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CHIEF LEARNING OFFICER EDITORIAL STAFF

LEARNING IN PRACTICE AWARDSPRACTITIONER AWARDSCLO of the Year Award: For the learning executive who is without peer in developing and executing learning and development strategies, marshaling and managing resources and achieving measurable success.

Business Impact: For learning executives who have demonstrated measurable business impact of their workforce development pro-grams in the past year.

Collaboration: For learning departments that have collaborated effectively with internal and external groups and individuals, such as business partners, organizational divisions or functions such as the sales and marketing department, or external customer groups, to develop and deliver targeted employee development programs in the past year.

Global Learning: For learning executives who have delivered development initiatives to geographically dispersed or culturally and linguistically diverse audiences internally or externally in the past year.

Innovation: For learning executives who have successfully applied emerging methodologies to create a stimulating and engaging combination of content and modalities in the past year.

Strategy: For learning executives who have demonstrated excep-tional business acumen combined with forward-looking vision in the development and execution of a learning strategy in support of their organization’s objectives in the past year.

Technology: For learning executives who have delivered new and unique applications of emerging technology to employee learning and development initiatives.

Trailblazer: For learning executives who have either launched a new enterprise learning function or completely overhauled existing workforce development initiatives in the past year.

PROVIDER AWARDSExcellence in Academic Partnerships: Recognizes accred-ited academic learning providers that have partnered with an organization in the past year to teach its employees about a key business issue.

Excellence in Blended Technology: Recognizes vendors that have deployed a rich mix of technology tools in support of a cli-ent’s learning program that combines multiple modalities, such as e-learning, mobile devices, social collaboration tools and games.

Excellence in Community Service: Recognizes vendors that have provided significant investment of company resources and time in support of a community service project or initiative.

Excellence in Content: Recognizes providers that have created superior customized or off-the-shelf learning content in the past year.

Excellence in E-Learning: Recognizes providers that have rolled out an innovative and effective new e-learning program or suite for a client in the past year.

Excellence in Gaming and Simulations: Recognizes providers that have rolled out innovative and effective branching, nonlinear and interactive learning programs for a client in the past year.

Excellence in Social Learning: Recognizes providers that have rolled out wikis, blogs, communities of practice, social networks or any other employee communication and collaboration plat-forms for a client in the past year.

Excellence in Vendor Partnership: Recognizes vendors for their work, either via whole or partial outsourced services, con-tent development and delivery or training, in support of an orga-nization’s learning and development function in the past year.

The ninth annual Chief Learning Officer Learning In Practice Awards recognized learning leaders, vendors and organizations that have made a substantive and measurable change in business, vision, strategic alignment or leadership.

Winners were selected by a panel of practitioner judges from more than 250 nominations.

Awards were presented to the top three entrants — gold, silver and bronze — in more than a dozen categories, with several new ones added this year, including Strategy, Technol-ogy, Trailblazer and Collaboration for practitioners and Vendor Partnership, Blended Technology and Community Service for vendors.

Senior learning leaders received awards in seven categories

that had two divisions: Division 1 for compa-nies with more than 10,000 employees and Division 2 for companies with fewer than 10,000 employees. Learning providers were recog-nized for their service in eight categories, includ-ing e-learning, academic partnerships and social learning.

Winners received their awards in September during the Fall 2012 Chief Learning Officer Symposium at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Colo.

ON THE WEBTo learn how some of the 2012 Learning In Practice Award winners got to the top, visit CLOmedia.com/articles/view/5506.

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PAT CRULL Group Vice President and CLO, Time Warner Cable

In the six years that Pat Crull has served as chief learning officer of Time Warner Cable (TWC) the company has more than doubled in size. It became publicly traded, spun off from Time Warner Inc. and reorganized from 33 autonomous divisions to a central-ized functional structure with two aligned operating regions.

In addition to these transitions, competition from AT&T and Verizon, among others, has increased dramatically. The pace of technical change in the business, along with increasingly sophisti-cated products and services, also has emphasized the importance of change readiness.

Despite industry obstacles, Crull said her work in the profes-sion is an opportunity to impact productivity and satisfaction for individuals and organizations. Her dedication and committment to the profession are part of what won her this year’s CLO of the Year award.

“The biggest challenge I face daily is the increasing pres-sure, since 2008, of accomplishing more with less,” said Crull, TWC’s first CLO. “This has become normal expectations for our teams. This calls for the best leadership skills we have to meet the challenges, to stay innovative, to continue to be energized.”

Since 2006, Crull has framed a learning, development and inclusion vision focused on creating a workforce that can devel-op quickly and effectively. She epitomizes what it means to be a CLO, and her resulting learning strategy supports the new busi-ness model, helping to build a more interdependent and collab-

orative environment while supporting emerging businesses. “If you look up the definition of a CLO, it would have Pat’s

picture next to it,” said Tom Mathews, executive vice president of human resources for TWC. “She has dedicated her illustri-ous career to be in this space and strives every day to further the profession.”

A registered psychologist with a Ph.D. from Northwestern University, Crull began her professional work with Arthur Ander-sen/Andersen Consulting — now Accenture — in 1981. Since then she has worked at Baxter Healthcare, McDonald’s Corp., Toys “R” Us Inc. and TIAA-CREF.

“I’m as excited about the industry today as I was 31 years ago,” she said. “I think I’m wiser — I’m certainly more skilled — but that same passion, thinking this is a terrific thing to be doing, exists.”

This appetite for learning and growth is what her colleagues admire most about her.

“Not many people can repeat success, and Pat has done it time after time,” said Kevin Wilde, vice president of organization effec-tiveness and chief learning officer at General Mills and the 2007 CLO of the Year. “In the sports world, she would be a dynasty.”

At TWC, Crull and her team developed a rolling three-year strategic plan that is vetted and supported by company leaders so the learning, development and inclusion team can systemati-cally meet the business’ current and future needs. Crull said her mission is to enhance and protect the company’s brand experience

Pat Crull, 2012 CLO of the Year, at the Fall 2012 Chief Learning Officer Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo.

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GIVING BACK TO THE COMMUNITYSince the beginning of her career, Pat Crull has made involvement and giving back to the profession central to what she does. Her involvements, past and present, include:

Charlotte Region.

Education & Training.

If you look up the definition of a CLO, it would have Pat’s picture next to it. She has dedicated her career to the industry and strives every day to further the profession.

— Tom Mathews, Executive Vice President

of Human Resources, Time Warner Cable

for external customers, vendor partners and for internal employees. To do this, Crull had to get the organization to recognize the value of a systematic, planned, strategic approach to learning.

Change and adaptability are the hallmarks of her approach. Six years ago, 100 percent of learning was instructor led, with little interaction. Today, 35 percent is self-paced e-learning, and 25 percent is social or informal. Of the current instructor-led classes, which comprise 40 percent of learning offerings, the team is hoping to make at least half virtual instructor-led by the end of the year.

“What made us successful a few years ago will hardly make us successful as leaders in the learning function today,” Crull said. “To be successful in the future, we need to advocate passionately for learning and do it in a language all business leaders under-stand — business acumen is key.”

To increase her expertise, Crull spends a majority of her time working directly with other line leaders and front-line employees, who she refers to as heroes of the business. For example, when Crull joined McDonald’s, she learned that the majority of employees work their way up the management pipeline and jokingly say they have ketchup in their bangs. Because Crull was sauce-free, for 18 months she spent one day a month in a McDonald’s restaurant as a crew member to understand the business firsthand. At TWC, she spends time in call centers, truck rolls and does focus groups with dispatchers.

“She’s always proven to not only be a good learning leader but a good business executive,” said Tamar Elkeles, chief learning officer at Qualcomm and 2010 CLO of the Year. “There are not a lot of learning executives that can build relationships, cred-ibility and support as easily as she can.” CLO

— Ladan Nikravan

Time Warner Cable CLO Pat Crull celebrated the award and her birthday.

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Coldwell Banker University (CBU), the learning arm of Coldwell Banker, supports 85,000 sales associates in more than 3,100 offices worldwide. For the past three years, training has been aligned with central business goals to achieve greater market share and increase company revenue. In a real estate setting, this is achieved by increasing gross commission income by changing sales associates and office brokers’ business behavior.

Developing learning modules for these goals is difficult because more than half of Coldwell Banker’s offices are independently owned franchises. There-fore, CBU includes both synchronous and asynchro-nous instruction, streamed

videos, mobile learning, cloud-based computing and two social learning portals, one for managers and one for sales associ-ates. The social learning aspects include blogs written by social media experts, user ratings of CBU courses, user comments on materials, the ability to post user-generated content and thread-ed discussion groups for collaborative learning. Also, CBU no longer has a learning management system with a cumbersome registration process. Instead, the self-paced courses are available anytime, anywhere, including versions for mobile compatibil-ity.

In addition to making CBU’s learning modules more acces-sible, Coldwell Banker’s learning department, under the leader-ship of Vice President of Learning David Birnbaum, worked to link learning and training to three key performance indicators: return on value, return on investment and percent improve-ment in performance.

Resulting metrics say students can expect to generate, on average, $6,500 more in gross commissions if they take at least one strategic learning program in a given year. That means a $390 increase in revenue to the company per employee. Further, the learning department found for every dollar Cold-well Banker spends on learning, the company sees a 75 percent return in increased revenue.

GOLDDAVID BIRNBAUMVice President of Learning, Coldwell Banker Real Estate Corp.

