Teach Business Basics to First-Time-Bosses by Agatha Gilmore

It seemed like a natural progression: Cheryl was an ace employee, a high potential, a top performer. When a management position opened up at XYZ Corp., Cheryl was promoted without a second thought. But the organization didn't consider that it was relying on Cheryl's personal success as a top performer to enable her skill as a successful manager. Further, many organizations make this same mistake.

A new survey by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) found nearly one-third of employers don't teach business basics such as budgeting, time management and project management to first-time bosses. Another 26 percent don't offer training on diversity awareness.

"There are two [issues here]," said Mary Ann Downey, talent pillar director for i4cp. "One, for a lot of first-time managers, they're at the lowest level of the organization. They may not have budgeting authority yet. It may be that organizations don't feel that those are needed skills. [But] if you don't understand how the budgeting process works, and you're in a management potion, you're really at a disadvantage.

"On the time management and project management point, in lot of organizations, the folks that are promoted may not necessarily have the best people skills, supervisory skills, but they were top performers. They probably already had good time management and project management skills. That may be the reason why companies are not focusing on those items."

However, just because new bosses exhibit these skills doesn't mean they can teach them effectively, nor does it mean their personal styles will mesh with their new management roles.

"Style is such an important element of time management and project management: You may have a personal style that works for you, but is it going to work in a team environment?" Downey said.

What are rookie managers being taught? According to the i4cp survey, employers instruct new bosses to a high or very high extent on harassment (39 percent), coaching skills (40.9 percent) and performance management (47.6 percent).

While coaching skills are crucial for managers to learn and fall on the softer side of training, harassment and performance management training could be considered standard risk management on the part of the organization, with the purpose of avoiding conflicts in the workplace.

"[These areas] are procedural and so probably a little easier to teach in an in-class format," Downey explained.

The i4cp study also found that 41 percent of those promoted to a first-time manager position end up supervising a group of peers. Downey said this statistic reveals just one of the reasons why new bosses must be taught the business basics.

"There are two pieces of it. First, there are the personal relationships - how you may have interacted with each other on a peer level may not be appropriate any longer. The reverse side of that is how are the folks that you're now supervising going to accept your new authority?" she said.
"If you're a first-time manager and you don't have these skills, and there are no other interventions being done - either an on-boarding or an assimilation - then organizations are really at a risk of both setting the supervisor up for failure and having the team productivity go down. That's the big risk for organizations: burning out a potential star or risking their overall organization's productivity."

[About the Author: Agatha Gilmore is a senior editor for Talent Management magazine.]

Relocation: A Balancing Act by Saskia Meckman

In 2009, companies will be forced to juggle expatriates and their families worldwide, while balancing the decisions involved in finding and retaining globally competent employees.

When taking the pulse of the global relocation field, it is apparent that there is a lot to think about. Will companies around the world be able to find the ideal globally competent employee? Once found, what will it take to retain this employee? And finally, how have expatriate-family dynamics and needs changed from the classic model?

Balancing these three key issues is on the minds of HR executives worldwide today and will continue for a long time to come. The trends of a global talent shortage, the need to retain talent and the demand for work/life balance are the main factors that have a direct bearing on this "balancing act."

While the phrase the "War for Talent" continues to be overused, it is clear that this trend shows no sign of abating. Evidence of this is the beginning exodus of the baby-boomer generation from the workforce, mostly through retirement. The result is a growing need to improve employee satisfaction and this, ensure retention. This is particularly important for expatriates repatriating back "home" after an international assignment.

Currently, the global demand for skilled labor has exceeded the supply, resulting in shortages in many pockets of the world, according to news articles. For the past 20 years, the U.S. workforce has grown by 50 percent; however it is predicted to grow by only 3 percent over the next 20 years, according to the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics. Demand in the United States continues to be high for skilled non-U.S. citizens (especially from India and China).

This year alone, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services received more than 163,000 applications for just 65,000 H-1B visas, which were distributed within the first 24 hours. Debate over increasing the cap is ongoing. Since L-1 visas are not subject to a cap, non-U.S. employees are now entering with an "Intra-company Transferee Visa," whenever eligible. An additional advantage of this visa is that the accompanying spouse is allowed to work in the United States.

Across the Atlantic, the European Union will need 20 million skilled workers over the next two decades. They have a plan to make it easier for skilled foreign workers to get jobs in the E.U.'s 27 member states. The Blue Card is a combined residence permit and work visa that would allow holders and their families to live, work and travel anywhere within the European Union. If agreed upon by member governments, the proposal, introduced by the European Commission in 2007, will pass in 2009.

Currently, 55 percent of skilled non-U.S. citizens head for the United States and only 5 percent to the European Union. With the Blue Card, the European Union hopes to reduce this imbalance, which will be to the detriment of American employers.

According to GMAC Global Relocation Service's 2008 Global Relocation Trends Survey, the three emerging destinations for many expatriates are China, India and Russia -- countries with rapidly growing economies. These countries also happen to be the three most challenging locations for expatriates and their families to successfully complete assignments and for international-assignment-program managers to set up, according to the survey.

With 25 percent of international assignments now in emerging markets, this is no small challenge. With security issues, rising housing costs, insurance prices, natural disasters, education for kids, work permits and visa issues, the list of worries for expatriates goes on and on. Additionally, potential employees and their families are often reluctant to head to a part of the world they may have heard little about until recently.

How do HR executives balance the needs of the company with those of the potential expatriates employees and their families?

Often the secret ingredient, forgotten in most recipes, is the expatriate spouse. While discussions between the employee and company may happen months ahead of an upcoming international assignment, the spouse is often left out of the equation until the last minute or, more often than not, altogether. The employee and spouse may have spoken countless times about the possible assignment, yet the company may offer little to no support regarding the spouse's career or other needs.

For most companies, it is becoming increasingly hard to fill certain positions without providing comprehensive and lucrative compensation packages. Including career-support services and any other additional support for the spouse may make a difference in whether an employee accepts or declines an international assignment.

Retaining Talent

There is no arguing that the most valuable and sought after commodity in any company is talent. In order to attract and keep this talent, all aspects of a relocation package need to be appealing. The challenge then becomes, how do companies keep these packages frequently updated in order to offset the declining purchasing power of the dollar, while at the same time addressing the needs of the employees and their families?

According to Martin Foxwell, West Coast director of the New York-based consulting firm ORC Worldwide, "The implications for global and expatriate pay packages include a classic conflict: Expatriate pay packages are renowned for their high cost to the company -- often three or four times an employee's base salary.

On one hand, companies are continually challenged to reduce costs wherever they can, and expatriate packages are an obvious place to start. On the other hand, the fierce competition for the best talent is putting upward pressure on the cash, perquisites and benefits needed to incentivize potential expatriates [and their families] to undertake international assignments. This dilemma is a delicate balance and an extremely important strategic issue."

