2015 Best Practice and Outstanding Training Initiative Award Winners

BEST PRACTICES
GENENTECH, INC.: CAREERLAB
Genentech, Inc.’s CareerLab was launched as a resource to support the career aspirations of all employees. The business projected an initial flat growth in promotional opportunities and suggested an opportunity to focus on “mastery in role,” job enrichment opportunities, and lateral moves as opposed to promotions as the only career opportunity.

CareerLab’s mission is “to focus on internal positive development with empowering employees to own their career with management guidance.” CareerLab is built upon a framework that balances individual and organizational needs, instills a sense of ownership, and provides supporting tools and resources. The core services designed around this framework include:

• 1:1 Career Consultation: Career consultants provide up to five annual 45-minute, confidential career consultations (in-person, via phone, or on Skype).
• LearningLabs: Two-hour Webinar and in-classroom sessions cover an array of topics that are accessible to all employees.
• Mentoring Services: CareerLab offers a formal Mentoring Program and Mentoring Tool Kit for individuals to form their own mentoring partnership.
• Career Assessments: Five online assessments provide employees insights about personal style, values, skills, strengths, and interests.
• Career Minute: Short online video content to inspire employees to think differently about their careers, the CareerMinute features blogs written by organizational career development experts and animated podcasts.

Results:

• Genentech maintains an employee turnover rate of 6.2 percent—far below the industry average of 11 percent— and 42 percent of job opening are sourced with internal candidates.
• In 2014 alone, CareerLab helped 76 high-potential employees whose positions were being eliminated find new roles in the company. This translates into a retention cost savings of approximately $20 million.

In 2014, a two-year-long impact study evaluated the three core career development services (1:1 Career Consultations, LearningLabs, and Mentoring Services) and found:

• 92 percent of respondents agree they are more likely to remain with Genentech/Roche.
• 82 percent are more engaged in their work.
• 97 percent agree that the mentoring and 1:1 Career Consultations were worth their value in terms of time investment (salary) and necessary to reprioritize their work.

IRON MOUNTAIN, INCORPORATED: SENTINEL
From 1996 to 2006, Iron Mountain, Incorporated, grew from a $100 million business to a $2.4 billion, Fortune 1000 enterprise that had acquired 250 companies. With rapid growth came serious challenges:

• Overall process errors, including as many as 20,000 missing pieces of customer information annually
• Turnover rates as high as 40 percent
• Scanner discrepancies at 20,000 a week
• Low employee engagement scores among front-line workers

To better support its more than 6,500 front-line operations personnel (the company’s largest employee base responsible for 675,000 customer transactions a month), Iron Mountain had to standardize both operations and cultural norms, prepare new employees to work safely and efficiently, and provide remedial training to the existing workforce.

Iron Mountain enlisted working groups of senior executives, operations managers, HR representatives, and training professionals to identify key performance and logistical issues, skill and knowledge gaps, and talent needs. This multi-month collaboration birthed the linchpin of the program—developing a cadre of peer coaches to deliver it. These “Certified Coaches” would benefit from extra pay, but more importantly, a unique development opportunity, recharged engagement, and the potentially life-changing chance to move from hourly to salary positions as supervisors and managers.

In 2011, Iron Mountain launched the Sentinel Program for its largest front-line workforce: Transportation. Sentinel includes an employee training program and a train-the-coach curriculum. In just six months, the learning team created the former, a blended learning solution including two immersive simulations, 23 e-learning courses, and 30 on-the-job modules. To ensure access to online content, Iron Mountain deployed 250 learning station computers to field locations. The train-the-coach curriculum is a 3.5-day face-to-face program, including senior executive participation via video conferencing.

To ensure realistic, hands-on learning, an interdisciplinary team brainstormed ideas to arrive at a cost-effective solution: transform 10,000 square feet of unused warehouse space in Atlanta into a state-of-the-art Operations Learning Center that replicates Iron Mountain’s operations facilities.

Results: Since 2011, Sentinel has helped Iron Mountain:

• Reduce Record Center operations discrepancies by 50 percent
• Reduce injury frequency rate from 2.82 to 2.64
• Reduce turnover rates from 1.84 percent per month to 0.36 percent per month
• Increase employee engagement by 23 percent as measured by biennial SPEAK surveys
• Train more than 400 Certified Coaches, 42 of whom have been promoted to coordinators, supervisors, and managers

In addition, Sentinel has expanded to four front-line operations business lines and been adopted by the UK and Europe operations divisions.

