Elearning! Magazine: Building Smarter Companies via Learning & Workplace Technologies.
Issue link: http://elmezine.epubxp.com/i/714072
Elearning! August / September 2016 19 Vi operates residential facilities for active and retired adults operated by Hilton Ho- tels. Vi employs 2,046 people across 10 fa- cilities and its corporate office. Vi's strong collaboration with business partners and alignment of learning strategies and initiatives are what drives results. What makes Vi unique is how the company's Learning and Organizational Develop- ment department engages with its busi- ness partners. Responsibility for learning is viewed as a leadership competency and is part of each leaders' annual goals which are tied to compensation. is partner- ship has manifested in high levels of employee and resident satisfaction, high levels of employee retention and strong financial and quality performance. per- formance. Nine out of 11 of Vi's locations have won awards as top employers and best places to work in 2015. Vi's future success depends upon de- veloping future leaders with the same cultural DNA. Vi's Breakthrough Lead- ership Program does just that. It lever- ages the best of classroom, virtual and collaborative learning and multi-faceted evaluation techniques to measure each aspect of the program. Vi partnered with organizational development faculty from DePaul University to identify what spe- cific elements of Vi's leadership training program were effective and worked to refine what specific elements contribute to participant success. In the past, Vi strictly relied on program participant retention, promotion rates and partici- pant and managerial feedback to assess program effectiveness. Although each component of this program offers the benefit of providing unique learning, insight, and reinforcement of concepts, each learning event has its own training assessment associated with it. A determi- nation of overall program effectiveness requires capturing information about learners that is based on the objectives of the entire program, not simply tied to a given learning event. e end goal was to design a more systematic approach to assessing training outcomes connected to learning across the program. As a result, Vi implemented a variety of assessment tools for participants, their managers and peers. ese assessments were taken before the start of the pro- gram, during the program, and aer the program ended to measure the effective- ness of each program element. In addi- tion, Vi's Learning and Organizational Development team engaged senior ex- ecutives throughout the entire program (including virtual sessions) to reinforce key concepts and share personal learn- ing. Vi invested in key partners such as faculty from DePaul University, Harvard Business and TalentSmart to deliver best in class solutions. Successful training ef- fectiveness assessment depended on us- ing multiple methods and sources of data and focused on outcomes known to be empirically associated with increased learning readiness, training motivation, transfer of train- ing and job performance. Findings included: >> Emotional Intelligent scores exceeded benchmark data across all dimensions by 10 percent. Overall emotion- al quotient scores increased seven percent to 86 percent with a 75 percent benchmark. >> Knowledge gains were evaluated pre-class, aer class and one year later, and showed a 25 percent increase in knowledge. >> Attitudes and skills eval¬uated pre- and one year later reported an 11-per¬cent average gain across all dimensions including self-efficacy, utility, transfer motiva- tion, role clarity, supervisor support, skills self-assessment. >> Engagement in leadership development activities asking for feedback by capa- bilities increased from 30 to 80 percent. >> All 13 dimensions measured saw a nearly 90 percent increase in abilities. VI is a six-time Learning! 100 award winner. HEAR FROM THE WINNER: At Vi, Learning is a Leadership Competency Pictured: John Quigley, Director of Human Resources and Tonya Piper, Human Resources Generalist, Vi AREA OF EXCELLENCE C U LT U R E