The Talent Management Cookbook: Recipes for Successful Talent Management

The Talent Management
Cookbook

Stacia Sherman Garr
Vice President, Talent Management Research

Bersin by Deloitte
Deloitte Consulting LLP
January 2014

Copyright © 2014 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved.
This material is licensed to Saba Software, Inc., for distribution only.

The Talent Management Cookbook

2

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3

Overview
Today, more than ever, talent management is an important component
of an organization’s success. To help HR professionals and other business
leaders succeed in evolving their approach to talent management, we
have developed The Talent Management Cookbook. We have designed
this report to read like a typical cookbook and have provided “recipes”
for the core “entrées” necessary for an updated talent management
approach. Of course, an organization could choose a different “menu,”
but we think that our selected recipes will help leaders build the
foundational blocks for a successful talent management approach.

In This Menu
• Entrée 1: Social Sourcing. Readers will learn about the latest tools
being used to identify active and passive candidates, screen them for
capability and compatibility, and leverage the power of collaboration
between recruiters and talent managers.
• Entrée 2: Continuous Learning. This recipe explores how to advance
from a blended learning model to one that emphasizes on-the-job
experiences, tools such as online libraries and job aids, and how to
leverage the classroom and e-learning.
• Entrée 3: Operational and Compliance Training. Readers will see
why operational training is important, and also how to implement
an effective compliance learning program. As this training is one of
the few times learning organizations have a captive audience, it is
essential to use this opportunity to both impart critical knowledge
and reinforce a strong learning culture.
• Entrée 4: Modern Performance Management. The traditional
way of managing employee performance has given way to a new
model. Readers will see how using a process of regular goal-setting,
continuous feedback, coaching, and rewards and recognition can
optimize the workforce for long-term success.



4

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction

5

The Entrées: Four Core Talent Processes
Entrée #1: Social Sourcing

7

Recipe: Creating a Talent Acquisition Function with
Exceptional Social Sourcing Capabilities

10

Bersin Blue Plate Special: Using Social Sourcing to Gain a
Holistic View of Candidates

13

Entrée #2: Continuous Learning

15

Recipe: Building a Learning Architecture to Support
Continuous Learning

20

Bersin Blue Plate Special: Yum! Brands Implements Blended
Learning to Create a Consistent Dining Experience

24

Entrée #3: Operational and Compliance Learning

26

Recipe: Designing an Operational and Compliance
Learning Program

28

Bersin Blue Plate Special: Allina Hospitals and Clinics Uses
Continuous Learning to Efficiently Deliver Compliance Training

31

Entrée #4: Modern Performance Management

33

Recipe: Developing a Modern Approach to Performance
Management

37

Bersin Blue Plate Special: Media-Saturn Uses Performance
Management to Align Employees and Better Understand Talent

40

Conclusion

42

Recipe Notes: Key Takeaways

43

Appendix I: Glossary of Terms

46

Appendix II: Table of Figures

48

About Us

49



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Introduction
Today’s workplace—and workforce—are in the midst of a rapid and
continuous change. The past decade has seen transformations such as:
• How businesses operate. Communication and collaboration tools
have enabled teams to work together across multiple time zones and
varied cultures. These types of tools facilitate collaboration and faster
decision-making, and therefore quicker reaction to the marketplace.
• How consumers buy. Today’s consumer is more educated and
has more options. Technology and social media have put more
information than ever at consumers’ fingertips. As a result, the
way products and services are marketed and sold has changed
dramatically.
• How businesses compete. Barriers to entry have changed. Online sales
often do not require a brick-and-mortar location or any inventory to be
held. Consumers have come to accept this as the new normal.
• What employees expect. Gone are the days of company loyalty.
Young adults joining the workforce straight out of college are not
looking for pensions but rather developmental opportunities and the
chance to make a difference.
In this transformative period, business leaders report that filling talent
and skills gaps are among their biggest challenges.1 Meanwhile, global
growth, including merger and acquisition activity, has meant that
businesses need to rapidly integrate and improve the skills of employees
in these organizations.2
The clear conclusion drawn from these trends is that we need a better
approach for managing talent. Today, talent management is about
using systems, solutions, and processes to make the elements of talent
management work together and reinforce each other.