MOUNTAIN AMERICA CREDIT UNION: FLOW PHILOSOPHY TRAINING
In 2012, a Mountain America Credit Union Educational Services assistant manager, Kimberly Boettcher, attended the Experience Learning Live! Conference. In one of the breakout sessions, she learned about the concept of Flow: “an optimal state of intrinsic motivation, where the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing.” The Flow Philosophy is commonplace in the video game industry: Video games begin with a built-in tutorial; gamers receive prompts as they progress through the initial levels of the game; and the objectives become incrementally more challenging. This is how the software captures gamers’ attention and motivates them to continue.

In 2013, Mountain America applied this concept to its Teller Training. As it crafted test accounts and scenarios, the team built micro-level, mid-level, and end-level goals into the curriculum. The team created characters who could interact with trainees. Each character has a back story, and with each interaction, the tellers learn more about the member’s needs, wants, and expectations. As trainees gather more information and explore new areas of Mountain America’s core processing system, their scenarios and transactions become increasingly complex.

Results: To gauge the effectiveness of the new Sales Training approach, Mountain America monitored the average monthly sales of 30 new employees during their first two months of employment (that is when employees are required to complete their Teller Training post-work courses). Ten of these employees who attended Teller Training before Mountain America implemented the new approach were called the Traditional group. Twenty of these employees who attended Teller Training after the implementation were called the Express group.

During the first month of employment, the average monthly sales in the part-time Express group were 23 percent higher than the Traditional group’s. During the first month of employment, the full-time Traditional employees averaged 3.5 sales per month, while the full-time Express group averaged 11.4 sales per month—a 225 percent difference. During the second month of employment, the Traditional employees averaged 5.5 sales per month, and the Express group averaged 34.83 sales per month—a 533 percent difference.

USAA: CONSUMER LENDING ACQUISITION PIPELINE REINVENTION
One of the primary roles of USAA member service representatives is to support the member’s acquisition of consumer loans for a variety of products such as autos, boats, recreational vehicles, and motorcycles. In early 2013, USAA rewrote its new hire pipeline training program with two design goals: increase the proficiency of graduates and reduce the length of the program if possible.

The new program retains the same basic structure as the original. There are still 20 days of classroom-based activities followed by guided practice to proficiency through a nesting/ coaching program. The difference between the programs is in the content. The new program substitutes hands-on training for lecture whenever possible by using a combination of Captivate emulations, simulations, and proctored live work. As a result, students are much more proficient in tasks and procedures than before. This allowed USAA to reduce the length of the live call nesting/coaching segment by 17 days, while seeing a significant decrease in time to proficiency. An intangible, but still important result of the new training program is the confidence that member service representatives feel coming out of training.

Results:

Efficiency: The new pipeline, from Day 1 through graduation to Phase 2, is now 49 days vs. the original 66.

Effectiveness: At graduation, students of the new program are producing 38 percent more loans and pre-tax income than graduates of the original program. More importantly, they are producing 6 percent more than incumbents with at least a year of experience.

Business results: Taking all results together (increased loans, increased loan value, sales during training, earlier shift to production, and earlier performance at a proficient level), each class of 16 graduates returns $958,000 of pre-tax income and cost savings back to the association.

WALGREENS: LEADING WELL AT WALGREENS
Walgreens’ goals to Create a Well Experience, Advance Community Pharmacy, and Create a Winning Culture required transformative executive development. In 2011, Walgreens’ “Top 250” leaders especially needed clear, consistent direction on making the new strategy a reality. Complicating matters:
• Walgreens was moving siloed business units into a highly collaborative matrix organization.
• Multiple acquisitions meant that suddenly not all executives were company veterans.
• Walgreens didn’t yet have defined leadership competencies or expectations.