SILVER (TIE)CHUCK BATTIPEDEVice President and CLO Learning and Development, Hewlett-Packard

Four years ago, during enterprise-wide cost cutting, leaders in the learning and development program at Hewlett-Packard were asked to show the impact of their program on bottom-line

business results. At the time, the learning team, led by Chuck Battipede, vice president of learning and development, had no consistent or systematic approach to assess business impact. Since then, the team has moved learning and devel-opment from a business-neutral to a business-aligned strat-egy. When creating a new, comprehensive learning model, the team struggled to create a program that used metrics to highlight direct impact on business and achieve less quantifi-able results, such as more adaptive and innovative talent.

The new learning module, The HP Evaluation Frame-work, already has shown business impact. A sales training program helped increase quota attainment by 10 percent, a technical on-boarding program helped lower the attri-tion rate by 13 percent and a partner sales training program contributed to a 7 percent increase in quota attainment.

SILVER (TIE)JIM BRODIEGlobal Operations Director, Mars Inc.

When most companies were asking their learning func-tions to make cuts at the height of the global recession in 2009, executives at Mars Inc. challenged Mars University to have more impact. The first order of business was to conduct a strategic review of how the university could better integrate with Mars’ principles and strategic business plan. The review, completed in March 2010, found duplication, inconsisten-cies and inefficiencies throughout the program. Perhaps most startling: less than 30 percent of associates strongly agreed that Mars University contributed to business goals and impacted job performance.

In the next two years, learning leaders at Mars, led by Jim Brodie, director of global operations, worked to revamp Mars University into a singular entity using a consistent frame-work and language with modules that showcased stronger relationships between the university and business practices. With these changes in place, use of Mars University resources increased five-fold by Mars employees in the last year.

Coldwell Banker sales associates generate on average $6,500 more in gross commission per year if they attend a strategic learning program.

Business Impact — Division 1

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BRONZEDEBBIE COTEAssistant VP of Retirement Services Training, MassMutual Financial Group

MassMutual began 2011 with a lofty goal: double market share in the next four years without an equivalent

growth in staff. To achieve the goal, exec-utives stressed the importance of growing the business and industry knowledge in its 1,100-member workforce. Under the direction of Debbie Cote, assistant vice president of retirement services, the learn-ing and performance division established a new core curriculum, which included more than 30 e-learning modules and a manager roadmap to help assimilate new employees. MassMutual already has increased market share from 2 to 3 percent in the last year, and is aiming for 4 percent by 2015.

SILVERGREG LINDAMOODSenior Training Instructor, Santee Cooper

With a complex web of training and development programs, Santee Cooper, South Carolina’s state-owned electric and water utility compa-ny, had difficulty providing the necessary data to show compliance with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) guidelines.

Some training was instructor-led while other training was done via video. Module completion records were collected electronically while others used paper documen-tation. To streamline the learning and development process, Senior Training Instruc-tor Greg Lindamood and Senior Safety Specialist Tami Barnette led the implemen-tation of a new, company-wide learning management system.

Learning leaders at Santee Cooper worried about employee buy-in for this new learning module because many of its nearly 2,000 employees did not have regular access to a computer at home or work, which made e-learning nearly impossible. From the start, Santee Cooper’s CEO and other executives showed their excitement for the ease-of-use with the new LMS, which encouraged quick employee adoption.

The LMS has helped Santee Cooper demonstrate full OSHA compliance for the past four years. Safety learning modules resulted in the largest reduction in the number of personnel accidents and motor vehicle injuries in the company’s history, and the LMS’ e-learning capabilities helped cut travel time and expenses for compa-ny instructors.

Business Impact — Division 2

Professional services firm PwC Canada, the Canadian affiliate of PricewaterhouseC-oopers, approached changes to its learning modules by answering one key question: How can we accelerate individual and team development to achieve and sustain compet-itive advantage?

Internal surveys concluded PwC Canada was not delivering a distinctive experience for its clients, whose top priority was to retain proactive, insightful, relevant advisers. Advis-ers also need to be aware of the constant changes to regulations and standards.

With these concerns in mind, devel-opment and transformation leader Karin Muchall and the learning team at PwC Canada developed Enhanced Working Practices (EWP), now referred to through-out PwC as Team Based Learning. EWP includes a set of routines, behaviors and mindsets designed to increase the potential for high performance and learning in the workplace.

The program’s goals are to increase people engagement and foster longer relationships with clients and teams. Program success

is measured in a number of ways, including effectiveness of learning and development to prepare for future work assignments, employee comfort voicing opinions, ability to receive constructive feedback, using client feedback to improve work processes and responsiveness to client needs and issues.

Learning leaders designed the EWP program as informal learning that is part of employees’ day-to-day routines. This approach shows employees the real-world applications of EWP from the start. The multinational corporation’s global people survey found individuals who imple-mented EWP scored 12 percent higher on people engagement and high-perfor-mance team scores than their peers at the

company. Anecdotally, the program also has increased team morale and energy, promoted higher quality of documentation and greater involvement of everyone on the team. The program was so successful PwC expanded it throughout the corporation.

GOLDKARIN MUCHALLDevelopment Leader, PwC Canada

Employees using PwC Canada’s Enhanced Working Practices score 12 percent higher in people engagement and high-performance team scores than their peers.

Jennifer Gale accepted the award for PwC.

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Diana Thomas, vice president of U.S. training, learning and development at McDonald’s Corp., has worked at the fast food company since she was a crew member at age 16. Much has changed in the last three decades to make the business more complex. There are new products, extended hours, increased guest counts, larger and more diverse staffs and changes in equipment, technologies and processes.

These changes led Thomas and her department to address the traditional single management model employed by most McDonald’s franchises throughout the United States. Their solution: restaurant department management, a people migration strategy developed in conjunction with HR, owners and operators.

With the new model, the training, learning and development department aimed to clarify roles and define specific areas of responsibility among the management team, create a development path within the restaurant and establish accountabilities and success measures. The structure of the new people model includes three additional department managers: management of product, customers and employees. Training for these positions included five new curricula with a combination of test out features, e-learning, coaching guides, videos, virtual collaborations, delivery in tracking on an LMS and a two-day immersive simulation tied directly to McDonald’s three key business measures: leading teams, guest satisfaction and restaurant results.

Thomas said she knew the biggest hurdle would be adoption among the 47,000 restaurant manag-ers and mid-managers and 600,000 crew members. Therefore, the training, learning and development team partnered with three franchise owners to pilot the new training curricula. Restaurants that have adopted restaurant department management have seen improvements when compared with their peers. Hourly manager turnover is 10.1 percent less than peers, crew member turnover is 2.4 percent less and customer service opportunities are 5.6 percent higher.

GOLDMCDONALD’S CORP.

Collaboration — Division 1

BRONZEBAE SYSTEMS

Like all U.S. govern-ment defense and secu-rity contractors, BAE Systems is required to hire qualified U.S. citizens to work on its projects. In recent years, however, it struggled

to attract strong recent graduates in STEM fields. The learning operations and technology team, led by manager John Hovell, viewed this pitfall as an issue affecting the American education system. Therefore, the team decided to collaborate with educators and admin-istrators at Liberty Elementary in Loudoun County, Va., and developed STEMerday, a program that promotes STEM topics such as robotics and forensics to elementary-age students on various Saturdays.

SILVERHCL TECHNOLOGIES LTD. With 90,000 global employees in 31 countries, HCL Technologies Ltd., an information technology services and consulting company, had difficulty scal-ing its existing training model to serve all employees. Technical Competency Enhancement for Enabling Development (TechCEED), the company’s learn-ing and training arm, identified four major issues with HCL’s existing train-ing model: learning requirements were diverse in different lines of business, which made customization difficult; there was no measurement to see if the training was relevant and aligned with business goals; the training process was not efficient; and the existing model was completely centralized, preventing flexibility.

Led by Associate Vice President Dhamayanthi N, TechCEED took these issues and developed a business-aligned training model centered on strategic delivery teams. Each team is attached to an academy, with an academy head who interfaces with other business enablers to identify training needs. Tech-CEED maintains control over all academies’ policies and standards to ensure quality and standardization.

The new training program uses the federalist model, simultaneously involving aspects that are centralized and others that are decentralized. In total, the business-aligned model saved $3.1 million in training expenses in the 2012 fiscal year and allowed the company to scale up its training with customized academies while maintaining general, centralized oversight.

Hourly management development reduced turnover 10 percent.

McDonald’s Diana Thomas accepted the award.

John Hovell of BAE Systems accepted the award.

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Collaboration — Division 2

Before Peter Shelby joined the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in late 2010 as chief learning officer, the intel-ligence agency’s in-house university was split into five separate schools — profes-sional development, engineering, warf-ighter support, enterprise support and acquisition — with little collaboration. In an era of government austerity and a do more with less attitude, Shelby knew the university would not be sustainable amid budget cuts if programs weren’t streamlined.

To facilitate the situation Shelby forged relationships with other members of the intelligence community, the federal government and industry counterparts. The NRO now has a reciprocal agreement with the CIA to share learning resources, and CIA instructors came to the NRO to teach several programs. With this partnership, the two have built two week-long programs: fundamentals of supervi-sion and fundamentals of management.

Through contacts at the Federal Interagency CLO Council, Shel-

by and the NRO learning team received source code for the Notification and Feder-al Employee Antidiscrimination and Retal-iation Act and the U.S. Patent and Trade-mark Office’s leadership development Web presence. These collaboration tools would have cost the NRO nearly $10 million to create if it had to start from scratch. Instead, with a flat budget in fiscal year 2012, the NRO was able to increase employee learn-ing opportunities 90 percent without any additional financial resources.

