RECONNECTING LEARNING AND BUSINESS

HOW 9 MAJOR US ORGANIZATIONS ARE BRIDGING THE GAP

CLAIRE SCHOOLEY
CONSULTING Connecting Leaders to Learners
 Connecting Leaders to Learners

SUMMARY
00 INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................P.04

01 RESHAPING CORPORATE LEARNING.............................P.06

02 WHY BUSINESS AND LEARNING

NEED TO PARTNER........................................................................................P.08

03 HOW VERINT SYSTEMS, MCDONALD'S AND

TELUS INTERNATIONAL EFFECTIVELY
BRIDGE THE GAP...............................................................................................P.14

04 THE UNDERESTIMATED ROLE OF CULTURE.......P.18

05 LOOKING TOWARD THE FUTURE P.22

 4 5
Connecting Leaders to Learners

INTRODUCTION Michelle Braden

Global Vice President and Chief Learning Officer,
TELUS International (Telecommunications)

In today’s fast-paced business world, the role of the learning executive Kimberly Currier
is changing, broadening, and demanding a closer association with the Senior Vice President, People Strategy, North Highland
business. CEOs are recognizing and acknowledging that engaged, Worldwide Consulting (Professional Services)
agile, and well-skilled employees who have a focus on customers
are critical to business success. This business environment requires Kimo Kippen
learning executives to align with the business, understand the business Former Chief Learning Officer, Hilton (Hospitality)
problems, and create a learning strategy that gives employees the and Founder, Aloha Learning Advisors
resources to meet company goals, develop new skills, and continue
to grow in their careers within a supportive culture. Rob Lauber
This eBook addresses this partnership between business and Senior Vice President, Chief Learning Officer,
learning and what you need to do to get there. We interviewed 10 McDonald’s Corporation (Food & Beverage)
learning and business executives including CLOs, VPs of Learning,
and General Managers, each representing a different enterprise Brian Miller
business vertical. We wish to thank the following leaders who are Vice President Talent, Development & Inclusion,
passionate about business and learning partnerships and gave Gilead Sciences (Biotechnology)
of their time to share their efforts and successes.
Mark Rutherford
Claire Schooley (Claire Schooley Consulting) and Camille Senior Vice President, Head of Human Resources,
Charaudeau (360Learning) First American Financial Corporation (Financial Services)

Julie Stone
Senior Director, Learning and Performance Support,
eBay (eCommerce)

Lisa Szabo
Vice President, Learning & Development, First
American Financial Corporation (Financial Services)

Nancy Treaster
Senior Vice President and General Manager,
Strategic Operations, Verint Systems (Technology)

Kris Zilliox
Vice President, Training-Institutional North America,
Ecolab (Environment)

This work is supported by 360Learning, the first corporate Learning Engagement

Platform where business leaders, L&D professionals, and learners connect to create a
continuous work and learning organization.
01 - RESHAPING CORPORATE LEARNING 6 7
Connecting Leaders to Learners

01
RESHAPING CORPORATE
LEARNING
Worker mindset has changed to a growth mindset – “I don’t know
how to do it now, but I know I can learn.” Technology has opened up
a broader view of the world and is a factor in this change. The growth
mindset has changed people’s behavior, and not just Millennials
and the new Generation Z entering the workforce. This mindset
change is moving into the older generations as well. Business is
faced with the “modern employee” who has many of the following
work requirements: Here are some of the ways this new role for learning and business
• Expects learning opportunities not just around the job hired for are developing:
but around career advancement. In career pathing, employees • Executives see learning as a competitive advantage and a key
own their future and drive toward it with company resources and differentiator in winning and retaining customers.
support.
• Learning is a strategic enabler. Business drives the agenda and
• Wants work that has value for them - and the broader world - based learning supports the business agenda to enable success.
on a company purpose, vision, and mission they can support.
• Learning leads are essential in executive strategy meetings.
• Expects access to technology resources they need to do their They listen and contribute to business strategy and tease out the
work that are at a minimum as sophisticated as those they use in behaviors and the learnings necessary for business success.
their personal lives.
• Businesses are hiring based on a candidate’s portfolio of
• Values collaboration, sharing, and learning from others often experiences rather than the past positions held and college
using social tools and human interactions. degrees.
• Likes a work environment with a diverse workforce in gender,
age, ethnicity, education and cultural backgrounds.
Business has changed, too. It boasts a relentless focus on the
customer demanding agility and innovation to separate itself from  Organizations must have a mindset around growth, a
mindset around how they regard failure, and a constant
the competition. The accelerated business pace means continual diet of reskilling and upskilling in the organization. If you are
changes. Learning must move in step with these business changes. not learning, you are not growing and if you are not growing,
how do you or the organization succeed?“

