Elearning! August - September

2013

Elearning! Magazine: Building Smarter Companies via Learning & Workplace Technologies.

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The Hertz Corporation: Gaining a Seat at the Table Karl-Heinz Oehler, senior vice president for Global Talent Management at Te Hertz Corporation, practices what he preaches. For a company to be truly successful in today's ultra-competitive world, corporate learning must become a way of life. Karl-Heinz Oehler: 'We have almost quadrupled the investment in learning over the last fve years.' "We don't really look at learning in isolation, we look at it as integral to bottom-line success," cites Oehler. "Te philosophy is that employee development is integrated into business processes. Whenever you read articles and books, you always see that learning or HR or talent or development needs to be connected to business — but when you ask questions on how you do that, you don't really get a good answer. Hertz is unique in that we have made that really important connection." Hertz's learning and development solutions have, as he puts it, "driven organizational efectiveness to enhance market competitiveness" by: >> Integrating into the frm's value chain >> Defning its impact as economic value add >> Providing real-time response to business needs >> Delivering learning solutions, not training programs >> Becoming an integral part of talent management Oehler was the frst proponent at Hertz to outsource learning, and it's paid of in a big way. ACS Xerox, which manages the Hertz Learning Services , designs and administers instructional programs, and conducts some of their delivery. "If we need to source anything specifc, they will source it for us," adds Oehler. "What we have kept in-house is some of the delivery of very specifc programs, such as executive development and culture shaping programs. Even more importantly, we have established a role called 'business learning partners,' who are subject-matter experts in specifc business functions. "A lot of companies struggle to effectively outsource learning, but we've proven that it's very efective, not only from an operations point of view but also from a business point of view." Oehler, using expertise gained through master's degrees in social psychology and economics from the University of Düsseldorf, has convinced Hertz's top managers that learning is indeed driving the company's success. "When I joined Hertz in 2007," he notes, "learning was 0.6 percent of total payroll and benefts; in 2012, it was 2.71 percent — which is a huge increase. Tere is a particular focus on the front line, because that's where the action happens and where the customer contact is. Tat front line is more important to us than anything we do in the company." It's important to note that the increase in learning and talent investment was not automatic. Oehler needed what he calls "a seat at the table" — a meaningful role in upper management's fnancial planning meetings. "How do you get a seat at the table? You get it if you understand the language that's spoken at the table," he insists. "I've spent half of my life in business, so when I transferred into organization development, I got tired of always defending why I need more money, when everybody else got what they needed just by asking. So I turned it around and asked the business managers what they wanted and demonstrated to them in fnancial terms that learning would generate monetary value to the bottom line. "I wasn't talking to the extended leadership about specifc learning tools and assessment; nobody cares about those. What people care about is the output that learning generates that makes us more efective in the marketplace. Once they began to vet the numbers coming out of fnance, I wasn't disputed any more. Tat's why we have a seat at the table. "I do believe that HR and talent management are valuable support functions that need to be fully integrated into the business. I hire people who have business experience. Yes, I have specialists, but they can communicate what the business needs. I have proven in many instances that we've signifcantly impacted business results. Once you do that and the fnance department is behind you, you don't really need to justify yourself any more." AREA OF CULTURE EXCELLENCE Elearning! August / September 2013 25

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