The Business Impact Award

The Business Impact Award is for learning executives who have implemented a significant measurement or evaluation program that has demonstrated exceptional business impact from their workforce development programs. Potential results may include measures of employee retention, sales, revenue growth, customer satisfaction or cost reduction, among others.

DIVISION 1: For companies with 10,000 employees or more

GOLD

Kristin Cassino, Manager, Learning Services, Liberty Mutual Insurance Global Risk Solutions

Many companies are content with finding a positive correlation between learning delivery and business impact, but Liberty Mutual found a way to separate itself from the pack. The learning services team, managed by Kristin Cassino, set out to create an entire methodology to track the relationship between training and outcomes, with hard data to back it up.

The discontent with differing measurements and communication between business partners and the learning services department inspired the need to design a new blueprint to scale how effective learning can affect business revenue. Time savings, cost savings, customer experience, retention, efficiency gained and change in quality assurance scores are all factors now being considered in new programs’ evaluations.

Learning Services not only developed an infrastructure able to support the amount of data collected from sources across the company, they also created a measurement and evaluation philosophy. Aligning their own distinct business values with practical data collection tactics proved worthwhile when presenting their findings to business partners.

With a new methodology to track effective changes in training and streamlined values across departments, Liberty Mutual can try out and assess new training techniques with relative ease.

SILVER

Mark Boccia, Director of L&D, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.

Faced with a swelling number of new hires and the need to upskill promoted current employees, Royal Caribbean departed from their rigid training model of over-the-shoulder, on-the-job training, which had proved an ineffective use of time for both crew members and managers. Mark Boccia oversaw the shift to EMBARK, Royal Caribbean’s latest learning initiative.

EMBARK increases job skills proficiency for multiple job roles onboard Royal Caribbean ships by offering short, interactive digital learning modules. Hundreds of modules have been created for different departments, including Food and Beverage, Housekeeping, Lifeguard and Guest Services. The platform offers a clean, mobile-responsive user interface, videos, interactive content, quizzes and practicals.

Consistent from ship to ship, crew members across departments were able to implement EMBARK, access it from any device they wished, both on land and at sea, and provide any feedback they had along the way.

BRONZE

Angie Ballinger, Global L&D Manager, College of Business & Commercial Excellence, Cargill

From their traditional classroom training program in 2012, which had “too much information in too little time” and made learners feel as though they were “drinking from a firehose,” Cargill shifted gears to digital learning.

Under Angie Ballinger’s leadership, cost-per-person for the new training dropped by an estimated $4,900, and development for the online program took eight weeks compared with the classroom’s eight-month gestation period.

The curriculum’s medium isn’t the only component Cargill tweaked to enhance learning results. Measuring impact through a sales excellence map and rearranging metrics used to gauge outcomes meant both learners and managers could track progress easily and accurately.

DIVISION 2: For companies with less than 10,000 employees

GOLD

Victoria Spears, Talent Development Manager, West Monroe Partners

Addressing the gap between what businesses expect from consultants and what consultants can provide, the talent development team at West Monroe Partners investigated what shifts in culture and curriculum needed to happen and developed the Value Creation workshop.

Managed by Victoria Spears, the Value Creation workshop aligns focus on why consultants are hired for projects, not the different types of projects or skills they possess. By implementing this different mindset, learners at West Monroe Partners are able to track and communicate value to clients at every stage of the project, while assessing client’s needs throughout.

The Value Creation workshop was offered 11 times between 2017 and 2018, garnering 54 percent of the target population’s completion. The learners who completed the workshop had the opportunity to submit a case study revealing the effectiveness of the skills and values taught. The top three case studies were presented at West Monroe Partners’ directors retreat, demonstrating the companywide shift in mindset.

With 76 percent of workshop participants saying they’d recommend the workshop, value creation has become a fundamental company value. As a result, West Monroe Partners has seen 67 percent growth in revenue since starting the workshop.

SILVER

Kamilah Townsend, Learning & Development Manager, Ally

To improve revenue returns, Ally tried out a manager-specific training. Borrowing metrics from their department of subject matter experts, learning and development was able to find the best ways to measure impact and the specific traits team leaders would need to expect improvement in returns.

Led by Kamilah Townsend, Ally’s learning and development team designed an engaging and results-driven program that focused on participants demonstrating their ability to lead. Those learners rated the new learning program 4.5 out of 5 and showed significant improvement across the measured variables, amounting to an overall higher ROI for training and development costs.