Category: Training

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Organizations Need Coaching on How to Coach: Report

The success of performance coaching hinges on the support of top brass, enabling organizations to generate superior business and employee results, a new study shows.

Business results were 21 percent higher among organizations whose senior leaders “very frequently” make an effort to coach others, according to High-Impact Performance Management: Maximizing Performance Coaching, produced by Oakland, California-based advisory firm Bersin & Associates.

Additionally, organizations that reported “excellent” cultural support for coaching had 13 percent stronger business results and 39 percent stronger employee results, including engagement, productivity and customer service, the report notes.

The report is based on responses from nearly 200 U.S. companies. It marks the second phase of Bersin’s study on performance coaching. An earlier Bersin report in August revealed that 70 percent of organizations have jettisoned traditional performance reviews in favor of coaching, but also noted that most managers don’t know how to effectively coach.

“Coaching is the No. 1 performance-management challenge that organizations face, yet most don’t understand its value. They aren’t sure which emotional levers they need to pull to change people’s behaviors,” says Stacia Sherman Garr, a Bersin analyst and the report’s author.

Senior leaders need to engage in coaching to make sure it becomes culturally accepted and a point of accountability, the report concludes. Getting executives to participate is itself a challenge, though. On average, only 11 percent of senior leaders are considered “true believers” that coaching leads to improved performance.

To reverse the perception, leaders who believe in coaching should evangelize others through action, particularly by piloting performance-based coaching programs, according to the report.

Aside from executive support, helping managers understand the impact and acquire coaching skills also is crucial, according to the study. For instance, organizations that effectively prepare managers to coach are 130 percent more likely to realize stronger business results vs. those that don’t prepare managers and 33 percent better at engaging employees than ineffective organizations, Garr says.

Finally, human resources should be involved by creating an environment “that supports, teaches and measures coaching,” the study says.

Two years ago, Archer Daniels Midland Co., a global agricultural products company, launched a Coaching to Win program designed to better equip its 6,000 managers around the globe. The objective is to formalize coaching as an expectation for all managers, says Jane Pierce, the Decatur, Illinois-based company’s vice president, talent and organizational development.

“We believe good performance management really is about coaching for performance. The performance management review process is important, but it looks backward. Coaching gets people to look forward,” Pierce says.

Participants identified three traits to help managers improve their coaching abilities: active listening, reinforcing the desired behaviors, and asking open-ended questions, Garr says.

Generally, though, leaders still struggle when expected to coach, says E. Michael Norman, a Los Angeles-based senior consultant with Sibson Consulting, headquartered in New York. “Leaders are lining up and acknowledging the need. Now it’s a matter of making it a priority as part of the performance management model.”

Garry Kranz is a Workforce Management contributing editor. To comment, email editors@workforce.com.

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Are Millennials Too Conservative When Investing?

Ryan Spiering says he doesn’t like to save money, but is starting out his working career with decent saving habits.

The digital art director for the Milwaukee office of HGA Architects and Engineers just started contributing the maximum allowed to his 401(k) plan thanks to his wife’s suggestion. They also own a duplex and rent out the other unit for income. And, he recently made his first stock purchase in Marvel Entertainment.

Spiering, 28, was automatically enrolled into his 401(k) plan when he started his job three years ago, and has his contribution deducted from each paycheck. He says he was given three investment strategies: conservative, balanced and aggressive, and chose the middle one. So far he has about $6,000 saved for retirement.

Choosing the balanced approach “sounded like the best of both worlds,” Spiering says.

“The way the stock market is, I’m not ready to do a whole lot with it. I don’t want to risk it too much.”

At a time when millennial workers like Spiering have 30-plus years to save and invest before retiring, many are investing too conservatively—like their baby boomer parents—a new survey by MFS Investment Management shows.

It’s cause for concern, says William Finnegan, senior managing director of U.S. retail marketing for MFS in Boston, because an overly conservative approach won’t allow these workers to accumulate enough assets to achieve certain goals, like retiring on time. MFS estimates this group includes about 77 million people ages 18 to 30, with nearly $1 trillion in spending power.

“The risk of being too aggressive is equal to being too conservative,” Finnegan says. “This could have a long-term negative impact 30 to 35 years out.”

About 40 percent of investors in the MFS survey agreed with the statement, “I will never feel comfortable investing in the stock market.”

