5 Examples of Organizations with Successful Learning and Development Strategies

1. IBM

IBM is a pioneer in employee education. Its first executive training program started in 1916. Today IBM spends over $574 million every year on employee training and development. Their program is considered to be the largest in the world. IBM employees spend over 28.6 million hours every year in training and education. They can enroll in different types of training initiatives and have no chance to get bored with what they do. To provide growth opportunities to their staff, IBM has created a leadership management process for identifying, assessing, and developing high-potential leaders. One of the company’s most famous programs is Basic Blue, an in-house management training program for new managers. The program involves role-playing and focuses on developing the emotional intelligence and coaching skills that an IBM manager should have. Hands-on training is also a part of IBM’s employee education. To enhance employees’ careers, IBM’s L&D practices job rotations. Participants spend a certain amount of time working on projects that further their career goals. IBM’s own employees call it “growth through rotation and transformation.”

• Formlabs

Formlabs is a leading 3D printer developer and manufacturer. The company works with hundreds of resellers that represent Formlabs worldwide. To make sure their partners deliver the best customer service, the manufacturer has implemented a learning management system (LMS) to educate internal employees and external representatives. To make the program more engaging, the company uses certificates and gamification. For instance, partners get points for performing specific actions, which not only increases training completion rates but also improves brand-partner relationships. It takes a few weeks to fully onboard new partners and introduce all their technicians to Formlabs’s machines.

• Reed

Reed, an employment agency, was struggling to onboard their employees to a new customer relationship management (CRM) system before they created an agile training and onboarding system with the help of Whatfix A new system provided personalized onboarding experiences for Reed’s employees, making the process of switching from an old legacy system painless and fast. Whatfix, a digital adoption platform, immediately created in-app, contextual walkthroughs based on the help content that Reed created earlier. Now, CRM users receive real-time, in-app guidance whenever they need help while managing customer records. Ninety-two percent of over surveyed 3,000 employees said they found the ‘Whatfix way’ of onboarding, training, and support to be effective. Reed continues to use Whatfix to train new hires and guide employees on underused CRM features.

• Abstracta

Abstracta is a software testing company that was experiencing a lack of good software testers when they decided to create an internal training program (that later evolved into an external program). To fill the significant skills gap in the market, the company has launched 34 online courses — most of which are accessible to both internal and external learners. They deliver training through an LMS so that it’s easy to manage the courses and monitor the learners’ progress. This is a great example of how you can use your internal learning and development strategy to build a foundation for an external training program and strengthen your customer relationships.

• Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs is another corporate giant known for its investment in employee development. The company’s learning programs vary from skills-based training and high-performing leadership programs to roundtable discussions and workshops hosted by senior leaders. One of the examples of learning and development initiatives by Godlen Sachs is “Talks at GS,” a series of conversations and interviews with experts in various niches, from the arts and entertainment to politics and business. The company invests in this initiative to support their employees in constant learning and help them pursue career growth opportunities.

Credit  :  Whatfix Blog | Content on Driving Digital Adoption