In addition to bringing new programs into the NRO University, Shelby worked to consolidate existing programs. In the past year, NRO University eliminated 14 redundant systems. It also added the NRO online passport and a 12-part set of training and development initiatives for on-boarding. Before development of these programs, the on-boarding process took between six and nine months. Now, it takes less than a week. Further, as part of the centralization process, NRO University added centralized registration tools, which makes all parts of the university easily accessible to any employee.

GOLDNATIONAL RECONNAISSANCE OFFICE

General Reinsurance Corp. (Gen Re), a professional life and health insurance company, moved more than a third of its 2,400 employees from more than three-dozen

different client databases to a single customer relationship management system. Charged with facilitating the move, the core training team, led

by Vice President Ann Marie Sidman, collaborated with seven differ-ent business units and settled on a multi-modal training system, which included the basic aspects of the CRM system and custom-ized approaches specific to a business function. Gen Re worked with independent consultant Bluewolf to train its trainers. Ultimately, the program received a 97.6 percent satisfaction rate from employees.

BRONZEGENERAL REINSURANCE CORP.

University Health System (UHS), a hospital system in San Anto-nio, found that many of its environmental services employees, often underskilled and with limited English proficiency, struggled to cross over to the clinical career ladder. This left them stuck in low-paying jobs with little opportunity for advancement. With proper train-ing, these employees could fill clinical jobs throughout the hospital system.

The Center for Learning Excellence at UHS, under the leader-ship of Senior Director Jacqueline Burandt, partnered with Alamo Colleges to launch a training program on site at University Hospital. The model combines bilingual technical training and occupation-

specific vocational English as a second language classes, a move away from the traditional model which required that participants learn general ESL curriculum and then enter training only taught in English. Training takes place six hours a day, four times a week, which allows participants to complete it in weeks rather than months.

Twelve staff members took the first program three years ago, and all successfully completed the program, which involved CPR training and certification. Further, half of the participants earned certified nurse aide licenses after passing the Texas boards. One of these aides was promoted twice and is now a medical-surgical technician.

SILVERUNIVERSITY HEALTH SYSTEM

NRO CLO Peter Shelby (center) accepted the award along with his team.

Angela Cominos accepted the award.

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Global Learning — Division 1

Operating in more than 171 countries, IBM was challenged to deliver learn-ing to a widely dispersed audience, especially in growing markets. The in-dustry learning team, led by Beverly Ward, needed to reach 70,000 sellers and consultants globally, half of whom are new to IBM. This audience needed to be educated on the com-pany’s strategy, products and tools, but language challenges, cultural differ-ences, poor infrastructure, the program’s complexity, lack of available free time among learners and time zone differences presented significant roadblocks.

To meet these challenges, the learning team developed a portfolio of virtual, face-to-face, blended, on-demand and self-paced learning programs that build on each other and are targeted based on the learner’s level of experience. Programs include education on the industry for beginners, experiential learning and mentoring for experienced sellers and role play opportunities to prepare for upcoming client meetings.

One virtually delivered program works with more expe-rienced sellers on their current deals and helps them make progress on specific deals in the pipeline. The company also uses online communities to allow employees to network and share knowledge and best practices.

IBM developed metrics for each program to ensure activ-ities are delivered efficiently and are effective. Surveys are used as follow-up after a learning activity, and semi-annu-al meetings are conducted with subject matter experts to review and evaluate content validity and timeliness.

These efforts resulted in an increased number of cross-brand industry experts and thought leaders within the orga-nization. The beginner-level programs have been accessed by 76,000 employees, while the advanced role-playing and skills development programs have been delivered to about 3,500 sellers and consultants. The programs receive a net satisfaction score of 3.6 on a four-point scale.

GOLDBEVERLY WARDGlobal Program Lead for Industry Learning, Center for Learning and Development, IBM

SILVERROBERT LAUBERVice President, Yum University, Yum Brands Inc.

Yum Brands has 37,000 restaurants across three brands in 117 countries, and about 80 percent of the businesses are franchised. There are separate business units within the company

divided by region or country, each with its own goals and business strategy. Because of this setup, learning was not formalized under one platform, and training was inconsis-tent and not being done in a timely manner.

To address these conditions, Yum University, led by Vice President Robert Lauber, developed a learning tech-nology platform, the Yum Learning Zone, with input from representatives from each division. This system replaced outdated printed material with consistent, personalized online content and allowed new hires to immediately sign up for training courses. To develop the system, Yum researched internal and external best practices and used a pilot program to gather feedback and fine-tune the system.

Since implementing the Learning Zone in more than 22,000 of its restaurants, the company improved its customer service scores and its level of customer recom-mendations, reduced training time and turnover and has a more consistent understanding of its desired culture. The Learning Zone also led to better communication and collaboration across divisions, geographies and languages.

BRONZEWILLIAM MAGAGNADirector of Education and Technology Solutions, Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics

Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics realized that because of varying markets and resources, its global partners were at a disadvantage when educating customers. To correct this problem,

William Magagna, director of education and technology solutions, and his team developed the Personalized Educa-tion Plan (PEP), a competency-based education platform for lab personnel. PEP encompasses knowledge-based online training, skills-based exercise design and ability-based assessments. Using the system, U.S. experts were able to provide full knowledge transfer to select experts in other regions, who are then able to develop and deliver localized content at a fraction of the cost.

IBM’s industry learning team delivers training to 70,000 learners in 171 countries every year.

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When software company Deltek set up a new office in Makati, Philippines, and hired engineers to develop and test systems, the engineers didn’t understand the products they were hired to work on, and virtual training from subject matter experts in the U.S. was difficult because of a 12-hour time difference.

To address these problems, Deltek hired a team of learning professionals in the Philippines and integrated them into Deltek University, led by Daniel Carusi, vice president of global servic-es, and made them part of the curriculum team, which develops customer training. This produced two teams working all hours of the day to create learning for employees and customers. The team created products such as:

about the company’s products.

employees, including a six-month assimilation program.

plans devised with managers through an online system.

system implemented through virtual collaboration in months instead of years.

subject matter experts in the Philippines through training with mentors in the U.S.

As a result of Deltek’s learn-ing efforts, engineers in the

Makati office have improved their skills and increased their ability to deliver high-er-quality systems. The office is growing its own subject matter experts, and a comprehensive learning service has been created for customers and employees globally. The company’s train-ing programs are now rated by employees as the fourth-highest on a list of reasons to work at Deltek, and the Makati office has been rated as one of the Best Employers in Asia for Learning and Development by Asia’s Best Employer Brand Awards 2012.

GOLDDANIEL CARUSIVice President, Global Services, Deltek Inc.

BRONZEPETER STOUT Senior Research Forensic Scientist, Research Triangle Institute

Forensic professionals need continuing educa-tion to maintain credibility in their field, but they rarely have time. To meet this need, Senior Research Forensic Scientist Peter Stout

and the forensic science services department at Research Triangle Institute (RTI) developed training and delivered it via Adobe Connect in a hosted, multi-tenant environment. However, limitations appeared regarding security, capacity and reliability.

To meet these challenges, RTI purchased perpetual Adobe Connect licenses and managed it through Connect-Solutions on dedicated servers, allowing for increased secu-rity and tripling the size of the program’s deployment. The deployment was migrated without any break in service and the number of users increased 25 percent in less than a year.

SILVERDAMIEN O’DONOGHUEGeneral Manager, GAC Corporate Academy

With 9,000 employees in 300 worldwide offic-es, shipping and marine services company GAC needs to cost-effectively provide sustainable learning across national borders. While its GAC

Corporate Academy developed classes, it was challenged in how to select participants for training and how to provide learning support on a local level.

To solve this problem, the academy and General Manag-er Damien O’Donoghue developed a network of liaison offi-cers. To ensure these liaison officers had a similar ability and understanding of their role, the company developed an inter-active and experience-based training program from an existing eight-week e-learning course. Three such training courses were conducted in 2011, resulting in liaison officers who were better able to understand corporate learning, their role in the process and how to perform that role, as well as establishment of a global network to share best practices and support.

One of the training outcomes was an efficient learning fore-casting system, allowing the academy to prepare course loads and the required budget for the coming year, knowing where learning and development priorities lie and aligning courses with the strategic plan. Improved communication at local levels resulted in increased participation in academy courses and great-er appreciation for training opportunities, including lower drop-out rates among participants.

Global Learning — Division 2

Time differences between offices allow the Deltek learning team to devise learning products around the clock.

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Technology has been instrumental in Dan Pontefract’s journey as a learning professional. In fact, he was brought in by Canadian telecommu-nications company Telus Corp. in 2008 to make a splash — and he did, as the company experienced a shift from classroom-only learning to a combi-nation of formal, informal and social. No longer is learning viewed as a series of isolated events. Instead,

it is part of an integrated, collaborative process. To address business and learning challenges, it was imper-

ative that Telus innovate and rethink learning. The company developed a three-part learning and collaboration strategy.

The first part is focused on practices and what Telus refers to as “applying a comprehensive, proactive formula.” This entailed using business goals as the base to fuel a cultural change that would better enable effective learning.

The second part is centered on technologies and what Telus refers to as “pioneering Learning 2.0.” This meant widening learning’s scope within the organization beyond formal offerings to include informal and social learning. It also was deemed crucial to use technology that would allow employees across the organization to collaborate and partici-pate in online knowledge sharing.

The third is focused on processes and what Telus refers to as “re-engineering learning function operations.” The company created a new way of thinking about learning governance, outsourcing and measurement; streamlined vendors; and transformed vendors into partners aligned to its vision. A governance structure was established, as was a proprietary learning measurement system.