Plus, 30 percent of millennial investors’ primary investment objective is to safeguard their money. The survey of nearly 1,000 people with $100,000 or more to invest showed they allocate more money to cash than any other age group—about 30 percent.

It’s mostly because millennials reached the investing age during two major recessions and continue to see significant ups and downs in the market today, says Dan Keady, director of financial planning in the Charlotte, North Carolina, office of TIAA-CREF.

“There are things that can be done to help these people invest more prudently based on the number of years they have to work,” Keady says.

He says using target-date funds and conducting one-on-one sessions with advisers who use engaging social tools such as iPads are ways millennial investors can achieve a more suitable approach to investing.

“Most people are not comfortable with 100 percent stocks,” Keady says. “But to take a modest approach and staying with it over a long period of time can work out well.”

And there are more red flags for this generation when it comes to retirement, experts agree.

The MFS survey reveals that 54 percent of millennial investors are more concerned than ever about being able to reach their retirement goal, and 44 percent said they have lowered their expectations about the quality of life in retirement.

Left on their own, only 54.6 percent of millennial workers participate in their company 401(k) plan, compared with 75 percent of Generation X workers and 78 percent of baby boomers, data from consulting firm Aon Hewitt show.

On average, millennial workers contribute 5.3 percent of their pretax salary to their 401(k) plan, compared with Gen X’s 6.8 percent and the 8 to 9 percent contributions from baby boomers, according to Aon Hewitt, which reviewed 120 large defined contribution plans with 3 million eligible employees. Most experts agree workers should save between 12 to 15 percent of their pretax salary for retirement.

“Gen Y’s future is so dependent on their defined contribution plan, and I don’t think that has sunk in broadly,” says Pam Hess, director of retirement research for Lincolnshire, Illinois-based Aon Hewitt. “Their [defined contribution] plan could be the only thing they will be able to rely on in retirement. They will be on their own with a lot of costs.”

Many millennial investors like automated features, Hess says, and Aon Hewitt’s data show companies automatically enroll more millennial workers than any other group. The trick, she says, is to start them at a high contribution rate.

“They do very well … being put on a path,” Hess says. “If you automatically put them in a target date fund, they will stay there.”

Spiering agrees.

“My instincts are not to save. If given the choice, I would spend it,” he says. “I have things set up so I don’t have to think about it.”

Another way to get millennial workers to become better investors is for advisers to learn and understand what they are worried about, Finnegan says.

“Sometimes we are programmed to give pre-formatted answers,” Finnegan says. “We need to understand the emotion behind the decision.”

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Dear Workforce Who Has a Good Blueprint for Creating an Onboarding Program?

Dear In the Dark:

It is great to see an organization that takes onboarding seriously. After all, you get only one chance to make a good first impression.

Onboarding is a critical—but often overlooked—aspect of talent management. As you suggest, good onboarding can drive employee retention. It also improves employee satisfaction and engagement, productivity and performance.

For best practices, you may want to refer to Getting On Board: A Model for Integrating and Engaging New Employees, produced by the Partnership for Public Service. The report outlines a strategic onboarding model, based on best practices from both the private and public sectors.

Good onboarding actually begins when the new employees accepts a job offer—even before the person reports for a first day of work—and extends to the end of the new employee’s first year. The Getting On Board model outlines five specific onboarding phases (before the new employee reports, the first day, the first week, the first three months and the first year) and lays out specific steps for each phase.

Although this report was written with the public sector in mind, it applies to all organizations. It outlines four fundamental principles that help ensure onboarding is: comprehensive and integrated, reflects the organization’s needs and, most importantly, drives positive outcomes.

1. Align to mission and vision. Onboarding should highlight to new employees how their jobs contribute to the organization’s mission.

2. Connect to culture, mission and strategic priorities. Onboarding must paint a realistic picture of culture, enabling new employees to understand the organization they’ve joined. And onboarding goals should be built around organizational priorities. If a goal is to reduce turnover, for example, the onboarding program should reflect this in a measurable way.

3. Integrate activities. While human resources is traditionally the main onboarding process owner, other key players include security, information technology, facilities, managers/supervisors—and the new employees themselves. All must be accountable for meeting shared onboarding goals.

4. Apply to all employees, regardless of location and level, and also tailor to specific types of employees. New hires entering the world of work for the first time have different needs than experienced professionals who are switching jobs.