Kimo Kippen, Hilton

02 - WHY BUSINESS AND LEARNING NEED TO PARTNER
02
WHY BUSINESS AND
LEARNING NEED TO
PARTNER
Business executives want a higher performing company and know
that to do this, they need well-skilled employees. Business wants
to hear learning executives talk in terms of critical success factors.
Business will value a partnership with the learning executive if the
learning executive and department have credibility. This means that
the learning executives show that they understand the business and
can work collaboratively with the business. The learning executive
must be a business person first but also know a lot about learning
and how to work with the business people who are subject matter
experts (SMEs) to grow employees’ skill sets and careers. Gaining this
recognition is higher level work than developing courses or training
experiences. Here are the prerequisites the new learning executive
needs to check.
8 9
Connecting Leaders to Learners
• Understand business in general and especially the particular
business the company is in. Go to new hire sessions; have
conversations with executives in different lines of business; find out
what the pain points are; and ask a lot of questions. Understand
the language of the business, what’s important to the business,
and how the business makes money.
 Educate yourself so you know what the business does
and have a good understanding of the products and
services so you as the learning person are not just a technical
hand behind the scenes separate from the business.“
Nancy Treaster, Verint Systems
• Use data effectively. Learning executives must understand data
that matters to the business, like employee attrition rate, new
employee time to proficiency, sales training effectiveness, and
employee engagement scores. Learning executives must collect
data, be clear on the outcomes that business expects, and
design the learning around those outcomes. For First American
Financial, that views itself as a “people business,” employee
engagement surveys are highly valued by top management and
used to make business changes.
02 - WHY BUSINESS AND LEARNING NEED TO PARTNER
 From our employee engagement surveys, we find out
things that we had no idea were issues. We also find out
needs of our employees. We analyze results, make decisions
on changes and let employees know what’s changing. In some
cases, we weren’t telling people what we were doing. Now we
are much more transparent, and our engagement survey results
have continued to improve, and our score has risen each year
as one of Fortune 100 Best Places To Work.“
Mark Rutherford and Lisa Szabo, First American Financial
 Knowing what employees think company-wide has also
made a difference in Gilead Sciences. We use employee
Net Promoter Scores (eNPS) as important data points because
we know that a company can’t attain customer growth without
loyal, engaged employees. One question we ask: “I would
recommend Gilead as a great place to work.” sent out as part
of our engagement/listening strategy provides key insights
about the importance of career development, collaboration
and transparent/authentic communications—our goal is to
make Gilead the best place to learn and grow.“
Brian Miller, Gilead Sciences
10 11
Connecting Leaders to Learners
• Understand and analyze the problem that requires learning.
Identify the problem, research the issue, and then design the best
learning environment that will encourage and enable employees
to learn in a practical and pragmatic way. Decide what blend of
technologies will support this learning.
 Iexperiences
think of learning leaders as the architects of learning
rather than those who need to do the
actual building.“
Rob Lauber, McDonald's
 Rather than build a competency model, we focus on the
values that drive our business and the behaviors that are
aligned to those values. This provides the foundation of every
program we build, and the goal of every program is to help our
people be successful and grow.“
Michelle Braden, TELUS
02 - WHY BUSINESS AND LEARNING NEED TO PARTNER TO DRIVE BUSINESS SUCCESS 12 13
Connecting Leaders to Learners

• Address the business impact of learning. The pressure to measure
the results of learning is not going away. Most executives want
to see learning measurement results. They may relax a bit when
they see ongoing evidence of the impact of learning and develop
confidence in the learning executive - the executive is viewed as
a true business partner – and even then, business executives may
ask for some hard data. L&D needs to develop an analytic skill set,
work on data collection strategies, and secure the right technology.
Work with the executive team. By showing good business skills and
expertise in working collaboratively with business, learning executives
will become a management team member. They will participate
in strategy discussions and the crafting of the business strategy by
bringing learning expertise to areas that need employee behavior
changes. Don’t be an “order taker” and wait for executives to tell
you what they want. Be additive rather than subordinate.