Some of the results reported include: higher employee engagement; increased learning effectiveness, efficiency and accountability; greater average return on learning; and great-er innovation.

GOLDDAN PONTEFRACTHead of Learning and Collaboration, Telus Corp.

Innovation — Division 1

BRONZETIMOTHY J. TOBINVice President, Global Learning and Leadership Development, Marriott International Inc.

Marriott International Inc. was often chal-lenged by its need to pull associates away from their jobs for instructor-led training or e-learning, so the company looked for a

solution that would minimize interruptions. Timothy J. Tobin, vice president, global learning

and leadership development, led the way to develop the Leadership Learning Guide — a development resource that maps formal and informal learning to Marriott’s core competencies, and touches about 26,000 property-based management associates.

Estimated cost savings are more than $6 million annually; there are more development opportunities than associates can use; and associates can custom-ize their development experiences based on current or future roles, locations and geography.

SILVERVIDULA BALGlobal Leadership Development Director, Mars Inc.

Amidst various business challenges, Vidula Bal, global leadership development director at Mars Inc., and her team were tasked with creating leadership development programs that would give the company a competitive advantage, build a solid talent pipeline and empower the company to face challenges head on.

To meet this need, Bal created a leadership develop-ment curriculum for Mars University in 2009, which will be fully implemented next year. When the curricu-lum was launched in 2011, more than 167,000 hours of leadership training were recorded. Mars continues to develop and use metrics, and collects feedback and data on an ongoing basis to ensure its efficacy.

Bal also develops customized learning offerings for the company, including Leadership@Mars — a three-part learning journey designed to help managers hone the skills they need at different levels of leadership. She also developed the Asia Leadership Forum — a custom-ized learning program created following a needs analysis for leaders in the Asian market.

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Strategy — Division 1

Defense Acquisition University’s (DAU) mission is to provide a global learning environment to support a mission-ready defense acquisition workforce that develops, delivers and sustains effective and afford-able war-fighting capabilities. As DAU’s acting president, James McMichael needed to guide the corpo-rate university as it overhauled its enterprise learning strategy.

This year, DAU redefined its enhanced enterprise learning strategy with a new learning technology roadmap. This laid out seven strategic drivers for learning transformation, each designed to streamline and improve the organization’s learning. The seven drivers were: learning infrastructure, virtual environ-ments, personalization, collaboration, mobile, media and innovative classroom and learning technolo-gies.Among the enterprise learning changes that took place under these strategic drivers, DAU upgraded its LMS to increase capacity, ease use and improve access; initiated efforts to provide more learning via virtual environments; promoted expanded collaboration in traditional and online learning experiences; and incorporated social media into daily learning activities.

As a result, DAU made its operation more integrated and cost efficient. Through its revamped learning framework, the university provided 11.2 million hours of formal and informal continuous learning as well as 6.8 million hours of training. It provided 636 mission assistance efforts, which totaled 624,000 hours, and graduated more than 200,000 students. It also reached its 160,000th Acquisition Community Connection (ACC) member. ACC is a tool to facilitate collaboration, sharing and knowl-edge transfer among learners across the organization.

GOLDJAMES MCMICHAELActing President, Defense Acquisition University

Health services firm Cigna needed to redesign its intranet site, which design didn’t fit with learning offer-ings aligned with business goals. Cigna needed a new site to not only foster communication among internal

business groups but to leverage social collaboration and networking.Under the guidance of its chief learning officer, Karen Kocher,

Cigna implemented a strategy to upgrade its intranet to Share-Point2010, taking advantage of the portal and Web 2.0 functional-ity to enhance the learning experience with informal learning. The site, Your Cigna Life (YCL), launched in January. YCL has had some 800,000 hits, and 1,000 profiles have been created, including blog posts viewed by all employees.

BRONZEKAREN KOCHERChief Learning Officer, Cigna

As the largest retail bank in the U.K., Lloyds Banking Group has faced its share of economic challenges. Not only is it undergoing the economic strain in Europe, but it recently brought on a new CEO and strategy, integrated with another bank and is under constant media pressure as part of a backdrop of economic instability.

Lloyds also has learning challenges, which, until a recent strat-egy shift, included clouded access, poor design, insufficient funding and a lack of commitment and enthusiasm for the function. That was until Simon Brown, the bank’s head of learning transformation, spearheaded an effort to deliver the strategy he designed — which transformed the function with a new operating model, technology,

organization design and process, and implemented new strategic learning partnerships to turn Lloyds’ learning around.

By making the business case and gaining commitment from leaders across the bank, Brown implemented his learn-ing framework to provide clear and simple access to learn-ing and a defined curriculum, improve alignment with the bank’s business goals, and offer a slimmed-down and more efficient learning model. Learning alignment to the busi-ness has improved by 7 percent and all of the bank’s 104,000 employees have learning coverage. Further, Lloyds’ learning has been mapped to more than 1,500 roles within the firm.

SILVERSIMON BROWNHead of Learning Transformation, Lloyds Banking Group

This year DAU provided 11.2 million hours of formal and informal learning; 6.8 million hours of training; graduated more than 200,000 students; and provided 636 million assistance efforts, totaling 624,000 hours.

47

Strategy — Division 2

Faced with increasing marketplace demands, wireless services firm BrightPoint North America L.P. sought to better optimize its human capital, enhancing employee development and talent manage-ment practices to help serve its clients and customers more effectively.

Josh White, vice president of talent management, took the reins of the initiative, which involved a near complete rebranding and marketing of the company’s internal learning, development and talent management services.

White implemented a plan to unify existing talent management programs in North America to support the new emphasis on development with a learning and development team of only two. To complicate matters, the company acquired a reverse logistics firm in 2010, doubling its North American workforce.

To tackle the enhanced focus on human capital development, White and his team developed the BrightPoint Performance Compass, a competency model to evaluate and assess talent and learning needs across the board. The purpose of the model was to capture and communicate the specific knowledge, skills, attitudes and outcomes that constitute a well-rounded performance within the company’s culture and business environment.

The Performance Compass aimed to define the characteristics of an ideal performer. White and his learning team spent four months reviewing academic literature and corporate examples on how to best design the model, which was integrated throughout all talent management and learning.

Since integration, BrightPoint said its managers and employees have increased their focus on professional development. The firm saw a year-over-year increase in its Walker Survey Employ-ee Commitment Index, a score that indicates employees’ level of engagement and satisfaction. Further, 54 percent of the company’s high-potential employees have been promoted within the last year. BrightPoint has lost less than 2 percent of its employees to other firms in the same timeframe.

GOLDJOSH WHITEVice President of Talent Management, BrightPoint North America L.P.

BRONZEDIANA HALFERAdministrator, Children’s Memorial Hospital

On June 9, Chicago’s Chil-dren’s Memorial Hospital moved 126 patients, 5,300 employees and equipment to

a new facility three miles away.As administrator of the hospital’s clini-

cal and organizational development, Diana Halfer was tasked with a large portion of planning for the one-day move under the hospital’s training and development strat-egy, the Moment One Readiness Orienta-tion, as well as the logistics around func-tionality in the new facility.

Planning took five years. Halfer led efforts to design and integrate a learning strategy for the move and the associated change. In the end, the move was nearly flawless, occurring over 14 hours without interruption.

SILVERJEFFREY DARNERDirector of Organization and Employee Development, Moen Inc.

Faucet manufacturer Moen Inc. sought to simplify its learning library to increase participation. Moen was using the entire Lominger library, which features 67 competencies, as its source for all employees to identify devel-opment areas. In May 2010, the company invested $25,000 in a Skillsoft e-learning portal, implemented as an open architecture with no prescribed learning paths for targeted employees. But portal usage was under 5 percent.

Enter Jeffrey Darner, Moen’s director of organization and employee devel-opment, who joined the firm in July 2010. Upon Darner’s arrival — and a rethink of the company’s learning strategy — the firm strengthened its desired leadership competencies by first shaving down the number of Lominger competencies, referred to as the “Lominger Big 8.” The Lominger model was already deeply embedded in the firm’s culture, so keeping the framework but simplifying it helped ease the transition. The Skillsoft e-learning portal was reorganized to align with the new development structure.

All 2012 employee individual development plans — including those for the executive team — are now identified in Moen’s performance management system with targeted competencies from the revised model. Also, the monthly average participation in the Skillsoft e-learning portal for the last year is now at 22 percent.

Since BrightPoint implemented the BrightPoint Performance Compass, 54 percent of its high-potential employees have been promoted within the last year.

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Technology — Division 1

Telkom Indonesia, the country’s largest tele-com company, needed to use advanced tech-nology to train its employees. It was a faster and more effective way to close competency gaps, and it would save the company a lot of money.

The company, under the direction of Tonda Priyanto, senior general manager of the learning center, uses digital learning, includ-ing e-learning, learning channels and mobile learning. The e-learning is multimedia-based and interactive. For instance, there’s an inter-active simulation available for field workers who install new equipment. The learning channel is a video learning content system, which can broadcast or be made available on-demand on the company intranet. Mobile learning is designed to work in tandem with the other forms of learning, but is mostly creat-ed to be consumed in bite-sized form — short and instant.

In terms of digital learning, to date there are more than 200

e-learning training modules and 1,000-plus learning videos on topics such as business, marketing, finance, human capital and tele-communication.

When using traditional forms of training such as classroom, there would be an aver-age cost of $102 per employee excluding the price for class infrastructure. For digital learn-ing that amount has been reduced to $5.80 per employee. Further, that cost is expected to drop even more as the number of users grows. Other benefits associated with digital learning

include reduced need for travel, a more efficient utilization of existing resources, saving time and the ability for individuals to access learning anytime, anywhere.