“Best practices” organizations also focus on the role of the manager/supervisor in onboarding. All managers should:

• Welcome new employees and meet with them as early as possible.

• Cleary communicate job responsibilities.

• Explain and set cultural expectations (for example, decisions that can be made without manager approval, communication styles).

• Develop individual performance plans with performance expectations.

• Assign meaningful work as soon as possible.

• Discuss career development.

• Monitor performance and provide frequent formal and informal feedback throughout the employee’s first year.

Leading organizations also assign new employees a sponsor (or “buddy”), a peer who can help the new employee understand the organizational culture. The buddy can help the new hire:

• Understand the written and unwritten elements of the culture.

• Learn how to navigate the organization.

• Meet colleagues.

• Get answers to key questions.

While the model in Getting On Board provides an overall framework, individual onboarding programs must be adapted. Specific recommendations:

1. Know where you want to be—define onboarding goals and attributes. Strategic onboarding programs help integrate new employees into their jobs and the organizational culture. Beyond these broad goals, onboarding should map directly to specific organizational goals: reducing turnover, changing culture and improving employee engagement, for example.

2. Know where you are—baseline your current onboarding program. Before making changes, it is important to understand and document current practices and responsibilities. In other words, assess your current approach, scope and effectiveness).

3. Seek quick wins. For many organizations, small improvements pay big dividends. Activities that can be implemented quickly and inexpensively include:

• Sending out welcome emails to new employees after they accept job offers.

• Assigning a sponsor to help new employees before they start and during their first days and weeks.

• Developing new-employee checklists—both for new employees and managers/supervisors—and posting them electronically (Getting On Board includes an onboarding checklist).

• Ensuring orientation programs contain information about organizational history, mission and core values.

• Involving senior leadership in orientation and subsequent onboarding activities.

4. Tailor onboarding to type of employee. Organizations that have the onboarding basics down can move on to tailor onboarding to specific new employee groups (e.g., executives, midlevel managers, more junior employees and transfers).

As our organizations face increasingly complex challenges, employees need to be fully productive and en¬gaged as quickly as possible. Stra¬tegic onboarding provides a framework to integrate new employees to maximize their productivity, engagement and retention.

SOURCE: Bob Lavigna, director of human resources, University of Wisconsin at Madison

LEARN MORE: Assigning new employees to a “caring manager” plays a key role in onboarding.

Workforce Management Online, April 2011 — Register Now!

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

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Dear Workforce What Are the Steps to Grooming Successful Mentors

Dear Teaching the Teachers:

First off, I’d like to acknowledge that managers need to play a role in driving employee engagement and performance. I would not recommend that you replace manager-employee coaching or try to make up for bad managers with a mentoring program.

Clarify your objectives. An effective mentoring program supplements coaching from managers, and it should be positioned as a way to make the business, not just individual employees, more successful. From there you can add a more specific goal, such as helping new employees get up to speed quickly.

Define your mentor selection criteria. Mentors need to be more than willing. They need to have a coaching attitude and ability. Describe these characteristics in writing—and other traits, such as particular business knowledge or specific skills.

Equip your mentors. Provide tools and training to help mentors fulfill their role. This process goes beyond basic coaching skills to include an emphasis on:

  • Individualized partnerships. “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” may serve people well most of the time, but it can actually get in the way of successful mentoring. Effective mentors understand their individual mentees’ needs and work with everyone differently. What works great for one person can derail another.

  • Career coaching. Although employees may look to their mentors for career “navigation” advice, our research indicates that few are clear on what’s important to them. Mentors need to help people get behind the core values that create job satisfaction for them. What do they like to do and why? What would enrich their work each day? Only then can mentors help employees create a plan for professional development, career progression or job enrichment.

Reinforce mentoring. To reap the benefits that mentors provide, you need to make mentoring a way of life. Senior leaders must be role models and discuss with employees the impact that mentoring has on business and personal success.

Leaders experience success as mentors through practice. The more they mentor, the more successful their mentoring becomes. A virtuous cycle will then take hold: They believe in mentoring, they’ve seen how it works, and they’re motivated to build their own competence.

And don’t forget to build in accountability, metrics and recognition systems. Without these, mentoring can fall by the wayside as a “nice to do that we don’t have time to do,” instead of remaining a core strategy for building an engaged workforce and thriving business.

SOURCE: Cathy Earley, BlessingWhite, San Francisco, November 27, 2007.

