Top 10 Hall of Fame Outstanding Training Initiatives (Sept/Oct 2016)

Each year Training magazine requires all Training Top 10 Hall of Famers to submit an Outstanding Training Initiative that is shared with our readers in a print issue. Here are the details of Booz Allen Hamilton's "Tech Tank" and Farmers Insurance's "Bring the U to You."

Booz Allen Hamilton: Tech Tank

Firm leadership at Booz Allen Hamilton identified priority areas of business growth for the near and long term. To meet these growth targets, the firm needs a pool of affordable technical talent to meet current and future demand. The firm’s Tech Tank program is focused on highperforming staff in a targeted functional area within a market team. Two market teams participated in the initial pilot program (100 learners). Based on the success of the pilot, the program is being scaled for companywide implementation.

Program Details

Tech Tank is a 9- to 12-month skills enhancement program designed to rapidly build an affordable pool of in-demand technical talent in a differentiated way. This cohort-based program is designed to be scalable and repeatable. This allows for multiple cohorts to run at the same time, and each cohort can be focused on very different targeted roles and skills.

The Tech Tank selection process is based on a highly competitive 5-step process. After eligibility criteria has been met, a cohort selection committee reviews the results of all staff that have completed the pretest and Hogan assessments and determines the final participants. Selected staff receive an offer to participate in the form of a program Commitment Letter that must be signed by the participant and endorsed by his or her leadership. Those who do not pass the technical pretest are given information on how to develop the skills required and are invited to apply to a future cohort.

There are six components to the Tech Tank program:

1. Core Curriculum: Participants receive training in industry recognized skills to accelerate the learning curve and enable them to support multiple complex client environments. They participate in classroom training, self-paced training, experiential labs, interactive workshops, and gamified social learning. The selection and development of curriculum was done in partnership with business leaders.

2. Events: Participants attend in-person events throughout the program. The purpose of these events is to measure progress, discuss challenges, network with colleagues/leaders within the functional area, and engage in technically focused activities that apply content from the core curriculum.

3. Assignments: Participants engage in internally built competitions and activities (e.g., “hack-a-thons,” “pitch-jams”) using gamification and social learning. Points are allocated to all assignments, allowing learners to earn points as they compete with other participants and can view results on a badging leaderboard. These practical applications are reviewed and content reinforced through one-on-one mentoring from subject matter expert (SME) mentors.

4. Engagement Plan: Following the completion of the core curriculum training and in coordination with their leadership, participants engage in a series of billable assignments or other projects that allow them to practice and further develop the critical skills and competencies gained throughout the program.

5. Electives: These are technical and consulting courses participants take on their own time to increase the breadth and depth of their skills beyond the core curriculum.

6. Mentoring: Participants are matched with mentors to foster functional development by identifying available experts and aiding staff to engage in activities that focus on learning and growing functional skills that can be directly applied to their work. In many cases, the same business leaders who led the assignments and helped develop the core curriculum serve as mentors to participants.

Results

Level 1 (reaction): Final survey results for pilot participants and their leaders were 30-plus percent higher than survey results for related traditional training programs in the same functional area.

Level 2 (learning): Within three months, 70 percent of the participants completed the core requirements. Participants reported the training has increased their aptitude in coding languages, predictive modeling, and gathering/preparing quantitative data for analysis.

Mentors and other business leaders reported that participants’ demonstrated technical knowledge on projects exceeded their expectation based on direct results of assignments.

Level 3 (behavior): More than 80 percent of pilot participants volunteered to act as mentors and/or to lead activities for future cohorts. Leaders of program participants indicate that staff engagement is high (more than 70 percent high or very high). The firm-wide attrition rate for the pilot cohort was four times as high as the attrition rate for those not in the program.

Level 4 (results): Participants in the Tech Tank program increased their billable rate upward of 10 to 25 percent over their peers who did not participate in Tech Tank. Most pilot participants were able to immediately align to previously unfilled and funded open positions.

Farmers Insurance: Bring the U to You

The high-level learning objectives for Farmers Insurance’s “Bring the U to You” classes were to increase the knowledge and skills of its agents and agency staff in seven distinct subject areas, while at the same time reinvigorating and inspiring their enthusiasm and attitude for growing their agencies. Specific objectives span seven content areas: commercial insurance, customer service, staffing, marketing, consultative selling, and life insurance and financial services for personal and business markets.

Before this initiative was implemented, agency development classes were available only at the University of Farmers’ California campus and were delivered by one facilitation team. Agents who elected to attend had to pay for their own lodging, meals, and basic classroom materials; travel to the campus; and spend at least three days away from their offices and their families. Not surprisingly, only a small percentage of agents took advantage of these development opportunities. Out of the entire agency force, which averages approximately 13,000 agents, no more than 320 attended in a typical year for full-time agent extension courses. As such, the Learning and Development team faced the following challenges:

  • Find away to markedly increase attendance
  • Secure executive buy-in for an expansion of the Learning and Development staff
  • Reposition the existing facilitation team to function as train-the-trainers
  • Build the capabilities of 18 new facilitators across 10 territories on as many as seven 2.5 -day classes

Program Details

The “Bring the U to You” initiative first was created as a 100- day sprint, in response to an organizational call for quick-hit programs that could drive near-term results. Farmers’ head of Field Training led the development. The sprint was so successful that there were waiting lists for the training.

At that point, the University leadership, headed by Farmers’ chief learning officer, decided to convert the effort into a long-term initiative as part of the overall business strategy. Executives from the Learning and Development team and from Farmers’ Distribution (sales) unit got involved in building out the overall strategy, designing a delivery plan, and staffing up for an expanded and geographically distributed delivery schedule. The L&D facilitation team manager closely supervised development and remains engaged in coaching and mentoring territory trainers and training managers. In addition, the director of Field Execution provides close support to the field teams who deliver the training.

Instead of being held on the University campus, “Bring the U to You” classes are conducted in the territories. Territory trainers and training managers recruit agents to attend and facilitate classes. University facilitators travel to the various sites to train on subject matter, facilitation skills, and classroom management. This program shifted reliance on L&D professionals by leveraging their experience and expertise to grow training delivery capabilities for members of the sales function as adjunct faculty.

Results

Agents who have attended a “Bring the U to You” class averaged a 4.5 percent lift in production. In 2013, the year before “Bring the U to You” was implemented, approximately 400 agents attended agency development classes. In 2014, the first year of “Bring the U to You,” Farmers provided classes in the territories, eliminating all but local travel, and reduced the cost to the agent from more than $1,000 to $150. As a result, the number of attendees more than doubled. In 2015, Farmers was on track to achieve 850 participants by year end. The revenue impact of participating agents attaining a 4.5 percent production gain equates to nearly $9 million additional revenue over 12 months from these participants.

While the innovative approach of bringing the training programs directly to learners’ hometowns resulted in a diminished average new business lift per agent, the increased participation levels drove a net increase of nearly $4 million in additional revenue.

Farmers extended its infrastructure to deliver similar related initiatives in the future through the creation of extended faculty. Bringing in 18 territory managers to serve as extended faculty on top of the core six sales training facilitators expanded the delivery team by 300 percent.

Lorri Freifeld
Lorri Freifeld is the editor/publisher of Training magazine. She writes on a number of topics, including talent management, training technology, and leadership development. She spearheads two awards programs: the Training APEX Awards and Emerging Training Leaders. A writer/editor for the last 30 years, she has held editing positions at a variety of publications and holds a Master’s degree in journalism from New York University.