 I look at the programs we offer to develop people to do

their job, the people that participated, and their actual
business performance in terms of EBITDA (Earnings Before
Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortization) in their group,
engagement in their group, and revenue from their group.
When I do my monthly business impact study, I can show that
for the people who have participated in certain programs,
their business is performing at a higher level. This is the
kind of impact business wants to see.“
 Every business strategy has a learning component but if
you don’t have the right employees with the right skills
to deliver on the strategy, it doesn’t matter! When learning
leads bring value to the business strategy, they will ALWAYS
be invited.“
Julie Stone, eBay

Michelle Braden, TELUS

• Work collaboratively with subject matter experts. In smaller

companies SMEs often author learning courses using easy-to-use and
template-based authoring software.These authoring software can even
be natively integrated in the main Learning suite, or in the Learning
Engagement Platform. Tools for user-generated content allow, for
example, sales people to share best practices with their colleagues on
selling products. In larger learning projects SMEs supply the content and
work collaboratively with the learning people who suggest the blend of
learning modes that will enable employees to learn the content best.

 When creating an employee learning experience,

collaboration with SMEs is critical to ensure relevancy
and credibility. I have found it works best to engage with
SMEs from the perspective that they are bringing the content
expertise and my team is bringing our expertise in creating
impactful learning solutions. This helps each of us appreciate
the role we play in the design, development, and execution
of the learning solution.“