This statement should be given considerable thought in light of the fact that, in 2008, 58 percent of companies surveyed by GRTS said they were reducing expenses for international assignments in response to economic conditions.

Once companies have found talented employees, the main goal is to retain them. One way of doing this is by making sure that there is a job offer of equal or greater interest for them once they repatriate "home" or head off on another international assignment. Companies are often still losing their best talent by not taking advantage of the cultural understanding and global competence the employees acquired while on assignment.

Natalie Richter, principal of Natalie Richter and Associates states, "An organization's greatest resource is its globally competent employees. They enable companies to be nimble and respond quickly to changes in the international environment, which in turn makes them more globally competitive."

HR executives are crucial in providing an employee with a seamless international-assignment transition and ensuring that there is communication between home and host country.

As the war for talent continues, it is apparent that practices such as flexible hours, remote work, intercultural training, executive coaching and spousal-career services, are now essential. Even areas such as more effective use of virtual teams and greater utilization of communication alternatives such as instant messaging, voice over IP and Web conferences -- once regarded as optional -- are now crucial.

Companies that are spending more time and effort focusing on work/life balance as a strategy for talent management will be the winners of this war!

Work/Life Balance

How are HR executives going to address work/life balance issues, which are particularly challenging for expatriates on international assignments? In some cases, the "norm" is often for the employee to arrive months ahead of the rest of the family and then travel extensively throughout the assignment. It is no wonder that finding balance is imperative. This is particularly true when many expatriate families juggle the demands of needing to be in two or more places at the same time, while preparing for the final move to a new country.

One of the areas that creates great challenges for HR executives and companies, not to mention the expatriate families in question, is when the accompanying spouse or partner must give up his or her career. The dual-career issue continues to be one of the main reasons employees turn down international assignments. When families are accustomed to two working parents' salaries, it becomes very hard to scale down to one income, even if the expatriate-compensation package comes with additional perks and added benefits.

According to the GRTS, 54 percent of accompanying spouses were employed before their relocation. During the assignment, however, only 20 percent found employment. This dramatic drop may be due to a variety of factors. It is clear that these spouses have to be very creative in finding work that matches their skill set, as each country offers new challenges and opportunities.

This is particularly true for "serial expatriates," who move every few years. For some spouses, having a portable career -- a profession that they can "carry in a suitcase" and keep with them from one host country to the next -- is the ideal situation. A few lucky and strategic individuals are able to continue working with their same employers, either remotely or at an office in the host country.
For most spouses, however, the visa restrictions, time constraints and difficulties of finding a job make seeking meaningful, financially stable employment close to impossible. This may suit the needs of some families, when the spouse is eager to be a full-time parent, but for younger couples just starting their careers, this may cause unexpected stress. Finally, the needs of the single expatriate employee (and parent!) relocating alone must not be forgotten, as this population is slowly growing and the dynamics of the expatriate family are changing.

When looking at the demographics of the current expatriate population -- 50 percent are between the ages of 20 and 39, according to the GRTS -- the needs of Generations X and Y are becoming more apparent. These populations have an increasing interest in greater flexibility at work, more meaningful jobs, further professional freedom and ultimately more work/life balance. Their outlook on life has been shaped by, among other things, the Internet, information overload and overzealous parents. Many of their overworked parents spent most of their lives working for the same company and not as much time as they would have liked with their families. These new generations are ready to change that.

The classic model of an expatriate employee willing to work 75 or more hours per week with a demanding travel schedule is slowly shifting, as there is ample evidence of the stress caused by the work/life time crunch of international assignments. Companies are becoming more and more aware that family adjustment, partner resistance and children's education are the three most critical challenges faced by expatriates.

Since the inception of the GRTS 15 years ago, these same challenges have continued to be critical, so it should come as no surprise that family concerns, including dual-career issues, are the most common reasons potential expatriate employees and their families turn down international assignments.

Finding a balance for these work/life matters will be a challenge for HR executives as the changing generations will continue to affect the global workforce.

In order for companies to remain globally competitive and win the war for talent, they must be able to juggle expatriate family needs as well as company demands and economic hurdles in order to find and retain the ideal globally competent employee and be successful in this global market.

[About the Author: Saskia Meckman is founder of Soleil Intercultural and offers intercultural training and consulting to organizations with employees on global assignments. She has been working in the global relocation field since 1998, based out of New York, Boston, and currently Boca Raton, Fla. U.S.-born, with Ecuadorian and Dutch-Austrian-Danish parents, she grew up in France, Germany, Luxembourg and The Netherlands, and has traveled extensively around the world.]

The Training Industry in 2009: A Look Ahead by Cushing Anderson

Respondents to Chief Learning Officer magazine's Business Intelligence Board survey view the coming year with guarded optimism. Most of them acknowledge the threats posed by economic problems, but also see opportunities for improvement.

Training executives remain basically optimistic about the outlook for employee development in 2009, with 50 percent feeling more optimistic about 2009 compared to 2008. However, compared to the outlook for 2008, learning leaders are feeling less optimistic overall. About 25 percent are less optimistic regarding the coming year, whereas only 19 percent of respondents felt less optimistic about 2008 when asked last year.

The fact that a quarter of learning executives are feeling less optimistic shows a dramatic change in overall outlook. The reasons for dampened optimism come as no surprise: Sixty-seven percent of "less optimistic" respondents gave the troubled U.S. and global economies as the reason for their concerns. Participants cited cash-flow issues, credit problems and lower revenues due to the economic crisis as reasons why budget cuts in training programs are expected to follow in the coming year.

On the more optimistic side, there are a variety of reasons companies gave for an optimistic view of training and development in 2009. Many of these take a positive view of the economic situation, as well as challenges in hiring talent and the surge in boomer retirements.

With regard to the economic situation, one training executive expressed increased optimism due to a "when the going gets tough, the tough get going" mindset. "We all have to be more creative in troubled times like these," the respondent stated. Many training executives see opportunities for a higher utilization of employee development programs as they strive to hire and retain talent and retrain workers to replace retiring company leaders.

Additionally, companies are expecting positive developments in the role training plays in their companies. Ninety-five percent of learning executives expect that training will be more aligned with company business objectives, while 84 percent believe that the perception of training in their companies will be higher.

And finally, 78 percent report that the quality of their training offerings will improve next year.

Impact of LMS and Knowledge Management Continues to Increase

The impact of learning activities from 2008 to 2009 shows shifts in rankings, though leadership training and competencies remain the top two choices. Beyond these two, there are some noteworthy changes. Informal learning is up four spots, while measurement (fourth place in 2008) is no longer in the top 10. (It landed at 11 this year.)