This move toward technology is a boon for the company, especially since in a 2011 annual survey employees expressed their interest in using new technologies such as mobile and video learning.

GOLDTONDA PRIYANTOSenior Manager of Telkom Learning Center, Telkom Indonesia

SILVERSUJAYA BANERJEEChief Learning Officer, Essar Group

As Essar Group expanded globally through mergers, ac-quisitions and partnerships, the company’s globally dis-persed workforce became increasingly diverse. Employ-ees needed a high-tech, high-touch employee experience where anytime, anywhere learning was readily available.

To this end, the organization overhauled its entire performance management system platform, making it more robust and transparent. The company chose SuccessFactors to manage performance and careers, enlist-ed Skillsoft to power its learning management system, and work was done to integrate Skillsoft with the e-Compass platform. This move would empower employees to pursue self-directed learning either at work or from home.

The integration, led by Chief Learning Officer Sujaya Banerjee, is said to be one of the first of its kind in Asia. Implementation resulted in a drop in training costs and has given employees access to course material they can review or replay anytime and anywhere.

BRONZE LAURIE ROSENBERGVice President, Integrated Processes and Technologies/Global Head, CTMS and Operations and Systems Adoption,Quintiles

The need to increase operational efficiency in clinical trial processes and drug development in the biopharmaceutical space is greater than ever. In 2008, clinical research company Quintiles created an initiative

to launch a clinical data tracking technology platform (CTMS). While the initial deployment of the CTMS was in 2010, by 2012 it has been deployed to more than 7,000 users globally. Laurie Rosenberg, vice president of integrated process and technologies, reports benefits during this time include improved quality and reduced time in data entry, tracking and enhanced analytics.

Using traditional forms of training such as classroom costs an average of $102 per employee at Telkom Indonesia; digital learning reduced that amount to $5.80 per employee.

49

Big Brothers Big Sisters has 360 agencies and hundreds of thousands of participating children, volunteer mentors, families and employees across the United States. According to Charles Pierson, president and CEO, one of the key ways to achieve the company’s business objective — to help the children identify their talent and turn it into a career — is to offer best-in-class training.

The company already had an internal legacy learning management system and a few other learning assets, but it needed an enhanced platform with greater functionality and reach.

To achieve this, Big Brothers Big Sisters selected the Exper-tusONE platform — rebranded internally as Impact U — to provide a learning environment where formal, informal and social learning would be integrated. Previous training chal-lenges addressed include enhanced usability, social learning and collaboration tools, advanced analytics and reporting, and flexible user interface design. Through the cloud-based design, learners were able to access more than 300 online courses, webinars, in-person training materials and other documents regardless of their location in the world.

The ExpertusONE platform went live in March. It is esti-mated that more than 7,000 volunteers and employees from 90 agencies will use Impact U training by the end of the year. Further, the system allows learners to save time and resourc-es, to easily track and measure learning progress and certifi-cations and to have a vast array of training courses, webinars

and documents at hand. “Together with staff support, Impact U enables Big

Brothers Big Sisters mentors to strengthen their relationships with their mentees and increase the impact that leads to the mentees’ future achievement,” said John Kulikowski, Big Brothers Big Sisters’ director of learning and development.

GOLDJOHN KULIKOWSKIDirector of Learning and Development, Big Brothers Big Sisters

SILVERLUCAS VITALEHead of Global Organizational Development, Talent Management and Learning and Development, Life Technologies

This year, Life Technologies needed to offer development opportunities to a diverse, globally dispersed employee population. One of the challenges for Lucas Vitale, head of learning and development, was that e-learning had come to be viewed as stale and unpredictable. Further, employees experienced difficulty accessing courses, and the learning management system did not support mobile devices.

To offer instant access to online modules, the company built a new learning platform — MoDu, or Mobile Digital University, an online and mobile platform with custom learning. The e-learning modules were created to enable just-in-time learning. The content is hosted on the cloud, and employees can access it via the intranet or through the app. The modules have a global reach — covering the APJ region, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Greater China and the Americas. The modules are also available in a variety of languages including English, Chinese, Japanese, Dutch and German.

While the soft launch was in early May, before the month ended 25 percent of the company accessed 11,000 modules. The platform was formally launched May 30.

Technology — Division 2

Big Brothers Big Sisters predicts that its Impact U will touch more than 250,000 affiliates this year.

50

The Asia-Pacific region of the Estée Lauder Cos. has shown tremendous growth in the last few years. Sales increased 21 percent in just the last year. Still, the region lacked strong talent who could take over senior leadership positions inside and outside the region. Before Figin Seng, the regional director of learning and talent development in the Asia-Pacific region, came to Estée Lauder in 2008, the company had no focus on learning and talent develop-ment for the region. This meant existing leaders often had little leadership experi-ence and training, which led to ineffec-tive and inefficient business practices.

With support from Estée Lauder’s regional president and regional head of HR, Seng developed a new learning and training model using a future-back approach. She looked at where the organization wants to be in 2015 and 2020 and devel-oped both short- and long-term talent strategy. The final solu-tion: the Asia Pacific Leadership Institute, a learning module that

combined in-person and mobile oppor-tunities.

The leadership institute focuses on talent management, leadership devel-opment and learning with an emphasis on high-touch practices and includes a nine-month leadership development program, coaching framework and a series on innovation, creativity and digital acceleration. Estée Lauder part-nered with Korn/Ferry International, an executive recruiting and search firm, to development the nine-month leadership program. The learning modules offer customization, executive education, strategy development, senior manage-ment mentorships, and coaching.

In the 18 months since the leader-ship institute opened, more than 2,300

staff members in the Asia-Pacific region have gone through vari-ous programs. Further, the learning and talent development department has created 750 individual talent development plans for managers and employees.

GOLD: FIGIN SENG Global Learning and Talent Development Director, Estée Lauder Cos.

Before Hilton Hotels was acquired and renamed by the Blackstone Group in 2007 as Hilton Worldwide, the global hotel chain’s learning and development team acted as an order taker. It delivered ad hoc training with-out thought as to how the learning impacted business strategy. This model proved costly, time consuming and ineffective. Further,

the learning and development team had no solid budget data, measurement strategy and lacked a global course and training catalog.

Kimo Kippen, chief learning officer and vice president of learning, joined Hilton in 2010 and helped launch Hilton World-

wide University (HWU), the hotel chain’s first company-wide corporate university. At HWU, senior directors act as deans who manage colleges and report progress to the CLO. This organized process centralized oversight and standardized learning curricu-lums. HWU also has a team member focused on administration and finance and another who leads communication, marketing and curriculum design to prevent new programs from reverting back to the issues that plagued the learning team in the past.

Employees have embraced the new curriculum. In the first six months of 2012, employees completed 48 percent more training models than in the same period last year. Hilton plans to launch a new learning management system and a social learning strategy by the end of the year.

SILVER: KIMO KIPPEN CLO and Vice President of Learning, Hilton Worldwide

After multiple acquisitions, PNC Financial Services had no centralized, enterprise-wide talent develop-ment architecture or leadership development program. Performance management approaches also were incon-sistent throughout the company. Kathleen Prime,

senior vice president and director of talent, organized a small team to create company-wide leadership competencies and assessments

as well as a comprehensive development and succession planning process. The corporation added new leadership programs including Women’s Executive Development, Dynamic Leadership, Standard-ized Team Effectiveness and Mentoring for Leadership. In 2011, the first year of full implementation, more than 10 percent of employees participated in leadership development programs, and the number of individuals identified in succession planning increased 52 percent.

BRONZE: KATHLEEN PRIME Senior Vice President, Director of Talent Development, PNC Financial Services

Trailblazer — Division 1

10 percent of individuals who have participated in Estée Lauder’s leadership institute now have greater roles in the company.

51

Prior to late 2010, software company Syncsort Inc. had no formal training department. In an effort to scale up the business, Syncsort switched to a partner-ing business model, which required addi-tional training and development for all employees. Therefore, executives invested in a global education services depart-ment, led by Patty Crowell, director of global education services.

Crowell and her team began with a comprehensive assessment of learning and development business needs and identified six key areas of focus: train-ing content for different levels, roles and stages of development; infrastructure for delivery, registration and content manage-ment; performance measures to track who is trained, results, gaps and targets; collaboration on training; certification and accredita-tion for scaling programs; and training resources. In the last year, the global education services department launched an online commu-nity, a learning management system and an accreditation and certi-fication program.

When Crowell joined Syncsort, she aimed to link formal training to the company’s business strategy and bottom line. The new global education services department saved the company $90,000 in its first year by central-izing the training function, replacing the learning management system and adding remote lab capabilities.

The department hired three key training staff members to develop new programs and courses and developed a learning advisory board to foster training collaboration. In the last year, more than 1,300 employees, partners and customers were trained on new programs, and 21 instructors complet-

ed the train the trainer program. This program helps to ensure a consistent training approach with measurable results through-out the company. With the help of these trainers, 274 employees were accredited in programs geared toward sales professionals, technical sales professions and a separate certification program for engineers.

GOLD: PATTY CROWELL Director of Global Education Services, Syncsort Inc.

