by Site Staff
November 25, 2013
GOLD: Douglas Clayton, Senior Vice President of Learning and Development, SES
Before SES, a global satellite provider and operator based in Luxembourg, consolidated its four entities into one company in October 2010, each entity had its own company culture. The organization’s executives realized if the consolidation was going to succeed, SES needed one common culture, not four potentially incompatible ones.
To accomplish this, the five members of the SES executive committee asked Douglas Clayton, the firm’s senior vice president of learning and development, and his department to develop a training program to prepare employees, managers and executives to work as a cohesive and collaborative organization.
Clayton worked with a University of Pennsylvania human resources professor to develop a learning program that would teach change readiness, SES strategy, employee empowerment and knowledge networking.
The resulting learning initiative was a full-day interactive workshop that taught all employees the key elements of the company’s strategic plan. One of the program’s most important aspects was a two-hour business simulation that put the participants through a scenario in which they played the role of an executive committee member, making decisions based on constantly changing industry and world events. The use of this technology helped employees understand the difficult decisions facing executive committee members and reinforced key skills learned.
From February through June, SES conducted 44 workshops in 10 locations across the world. As a result of the initiative, 88 percent of the company’s employees said they now have a better understanding of its business strategy.
SILVER: Conrad Cone, Director of Talent Development at Active Network
After going public, Active Network, a software as a service company based in Buraby, British Columbia, experienced global expansion. During that expansion period, Conrad Cone, Active Network’s director of talent development, noticed the company was hiring externally rather than internally for key roles.
To reverse this trend, Cone helped develop a learning initiative to allow Active Network to cultivate internal talent and ensure strong succession plans and career paths were in place. To accomplish this goal, the company built the Take 5 a Day mobile app to deliver “‘earning bento boxes” to its leaders.
The bento boxes give employees access to learning content in small, five-minute or less sessions. The sessions teach leaders how to identify high-potential individuals in the organization, as well as how to overcome inconsistent leadership behaviors.
The learning initiative has been expanded to include a bento box app strictly for the top 10 percent of Active Network’s senior leaders.
BRONZE: Adri Maisonet-Morales, Vice President of Enterprise Learning and Development at Blue Cross & Blue Shield of North Carolina
With major changes ahead for the health care industry, Adri Maisonet-Morales, vice president of enterprise learning and development at Blue Cross & Blue Shield of North Carolina, implemented a learning initiative to help the organization’s staff become familiar with updated infrastructure systems and processes.
The learning program teaches team building and collaboration skills, provides access to timely on-demand content and allows employees to easily share thoughts. The goal is to promote organizational agility and enhance customer service and competitiveness.
“This prestigious award has reaffirmed our mission to unleash the power of learning through creative, technology enabled solutions that prepares our people to compete in a complex and transformational market,” Maisonet-Morales said.