Kris Zilliox, Ecolab

03 - HOW VERINT SYSTEMS, MCDONALD'S AND TELUS INTERNATIONAL EFFECTIVELY BRIDGE THE GAP
03
HOW VERINT SYSTEMS,
MCDONALD'S AND
TELUS INTERNATIONAL
EFFECTIVELY BRIDGE
THE GAP
If the learning executive shows expertise in the above areas, the
business executives will more likely respect and understand the
learning function better. He'll appreciate how the learning experiences
make a difference and help the business win. The questions about
learning as a cost center and the yearly battle for budget are minimized
because the Value of the Investment (VOI) is clear. Learning executives
feel resistance from business executives when these business execs
haven’t seen the value and, therefore see learning as fluff.
Here are three examples of learning value involving SMEs (Business
partners) from Verint Systems, a company that provides software and
services to corporate call centers, McDonald's, a fast food company,
and TELUS International, a communications company.
14 15
Connecting Leaders to Learners
CASE STUDY
VERINT SYSTEMS
Verint has an extensive portfolio of products that sales people need
to understand and talk about intelligently to sell the products. Since
Verint sales people take a consultative approach, keeping up with
the expanded business problems addressed by the portfolio is a
real challenge.
To address this challenge, Verint’s business and learning partners
developed six, self-paced courses to provide baseline business
training for new hires and to build more confidence about areas of
the portfolio less familiar to some seasoned sales people. A team
of subject matter experts from business provided the domain
expertise and the learning enablement group brought the tools
and understanding on how to make the content engaging for
employees. Huge positive response came from sales and partners
who took the interactive courses, which included videos, eLearning,
built-in Q&A, customer case studies, assessments throughout, and
knowledge validation at the end. The value to learners was clear and
they want more. The partnership together had developed a resource
that directly addressed a pain point of the organization. No formal
ROI of the learning program was conducted but business is tracking
the pipeline growth as a concrete indicator of success.
03 - HOW VERINT SYSTEMS, MCDONALD'S AND TELUS INTERNATIONAL EFFECTIVELY BRIDGE THE GAP
CASE STUDY
MCDONALD'S
More than 90% of McDonald's restaurants in the US are owner-
operated franchises. Corporate runs programs for franchise owners
to help them become better business owners.
The job of L&D is to engineer experiences that will provide the best
learning possible for the owners. Internal and external SMEs facilitate
the experience where owners come in to a physical location and
think about and explore new ways of how they run their businesses.
These include bringing in experts to talk to owners, running panel
discussions, and designing experiences so owners can learn from
each other.
McDonald's also does virtual training with SMEs. An example is
around rolling out of new products. L&D brings in outside resources
as necessary. In one scenario an actress conducted “person on the
street” interviews with chefs in the kitchen while they were making
the new food product. This added an engaging component that
also provided learning. SMEs talk about and show new packaging,
processes, and kits stores will receive (the new cheese-bacon fries
product for instance).
16 17
Connecting Leaders to Learners
CASE STUDY
TELUS INTERNATIONAL
As a learning executive it’s important not to isolate oneself, but to
listen and hear about problems in the business.
TELUS International’s learning executive was aware from comparing a
coaching audit report to business results and seeing little correlation,
that a team leader coaching program was not as effective as it could be
and wondered why. To find out, Learning partnered with the Business
(SMEs). Business analyzed the coaching process used by team leaders
after training while Learning examined the 3-day coaching training
program. Both the process and the training were broken.
Learning redesigned a new coaching training program and Business
made plans to support and continually monitor the team leaders and
their coaching during a 10-week process leading to their coaching
certification. This example underscores the importance of partnering
with the Business. If Learning fixed just the coach training, it wouldn’t
have helped since both the training and the process were broken. The
important lesson is that learning can’t work in a silo. The learning
executive and staff need to be out in the business listening and looking
for problems to solve and partnering with business on how to solve them.
04 - THE UNDERESTIMATED ROLE OF CULTURE
04
THE UNDERESTIMATED
ROLE OF CULTURE
Traditionally, the corporate organization culture has been one in which
employees learn the rules and follow them. If employees had good
ideas that might help customers, but the ideas were different from the
norm, the employees often remained silent. A top-down decision-
making environment sends a message that employees don’t have
permission to suggest changes. This mentality is slowly changing
especially with the huge emphasis on customer service today. Some
companies have given employees more freedom to make the best
decision for the customer based on the circumstances and company
guidelines and values. For example, a retail employee may decide
on-the-spot to waive the handling and postage cost of sending a
customer a product because of a long delay in promised delivery
date. Employees feel respected for their capabilities and trusted when
they have the freedom to make decisions and help customers. Recent
research from SHRM gives more insight on employee autonomy.1
This employee autonomy to make decisions is also appearing in
organizations. As companies hire more for demonstrated expertise
and values rather than for degrees and a list of past employers, they
are also giving employees more control over how they do their
jobs. Once onboarded and familiar with their responsibilities, the
employees have freedom which, when learning is involved, benefits
a whole department. Let's now have a look at two examples.
1 A recent article from SHRM (Society of Human Resource Management) delves deeper
into the importance of employee autonomy for greater employee engagement and
company productivity.
“Empower Employees To Make Things Happen, ” by Marina Krakovsky,
SHRM: February 16, 2019.
https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/all-things-work/Pages/empower-employees-
to-make-things-happen.aspx
18 19
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SALES GENERATES TRAINING
An enterprise manufacturing company has a division that sells a
portfolio of handheld tools. The large sales staff were experts on
certain tools but were having difficulty selling tools that they were
less familiar with or had never used. Onsite training was provided but
it didn’t do the job – too much material was presented all at once.
Because the sales team had the freedom to find the best way to sell
these tools, some sales staff decided to try something different:
make short five-to-six-minute videos on how to use the tools that
they knew well. Over two years, individually or in teams of two,
sales people, using mobile phones, developed over 150 training
videos, each on a different handheld tool. There was no editing,
just straight shooting with a sales person talking about the tool and
showing how to use it.
Sales colleagues loved them.
These short videos became the most used sales training on the company’s
LMS. Sales were hearing from their experienced co-workers and learned
enough to be able to sell the tools with little background. An added
benefit was the social interaction with the “video hosts”. If a colleague
wanted more information, the social network provided an additional
resource. This video-based training was user-generated to meet a need
that sales knew they had. If they could increase individual sales people’s
tool expertise, the teams could sell more and grow the revenue of their
division. This solution to a problem came from sales because they were
empowered to do what it takes to take care of customers and make sales.
04 - THE UNDERESTIMATED ROLE OF CULTURE 20 21
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EXECUTIVES DRIVE THE CULTURE If learning leads need support for a learning approach within a positive
A supportive culture with collaboration among business units boosts culture, here’s good advice:
engagement and learning. Hire carefully and give the employees
the freedom to make decisions within their domain of expertise.