With unprecedented storms across the country, Hanover Insurance Group’s property adjusting teams saw record claims last year. With a continued increase in property claims, Nancy Polsky, director of claims learning and development at Hanover Insurance, determined

it was necessary to strategically improve operations. The learning team developed a learning structure and strat-

egy to support dynamic and accelerated learning programs that were engaging and cost effective. Further, the team wanted a new learning model that could be customized by geographic

location, skill level, experience, hiring date and point in career.To fully understand claim adjusters’ jobs, Polsky and the

other learning team members worked as part of the property adjusting team to help with the 11,000 additional claims filed last year. This allowed the team to see things from the inside and prevented a drop in customer satisfaction as the team processed the additional claims.

With this knowledge, the learning team created customiz-able learning modules for just-in-time learning, allowing begin-ner adjusters to be fully productive claim adjusters a month earlier than under the previous training model. That additional month of productivity means claim adjusters can serve 80 addi-tional customers in their first year.

SILVER: NANCY POLSKY Director of Claims Learning and Development, Hanover Insurance Group

In February 2010, the Centers for Disease Control and Preven-tion’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention institutionalized workforce development and capability as one of six goals in its five-year strategic plan. Deputy Director Hazel Dean developed the plan in reaction to the growing number of public health professionals not able to

meet coverage demands. The workforce development program focuses on recruitment and retention, learning opportuni-ties and a healthy work-life balance. Initiatives include novel communication platforms on workforce issues such as an email box, blog and development, a Learn@Lunch career develop-ment series and a new employee ambassador program.

BRONZE: HAZEL DEAN Deputy Director of the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Trailblazer — Division 2

The new global education services department saved the company $90,000 in its first year by centralizing the training function.

52

Excellence in Academic Partnerships

In the past, training for retail and commercial banking, and private wealth and mortgage management at SunTrust Bank were handled separately. As a result, a client might experience a certain style, meth-odology or approach in one line of business but feel something entirely different in another. Talent pools were also in career silos. SunTrust University saw the potential to create a more adaptable talent pool where teammates could move across lines of business.

Collaborating with Bellevue University to build a business case for increased investment in tuition assistance led SunTrust to create PATHways — Professional Advancement Through Higher Educa-tion — an education investment partnership focused on building a learning culture and making decisions.

SunTrust increased its tuition assistance limit from $1,500 to the maximum pre-tax limit of $5,250 for all employees — full-time, part-time and peak time. The Professional Banking Opera-tions and Leadership (PBOL) degree program is the cornerstone of PATHways. Its 12 courses — representative of a junior/senior year for a bachelor’s degree — are online, providing a learning platform that transcends geography for 29,000 employees and cultivates a learning culture across regions.

All employees can enroll in PBOL courses regardless of how much previous college credit they have. The case studies, assign-ments, reports and other content in PBOL all relate directly to the SunTrust business. Because of this, and through the design of the assignments, employees can immediately apply what they learn to boost performance and grow their careers.

Students enter the program in groups of 15 to 25 and go through together, class by class. Their opting in helps SunTrust business leaders recognize people who have career aspirations, as participants are highly engaged and invest personal time in the program and finance the remaining tuition after the tuition assis-tance. Without the opt-in program, these employees might not be identified for career advancement opportunities.

GOLD: BELLEVUE UNIVERSITYSILVER: SMU COX SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

Hispanics are the largest minor-ity group in America. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 15 percent of the U.S. population is Hispanic, and that will grow to 30 percent by 2050. But although Hispanics will account for almost 70 percent of workforce growth this

decade, they make up only 3 to 4 percent of executives in Fortune 500 and public companies. This gap between Hispanic repre-sentation and development presented a challenge and opportu-nity to the National Hispanic Corporate Council and Southern Methodist University (SMU) Cox School of Business.

The two organizations created an executive development experience for high-potential, mid-level Hispanic managers in Fortune 1000 companies to prepare them for success at high levels. Delivered in three phases over nine months at the SMU Cox campus, the program includes classroom instruction, work-place application and community engagement, provides partici-pants with knowledge, skills and tools to accelerate their progress and equips them to lead in achieving superior business results.

By giving participants tools to address leadership development without losing cultural authenticity, the program expands the number of talented Hispanic managers in the executive develop-ment pipeline. More than half of the participants in the first two program offerings have had the opportunity to be considered and selected for positions of higher responsibility and lateral moves.

BRONZE: UNC EXECUTIVE DEVELOPMENT

In 2011, Lowe’s found itself at a crossroads. Senior leaders who had been called upon to sustain the company’s growth were now chal-lenged to lead in different ways as Lowe’s transitioned from a store-centric home improvement retailer

to a total home improvement company. An enterprise-wide leadership initiative was established

with UNC Executive Development to set new expecta-tions and define how leaders wanted employees to think, act and lead. Multiple business strategies were identified and scheduled for staged releases during the next few years that will impact how Lowe’s recognizes, measures and rewards those behaviors, and how employees interact with and meet customers’ needs.

Since Bellevue University funds development, marketing, deployment and impact research for its customized program with SunTrust Bank, the collaboration has helped it develop a learning infrastructure in tight economic times.

SunTrust CLO Mary Slaughter (second from right) with Bellevue’s Bob Kelner, Emily Crawford and Mike Echols.

UNC’s David Leonard.

Associate Dean Frank Lloyd.

53

Excellence in Blended Technology

ConnectSolutions, a provider of unified communications as a service, is accustomed to coming up with learning services for large enterprise and government organizations. But the compa-ny had to exercise significant outside-the-box thinking and a blended technology approach to provide new learning instruc-tion for the Veterans Affairs (VA) Acquisition Academy.

In the last year, the Office of Management and Budget outlined new training requirements for contracting offi-cer representatives who help with federal acquisitions and contracts. The VA employs more than 10,000 of these repre-sentatives at any time. Further, ConnectSolutions had to be mindful of budget cuts for travel-related spending at the VA.

ConnectSolutions developed an integrated learning module centered on an instructor-led virtual course. The virtual nature of the training significantly reduced travel expenses. Connect-Solutions used Adobe Connect software to develop the course. Adobe Connect allowed ConnectSolutions to develop a Flash-based training module without requiring the potentially prob-lematic task of downloading software to participants’ desktops.

The four-hour course takes place over eight days. The instruction incorporates multiple modes of learning, including lecture, game, individual and team projects, and a threaded case

study. ConnectSolutions worked to make this virtual course as interactive as possible by including discussions, group rooms, polls and games. Most importantly, trainees use a contracting officer representative toolkit, which they can access while in the field to remind them of new processes and procedures.

All of the training modules needed to meet stringent secu-rity mandates from the federal government. ConnectSolutions focused on meeting these mandates so the VA Acquisition Academy could focus on creating new content. In the first year, employee confidence in performing contract officer representa-tive tasks increased 20 percent. In the same time period, repre-sentatives’ self-evaluation of their ability to perform 20 critical competencies increased 40 percent.

GOLD: CONNECTSOLUTIONS

BRONZE: HOMELAND SECURITY SOLUTIONS INC.

Homeland Security Solutions has provided civil law enforcement training for the U.S. Marine Corps for the past decade. In recent years, however, the Marine Corps has struggled to keep instructional content fresh, updated and read-ily accessible to face changing threats. Homeland Security Solu-tions approached this challenge with blended technology, combin-ing e-learning, Web-based training and distance learning. The blended

learning modules incorporate platforms such as Micro-soft Office as well as more innovative tools such as Skype, Go2Meeting and SharePoint. The Web-based training alone will reach 300,000 employees annually and save the Marine Corps more than $700,000 each year.

SILVER: LIVEOPS INC. LiveOps Inc. provides on-demand contact center servic-es. Some of its 20,000 employees field calls for Transam-erica, an insurance, investment and retirement company. LiveOps realized, however, that its independent agents frequently did not follow compliance guidelines for new insurance customers. If these guidelines are not followed, sales are canceled, and customers do not receive the product they expect. The agents already have been paid commissions, but Transamerica and LiveOps do not receive funds if the sale is canceled.

LiveOps’ learning team identified a method to ensure all of its employees met the insurance company’s guide-lines. With a geographically dispersed employee base and no financially viable way for employees to get certified on Transamerica guidelines and policies, LiveOps decided to take a blended technology approach. The new learning program blends a variety of learning modules, such as e-learning hosted via LiveOps University, which includes situational course design and virtual classroom settings, and has a mobile library, just-in-time content and an online community site for gamification features.

Since the new learning program was implemented, 95 percent of independent agents have completed it, and there was nearly a 78 percent reduction in the number of canceled sales due to compliance issues.

Charles Walsh of ConnectSolutions and the VA’s Richard Garrison.

Alan Malinchak of Homeland Security Solutions Inc.

54

Excellence in Community Service

SMART Technologies Inc. has been a provider of products that enhance learning and collaboration since it pioneered the use of interactive white boards more than two decades ago. Today, more than 2 million SMART interactive white boards are used by more than 40 million people in classrooms and offic-es throughout the world. With such a large number of users, SMART has worked to develop learning and training programs that specifically utilize its interactive technology.

SMART now offers SMART Exchange, an online library of more than 60,000 classroom-ready resources for teach-ers, including a free anti-cyber bullying class. The program is intended for teachers, students, school administrators and parents. The 30-minute course defines and helps individuals to recognize cyber bullying. It provides users with more informa-tion on common social platforms used in cyber bullying, how these social platforms can be abused and how individuals can use technology to document and protect against abuse.

SMART Exchange now includes more than 1.2 million members. The online community allows educators quick access to subject-specific, standards-correlated content that can be modified to suit the needs of any classroom. Further, teach-ers can connect with colleagues around the world to exchange ideas, insights and classroom success stories.

With more than 20 years in the learning industry, SMART leaders understand that teachers may be hesitant to embrace new technology, no matter what potential educational oppor-tunities are available in a program like SMART Exchange. Therefore, SMART works to make the interfaces user friendly. The company also provides a set of learning and development programs to help get instructors acclimated to the interactive white boards.