On the other hand, sales training made an appearance in the top 10 for 2009, although it did not in 2008. Sales training has increased in importance in light of the economy. As one executive put it, "In the tight economy, the performance of our sales team is the company's top priority. We are refocusing much of our efforts to drive productivity in the sales teams."

Key activities of significant impact continue to be:

a) Leadership

Leadership development continues to be a hot-button issue as companies work to support corporate succession initiatives. Replacing key leaders in an organization has become more important in light of talent shortages and an aging workforce. Companies need a pool of employees from which to select leaders, and leadership training also is a way to retain valuable employees.

b) Competencies

Competencies have always been the backbone of training. Today, however, amid the shortage for talent, competencies have taken on greater significance. To address current and future vacancies, organizations are looking to competency models to identify skills gaps and develop the necessary skills internally.

c) Informal learning

Informal learning also has become a key activity and not only because of foreseeable economic hardships and formal training budgets cuts. Many companies see informal training as the model to aspire to as training becomes intrinsic to everyday interactions and work cultures. Companies see that most learning occurs informally and that action learning and collaboration are vital areas of a learning organization.

d) LMS

The LMS is potentially the single-most important learning technology investment for companies. It's up one spot from last year and four spots in terms of impact over the past two years. It is seen as "the infrastructure that drives learning," thus making training administration more efficient and reaching more people through e-learning and reusable, standard content. Companies also seem satisfied with their current LMSs: Only 32 percent reported they will be changing or acquiring a new LMS in 2009.

e) Knowledge management

Knowledge management also continues a steady upward trend, up three this year, and up six spots over the past two years. As knowledge management captures processes, skills and context that are lost when employees leave the company, it is becoming more important given the retirement surge of aging baby boomers and as the "war for talent" continues.

Outsourcing in 2009

Nearly all training strategies have an impact in some circumstances, and no training strategy is overwhelmingly ineffective. So readers should take the assertion that outsourcing will impact training least in 2009 with a grain of salt. In a time of increased outsourcing in many areas of business, this activity was cited by 10 percent of companies as the area with the least impact on training for 2009.

Part of the explanation for this showing is that only 5-10 percent of organizations outsource significant portions of their training organizations. This leaves 90-95 percent of organizations that will not see outsourcing as a meaningful activity.

In general, companies feel the loss of control in outsourced arrangements - particularly around content creation and delivery - disconnects training from the company's overall vision and business strategy.

There also exists a sentiment that outsourced providers lack some subject matter expertise and provide a lower level of service than internal training departments. Only a quarter of companies report they will be outsourcing more of their training activities in 2009.

Social Networking Requires More and Less Attention

When asked which topics should be given more attention by the training industry, the top two choices were knowledge management and informal learning. Given the high impact that these two activities have on training programs, this comes as no surprise. However, social networking was the third-place choice.

Conversely, when asked what topic is overhyped and should be given less attention by the training industry, wikis/blogs was the first choice, and social networking was second. An equal percentage of companies selected social networking as an item to be given more attention as those that selected it to be "dropped from the radar."

For those companies that would like more attention paid to social networking, appealing to a younger generation of employees is a key factor in its importance. This ties directly to concerns over hiring talent and grooming the next generation of leaders.

Social networking also is seen as another avenue for high-impact informal learning and one that should be managed proactively rather than haphazardly. Companies are not yet fully convinced of social networking's impact, but it's pervasive in our culture, and many companies feel it should not be ignored.

On the flip side, those companies that see social networking as a topic to be given less attention believes it has "no real value" and is a "time waster." These companies do not see social networking as an appropriate training medium. As a technology, it is not believed to be mature or structured enough to be effective in training.

Similar criticisms are aimed at wikis and blogs: The content is opinion based rather than factual, and oftentimes - especially for blogs - it is ineffective since the structure is loose and finding content is difficult.

Predictions for 2009

Much about the upcoming year is uncertain, given the global economic environment, but 2009 will likely be a challenging year. Challenges from hiring and retirements will increase the importance of the training function, but only 41 percent expect budget increases, so training departments will have to do more with less.

Overall, companies believe the outlook for the learning function is similar to industries overall: It will be difficult, but there will be positive developments in the way organizations leverage and align learning, use tools and refocus on providing value to the organization.

[About the Author: Cushing Anderson is the program director of learning services at IDC.]

Get the Most Bang With Limited Training Bucks by John Myers and David Collins

It's easy to run a learning and development program when business is good. Growth leads to bigger budgets and new opportunities.

But in a tight economy, job opportunities decrease. Businesses are less likely to invest in new areas.
Employees are reluctant to leave their jobs, but may be distracted by financial concerns. As a result, productivity and performance often suffer at a time when just the opposite is required. To avoid this, learning strategy has to directly support the business.

"Only by understanding a business' most pivotal strategic goals can a relevant learning program be implemented," said Dr. John Boudreau, professor and research director at the University of Southern California's Center for Effective Organizations.

Boudreau said leaders typically are comfortable allocating resources for technology, advertising and other areas because they have well-developed models for evaluation and ROI. But the framework for these allocations often is unsophisticated and not geared toward greatest impact.

"Training can be the first cut, focusing on costs saved rather than value lost. Even worse, organizations may make across-the-board training cuts even though they are certain training and learning are not equally valuable everywhere," he said.

Nail the Basics

When times are tough, it's critical to focus training efforts on business fundamentals: What skills training and development initiatives will address the greatest number of workers and have the greatest impact?

For many organizations, that's managerial and supervisory skills. In white-collar businesses, a significant percentage of employees fall into these categories. Even in manufacturing, retail or service businesses, managers and supervisors are the first line of contact with the workforce. Further, the quality of the relationship with a direct manager is one of the most important variables in employee productivity and loyalty.

Training programs that address core supervisory/managerial skills, such as time management, communications, personal effectiveness and delegation are among the most universal skills and represent the foundation of most training curriculum. Similarly, training around common issues such as coaching, conflict management and team performance represent areas that have near-term influence on productivity and performance.

Because these core skills have proven workplace impact, maintaining funding is easier than that for initiatives considered more speculative, or "nice to have."

Take for example, PHH Arval's fleet management services business based in Toronto. Senior Vice President and General Manager Jim Halliday realized through analysis of turnover data, employee-opinion surveys and 360 feedback that managers were having a negative impact on employee engagement. This resulted in higher turnover and lower levels of initiative, creativity and innovation needed to drive business results.

"With limited training dollars, we decided improving coaching skills would have the greatest impact on improving engagement," he said. "Coaching is about having ongoing dialogue with staff; creating one-on-one relationships that demonstrate understanding of needs, issues and concerns; and providing support to achieve individual and company goals."

Ongoing measured improvement - in addition to seeing the positive progression of most of PHH's managers - convinced Halliday to commit to continuing the investment as a "must have" for the business.

