in areas that we’ve deemed important in a given year,” Roche says.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is the latest high-profile employer to learn a rueful lesson: America’s frontline managers need a stronger grasp on the basics of wage and hour laws. In July, the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer was ordered to pay $6.5 million in compensatory damages to the 56,000 employees in Minnesota who won a class-action lawsuit alleging Wal-Mart failed to pay them for working overtime.

The company could end up paying more than $2 billion after a jury convenes in October to consider civil and punitive damages. Among the violations: Employees allege they were directed by Wal-Mart superiors to work off the clock and frequently were denied breaks.

Wal-Mart has been punished for allegations of violating federal wage laws before. A Pennsylvania jury in 2006 awarded $78 million to Wal-Mart workers who said they worked off the clock and through breaks. That followed a $172 million verdict against Wal-Mart in California in 2005.

Wal-Mart is said to be appealing the judgments. The company declined to comment on the matter when contacted by Workforce Management.

Meanwhile, the retailer reportedly is embroiled in about 70 similar employee wage disputes nationwide.

Wal-Mart is hardly the lone major U.S. employer to face a large settlement. Other noteworthy payouts: UBS Financial Services Inc. is compensating retail brokers for unpaid overtime in a settlement potentially worth $89 million. United Parcel Service Inc. has agreed to pay $87 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by 20,000 of its drivers. IBM in 2006 settled similar litigation to the tune of $65 million, but has at least two other wage suits making their way through the courts.

Wage and hour lawsuits are widespread for a simple reason: Seven in 10 U.S. employers are failing to comply with wage and hour regulations, according to a recent study by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Some experts say that estimate is too conservative, suggesting the actual number is between 95 percent and 100 percent.

“You could go into virtually any company and probably find a technical violation of wage and hour law,” says Shanti Atkins, the president of ELT Inc., a San Francisco company that provides online legal and compliance training to corporations.

Failing to equip managers with at least rudimentary knowledge of labor laws comes with a steep cost. Companies found in violation of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act—the law that governs job classification, overtime pay, and record keeping—pay an average of $23.5 million to resolve claims of unpaid overtime and other FLSA-related allegations, according to a 2007 study by New York University School of Law professor Samuel Estreicher.

Experts say companies can sidestep some of the liability by making sure supervisors are conversant with basic dos and don’ts, such as instructing employees not to work through break times and not to volunteer their time after hours and requiring that they receive approval in advance for any overtime they put in.

“A manager should be trained to know what constitutes work and what doesn’t. It sounds like an easy concept, but often it’s not,” says Tammy McCutchen, a Washington attorney with Littler Mendelson and former administrator of the U.S. Labor Department’s wage and hour division.

Disputes about employee wages have been on the rise since the start of the decade, but have skyrocketed in the past few years. The number of wage complaints filed under the FLSA soared from 4,207 in 2006 to more than 7,300 in 2007.

Unlike allegations of discrimination or harassment, in which accusers must prove they were harmed, the burden of proof in wage disputes rests upon the employer. That means companies have to disprove claims that they failed to compensate someone for time worked.

An understanding of work laws isn’t usually considered a training issue—though perhaps it ought to be, given the spike in class-action wage and hour suits. Frontline managers need to understand the “definition of work” for each employee they supervise, as well as explain rules that prohibit employees from volunteering their time or pulling overtime without prior approval, Atkins says.

“Training managers on this can eliminate some very basic errors that people make completely inadvertently, which frankly are fueling most of the lawsuits in this area,” Atkins says.

The managers often commit some of the biggest blunders, such as suggesting that employees work overtime but not record it. They are also the ones who are likely to receive complaints from employees who think something is wrong with their pay or hours, so training is crucial in helping them defuse controversies, Atkins says.

Wage laws are painstaking, forcing companies to know precisely what constitutes typical workday activities. McCutchen predicts that future controversies will erupt because of the profusion of company-provided electronic devices that employees use to carry out their duties, especially with regard to nonexempt workers.

“If you’re giving them a BlackBerry or cell phone, and they use it at home to check their work-related e-mail, that’s [classified as] work time,” putting companies at risk if they fail to have written policies in place governing their use outside the workplace, McCutchen says.

Having accurate job descriptions and written policies also helps, but many organizations are using performance reviews to make managers accountable for ensuring that state and federal employment laws are rigidly followed. Some are even instituting policies that allow managers to be terminated if they purposefully or intentionally take some action that violates the law,” McCutchen says.