LEARN MORE: Please read Mentoring Matters to learn how and why corporations are ramping up efforts to pair seasoned managers with promising talent.

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

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Mayor Tackles Tenure, Rarefying ‘Teacher for Life’

A job-for-life in New York City’s public schools was once a near-guarantee. Mayor Michael Bloomberg is trying to change that.

On July 27, the Bloomberg administration said new, more rigorous teacher evaluations had dramatically lowered the percentage of educators granted lifetime employment.

“Tenure ought to be reserved for only the best teachers,” Bloomberg said. “Unfortunately, as we all know, tenure was instead awarded on the basis of longevity, not performance.”

This year, however, of 5,209 teachers whose performance was evaluated by principals, 58 percent were granted tenure. That’s down from a five-year high of 97 percent in 2006.

“I don’t know a single profession where 97 percent [of employees] deserve to get lifetime job protection,” said schools chancellor Dennis Walcott. “Tenure is now something to be earned.”

Of the remaining teachers, 39 percent were given extensions, which means they are developing but have not achieved the expertise required for tenure. They will be given another year to improve before being re-evaluated. About 3 percent were denied tenure.

A new four-point scale evaluates teachers as highly effective, effective, developing or ineffective. In general, teachers are considered to be on probation for their first three years, after which they are eligible for tenure. During the probationary period, the Department of Education can fire within 30 days teachers who are deemed to be ineffective.

Once teachers are tenured, they can only be dismissed based on the decision of an arbitrator picked by both the Department of Education and the United Federation of Teachers.

Last week, Crain’s New York Business reported that in a pilot program testing the new teacher evaluations, 18 percent of teachers were deemed ineffective, while only 7 percent were considered highly effective.  

Filed by Jeremy Smerd of Crain’s New York Business, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, email editors@workforce.com.

 

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Lesser-Known Defined Contribution Providers Tops in Service Study

Few defined contribution service providers are able to provide service and support in addition to brand recognition, according to a study from Cogent Research.



Cogent asked defined contribution plan executives with which providers they were most familiar and which they would want based on the knowledge of their service and support, according to Christy White, a principal at Cogent Research.



“Very few brands were able to succeed at both things simultaneously,” White said. While brands like Fidelity Investments, Charles Schwab and Vanguard Group topped the list as recognized leaders in the defined contribution industry, smaller firms were better able to distinguish their brands on service and support. The top three providers cited for service and support were Ascensus, Milliman and Affiliated Computer Services.



Providing strong service and support “comes more easily for a niche player that’s not trying to be all things to all people,” according to White. “The challenge that plays up against is they’re not well known.”



“It is a great opportunity for them to capture [market] share if they can get their message out in the right places,” White said.



The Cogent Research Retirement Planscape 2011 Study is based on a survey of 1,600 DC plan sponsors on 13 attributes identified as significant drivers in choosing a plan provider, including service and support, and brand recognition.


Filed by Rob Kozlowski of Pensions & Investments, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, email editors@workforce.com.


 


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The Last Word: The New College Try

As I write this column, I am caught up in the annual March Madness. No, not the nail-biting thrill of college basketball games. I mean the nail-biting anxiety of the college admissions game.

Like most high school seniors right now, my son is closely monitoring his email inbox for admission decisions. By the time you read this, he and most of America’s Class of 2015 will have learned their fates.

Nervous applicants are well-aware that the competition to get into top-rated colleges couldn’t be fiercer. Many schools say they are screening more high-caliber applications than ever before and are feeling a bit overwhelmed by the volume—as many as 30,000 candidates for 1,500 or fewer spots. Stellar SAT scores and near-perfect grades no longer guarantee access to a prestigious university; thousands of students can claim those credentials.

Admission decisions may hinge instead on the cleverness of an application essay, high school leadership experiences or a particularly glowing letter of recommendation. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt if there’s an alum in the family. Brown University even acknowledges the value of legacies on its website: “Brown takes into account the natural affinity for the university that often emerges among family members of our graduates. In particular, we will note when an applicant has a parent who has attended Brown.”

I realized just how cutthroat the admission process had become when my son and I attended a college information session last summer in Massachusetts. It’s all about “the strategic packaging of yourself,” the admissions official said. “This is no time for humility.”

All of which got me thinking: How much does your alma mater really matter to employers—and to your career?