These needs led to the creation of the Walgreens Leadership Model (WLM) and with it Leading Well at Walgreens (LWW), a blended learning experience to bring senior executives, and the company, to the next level. Designed with C-level input (including frank assessments of all their team members) and guidance from a management guru, LWW brings together cohorts of 20 to 24 participants from across the business for nine days of formal learning over three sessions. Key LWW components include:

• Facilitated instruction, discussion, individual and teambased exercises (five days): Executives explore the WLM and competencies in-depth through topics such as global workforce trends, human capital planning, decision protocols, replenishing one’s physical resources, and building intellectual agility. Senior executives deliver keynotes, facilitate some sessions, and network with participants. Evening social events promote relationship building.
• Action Learning Projects: Cross-functional teams of five to eight executives research and analyze a current, strategically aligned business challenge outside their area of expertise; analyze, debate, and debrief findings and implications; and propose a plan to a senior executive panel. Participants each dedicate 100 to 150 hours to group and individual project work between sessions.
• Six executive coaching sessions per participant reinforce learning and support individual development.
• “Teach-back” resources equip executives to share learning with direct reports.
• A community of practice on Walgreens’ social learning/ collaboration site encourages discussion and insight exchange.
• The LWW Academy Alumni Network enables continued learning and networking.

Based on early success, Walgreens immediately expanded LWW to its Top 400 leaders (a third were set to graduate last year).

Results:

• A 2.6 percent increase in prescription sales volume compared to control stores, thanks to market-specific health services such as hypoglycemia awareness, travel immunizations, and “My Diabetes” workshops.
• Improvement on execution of vendor agreements from less than 20 percent two years ago to approximately 80 percent today, positioning Walgreens to negotiate better terms.
• Cost avoidance of $150,000 per store due to a recommendation to delay implementation of an unproven/expensive new technology.
• Incremental sales lift of $22 million from the design of a merchandise impulse center at the main store check-out area.
• Shareholder return is up more than 60 percent since January 2013.
• Top 400 engagement has increased: On 2013 satisfaction surveys, the score for “In the past year, I have had opportunities to learn and grow” increased from 4.19 in 2012 to 4.33 out of 5, exceeding Gallup’s North American 4.0 mean for all retail executives.

OUTSTANDING TRAINING INITIATIVES
GABLES RESIDENTIAL: GABLES LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE
In 2012, Gables Residential faced an urgent and costly problem: Its senior leadership pipeline was all but empty. The answer was the creation of the Gables Leadership Institute (GLI), a yearlong blended learning program centered around four three-day sessions co-developed with expert facilitators. GLI features:

• Pre-Work: Includes a personality assessment and the book, “Strength Finders.”
• Session 1 – Learning About Yourself: Leadership strengths and how they add value to your team and organization, facilitated by an executive coach/organizational consultant. A sandcastle-building activity highlights leadership styles.
• Session 2 – Leading Teams: Facilitated by the Assistant Dean for University of Maryland’s School of Business, and including a 360-degree assessment, conflict resolution style assessment, and major highlight: a 12-hour experience in Gettysburg, “In the Footsteps of Leaders,” in which inspired attendees happily volunteer to march a mile through 30-degree temperatures, sleet, slush, and mud and still proclaim it “literally the best leadership experience I have ever had.”
• Session 3 – Developing Others: Conducted by a psychologist and Georgetown professor with expertise in developmental cultures. A cooking class with three senior leaders yields many coachable moments.
• Session 4 – Leading Strategically: Making the most of available resources without dependence on senior leaders, facilitated by another U of M business school professor. A survival exercise concludes this session.
• Quarterly “virtual campfire” chats: Senior vice presidents share personal leadership journeys and answer questions (sessions are recorded and made accessible).
• Interaction with senior management: During each session and at a welcome dinner attended by every top Gables leader—unprecedented at this highly decentralized company.

Results: The course concluded in October. Three of the 12 participants already have been promoted as senior leaders vs. one such promotion at the same time in 2013. Results from the most recent company survey reflect overall satisfaction up 2 percent, and senior management turnover has decreased 12.1 percent.

By promoting internal candidates, Gables Residential saved an estimated $900,000, conservatively using two times annual salary in recruitment, hiring, and training costs for three senior managers. GLI costs were $60,600 including design, development, and delivery of four sessions (facilitators, travel/ accommodation, special programs), yielding an ROI of 1,385 percent.

JIFFY LUBE INTERNATIONAL: LEADERSHIP TRAINING
Because of its desire to help the 45 percent of its employees who desire to continue their education, in 2011 Jiffy Lube International (JLI) went through an accreditation review with the American Council on Education (ACE). ACE awarded Jiffy Lube University (JLU) with seven hours of college credits. In the review, ACE recommended that JLI make changes to its manager training to improve it and to earn more ACE credits.