It’s never too late to attack the problem, even in the midst of litigation. Implementing wage and hour training initiatives during the course of a lawsuit can help companies reduce financial penalties, Atkins says.

When they get busy earning money, organizations sometimes forget to pay due attention to employee development. The problem is compounded in companies that expand rapidly through acquisitions and need to integrate myriad workplace cultures.

    Before things got to that point, Laird Technologies Inc. decided to put in place an internal learning initiative, Laird Technologies University, to give sales, marketing and financial employees a common language and common set of business methods.

    Headquartered near St. Louis, Laird Technologies operates 41 facilities in 13 countries. The company designs and supplies components and equipment used in cell phones, computers, plasma TVs and other consumer electronics. The products prevent electromagnetic interference and shield heat-intensive electronics from damage. The company is a unit of the Laird Group, a publicly traded British company that posted combined revenue of $1.2 billion in 2007. The company’s origins date back to the 1880s, when it designed warships for the British navy.

    With help from Washington University in St. Louis, Laird’s internal experts are devising learning resources for three modules, each one targeting a successively narrower grouping of employees. The first series of foundational classes began in March 2008, targeting 400 key employees who work in finance, sales and marketing.

    It includes intensive learning sessions on basic skills: product training, developing market-focused pricing, problem-solving, communication and supporting customers. Participants also get to hone skills in selling, financial analysis and product management.

    The in-house learning is akin to climbing a staircase. Employees enrolled in the first level, known as Foundations, must complete the necessary training to be able to pursue the Development and Executive modules, which will be introduced in subsequent years.

    Sean Harrigan, Laird’s senior vice president of sales and business development, says the program enables high performers to achieve “professional” status, signifying that they are experts in their field.

    It won’t be available to every employee, but only to those “who are rated for development across a spectrum of behaviors and achievements” by Laird’s managers, Harrigan says.

    Laird has been changing course in the past decade, divesting certain assets to concentrate solely on its core businesses. Meanwhile, it has been acquiring other companies, which has swelled its workforce to about 15,000 people.

    Harrigan says the new training is an important component to maintaining annual growth of about 30 percent.

    “The larger recognition is that for us to remain competitive, we have to invest in continually upgrading people’s skills,” particularly as newly acquired companies become part of the Laird portfolio.

    Washington University was a natural fit to help design the content and provide advice and guidance, Harrigan says. Laird previously has used university students to work on special projects, including a branding effort last year.

    Specially chosen subject-matter experts within Laird are working with Washington University faculty to devise proprietary case studies and learning exercises drawn from actual situations. Laird’s learning team trainers will use the instruction guides to deliver internal training.

    The arrangement should result in rich content that continually sparks employees to learn, says Samuel Chun, a professor with Washington University’s Olin Business School.

    The effort will help Laird create a talent pool and promote ongoing development, Chun says. “This year’s batch of people who get developed will become next year’s developers.”

    Each of the modules builds on the others. The foundational training zeroes in on tactical day-to-day tasks. Of the 400 employees eligible for the foundational training, Harrigan estimates roughly half are expected to complete the training requirements by the end of 2008.

    Perhaps two-thirds of them will advance to the Development module. An even smaller number, 30 to 40 people, will progress to the Executive module, Harrigan says.

    Laird already has a process in which top executives establish yearly goals and push them down to line managers, who ultimately are responsible for communicating those goals to their employees.

    Depending on which job they have, Laird employees are assessed on a series of key performance indicators that highlight their individual performance against corporate goals, which include revenue growth, new business development and operational excellence.

    Despite the clarity on goals, however, employees were asking for more precise knowledge development. Up to now, Laird responded by referring employees to courses provided by external training groups such as the American Management Association.

    “It wasn’t very formal and it wasn’t well-defined,” Harrigan says. But the new training should broaden people’s understanding of how their individual job specifically maps to Laird’s larger corporate objectives. It also ensures that all employees receive the same training.

    Laird believes it will be able to improve both recruitment of new employees and the ability to grow its own talent. Headhunters have been hovering, seeking to poach Laird’s top talent, Harrigan says.

    Additionally, Laird is ratcheting up its campus recruiting. The company plans to hire more college graduates, bringing them through stepped learning programs that include Laird Technologies University and functional assignments to quickly bring them up to speed.