GOLD: SMART TECHNOLOGIES

SMART Exchange, an online library of classroom-ready resources from SMART Technologies, is now used by more than 1.2 million educators.

BRONZE: GP STRATEGIES

GP Strategies, a global work-force training and development company, works to make the holiday season a little brighter for those in need. The company partners with local organizations, such as the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, to identify needy fami-

lies. Once a list of families has been compiled, executives work with parents to identify presents their children want. Then, employees volunteer to purchase the gifts. Employees deliver the presents to each family, and provide gift certifi-cates to local grocery stores so the family can enjoy a holiday feast. Last year, GP strategies was able to help nine single mothers and 23 children.

SILVER: UNIVERSITY OF PHOENIXOnline educator University of Phoe-nix has a simple mission: increase access to education to provide a pathway for economic advance-ment. That path is completely blocked off to the one out of every four high school students who fails to graduate. The statistics are worse

for minorities — one-third of African-American and Hispanic students do not complete high school.

To address this problem, the University of Phoenix part-nered with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Through the University of Phoenix Foundation, the university donated $2.3 million to BE GREAT: Graduate, a program at clubs throughout the country that targets young people most vulnerable to dropping out of school. In addition to monetary assistance, the University of Phoenix provides volunteers to mentor and educate these at-risk youth.

The university also has offered at least 25 college scholar-ships annually to Boys & Girls Club members since 2007 and worked with the club on a literacy program in 20 cities. This year, 200 children were selected as part of the BE GREAT: Graduate program for after-school, high-impact mentoring. The university also has awarded 200 college scholarships in the last five years. So far, 30 students have graduated from college.

Wayne Williams of SMART Technologies Inc.

Tammy Fernandez of University of Phoenix.

Douglas Sharp of GP Strategies.

55

Cisco Systems Inc. needed to eliminate the “diving catch” approach to its learning. Employ-ees at the technology company often found themselves reacting to problems without using institutional knowledge. Instead, the compa-ny wanted to create a learning offering that would alert users to the diving catch issue and lead employees to build captured, shared and stored knowledge. It

also wanted to endorse its “Learn, Improve, Share” model.

Cisco partnered with Enspire Learning to develop an e-learning course, “Introduction to Cisco Organizational Learning: The Light-Sabre 1550 Crashes.”

The goal was for learners to be able to define the concept of Cisco Organizational Learning (COL), repeat the frame-work of Learn, Improve, Share, and to list potential actions to promote the initiative.

The course took on an interactive graphic novel style, pushing users to follow a narrative as they investigated the causes of outages for a fictional piece of equipment while managing a client’s frustrations. The course gave learners the experience of resolving the situation in two modes.

First, users explored a resolution through the diving catch approach. While the problem is fixed in this situa-tion and the customer’s service is restored, users eventually learn that when the client upgrades to the newest version of the equipment, it crashes due to poor testing and train-ing, and the client moves its business elsewhere. This situ-ation allows the user to consider the consequences of the diving catch approach.

The second approach had users go through the COL model, stressing the importance of using knowledge gained. After users apply this model, they uncover causes for the crash and share them with others. This not only fixes the problem, it results in a new version of the equip-ment not crashing.

GOLD: ENSPIRE LEARNING SILVER: FUTURETHINK

Multinational pharmaceutical provider Novartis Oncol-ogy wanted to push development for its North Ameri-can leaders with greater problem-solving and innova-tion-building capabilities. The company also sought to jump-start the task in one day at its March global align-ment meeting for leaders in Washington, D.C. Novartis partnered with innovation capability firm FutureThink to establish the one-day curriculum of learning events that would support the firm’s goals for growth and change with practical tools and techniques that leaders could use daily.

FutureThink designed a variety of courses for attend-ees. Event content featured a keynote featuring Future-Think’s CEO and founder, Lisa Bodell, as well as smaller classroom workshops. The smaller workshops aimed to amplify successful application of the concepts discussed in the keynote. Session content was interactive, and all courses included a learning framework, case studies and innovation resources and tools for future reference.

Of the three workshops from the session, Futur-eThink’s workshop scored an average of 90 percent approval based on a post-event survey.

BRONZE: EBSCO PUBLISHING

Telus Corp., a Canadian tele-communications firm, sought to augment its organizational model of interconnectivity and unity. Led by Dan Ponte-fract, its senior director and head of learning and collabo-ration, the company already had an abundant amount of formal learning opportunities

for its team members. But Pontefract wanted to further develop Telus’ informal and social learning strategies.

Telus tapped EBSCO Publishing, which serves the library industry with business content. Business Source Corporate, EBSCO’s learning content hub for Telus, now helps the company’s team members quickly find searchable knowledge from sources typically not found on the Internet. It also has reduced the amount of time employees spend searching for information.

Customer satisfaction for the e-learning course “Introduction to Cisco Organizational Learning: The LightSabre 1550 Crashes” was rated 4.39 out of 5.

Excellence in Content

EBSCO’s Tom Paolucci.

Enspire’s Pam Kelly.

a proud winner of Chief Learning Officer Magazine

2012 Learning in Practice AwardEBSCO Publishing serves the organizational learning needs of more than 100,000 corporations and institutions around the globe with a turnkey learning portal and best-in-class content from industry thought leaders. Our learning solutions include:

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To improve their speaking skills, many international students use products from Kaplan Inc., an English language instruction provider. However, the intense requirements to learn such a skill renders classroom instruction alone somewhat ineffective. The compa-ny needed an automated tool to provide students

with immediate feedback. The company also needed to offer a consistent level of instruction

to train teachers globally on how to teach various verbal skills. Kaplan used Carnegie Speech’s NativeAccent software, which is designed to assess and train English learners’ speaking skills. The software listens to a person’s speech and identifies his or her native language, skills and learning pace, and then personalizes a curriculum for that individual.

The feedback is immediate, and according to some global stud-

ies the software has improved some individuals’ speaking skills 100 percent or more with 20 hours of training. Not only does this result in decreased training time, it reduces the cost by up to 50 percent. Another advantage is the anytime, anywhere nature of the training, which is accessible via the Internet.

Carnegie Speech offered sessions to train Kaplan’s teachers and administrators on the software; it also made a website available with information on the pilot, implementation and support resources. After training, Kaplan and Carnegie Speech conducted various assessments to gauge software effectiveness. It found the pilot to be successful and determined the software could provide Kaplan with consistent training quality, with a tool that could be accessed outside of training centers, and generate greater satisfaction and referral rates among students.

GOLD: CARNEGIE SPEECH

It was unfeasible for globally dispersed sales managers at Cater-pillar dealerships to take large periods of time to attend class-room-based training programs. They needed classroom time as well as a focus on in-the-field skills application.

BRONZE: RUTGERS UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF BUSINESS — CAMDEN EXECUTIVE EDUCATION

Excellence in E-Learning

Associate DeanRay Compari.

CEO Paul Musselman.

To train its global network of agencies on products, offer-ings and sales best practices, global insurance, annuities and employee benefit programs provider MetLife launched online Distribution Centers of Excellence (DCE).

DCE Online has been implemented in Central and East-ern Europe, parts of the Middle East and Latin America, and e-learning had been implemented in Russia, the U.A.E., Chile, Romania and more nations, with plans to expand further.

Core to the DCE was an online induction program target-ing new hires. MetLife partnered with NIIT to create a virtual induction program for DCE Online, which would make all the products, offerings and sales best practices available to new sales agents in an interactive, virtual environment.

The virtual induction pro- gram, which is hosted on DCE Online, is live in various parts of the world, including Russia, the U.A.E., Colombia and Mexico.

According to MetLife’s track-ing, the new on-boarding proce-dure has led to greater productiv-ity and increased performance.

Looking ahead, the company plans to extend the induction program as part of Distribution Centers of Excellence’s online curriculum to more countries, including Poland, Egypt and Turkey.

SILVER: NIIT USA INC.

A blended learning method was born using self-paced e-learning coursework, webinars and in-the-field skill practice assignments.

The Sales Management Certificate Program also was created to develop key competencies in sales managers, such as coaching,

leadership, forecasting, metrics and performance management.Program graduates were asked to complete formal evaluations

and assessments, and nearly all said the program was relevant to their jobs and that they applied new skills as a result.

Excellence in E-Learning

NIIT’s Vinit Thakkar.

Excellence in Gaming and Simulations

EXECUTIVE EDUCATION

High-Impact, High-ReturnLearning for Your Organiza on

In-demandProgram Areas

Cer catePrograms in

Until recently, distance learning for officers taking part in education in the U.S. Air Force’s Air Command and Staff College (ACSC) consisted of reading a box of books followed by a multiple choice exam. The ACSC contracted with The Regis Co. to develop a more engaging, effective and scalable online approach.

Working with the Air Force, Regis first developed the national security and decision making simulation and followed that successful pilot by converting all three courses in the joint curric-ulum — joint forces, joint planning and joint air and space operations to a simulated format.

These 30- to 60-minute activities engage higher-order thinking skills by placing students in real-life mission scenarios that require them to actively apply joint operations principles. In one of the 17 online simulation courses, for example, students were required to become familiar with the range of nonmilitary agencies and actors that are part of joint operations and coordinate military and civilian efforts in an attempt to achieve U.S. strategic interests. The self-paced online simulation requires learners to overcome challenges in planning and conducting joint operations in a multinational environment.