Rather than tweak the existing content, JLI conducted a study to determine the skill and content gaps so it could significantly improve the training. Working with its Franchisee Training Committee, JLI Operations, and the JLU Learning Team, JLI conducted an in-depth study of top and average-performing store managers. JLI then developed an observation and interview tool and selected stores for the survey. Each member of the team visited four top- and four average-performing stores, completed the observation form, and interviewed the managers. From the data, the team learned that top managers spent 22 percent of their time—double the time of average managers—in training and developing their team members.

Armed with this critical information, the team developed two major initiatives:

1. E-learning for Management Training: JLU updated old courses and converted several topics from the old instructor-led training (ILT) class. New video was shot and the courses were made more engaging and effective. A proficiency examination was added to the 14 e-learning courses to create a new and comprehensive Management curriculum.

2. ILT course for a new Leadership Certification: JLU considered some of the best books on leadership and business, along with assistance from several industry experts, to put together a new three-day class that focused on developing employees. The name was changed to Leadership Training, and the class incorporated training on the Building Blocks of a Successful Team, Performance Management, Training & Coaching, Change Management, and more.

After two months of pilot classes, JLU incorporated all the feedback and began offering Leadership Training classes in March 2014. JLU also introduced an electronic online followup system to encourage students to apply the learning from the class and to gain support from their supervisor. The system communicates to students and their supervisor the day after class and again at 30, 60, 90, and 180 days to ask them to assess their development as a leader.

Finally, JLU added an online simulation game as the final step in the Leadership Certification. The learner must resolve 32 real-life scenarios, gaining points based on the quality of the response. The game must be successfully completed as the final component of Leadership Certification. A leaderboard was added to JLU to highlight the top 100 scores to encourage competition.

Results: In the first nine months, more than 35,000 management e-learning courses have been completed, with 3,000 certifications earned. Level 1 student evaluation of these courses has gone from the bottom 25 percent to the top 25 percent. More than 1,000 students have completed Leadership Training ILT class and the simulation. Level 1 student evaluation scores on a 5-point scale have improved from 4.67 to 4.82 for the quality of the content. Approximately 50 percent of the students are utilizing the electronic follow-up system.

Managers who completed the new training during the first quarter of last year note customer counts 10 percent higher in the second quarter and 11 percent higher than system average. They also showed average revenue per customer up by 2 percent in the second quarter, which was more than 2 percent higher than the system average.

On September 16,2014, JLI had its three-year ACE re-accreditation review and earned 25 hours of college credits, an increase of 18 hours.

NATIONWIDE MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY: FAST-START FOR AGENTS
To meet aggressive sales goals for 2014, Nationwide Sales Solutions (NSS) hired more than 300 direct agents. NSS leadership wanted a “fast-start” solution for new agents. The redesigned curriculum cut two weeks from the original school and added more time taking live calls. Flipped classroom concepts were incorporated into the new curriculum. As part of this approach, agents are asked to complete several assignments, including shadowing an experienced agent/listening to calls and calling competitors to get an auto quote, evaluating their experience compared to Nationwide.

Additional learning strategies include gamification (an interactive game covering the life cycle of a policy and an animated simulation involving preloaded customer profile scenarios), video flashcards with roving hot spots that display content, a scavenger hunt to develop critical thinking/ locating information, and quick access “learning snacks.”

Experiential/discovery-based learning and social collaboration are introduced after each major product introduction. Coaches observe calls and provide immediate feedback at the time of the call. The instructor sets up a private collaboration site for the class and their supervisors. Some of the posts are taken directly from the curriculum, but also include tips and tricks, experience sharing, and contests/incentives. A skills matrix is used with agents during the learning experience and at 30 and 60 days post-training. This matrix measures selling, product knowledge, and quoting.

Results: Two primary metrics Nationwide tracks agents on are Yield Rate and Agent Awareness Report (AAR). Yield rate is the number of individual policies sold bound by payments made divided by number of phone calls made/taken. New agents right out of training are expected to achieve a 12 percent Yield Rate, and within six months of training, they should be at a 15 percent Yield Rate. New agents also are expected to meet Agent Awareness Report minimums. Agents receive a score based on the number of policies with errors divided by number of policies reviewed by quality control team. The goal is for agents to have 90 percent accuracy.