At CoBank, a financial cooperative serving rural America, there is a commitment to provide developmental opportunities for every employee and belief that managers are crucial to build engaged employees and satisfied customers.

"We believe that people leave managers rather than companies," said Bob O'Toole, vice president of human resources. "To ensure we have great managers, we offer a Leadership Excellence curriculum for anyone with one or more direct reports."

Demonstrate Impact

In an ideal world, every organization would evaluate the impact of its training programs. However, when an HR department is running full steam with limited staff, it can be difficult to find time to do more than gather "smiley sheets" or perform simple learning assessments. These Level 1 and Level 2 evaluations are a start, but they're not likely to carry much weight with a CEO who wants to measure impact.

Surprisingly, few companies assess behavioral change and the impact of training on critical business performance metrics, despite research from Accenture, Watson Wyatt, TRACOM and others showing learning investments have a strong impact and positive ROI.

A down market offers two advantages when it comes to conducting such evaluations: First, if an organization pares back course offerings and streamlines outreach, staff may have more time to develop a thoughtful Level 3 or Level 4 evaluation process and implement it.

Second, if a company is using outside vendors for training, a tighter market should make the vendors more willing to help research the training programs. Learning providers are more willing to step up to keep a customer satisfied and to get access to data showing the impact of their training.

At a minimum, a vendor should be able to provide an organization with ROI studies and research to substantiate the value of their offerings. If a vendor does not have these studies and isn't willing to help assess training impact, companies should question the vendor's commitment to achieving anything of value.

In a tough economy, there is more scrutiny on spending and a greater need to make a compelling business case for learning. "But by aligning our learning and development strategy with key elements of our business strategy, it's actually easier to show a return on our efforts," said O'Toole.

Be Efficient, Whatever the Budget

A recent white paper from KnowledgePool, a U.K. training consultancy, said organizations with staff of 2,000-plus can reduce learning and development expenses by 30 percent by following best practices and working efficiently. It recommends:

1. Careful supplier management, including adherence to an authorized supplier list and discount bulk purchasing.
2. Automating training administration.
3. More efficiently managing course scheduling to maximize occupancy and minimize empty seats and canceled classes.
4. Reviewing and modifying training offerings. Course content offered in the past doesn't always have priority today.

Here are some other ways to operate more efficiently:

1. Tie training to specific business initiatives and job tasks. The more talent managers can make training job-specific using workplace examples, the better.
2. Balance internal trainers with outside suppliers during peak times. The "day cost" will be higher when using a vendor, but companies will come out ahead if they limit use.
3. Offer flexible delivery. Ten years ago, more than 50 percent of TRACOM's business was for training programs of two days or more. Today, most are shorter than one day. The availability of modular training, pre-study and follow-up allows people to develop their skills in a more effective manner that requires less time away from their jobs.

At Gates Corp., a manufacturer of industrial and automotive parts, today's environment has meant constraints on training travel. "It's forced us to look for more creative ways to deploy training content," said Kathy Wojcik, Gates' manager of leadership development and learning.

"We're doing more Web-based training, webinars and consolidating training in the field to focus on what's really needed by the business. Self-paced and on-demand learning are also on the rise. We're evaluating the impact of these changes so we can make smart long-term decisions about training deployment."

Support People

One of the biggest challenges organizations face in a down economy is waning employee engagement. Organizations typically don't lose many people during a recession because external opportunities are limited. But slow-growth and a shrinking opportunity pool can cause employees to lose motivation.

If layoffs occur, the remaining people likely will experience fear and stress from the change and risk overwork from picking up extra responsibility. It's important to support employees through training and development.

Communication may initially take precedence over training in the stages of cutbacks. But once people understand the situation, don't overlook how training and development programs can help. Consider:

1. Building core skills such as personal effectiveness, team performance and conflict management.
2. Providing new functional skills training for employees with new responsibilities.
3. Assessing employee engagement to uncover areas of concern.

"[At CoBank], we know our learning and development activities have improved employee engagement. People feel emotionally connected to the business because we invest in them," said O'Toole.

Just as a stock market decline presents an opportunity for investors to regroup before future gains, a down economy presents an opportunity for training and development.

"It's the challenges that teach the best lessons," said Wojcik. "The decisions we make today will shape our future.

[About the Authors: John Myers is president and CEO of TRACOM, a workplace performance company, and David Collins is general manager, TRACOM Training Products Division.]

HR Technology: 'Mavens' and 'Connectors' by Wesley Wu

The advent of Web 2.0 gives HR leaders a whole new opportunity to bolster their organizations' knowledge-sharing and collaboration capabilities.

HR technology has always been at the forefront of HR change. With the advent of the database, HR shed its role as the keeper of manual payroll processes and steward of the company picnic and quickly found new capabilities to track the workforce and provide some minimal understanding of the state of the organization's employees.

Workflow and self-service in modern HR applications have provided another step in the evolution of HR. By removing administrative and manual tasks from the daily routine, HR has become incrementally more strategic. Technology tools have also provided better analytics to give us deeper insight into the workforce.

However, HR -- for the most part -- has rarely been an integral part of the business. These days, HR leaders may talk about "service delivery," being "business partners" and focusing more on "talent management," but the objective of these initiatives is to make the delivery of HR services and processes more efficient, not to change the way the workforce directly creates value for the business.

It may have moved from being administrative record keepers to being the owners of talent management, but it hasn't shown value to the operations side of the house other than it can "get them people." Generally, HR has had no impact on the way in which talent's value is deployed. That is now changing with Web 2.0.

If Web 1.0 was defined by the linear and unidirectional interaction of a single user with a Web page, Web 2.0 has been partially defined by the simultaneous interaction of many users within a community, i.e., Facebook and MySpace. Enterprise networks can perform this same function behind the corporate firewall, allowing real-time collaborative interactions.

The role of social media in the enterprise has yet to be clearly defined, even with its rapid adoption by many organizations. Project-management offices may use wiki technologies as tools to track progress, while research-and-development departments use blogs to publish knowledge and promote new practices. HR has found uses for the CEO blog to promote employer branding. Blogs have also aided in areas such as new-hire onboarding.

But social media, for all its vast potential, comes down to a single idea: connecting people to content and content owners. It's within these connections that value is ultimately created. Unfortunately, many HR departments seem to focus on tactical questions rather than the strategic goals of social media. This view needs to change.

As we implement the various social media and networks at the workplace, many of the current water-cooler conversations and hallway chats between co-workers will be displayed by wikis, blogs, discussion boards and instant messaging. Often, these are accidental, unplanned meetings of the minds where thoughts and ideas are shared and many spontaneous solutions and innovations arise.
Currently, however, geographic disparities limit many collaboration opportunities that could be valuable to the organization. But as we move into enterprise social networks, the opportunities for individuals to connect, share and then collaborate become more simplified and more plentiful, although the sometimes accidental nature of sharing disappears.