Quite a lot, it seems. Studies by economics professors have shown that prestige pays. Graduates of Ivy League and other elite colleges tend to command premium salaries throughout their careers compared with their counterparts from other schools. What’s more, they form valuable lifelong connections with their classmates and the school’s powerful alumni network.

Alumni relationships and college reputations can strongly influence talent recruitment. I once interviewed a frustrated recruiter at Johnson & Johnson who faithfully interviewed students each year at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Although she usually returned to J&J with few, if any, hires, the company’s senior executives, some of whom were Wharton alumni, insisted she continue to visit the Ivy League school. No matter the waste of time and money. J&J simply couldn’t resist the allure of Wharton’s reputation.

When I was editor of the Wall Street Journal‘s MBA rankings, I was fascinated by the mixed feelings that recruiters harbored toward Harvard Business School. While most Harvard MBAs land in the top echelon of companies with enviable salaries and signing bonuses, many of the recruiters we surveyed complained about their arrogance and excessive expectations. “Eat some humble pie,” one recruiter advised Harvard students, while another called them “poor team players.” But in the end, the Harvard name usually trumps such sour feelings.

Some schools play down the significance of a brand-name diploma. Robert Clagett, dean of admissions at Middlebury College in Vermont, sent emails in March to applicants’ parents, just a few days before announcing the winners and losers in the competition for its 690 coveted freshman-year slots. He wanted to prepare parents for possible bad news by trying to put things in perspective.

“Ours is a culture that attaches enormous significance to where we go to college,” he wrote. “In this country we are blessed with hundreds, even thousands, of first-rate institutions of higher learning which provide wonderful opportunities for our children to expand their intellectual horizons. Sadly, too often there is a perception that only a small fraction of those institutions are ‘good enough,’ as if they alone have some kind of a magic formula about how to educate young adults.” But he concluded on an upbeat note: “The fortunate reality is that almost all students end up attending a college where they are happy and where they thrive.”

I completely agree. My four years at Indiana University were among the very best of my life. I feel confident that my son’s college years will be richly rewarding, too, and that he will end up in a satisfying career—no matter which school he chooses. Still, I can’t help but share his anxiety as he waits to find out which schools chose him.

Workforce Management, April 2011, p. 34 — Subscribe Now!

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Deloitte Gets Physical with $300 Million Learning Center

Consulting giant Deloitte is putting serious cash behind its stated priority of training and development. Many companies have hoarded money in an uneven economy, but the New York-based firm is dipping into its profits to build Deloitte University, a $300 million “learning and leadership development” campus near Dallas.

Slated for completion this summer, Deloitte University will feature 35 classrooms, each outfitted with technology for interactive learning. The 712,000-square-foot complex also will be self-contained, including 800 hotel rooms on site to house visiting Deloitte employees who attend training. The company plans to hire a hospitality management vendor to operate the hotel.

Deloitte University’s primary purpose will be to help consultants buttress their technical proficiency with leadership, collaboration and team-building skills, says Bill Pelster, a Deloitte managing principal for talent development, who is based in Seattle. More than 45,000 consulting professionals make up Deloitte and its U.S. subsidiaries. Worldwide, the company has nearly 170,000 employees.

Deloitte consultants specialize in highly technical fields, such as tax accounting, auditing and risk management, corporate financial advice and regulatory/legislative matters. They also have expertise in selected business sectors.

It is unusual for consulting firms to adopt the corporate-university concept, says Sue Todd, president of the Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania-based Corporate University Xchange, a research and advisory firm. In fact, Todd says most consultancies still cling to older models in which consultants specialize strictly in one strategic area.

However, the need for continuous learning by technical professionals is greater than ever and likely to remain so given the rapid pace of the changing business climate.

“Consulting firms are slowly finding the models they’ve used to define jobs need to be significantly expanded. Either they get more value from their consultants, or they risk losing whole hunks of business to competitors,” says Todd, whose organization is not directly involved with Deloitte University.

Still, it is unusual for companies in the current economy—even large concerns like Deloitte, which posted global revenue of $26.6 billion in 2010, up 1.8 percent—to sink vast sums of money in a physical learning campus. But Deloitte has been transforming the learning curricula across its varied lines of business, including switching last year from a regional to a national model for talent management. Construction of the leadership center dovetails with that effort, officials say.