The simulation includes a dynamic content engine designed to create complexity and mini-mizes the possibility of learners sharing answers via randomization. It also provides feedback to learners if they allocate resources in a way that is inconsistent with the mission’s objectives.

Rather than the traditional e-learning approach that has students click through lessons followed by an assessment, the online simulations actively engage learners in higher-order thinking and prepare them to be better critical and strategic thinkers.

GOLD: THE REGIS CO.

The U.S. Air Force turned to The Regis Co. to develop an online simulation to help officers plan, execute and train for complex joint multinational operations.

Kathy Larson and Michael Kester of The Regis Co.

Excellence in Gaming and Simulations

There is no time on the battlefield to look up steps and procedures. Soldiers must be able to perform quickly and efficiently without hesitation.

With this goal in mind, the U.S. Army Capa-bilities Integration Center wanted to evaluate the use of smartphones as a training tool and contracted C² Technologies to create a series of Patriot missile crew drill applications for deliv-

ery on mobile devices.C² Technologies created a series of stand-alone iPhone apps

that deployed a realistic 3-D environment for crew drills. The Radar Set app used an immersive, first-person point of view

and puts the user alongside three other crew members who appear as avatars carrying out their duties as part of the drill in time with the learner.

Designed to augment in-person training, the app allows soldiers to practice anytime and anywhere. In addition, it includes a free roam capability that allows learners to isolate and practice particular steps, all while gathering metrics to be passed back to the instructor that help to spot trends and diag-nose skill gaps.

According to instructors, students who master the app are quicker to master hands-on training and spend more free time on self-driven training exercises.

GE Aviation, a manufacturer of jet engines for commercial and military aircraft, worked with Enspire Learning to develop Business Challenge, a two-day business acumen simulation program aimed at helping new hires and employees brought in through mergers and acquisitions to

better understand the organization’s business strategy and goals.

Participants in the competitive multiplayer simulation run the operations of a virtual company over a series of 12 simu-lated business quarters, followed by presentations to a virtual board of directors composed of GE executives. Since its initial rollout in May, approximately 240 people have participated in the simulation, and it is scheduled to run 12 more times in 2013.

SILVER: C² TECHNOLOGIES

BRONZE: ENSPIRE LEARNING

Effective training can take you anywhereFind out how SMART solutions help you deliver better training more efficiently – even if trainees are miles away. Visit smarttech.com.

C2 Technologies Cody Caddell.

Enspire’s David Taylor.

60

Excellence in Social Learning

Since 2009, Canadian telecom firm Telus has gradually shift-ed from a learning model heavily dependent on formal class-room training to what company leaders call “Learning 2.0,” which incorporates social learning with both formal and infor-mal learning approaches. But the company’s geographically dispersed population of more than 35,000 global employees represented a significant barrier to creating a successful social learning platform that cultivated culture and collaboration and provided a venue to share and transfer knowledge.

Telus turned to Skillsoft’s inGenius social learning platform to forge connections among that global workforce. The plat-form allows employees to create and manage their own indi-vidual profiles, identify areas of interest and expertise, follow others’ activity through a newsfeed, make notes and recom-mend learning assets to others, search for company experts and create learning networks within the company.

Used enterprise-wide, inGenius provides a framework to connect Telus team members with similar learning interests and help learners “qualify” learning by seeing what others think. The platform also gives users access to an online book club community tied directly to books and resources made available through the platform.

In keeping with its blended approach to learning, Telus uses inGenius to support its range of formal and informal learn-ing activities. For example, users can strike up a dialogue with colleagues and instructors before an online training session, keep the discussion going during the training and continue it long after the session is complete, thereby expanding the traditional class-room and making it more social.

Using inGenius, Telus tied its variety of formal and informal learning tools and approaches together with a social platform that supports the company’s leadership philosophy and learning 2.0 platform, shifting it from a training-as-mandatory culture to one where continuous and collaborative learning is baked into the way the organization operates.

GOLD: SKILLSOFT CORP. SILVER: SUCCESSFACTORSUntil recently, the average learning program at 4th Gener-ation Systems, a sales and management consultancy, was typically led by an instructor either in person or via the Web and could often run over a period of months.

Spurred by the need for speed and the difficulty in coor-dinating schedules, the company went looking for a social learning platform that would do several things: drive faster time to performance, capitalize on the pull of Internet-enabled learning, engage multiple generations and build a community of learners. It found SuccessFactors’ Jam.

Using Jam, 4th Generation was able to create shared communities of practice populated with topic-specific content that included related articles and blogs along with sample sales presentations. Jam also allowed sales leaders and experts to create, capture and upload video presenta-tions.

The program also let 4th Generation users create and participate in discussion forums, discover people within their network and crowd source questions. Using this user-generated content, sales leaders were able to clarify issues facing employees and customers and share ideas to address those challenges.

The company was able to roll out the new platform in less than three weeks and quickly saw faster response to questions from the field as well as deeper discussions and completion of key objectives.

BRONZE: APTARA

At any given time seven days a week, 24 hours a day, an employ-ee at a Hilton hotel is trouble-shooting a customer problem and helping a guest enjoy a better stay at one of the compa-ny’s more than 4,000 hotels in 18 countries. When the business

is 24/7, learning should be too, and Hilton Worldwide’s learning and development department set out to create a social learning platform to make it so.

Hilton partnered with Aptara to launch a Web-based learning portal called the President’s Portal that connects hotel general managers across the globe and allows them to share practices in real time at the pace of business. Since its launch in 2011, more than 450 managers have created and updated personal profiles, accessed blogs from senior leaders and participated in discussion forums.

Aptara’s Mike Stacy and Daren Harber.

Skillsoft’s Patricia St. Pierre, John Ambrose and Melynda Hilliard (left to right).

61

Excellence in Vendor Partnerships

Health insurance firm Humana needed to develop leaders who could create business

impact for customers and stakeholders. The company sought to develop high-potential leaders who would be

agile, customer-focused, networked, cross-functional and innova-tive, all while maintaining a constant standard of performance.

Humana’s main leadership development challenge came in two fronts. First, while many of its new hires came from outside the industry, with a value placed on their non-industry perspective, the company wanted to provide these hires with a foundational under-standing of health insurance. Second, as Humana employees in different business functions such as sales and underwriting had a core functional understanding of the industry, Humana wanted to provide them with greater knowledge of the broader business.

By partnering with Harvard Business Publishing, Humana was able to cultivate these learning needs. After conducting a needs assessment, Harvard Business Publishing helped Humana create the

Health Care Leaders 2020 (HCL 2020) program. Its design address-es learning needs in three categories — external, Humana-focused and customer focused. HCL 2020 is a cohort-based program with in-person learning events working in tandem with virtual events.

HCL 2020 resulted in a 16-month program, including a launch event, five modules, individual assignments, team projects, in-person sessions and webinars. Each module was customized for Humana, and each speaker, article and other content was matched to the firm’s business objectives.

Initial results from HCL 2020 indicate: nearly 50 percent of participants have been promoted; more than 90 percent of partici-pants reported being satisfied with the program; and more than 86 percent reported the learning experience from the program helped them become a transformative leader. HCL 2020 graduates also noted an increase in sharing and teaching the program’s lessons for individual teams and changing mindsets and thinking about leader-ship measurement.

GOLD: HARVARD BUSINESS PUBLISHING

Aerospace manufacturer Boeing Co.’s NW Manufacturing and Quality arm wanted to clean up its training delivery process to limit costs and promote consistency. To do so, Boeing’s learning function shifted its learning strategy to a structured business focus and resource management at the macro level.

After partnering with Intrepid Learning Solutions, Boeing designed and established a governance model and service-level agreement to strengthen learning impact. The governance team created a process to complete work package analysis, do baseline forecasts and identify resource gaps, which resulted in a 20 percent increase in capacity and capability across technical skill sets within a year.

The acquisition function within the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) knew the capability and capacity of its workforce had not kept pace with an increase in spending, the number of procurement actions or the complexity of federal purchases. To tackle these issues, the VA hired professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP to

provide program management, instructional design and delivery services for a new Acquisition Intern Program. The partnership produced a curriculum that combined technical training with business and leadership

acumen, among other improvements. The Acquisition Intern Program has since received praise from VA leader-ship, the interns and the broader acquisition community and has received an overall effectiveness score of 4.6 out of 5, according to internal metrics.

Amid a departmental transformation focused on shifting from a transactional training approach to a holistic strategy, hardware retailer Lowe’s Cos. Inc. sought a partner to deliver Learning@Lowe’s, its performance-based learning function.

In 2010, the company picked Innovative Learning Group (ILG) for the effort, and during the last two years they have worked together to help Lowe’s facilitate its learning transformation in key areas. For instance, they’ve developed a learning strategy that guides creation of performance-based learning; conducted a cause analysis to determine gaps in individual performance; co-created a learning architecture for the firm; built a just-in-time learning system during the development

phase; piloted the program; and measured its performance with formal and informal assessments.ILG and Lowe’s formed four teams for program implementation — one for strategy, management, development and communications.

A pilot program for Learning@Lowe’s launched in January. While the sample size is still too small to test the program’s early results, early indications show that store associates are pleased with the new learning experience and content and feel positive about their ability to apply new knowledge and skills.

BRONZE (TIE): PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPERS LLP

BRONZE (TIE): INTREPID LEARNING SOLUTIONS

SILVER: INNOVATIVE LEARNING GROUP

HBP’s Sean Kennedy.

ILG CEO Lisa Toenniges.

Intrepid’s Tracy Aiken.

VA’s Richard Garrison (left) along with PwC’s Kristin Parker and Michael Flentje.