Directing Traffic

While many believe that HR doesn't have a role in nurturing collaboration, nothing could be further from the truth. It's not enough to simply give employees tools for simplifying and increasing connections between them. While doing so will certainly lead to increased collaboration, it isn't the most optimal exploitation of social media.

To gain the most efficient utilization of a collaboration network, one must first understand how collaboration works. It is more than just bringing people together to share knowledge and ideas in simple transactions. Rather, it involves a complex network of agents who transact, coordinate and direct inquiries from senders and recipients.

To be truly effective, the collaboration network must be able to identify the individuals who hold specific types of knowledge (or who Malcolm Gladwell, in his book The Tipping Point, calls "mavens"), those that help direct traffic to knowledge holders (people Gladwell calls "connectors"), and those who are able to synthesize knowledge from multiple sources to create new innovations ("synthesizers").

Imagine a typical water-cooler transaction:

• Tom: How was your weekend, Jane?
• Jane: Great, but I spent too much time trying to figure out [XYZ engineering problem].
• Tom: You know, I hear Mary has a straw model to fix a similar problem. The ABC project team is looking at the issue to see what they come up with. You should go chat with them.

In this case, Jane is the requestor of information, Tom is the connector, Mary is the maven, and the project team is synthesizing the data. In most collaboration networks, the connectors are fairly stable: The same people always know where to go to find experts, even if they're never the experts themselves.

Similarly, the mavens and deep subject-matter experts for specific types of knowledge generally remain constant. In today's world, these are informal and uncodified networks that rely on users "knowing somebody." In the future state of Web 2.0 enterprise networks, HR will help manage collaboration as a quintessential HR function and a natural extension of its relationship with every other function.

HR can help facilitate these transactions simply by recording skills and competencies within the workforce and making them available to the network. This makes sense because HR not only has employees' self-identified skills and competencies at its disposal, but also job histories, performance reviews and other relevant data sources.

By identifying people within the network as subject-matter experts, mavens or connectors, HR can take even more of the guesswork out of matching knowledge with needs. In essence, HR could use a system of tagging to identify competencies, skills, knowledge and subject-matter expertise for each employee.

And, while it may require some effort, employees should also be able to self-update their own areas of expertise and have those data sets automatically uploaded back into HR and talent-management systems.

"Tagging" Knowledge

As the network matures and evolves, both the complexity and accuracy of employee "tagging" models should increase. First, a quick definition of tagging: In a Web and social-networking environment, tagging allows any user to create information about any data in the network.

As described by Wikipedia.com, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information (such as an Internet bookmark, digital image, or computer file). This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching. Tags are chosen informally and personally by the item's creator or by its viewer, depending on the system. On a Web site where many users tag many items, this collection of tags becomes a folksonomy.

In our example, the data would be a person and the tag would be a competency. Therefore, if I'm an employee looking for information about designing a widget, I should be able to look for tags associated with "widget" and find the right resources to help me.

As employees find resources within the network, they also have the opportunity to tag them. They may do this in employee blogs, entries on internal wikis, or participation in the network. As employees in the network create blogs or post changes to an enterprise wiki, those entries can also be tagged to identify their content. Network interactions in the form of blog comments and traffic to the specific Web page provide a measure through which popularity, insightfulness and expertise can be inferred.

When an employee writes a particularly interesting blog entry on a topic, other employees might also tag and rate that entry, which is directly related to the employee's competence on that topic.

So, each time an employee participates in any way, the network should be able to log and categorize that action. When the actions are categorized, we get information on what the employee is interested in, and also, perhaps, data regarding how competent they are in those topics.

For example, a single employee comment on a topic could be seen as providing low-level insight or requesting more information. But the employee who posts 20 or more transactions on the same topic might be considered either an interested party or subject-matter expert.

By going to the next step and looking at the connections that exist within the employee's network and how the employee has interacted with those connections through instant messages, blog posts, wikis and discussion boards, the organization could identify that person as a transaction agent in addition to being a subject-matter expert.

While HR's list of employee competencies and knowledge often centers on the employees' jobs, networks and the traffic patterns within them may reveal interests and subject-matter expertise outside their normal jobs. Additionally, as employees move around an organization and use previous work experiences, HR may find that their ability to collaborate in areas outside of their subject matter is greatly enhanced.

To fully realize the impact on collaboration networks in the business, HRIT organizations will not only need to mine their HR databases, but ensure that they're looking at metrics from the enterprise network as well. Integrating the two data sets and creating new types of analytics will inform HR not just about job competencies, but also about the employee dissemination and flow of knowledge from, through and to specific employee users.

Matching employee competencies in the talent databases to content, activity and traffic within the network can provide an analytical baseline through which new patterns of employee movement and conversation can be analyzed. It is through the combination of these metrics that HR will be able to best identify connectors, mavens and synthesizers in a collaboration network, and help employees put these skills to the best use. These analytics will allow HR to better facilitate knowledge transactions, and, therefore, create a stronger value proposition for its role in the business.

If the future of HR lies with greater integration with the business, then it must quickly adopt new technologies and exploit them before opportunities vanish. While the widespread implementation and adoption of these technologies may be several years away, many HR organizations can start preparing now.

Well-aligned competency models that include the roles played in collaboration models can be developed today. These models can be further broadened by incorporating employees' skills and interests.

Business-intelligence tools such as data mining and data warehouses will be needed to combine data -- everything from future collaboration tools to current HR technologies. Multi-dimensional data warehouse technologies will be used to combine data from core HR systems, talent, learning and any future Web 2.0 metrics.

HR needs to start incorporating Enterprise 2.0 tools into the organization. A major cultural change is necessary to reap the full rewards, and that takes time to create within a company culture. Now is the time to start.

Enterprise networks will accelerate the speed of communication, resource identification and collaboration. That acceleration will increase as HR incorporates data that only it can offer, including information on competencies, performance, job and organization history. The question is whether HR will be prepared to take a leading role in this new model of employee collaboration.

[About the Author: Wesley Wu is a senior consultant in the San Francisco office of Towers Perrin. He works with major corporations, helping them improve the effectiveness of their human resource programs and services. Wu's areas of expertise include HR strategy, service delivery, function effectiveness and HR technology.]

Capturing Knowledge That Makes the Company Great by Robert Hyde

As the Cold War generation retires from the defense industry, companies in this sector are struggling to replace these personnel with a shrinking pool of qualified professionals. Northrop Grumman has turned to knowledge transfer as a means for growing tomorrow's leaders.