Six months post-training, the January 2014 class (the first class who had the new curriculum) had an average Yield Rate of 16.30 percent—1.3 percent over expectations. In comparison, this Yield Rate significantly exceeded the Yield Rate for agents who completed training in 2013 (14.8 percent). In addition, the newly trained agents reached 90 percent accuracy in six months, about three months faster than their predecessors.

RENT-A-CENTER: MOBILE REVOLUTION
In an effort to significantly increase its customer base, Rent-ACenter decided to occupy the smartphone space. The company not only designed and developed all of the training materials in less than eight weeks, but trained more than 6,000 coworkers in 40 states in just four weeks.

In an effort to implement a successful change management program in regard to the smartphone rollout, Rent-A-Center built a deployment strategy that blended Webinars, face-to-face instructor-led training (ILT), and videos. The company branded it the Mobile Revolution. Several key components contributed to success:

People:

• Utilized 18 non-training professionals—Center of Excellence coaches—as instructors to deliver the two-day presentation.
• Worked with multiple departments across the enterprise, including Sales Strategy, Marketing, Operations Support, Expense Management, Human Resources, and Corporate Strategy, to ensure the success of the ILT events.

Process:

• Designed a two-week train-the-trainer program with a tiered schedule to build the presenters’ proficiency through presentation, practice, application, and feedback.
• Delivered more than 200 separate field communications to prepare stores and leadership for deployment.
• Developed a set of unique Customer Lifestyle Profiles around which to build the sales training.
• Pre-trained district managers prior to their staff arriving for training in order to gain buy-in and utilize them as table facilitators.
• Designed and implemented a coworker certification program.

Technology:

• Delivered the entire presentation via the Samsung Galaxy Note II, including video, audio, live polling, Polaris Office, and a Samsung AllShare Cast.
• Produced an introduction video in which Chief Executive Officer Robert Davis discussed the Mobile Revolution.
• Hosted a series of more than 80 Webinars to prepare field coworkers for the upcoming training and rollout.
• Every participant brought a working Samsung smartphone and spent two days interacting with the phone through activities, application, and knowledge checks.

Results: Some 95 percent of the participants said during a post-training survey that they were extremely satisfied with the training they received and it helped them prepare for their job. Level 4 results show that the company sold more than 65,000 smartphones within the first 30 days after the training was delivered, well over 10 percent of the projected plan. Today, Rent-A-Center continues to perform at 110 percent of its expectations.

UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS: STEP UP TO UH
University Hospitals’ main campus is located in Cleveland’s University Circle area, standing as a multi-billion-dollar entity surrounded by neighborhoods where poverty and unemployment are high. Launched in 2013 as part of the Greater University Circle Initiative, Hire Local, Step Up to UH is a recruitment and pre-employment training program developed by UH and its collaborative partners, Towards Employment (TE) and Neighborhood Connections (NC). This program was designed to address barriers to employment and provides residents of the high-poverty neighborhoods surrounding the hospital with the training and support necessary to become eligible candidates for entry-level positions within the UH health system and remain employed once hired.

UH and its partner nonprofit organizations charted a course to develop a “funnel before the funnel” to assist neighborhood residents to qualify for targeted entry-level positions within the hospital system. UH identified the positions within the health system pipeline and mapped out the competencies required for each vacancy. TE designed an outreach, screening, and training program to recruit and prepare neighborhood residents who have an interest in working for the UH hospital system. NC reaches out to the community to recruit participants to learn about the opportunity. UH is committed to drawing entry-level staff from this pool of candidates in addition to coordinating and overseeing the collaboration and training efforts.

To successfully implement Step Up to UH, UH gathered health system leaders to change protocol and policy necessary to hold vacancies in the target departments that could be filled by program participants. This included obtaining buy-in from hiring managers and HR to allow for longer hiring turnaround times or holding open positions longer.

Results: Outcomes of the program in its pilot phase in fall 2013 include:

• Three rounds of training resulted in 28 new hires.
• Significant reduction in the interview-to-hire ratio.
• Ongoing retention, coaching, and training support for first six months to ease job transition.
• First cohort achieved 90 percent retention at six months.

After receiving additional funding in May 2014, UH re-implemented this program and is on target to hire an additional 60 people from high-poverty neighborhoods in the next year. Since July 2014, UH has hired an additional 13 people, with new rounds of training and hiring occurring every other month. The first 10 hires from the pilot phase are reaching their first year of employment and are working with the UH Career Coach to determine next steps in their training and development.