    Laird is employing a practice once widely used by companies like IBM Corp. and Xerox, but which increasingly is going out of fashion, says David Brock, a performance consultant who provides coaching to Laird’s sales managers.

    “Not many companies invest at this level in their people anymore. What Sean and his team are doing at Laird is a cool idea: showing people they have a career path with the company,” says Brock, who is president of Partners in Excellence in Mission Viejo, California.

    Harrigan says specialized learning is under development for other employee groups, including a track for people in technical positions.

W. Stanton Smith has written the book on the widening generation gap in the American workplace—literally. Don’t look for Smith to do promotional book signings or speaking engagements, though.

    His book, Decoding Generational Differences: Fact, Fiction, or Should We Just Get Back to Work? is part of a cultural learning exercise at Deloitte, one of the Big Four accounting and consulting firms. Deloitte is a global company with several lines of business and advisory services. In the U.S. alone, where Deloitte has offices in about 80 cities, its business units generated $9.8 billion in combined revenue in 2007.

    Decoding Generational Differences is part of a series of internal executive briefings that aims to help Deloitte’s leaders understand, and capitalize on, the generational diversity of its 37,000 U.S. workers.

    It is not some stodgy treatise about learning theories. The narrative is informative and entertaining, blending humor and strategic thinking into a volume that can be quickly read by Deloitte leaders.

    Four generations of employees work at Deloitte: veterans (those born before 1946), baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964), Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980) and Generation Y (born after 1980). Each group embraces different attitudes and has different expectations from their jobs, complicating the task of professional development, says Smith, who serves as Deloitte’s national director of next-generation initiatives.

    “Our research has born out that there are real differences that can be bridged. But those differences are not just figments of someone’s imagination,” nor can Deloitte managers ignore them and remain credible with employees, Smith says.

    Deloitte, along with other large consulting firms, must weather a storm in the labor market. Stricter accounting and auditing regulations will trigger employment growth in the field of 18 percent by 2016, or about 226,000 new accounting and auditing jobs, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is faster than the average growth rate for all occupations.

    Yet the supply of new talent entering the profession is well below the levels needed to meet anticipated demand. In fact, finding successors and developing new talent are two top concerns cited by accounting firms in a 2007 survey by the American Institute for Certified Public Accountants, a trade group based in New York.

    Deloitte, with two-thirds of its customer-serving business consultants age 35 or younger, perhaps feels the pangs of the generation gaps more profoundly than most. Smith’s title reflects an emerging business strategy at Deloitte to recruit and develop a new generation of business consultants and accountants.

    “The young have always appeared different to their elders, but the current Gen Xers and Gen Yers—and particularly Gen Y—seem increasingly different in high-impact ways,” Smith says. “Our issue at Deloitte is, how can we become attuned to these young people, who now constitute the majority of our workforce below the partner, principal and director level?”

    Smith and his research team at Deloitte discovered three main “dividing lines” that distinguish Generations X and Y from baby boomers and veterans: namely, the younger generations’ heavy reliance on technologies, their attitudes about how and when work gets accomplished and rewarded, and a “consumer mind-set,” in which they expect employers to demonstrate exceptional interest in their professional growth.

    Younger employees expect constant challenges and stimulation, Smith says. That requires Deloitte’s managers to learn new ways of coaching, mentoring and communicating expectations.

    “We are addressing [the issue] by being willing to answer more questions and by showing people that there is value in the way we’re asking them to work,” Smith says.

    Deloitte’s story probably sounds familiar. Companies of varying sizes—but particularly larger firms with more to lose—are grappling with how to address career planning amid momentous demographic shifts in the U.S. labor market.

    Frustrating many companies’ attempts is the arm’s-length view young people often adopt toward jobs and careers, says training consultant Dianne Durkin, president of Loyalty Factor in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

    “These [newcomers to the workforce] want three things from a job: flexibility, fun and money. But the reality is that they’re not willing to sacrifice” for the sake of work, and that’s an attitude that can be maddening to their baby-boomer managers, Durkin says.

    The laws of supply and demand also favor Generation X and Y workers, who have the leverage to demand more from prospective employers. This appears especially true in the professional services field.

    Based on Deloitte’s research, Smith says there are about 16.5 million high school students in the U.S. in grades 9 through 12. But only about one-third of that number, or 5.4 million high school graduates, will earn college degrees during the next four to six years.