The concept of knowledge transfer is taking on new importance throughout the defense industry. That industry is faced with a demographic profile that had its foundation during the 1960s portion of the Cold War. It developed the world's best technical workforce in a society in which engineering was an occupation of choice and our public education systems had the rigor to develop tens of thousands who understood, learned and applied the math and science skills needed to be successful engineers.

That workforce is now retiring and the pipeline of talented replacements has shrunk considerably. All of the above are realities forcing the defense industry to understand that knowledge transfer isn't just another consultant-generated fad or cutting-edge buzzword. Survival - and, by extension, the qualitative edge the industry provides the American defense establishment - is reliant on successful knowledge transfer.

The Northrop Grumman Story

For Northrop Grumman Marine Systems, which employed more than 2,000 during the peak of the Cold War, the final victory was symbolized with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the crumbling of Soviet Communism and the Westernization of the Eastern Bloc.

All of those events, however, resulted in tens of billions of dollars in canceled defense contracts and a flattening of defense spending on development programs and weapons systems production. It was the peace "dividend," which meant reducing the workforce from approximately 2,500 to about 1,000. Business wasn't expanding, few new employees were hired and attrition was limited to retirement.

Fast-forward to today and Cold War-era systems need replacement, business is better, employment is growing, and the generation that won the Cold War is retiring in droves.

Northrop Grumman Marine Systems owns the intellectual property that makes one of its products singular in the world. It helps deliver the absolute reliability of a key strategic weapons system. This technology, which has never failed even a single test during decades of deployment, is the brain child of a key and indispensable engineer who has nurtured, fine-tuned and mastered this technology.

The problem is that this engineer has decades of accumulated "institutional" and "tribal" knowledge bouncing around in his head. He is planning to retire. In response, the business hired a brilliant engineer to serve as a protege for several years and learn from the master. That was a plan right up until the moment the protege accepted her "dream job" at NASA. Lesson learned: Don't put all of your eggs in one basket.

The case above demonstrated a key flaw over and above having "all of your eggs in one basket." Where were the lessons? How can they be replicated? What gets taught first? These and other questions plagued the management team. The result was a documented process and management commitment.

The leadership team quickly understood that to succeed, the organization needed a plan that standardized the process and removed the guesswork of ad-hoc learning. That plan and the lessons inherent in it had to be documented and shared with more than a single protege. Lessons are now prepared, reviewed by contemporaries of the knowledge holder and the management team and presented in a classroom in Socratic fashion.

Starting with the basics, the senior technologist presents the technical road map intertwined with that invaluable lifetime experience. "Here's what the book says, and here's what I've found out about this that isn't in the book," is the key to passing on the unique knowledge and keeping the interest level of the learners high.

The foundational sessions are presented to a group of learners that represents varying levels of experience. A veteran should be included along with newer high-potential employees and those others who need the knowledge to better accomplish their jobs. That veteran will help with organizational knowledge and has his or her own set of experiences to impart. Along with each learning session, job assignments and projects are assigned so the learners, the master and the management team can be confident that the concept is being imparted.

As the lessons progress, they get more detailed and specialized. With the input of the knowledge-holder and management team, the larger group branches out toward those aspects that best fit their skills, abilities and interests.

If there are any prodigies in the group, they will keep up with multiple branches of the lessons. These lessons are presented at intervals of three to four weeks. In the intervening periods, the project assignments are prepared in consultation with the knowledge-holder and in collaboration the entire team of learners.

At the right times, independent projects are assigned so the learner can demonstrate competency in an aspect of the knowledge. To spread the advantages, other interested engineers and technologists who can benefit from the entire process are invited. Managers debrief the senior technologist and the learners in individual sessions every 60 days. Progress is measured and reviewed, and necessary adjustments are made.

To summarize some of the key lessons learned:

1. Management must allow the senior technologist to have the dual role of contributor and teacher. Time and workload have to be carefully managed to make that work.
2. It doesn't work without budget and allocated time.
3. Keeping critical skills is the organization's highest priority. Without them, it is like every other organization. Remember that when weighing priorities.
4. Impart the knowledge to groups, and don't hesitate to have the body of knowledge branch out into more discrete paths.
5. Learned skills must be exercised, and learners have to develop their own lessons learned.
6. Measure results and reward success. This process shouldn't be a burden; it should be an opportunity.

In summary, because there was a plan, a road map, frequent review and adequate documentation, the process not only succeeded, but could be replicated. The business is stronger because of it. Instead of a sense of dread regarding retirement of the senior levels of the workforce, this is seen as an opportunity to grow tomorrow's key contributors.

Conclusion

The U.S. defense establishment is faced with a wholesale passing of the baton from the Cold War generation. The legacy of that generation can be preserved. It's neither cheap nor easy, but it is imperative if the defense industry is to fulfill its responsibility to the shareholders and keep the United States and its Armed Forces personnel safe.

[About the Author: Robert Hyde is director of human resources at Northrop Grummans's Marine Systems business.]

Manager vs. Manager by Scott Flander [Human Resource Executive Online | September 2, 2008]

Employees worried about their jobs because of the tough economy are competing against each other in unhealthy ways. But HR executives can mitigate such problems in several ways, including making people feel more appreciated.

As the economy falters, it's more of a dog-eat-dog world than ever -- and your best managers and executives may be the ones snapping at each other's throats.

Executive coaches and others say that high anxiety in corporate America is causing co-workers to be more competitive, often in harmful ways.

"August is the biggest month I've had in 25 years," says Anna Maravelas, a coach and author of How to Reduce Workplace Conflict and Stress. "I've had human resource directors calling me up, they were hyperventilating over the state of their executive teams. They say, 'Our teams are dysfunctional, the executives are hostile to each other.'"

Maravelas, founder of the St. Paul, Minn.-based firm Thera Rising, which focuses on team building, conflict resolution and leadership development, says co-worker competitiveness has significantly increased over the past year -- a situation she attributes to the downturn in the economy.

'When people's economic security is at risk, their behavior deteriorates," she says. Among the most serious problems among managers and executives are "backstabbing and avoidance," she says. "You do something that annoys me, or I don't agree with, I don't bring it up. I don't ask for explanations when things aren't going well in your division."

Eventually, she says, executives will stop offering each other a head's up about imminent problems -- "Or worse, they'll set you up to fail."

There are other signs co-worker competitiveness is growing. A recent survey of 150 senior executives from large U.S. companies found that nearly half (46 percent) believe employees are more competitive with their co-workers than they were 10 years ago.

But, just in the past year, the competitiveness has been accelerating, says Dave Willmer, executive director of OfficeTeam, which commissioned the survey. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based staffing firm, a division of Robert Half International, places professional and customer-service professionals.
He also puts the blame on the economy.

Competition among co-workers can be healthy, and can benefit companies when times get tough, says Willmer. But HR leaders need to be on the lookout for competition that becomes unhealthy -- which can lead to poor morale, lower productivity and difficulty in retaining good employees.