As the most visible outgrowth of the strategy, Deloitte University will sprawl across 107 acres in Westlake, Texas. When operations begin—probably in October—it will deliver 1 million hours of training per year, or roughly one-third of all Deloitte’s U.S. training.

All told, more than 420 learning programs are scheduled during the first year of operation.

“It embodies our commitment to developing professionals in a much more dynamic way” than traditional learning formats, Pelster says.

Deloitte University plans to jettison traditional learning methods. Lecture-based learning is out. Instead, interactive training activities will force employees to anticipate hypothetical problems and devise solutions as a group. Computer-simulated business scenarios, case studies and role-playing will be the norm.

The participatory format should help consultants see things from a client’s point of view—an important attribute when addressing business issues fraught with ambiguity and complexity, Pelster says.

Some of Deloitte’s U.S. partners, managers, and executives will serve as instructors at the Dallas campus, facilitating small groups of cross-disciplinary teams and providing feedback. For roughly every five participants, one Deloitte leader will be on hand as a sounding board.

“It’s basically a leadership laboratory that gives us the opportunity to see how teams react, and then provide immediate feedback on their decisions. It’s important that our leaders be in the classrooms to teach and mentor the next generation of Deloitte professionals,” Pelster says.

Deloitte decided to invest money in a learning campus largely because it will provide flexibility in how learning is delivered, Pelster says. Video and other interactive technologies are being installed to connect classroom learners with colleagues in Deloitte offices, including another learning center in India. Classrooms also can be reconfigured to accommodate different types of learning events, Pelster says.

It’s not a true corporate university, however, in which employees can choose to enroll in professional courses. Rather, participants will be invited to attend by business units or sponsors of specific learning programs.

Deloitte’s sizable investment also comes amid growing optimism by senior executives, 70 percent of whom expected to spend more on all types of capital projects during the first quarter, according to a February survey by the Corporate Executive Board in Arlington, Virginia. That’s up from 52 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Deloitte isn’t alone in pouring money into a building dedicated to employee development. This year, Planned Cos. is celebrating the second anniversary of its 2,000-square-foot interactive educational facility. The company, which provides building management and maintenance services at commercial and residential properties, built the $200,000 center next to its headquarters in Parsippany, New Jersey.

It features 14 workstations, each providing simulated exercises on a specific area of building management. A front-desk module, for example, enables employees to watch a live feed from a luxury condominium in Jersey City. “It lets them visualize what it means to man a front desk in a professional manner,” says Robert Francis, president and CEO of the company his family has owned for four decades.

Planned Cos. uses the facility as a retention tool for existing customers, as a sales tool to persuade new prospects, as well as a way to improve employees’ skills and help them plan their careers, Francis says.

The learning center also helps Planned Cos. hold onto its employees—a key goal in an industry with volatile turnover. “The higher our retention rate, the more it helps our bottom-line productivity,” says Francis, whose company’s efforts at career development earned it the 2010 Optimas Award for Vision from Workforce Management.

Even with the rise of e-learning and virtual technologies, Deloitte placed a high value on having its own leadership campus. The decision to build Deloitte University came after extensive internal research, including surveys across its multigenerational workforce. Pelster was surprised to find that throughout the company, including millennial employees, support for a physical learning facility was strong.

“It’s one place we’ll all go at key milestones in our careers, and it’s one place we’ll all have in common,” Pelster says.

Workforce Management Online, March 2011 — Register Now!

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A Hybrid Learning Model the Way to Go for a Global Corporation

The current trend among global corporations is to centralize their training functions into corporate universities. While this can be the right solution for companies that are very streamlined and simply aligned—those with only one big market and one main customer base—it may not be the right direction for more complex organizations.


The move toward centralized learning is clear enough. It is efficient and avoids duplication of effort in learning programs and personnel. Everything is under one umbrella, which makes it easier to manage and introduce top training programs.


Centralization is also more financially transparent. Learning universities know what they spend and they avoid hidden training costs that can easily creep into a decentralized learning organization.


But in the case of complex, global organizations, the central corporate university is far from the optimal solution.


Global companies contain multiple business cultures

Global companies are usually very complex organizations, with different divisions and different business cultures that coexist. For example, there is a “marketing culture”, a “sales culture”, a “research culture”, etc. Also, global companies are just that: worldwide. They operate in many countries, each with their own specific set of societal norms. Employee learning needs and the company’s product offerings may be fundamentally different from country to country. In other words, a one-size-fits-all-solution doesn’t suit global organizations due to their inherent makeup.