    Furthermore, only 2 percent of those college grads have evinced an interest in accounting, consulting or related careers, which equates to about 31,000 new entrants to the job market each year. That compares with about 54,000 accounting graduates who join the profession annually now.

    All told, the Big Four professional services firms hire 20,000 to 25,000 students directly from college each year, setting up a fierce scrimmage for a dwindling supply of talent.

    “The worst case is that the industry could see about a 40 percent drop in supply” during the next several years, Smith says.

    Deloitte can’t change the demographic realities, but it is adopting an “offense is the best defense” strategy. A major component lies in the concept of what Deloitte calls “mass career customization.” The objective is to help employees envision their careers through a series of interactive exercises and online resources. Employees are urged to think not only about their current role, but how careers tend to ebb and flow over time.

    Deloitte has established a Web site that gives employees a “consistent framework” for exploring their career options. Insala, a Dallas-based software company, provides users with fresh content and a suite of career management tools.

    Included are self-assessment modules, a template for beefing up their résumés, as well as access to virtual coaches, a team of about 15 HR generalists and recruiters within Deloitte.

    In concert with their managers, Deloitte’s workers are given an opportunity to imagine their careers on four different dimensions: their current role, the pace at which they choose to develop, the geographic location and/or types of future jobs, and their workload.

    Deloitte doesn’t want to think of its employees merely as assets, says Smith, but as human beings with goals, preferences and aspirations.

    The idea isn’t to lock people into a career plan, but rather to give them a defined set of jobs they could grow into at Deloitte.

    The customized career tools appear to be a big hit. Roughly 10 percent of Deloitte’s U.S. employees access the online resources each week, a fairly high usage rate, says Phillip Roark, Insala’s president and CEO.

    More important, the program is paying dividends in the form of higher retention. Each time an employee leaves, it costs Deloitte about $150,000 to recruit a replacement, based on average annual salaries of $75,000. Since launching the Mass Career Customization program in 2002, Smith estimates that about 1,000 employees have elected to stay at Deloitte who otherwise would have left.

    Multiply 1,000 people by a factor of two times their annual salary, “and you’re talking about real money,” Smith says.

    Initially open through a pilot program to about 7,000 Deloitte employees, the customized career program eventually will target every member of the company’s U.S. workforce. Within a year, Smith says, each employee is expected to start preparing an individual long-range career profile, in conjunction with their direct managers.

    Leaders shoulder major responsibilities for employee learning at Deloitte. Sometimes that means overcoming long-ingrained negative stereotypes that senior workers harbor toward less-experienced colleagues.

    “Some of our partners look at our younger employees as slackers who don’t want to work as hard as they did. The fact is that [younger employees] grew up in a very different world, and it’s unreasonable to expect them to behave the way people did 30 or 40 years ago,” Smith says.

    For example, only about 4 percent of Deloitte’s employees take advantage of flexible-work arrangements, although the company encourages their use. The most often cited reason for not seeking flexible schedules is that people believe it might automatically disqualify them from advancement opportunities.

    Deloitte is educating its leaders to let employees know that using these programs won’t harm their chances of earning promotions, Smith says.

    Durkin, the training consultant, applauds Deloitte’s proactive approach. She says employee development can be especially effective with younger employees, despite their mercurial nature.

    “The reality is that once they get into a good job situation, they’re like most people: They hate to move,” Durkin says.

Samsung Electronics North America is on a new journey. Although well established as a global organization, it wasn’t until 2007 that Samsung established a full-time training function for its 10,000 employees in North America.

    “We’re really just starting to look at things like providing learning opportunities to employees at all levels, not just high-potential leaders,” says Randy Mase, director of training and development for Samsung Electronics, a North American subsidiary of Seoul, South Korea-based Samsung Group.

    The company is making up for lost time. Samsung is increasing its reliance on e-learning to buttress instructor-led classes. And possibly by the end of 2008, the company plans to issue career maps to all employees.

    “As you can imagine, that’s an extensive project. But we think it’s going to give people a vision [for career growth] that will help us with retention—and in the long term, with recruiting as well,” Mase says.

    These road maps will spell out the knowledge, skills and experiences employees would need to pursue different assignments at any of Samsung Electronics’ eight North American subsidiaries. But employees who continually develop their skills won’t necessarily be in line for promotion.

    “There are lots of ways a person can progress and develop within a job. What we want to do is make people’s jobs richer,” Mase says.