Employee often feel more anxious about their jobs when they don't get enough recognition, says Willmer. "If recognition is unfairly distributed or not distributed, people become competitive to seek that," he says.

Competitiveness among co-workers also increases when companies don't communicate with their employees well -- not only about where things stand with the company's health, but about where an employee's career stands. "When you don't know, you tell yourself, 'I have to do whatever I can,'" says Willmer. "But that may not be a healthy thing."

Joseph Koob, author of Succeeding with Difficult Co-Workers, says he's seen a growing competitiveness over the last five or six years, as companies have cut back and eliminated entire levels of management. "They're leaner and meaner, but that creates more work and takes away a fair amount of advancement," he says.

"Mid-level and senior executives are working tremendously long hours, which puts pressure on everybody," says Koob, founder of Metacoach, based in Lansdale, Pa.

At the same time, he says, there's less loyalty to companies, and people are jumping from one to another -- which means "you have all these people floating around who are really good." That gets managers and others worried about their own job security, which creates even more angst and competitiveness, he says.

Co-worker competition can be good when it helps people to do their best, but becomes unhealthy when employees are so unhappy they leave, says Koob. "That eventually undermines the whole organization," he says.

How can a manager or executive tell when competition has moved from healthy to unhealthy? Koob suggests that leaders walk around and talk to people. Among the signs: "People will be complaining about other people, pointing their fingers. They'll be blaming others. They'll be whining about their own situations."

Like other experts, Koob says that if employees feel appreciated, they're less likely to worry about their jobs and engage in harmful competition. "It comes down to how people are treated," he says. "If a manager makes an effort to understand who they are, and appreciate who they are, then competition is fine."

Maravelas, of Thera Rising, offers these suggestions for keeping competition from getting out of control:

1. Acknowledge the contributions of your direct reports and other divisions daily." She recommends inviting leaders and employees from other departments to staff meetings and publicly thanking them. This helps everyone feel appreciated.
2. Eliminate performance measures "that reward employees and leaders for sacrificing the needs of other divisions for their own gain" such as a sales-compensation structure "that drives wedges between groups and leaders."
3. "Build the consistent message that we don't throw people under the bus here. As soon as you see a person disrespect or target another person or group, you shut that down."

Upgrading Talent by Matthew Guthridge, John R. McPherson & William J. Wolf

A downturn can give smart companies a chance to upgrade their talent.

Downturns place companies' talent strategies at risk. As deteriorating performance forces increasingly aggressive head count reductions, it's easy to lose valuable contributors inadvertently, damage morale or the company's external reputation among potential employees, or drop the ball on important training and staff-development programs. But there is a better way. By emphasizing talent in cost-cutting efforts, employers can intelligently strengthen the value proposition they offer current and potential employees and position themselves strongly for growth when economic conditions improve.

Companies can maintain their attractiveness to internal and external talent by using cost-cutting efforts as an opportunity to redesign jobs so that they become more engaging for the people undertaking them. A job's level of responsibility, degree of autonomy, and span of control all contribute to employee satisfaction. Head count reductions provide a powerful incentive to use existing resources better by breaking down silos and increasing the span of control for challenging managerial roles-thus improving the odds of engaging key talent in the redesigned jobs.

Consider Cisco Systems' approach to downsizing during the last recession. In 2001, as deteriorating financial performance forced the elimination of 8,500 jobs, Cisco redesigned roles and responsibilities to improve cross-functional alignment and reduce duplication. The more collaborative environment fostered by such moves increased workplace satisfaction and productivity for many employees. Initiatives like Cisco's succeed when companies focus on redesigning jobs and retaining talent at the outset of downsizing efforts.

In addition to redesigning roles, companies cutting jobs should carefully protect training and development programs. These are not only essential to maintaining workplace morale and increasing long-term productivity, but they also give people the skills necessary to carry out redesigned jobs that have greater spans of control. During the last recession, International Paper continued offering classes at its leadership institute by replacing external facilitators with the company's senior leaders. This approach not only reduced the cost of delivery but also, thanks to the involvement of senior leaders, redirected the content of the leadership program by tying it more closely to decisions and skills affecting the company's current performance. Similarly, IBM retained its employee-development programs during its major performance challenges in the mid- to late 1980s. It took the arrival of Lou Gerstner as CEO and a new strategy to turn the company around, but the historical investments IBM had made in developing its people helped achieve a successful turnaround.

Before undertaking widespread layoffs, companies should use their performance-management processes to help identify strong employees. Companies that conduct disciplined, meritocratic assessments of performance and potential are well placed to make good personnel decisions. These companies should also bring additional strategic considerations to the decisions. They should assess which types of talent drive business value today and which will drive it three years from now, as well as which talent segments are currently available and which will be in the future-keeping in mind, for example, that new MBAs will be equally available in two years. They should also look at which types of talent would take years to replace or develop-for instance, skilled electric utility engineers in an environment where retirements are dramatically reducing supply. Performance management well informed by key strategic questions can minimize the negative cultural impact of downsizing, improve the bottom line, and help identify talented people the company should try to retain.

Companies that are reducing staff must focus relentlessly on the internal cultural and external reputational implications of cost-cutting efforts. Although strong employer brands are resilient, it's difficult to reestablish brand strength once the culture has been damaged. The way many companies conduct large-scale downsizing decreases efficiency, morale, and motivation on the part of remaining employees. It also increases voluntary turnover among high performers and compromises a company's ability to attract strong talent in the future, as potential employees wonder how risky it is to take a job there.

Counteracting these tendencies requires creativity. In 2001, Cisco gave generous severance packages and assistance with job searches to the workers it laid off and launched a program that paid one-third of salary, plus benefits and stock options, to ex-employees who agreed to work for a local charity or community organization. Steps like these protected Cisco's employer brand by attempting to make departing employees feel better about Cisco and underscored the company's commitment to its people for those who remained. The results were measurable: employee satisfaction remained high, and Cisco retained a prominent spot on Fortune magazine's "Best Companies to Work For" list.

A strong employer brand is also important for companies undertaking selective recruitment even as they cut personnel costs elsewhere. Using slowdowns to uncover and hire displaced talent is often fruitful. Studies have shown that although overall levels of recruitment may level off or even fall, the quality of workers hired rises in recessions. And opportunities to find and hire displaced talent may be particularly valuable during this downturn, as massive downsizing in the financial-services sector makes available to nonfinancial companies a large pool of highly educated and motivated professionals who previously might not have considered jobs outside their previous employers or industries.

Some organizations are moving surprisingly quickly in response to these opportunities in the talent market. In late October 2008, the US Internal Revenue Service hosted a Manhattan career fair targeted at displaced financial-services professionals. More than 1,300 people attended, many standing in line for three hours to learn more about an employer that offered a newly interesting brand of "job stability."