In order to meet the various learning demands in a global company, training needs to be customized to match divisional needs, local needs, as well as specific business requirements. The hybrid blend of a decentralized training organization with strong central roots is a global corporation’s best option.


‘Institutionalize’ the hybrid blend with a governing learning board

Many companies believe they have a hybrid model simply because they established a corporate university and have training departments all over the world. But when a centralized system and a smaller decentralized system surrounding it simply co-exist without any governance, problems will occur.


The true hybrid model needs to be structured and institutionalized in order to make clear decisions about the two systems. It requires a decision-making, governing body—a learning board—to hold the hybrid together.

Similar to board members in other disciplines, learning board members need to have negotiation skills, project management skills, communication skills, conflict management skills, and maturity. The learning board should contain people who recognize the overall value of learning for the company and know how to keep their ego in check. They should be appointed by each division leader and be from the area of talent management, education, or human resources. There will be conflicts, so the overall leader (or chairman) needs to balance opinions and be tactful.


Case in point: Novartis’ hybrid learning structure.

At Novartis Corp., a bridge between the centralized and decentralized learning functions was created in 2010 by establishing a governing body for learning. Our learning board is comprised of 13 senior-level representatives from all divisions and all geographic regions of Novartis. Expertise is in the areas of talent management, human resources, and learning. The learning board is a decision making body that determines all key initiatives and how training is to be delivered. It determines—by majority vote—the scope and breadth of both the central corporate learning function and its decentralized counterpart.


A business division may have several learning representatives on the learning board, but each division has only one vote. The learning board’s mission and purpose is to define a company-wide, integrated learning strategy; one that is aligned with overall Novartis strategic goals. With full support of top management, board members have complete decision-making power over all learning programs.


For example, the learning board decides on the learning budget and allocation of resources for corporate learning. One of the aims is to maximize the impact of money spent on learning.


Centralized and decentralized learning programs

Broad learning programs that are relevant throughout the entire organization are created and implemented centrally, especially in basic areas like fundamental leadership skills and finance training. These are concrete global topics that apply to the whole organization and are not negotiable.

Decentralized learning includes programs that are specific to certain cultures and countries. An example might be programs around topics that are decentralized by nature, like a new country sales model. Training for that sales model should only be done in the specific country since it would only apply to that location. In other words, anything that is not globally standardized and that doesn’t need to be done by corporate (central) should be done locally (decentralized). The company will reap better results at a lower cost.


Conclusion

The hybrid blend of a decentralized training organization with strong central roots and a governing learning board has proven to be very beneficial to Novartis in that it works as an ‘early warning system.’ In this way, we avoid issues—cost overruns, duplication, etc. —as opposed to correcting issues after the fact. Moreover, access to divisional talent management leaders from around the world links corporate central learning management to real business issues, which can then be addressed and solved in a cost-effective manner.


Workforce Management Online, March 2011 — Register Now!

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Dear Workforce Do We Need to Be Educating Employees About the CLASS Act?

Dear CLASS Struggle:

The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports, or CLASS, program, which is being created under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, is a voluntary public insurance program designed to help people plan for a time when they may have functional limitations that interfere with their ability to maintain their independence. The Affordable Care Act requires the Department of Health and Human Services to spell out the official benefit plan by Oct. 1, 2012. Until guidance is issued on the CLASS program, there is nothing that employers have to do, and we can only surmise what the final program will look like.

That said, the CLASS program will be funded by premiums paid by enrollees and will pay a benefit for nonmedical services and supports to help people with disabilities function without having to go into a nursing home. Employer participation in the program is voluntary. Employers may elect to automatically enroll their active employees (with employee opt-out). Even if they do not promote participation through auto enrollment, employers may choose to deduct premium payments for the program from employees’ paychecks, presumably on an after-tax basis.

As for employees who opt out of the CLASS program, there are no indications at this time that they will need to be provided with any information about payroll deductions since there will be no CLASS program deductions from their paychecks. On the other hand, employees who choose to participate will no doubt need to be notified about what is being deducted.

Although there are no immediate action steps for employers to take, as details about the CLASS program are announced this year and next, employers should monitor guidance and consider whether they would like to play a role in facilitating employee enrollment and/or deducting premium payments.

SOURCE: Kathryn Bakich, the Segal Co., Washington, D.C.

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The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

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