A VP for design and strategy in a multinational personal finance

company was asked by executives why her teams were so engaged,
 Put the business filter on what you are trying to do, have
clear data-based reasoning and position projects so the
most skeptical CEO sees why it is important and the value it
focused on doing their best work, and liked her as a manager. She
brings to the business.“
talked about how tough she was when interviewing candidates to
make sure they would fit the culture and be able to do the work. Once
hired, she spent time to get to know them as people and learned their
strengths and weaknesses. She tailored the work to their strengths and Kimberly Currier, North Highland Worldwide Consulting
empowered them to take ownership with minimal supervision when
she believed they were set up for success. She logged employees’
weak spots and planned mentoring session to increase capability
in those areas. “I implemented methods to increase collaboration,
improve design processes, and up-level the design team’s skills to
produce higher quality, data-driven solutions. I cultivate a culture
of problem solving and grit.”
05 - LOOKING TOWARD THE FUTURE 22 23
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KEY TAKE-AWAYS

05 TO BRIDGE THE GAP BETWEEN LEARNING AND BUSINESS,

THE LEARNING EXECUTIVE MUST:
LOOKING TOWARD
THE FUTURE
We are on the cusp of change in corporate learning. Corporate
1. UNDERSTAND THE BUSINESS
executives see the importance of learning to help employees AND HOW IT OPERATES
perform better, to support loyal customers, and to drive bottom
line results. Companies are talking about a company-wide increase in
awareness and appreciation of the role of culture and its importance
for a successful business. As learning assumes greater importance,
the role of the learning executive will reinvent itself. This
means broadening responsibilities to include areas like employee
2. KNOW THE ART AND SCIENCE
engagement, change management, leadership development, career
development, collaboration, and performance — many now held
OF THE LEARNING CRAFT
by the HR executive. A learning executive becomes the Talent
executive and reports to CEO. The HR Executive also reports to
CEO but no longer has all employee learning responsibilities. Both
executives are equal in status.
3. COMMUNICATE AND COLLABORATE
The learning executive and L&D team must collaborate with all
divisions of the business and become a valued resource both formally WITH BUSINESS EXECUTIVES
and informally. Only then will learning make an impact on the bottom
line and be viewed as essential to everyday business operations.

The 5 key take-aways hereafter are the way forward to become a

valued member of the management team. 4. SHOW BUSINESS AND
LEARNING EXPERTISE

5. WORK TO ALIGN ALL LEARNING

WITH THE BUSINESS STRATEGY
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CLAIRE SCHOOLEY FROM THE 360LEARNING
CONSULTING RESEARCH INSTITUTE:

ABOUT CLAIRE SCHOOLEY EMBRACING THE LEARNING

Claire Schooley is an independent analyst and founder of Claire ORGANIZATION MODEL
Schooley Consulting. She is a leader in strategic thinking and an expert HOW ADOPTING A CULTURE OF LEARNING
in technology around corporate recruiting, learning, and performance WILL INCREASE EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
management. Her passion is helping employees grow and develop in
their careers. Before starting her own business, Claire was a principal
analyst at Forrester Research Inc. leading the strategic HR practice
worldwide in the areas of employee selection and development.
Today her work includes research, writing, and speaking engagements
around helping companies find, nurture, and develop talent. 4 STEPS TO TRANSFORM INTO A
LEARNING ORGANIZATION
HOW TO REVOLUTIONIZE TRANSFER OF
KNOWLEDGE WITHIN YOUR ORGANIZATION BY
CAPITALIZING ON YOUR INTERNAL EXPERTS

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