Cost cutting during a downturn is often necessary to ensure a company's current profitability and future competitiveness. Rather than freezing all hiring and employee-development programs, companies should use this period as an opportunity to upgrade talent and better engage existing staff. This means reinventing a percentage of the capital liberated from cost cutting into, for example, selective recruiting and development programs and in efforts to safeguard the culture and to redesign jobs so that they are more engaging to the remaining employees.

[About the Authors: Matthew Guthridge is an associate principal in McKinsey's London office, John McPherson is a director in the Dallas office, and William Wolf is a principal in the Washington, DC, office.]

I Hate Coaching Employees! by Chuck Murphy

"I hate coaching employees! They take so much out of my day and waste my time. Why can't they understand this? It's so simple. I can explain it 10 times, and they still don't get it. Boy, are they thick! Where did they get this one?"

Sound familiar? Well, sometimes trying to coach employees can be challenging. This is especially true if the talent manager believes coaching merely means showing another employee how to do something. The difficulty usually is not the employee, but rather in the manager's understanding of what is required to be an effective coach.

Like other duties, coaching requires specific competencies. Think about the following change in our society.

Computers have greatly reduced our patience in waiting for information. Thirty years ago, it would take five to seven minutes for someone to retrieve information from a folder in a file cabinet, but nobody had a problem waiting. Today, if the computer takes 10 seconds to retrieve data from a system 1,000 miles away, we tend to think it is taking all day to service our request.

We become frustrated, angry, irritated and may click "Ctrl, Alt, Delete," to end the task because we feel the computer is hung up. In reality, the computer is just taking a bit longer to process our request because it has 100 million other customer requests in the queue before ours.

This instant-response mentality also might be the root cause of our impatience in other situations, such as waiting in line for a sales clerk, waiting an hour at a restaurant for a table on a Friday or Saturday night or, in our professional lives, waiting for an employee to catch on to what we are trying to explain.

Coaching involves patience and understanding. It requires that we perceive an employee's difficulty in comprehending what we are trying to convey. To be a professional coach, you must think back to a time when you had to learn a new process or task yourself. How did you feel about not getting it the first time? Were you nervous or unsure of yourself as you entered into the learning process? Did the coach appear to be irritated when you didn't catch on immediately?

Professional coaches go slowly and are patient. They move in slow motion, shifting down from their normal 90 mph speed, to 2 mph so the employee can comprehend the task or concept being explained.

Professional coaches are patient, empathetic, resourceful, kind, understanding and focused on maintaining the employee's self-esteem. Coaches know it may take several attempts before a trainee understands what they are trying to demonstrate or communicate. Further, professional coaches employ different approaches to effectively transfer information. A professional coach is creative and thinks out of the box, or uses analogies the trainee can relate to everyday life.

Good listening skills are extremely important in the coaching environment. A professional coach listens carefully to employees' questions to pinpoint the specific areas in which the trainee is experiencing difficulty. They chunk information and ask questions at key points to ascertain an employee's level of understanding. These periodic checkups allow the coach to correct any confusion or lack of understanding prior to proceeding with additional information. The coach approaches the task at hand in a slow and systematic manner and is aware of where the employee is in the learning process.

A good coach has his or her finger on the employee's pulse and an eye on the person's body language. A professional coach proceeds slowly and cautiously, maintaining the employee's self-esteem and providing the person with opportunities to stop and ask questions.

There's really only one thing talent managers need to do on a continuous basis when coaching: Ask, "How would I feel if I was the one learning something brand new?" Now you get it, coach.

[About the Author: Chuck Murphy is a training specialist for the Massachusetts Department of Revenue.]

Measuring Business Impact of Learning by Michael E. Echols, Ph.D.

In its one-year-plus existence, the Bellevue University Human Capital Lab has funded research on how best-practice companies are using measurement of learning's business impact to support their talent management and strategic objectives. Here is what's happening at some of those companies.
Business Issue: Employees Quit Their Supervisors

At ACS, multivariate statistical methods were used to determine the impact of learning on call-center performance. The first phase of the research documented that training is a key factor impacting employee retention. The method used to derive this conclusion addresses a key measurement issue: how to be sure the improvement in business outcome - in this case, retention - was directly related to the training and not something else. Based on the initial business implications, ACS extended the analyses to additional dimensions of the business including recruiting.

Business Issue: Leadership Pipeline

The business challenge addressed here is one way a geographically dispersed global retail organization identifies highly engaged associates and delivers learning to this hourly and salaried workforce at thousands of locations. In this case, the focus is a customized retail-management program leading to a bachelor's degree. The program is co-designed by retail subject matter experts in conjunction with Home Depot executives to provide maximum impact on current associate performance and on future career capability.

This program integrates the corporation's tuition assistance benefits into its leadership career development strategy. The key element of this program is the opt-in nature of the highly engaged associates. The business-impact measurements at the company include the tracking of the percentage of future store management that emerges from the customized program vs. more traditional channels.

Business Issue: Tuition Assistance as a Strategy

One of the most advanced companies in the use of tuition assistance is Verizon Wireless. Under the leadership of Dorothy Martin, LearningLINK program manager for Verizon, the corporation already has monthly dashboards that document business impact. The four key business outcomes measured include recruiting, retention, job performance and job mobility.

These are key human capital factors for any company. All four parameters show favorable outcomes for employees utilizing tuition assistance relative to the general Verizon Wireless employee population. Especially dramatic is the fact that the strategy has produced as much as a 10 percent improvement in retention. This result is important because it is directly opposite to the "educate them and they will leave" opinion widely held among operating managers.

To extend the impact of tuition assistance, Verizon Wireless is collaborating in the development and deployment of a customized retail management program targeted at accelerating the development of future leaders in critical retail operations. Calibration of the impact of the custom program on the business outcomes listed above is part of the deployment.

Business Issue: Sales Training Redesign and Redeployment

Few industries face the challenges seen in the auto industry today. Innovation, a key concept in many markets, is more than a mere expression at Chrysler Academy. First presented to the public in detail at the Fall 2008 Chief Learning Officer Symposium, the corporation has deployed an innovative approach including:
a) Performance maps for high performers.
b) Gap analysis.
c) Sales training redesign and new deployment model.
d) Measured business impact.

Answering questions around learning's impact has motivated senior Chrysler management to extend the analysis to dealership management programs that reach far beyond sales training.

In summary, these best-practice companies are walking the talk when it comes to innovative learning strategies and the related business outcome measurements that show the value of the investments. Validated in the first phase, these measurement initiatives are being leveraged to impact even broader strategy issues - the true seat at the table.

[About the Author: Michael E. Echols, Ph.D., is vice president of strategic initiatives at Bellevue University and author of "ROI on Human Capital Investment."]