1

For more information, Key Findings: Becoming a High-Impact Learning

Organization, Bersin by Deloitte / David Mallon, August 2012. Available to research
members at www.bersin.com/library.
2 Ibid.



6

We developed this cookbook to help leaders examine their own
talent management organizations and processes, as well as to develop
strategies and solutions that can lead to success. Included are four recipes
that will guide readers through the steps that will help create a dynamic
workforce, within a dynamic workplace, that can achieve success.
The four recipes in this cookbook are as follows:
1. Entrée #1: Social Sourcing
2. Entrée #2: Continuous Learning
3. Entrée #3: Operational and Compliance Training
4. Entrée #4: Modern Performance Management



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The Entrées: Four Core Talent Processes

Entrée #1: Social Sourcing
The competition for finding high-quality job candidates is growing
increasingly intense as the global economy steadily grows out of the
most recent recession. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,
unemployment in the United States dropped to 7 percent at the end
of 2013—the lowest level in five years.3 In highly skilled fields, the job
market is much tighter. For example, unemployment in the technology
sector is estimated to be just 3.6 percent.4 Further, according to an
analysis by Computerworld5, the unemployment rate for software
developers is a mere 2.2 percent—essentially nonexistent.
This comes at a time when the practice of sourcing, recruiting, and
selecting qualified candidates is being completely revolutionized. Printed
classified ads—those relics from another era—have given way to webbased employment marketplaces, industry-specific marketplaces, and
robust company job boards. Those online tools are now being augmented
and, in some cases, supplanted by novel social recruiting tools that use
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other resources. Recruiters are also
finding candidates on function-specific online gathering spots such as
GitHub and Stack Overflow (e.g., for the software developer community).
Although unemployment remains high among many groups, highly
skilled workers are in great demand, making it critical for organizations
to become “talent magnets” and create a steady pipeline of top

3

Source: “U.S. economy adds 203,000 jobs November; unemployment rate down to

7 percent,” The Washington Post / Ylan Q. Mui, December 6, 2013, www.washingtonpost.
com/business/economy/economy-added-203k-jobs-in-november-unemployment-down-to7percent/2013/12/06/a183a50c-5dfa-11e3-bc56-c6ca94801fac_story.html.
4
Source: “Tech unemployment rate sees slight uptick,” Boston Business Journal /
Patricia Resende, July 12, 2013, www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/techflash/2013/07/techunemployment-rate-sees-slight.html.
5
Source: “Unemployment rate for electrical engineers soars,” Computerworld /
Patrick Thibodeau, April 9, 2013, www.computerworld.com/s/article/9238266/
Unemployment_rate_for_electrical_engineers_soars.



8

people.6 This attraction should reach both outward and inward.
Externally, organizations should focus on building and communicating
a strong and relevant employment brand, as well as treating every
employee as a brand ambassador.

The New Talent Sourcing Landscape
Today, recruiters should cast a wide net, employing every available
resource to identify external, internal, and especially passive candidates.
This latter group—those who are not actively looking for jobs—may be
the most valuable because these candidates are likely having success at
their current positions.
As many leaders know, these valuable candidates are often on social
media.7,8 Although scanning candidates’ LinkedIn or Facebook profiles
can prove enlightening, new tools are enabling organizations to move
beyond these ubiquitous views. For example, some tools can aggregate
information from various networks and online gathering spots to
enable talent acquisition teams to obtain a more multifaceted view of
candidates. Tools that survey industry-specific chat rooms and message
boards can reveal how skilled a candidate is at solving certain problems.
Some vendors can scan a wide range of social media looking for
candidates, including not only the largest networks but also niche sites
such as Meetup, Quora, and even social video sites such as Vimeo.
Although much effort is being put into identifying excellent external
candidates, talent acquisition leaders would be remiss if they failed to
create a robust online-based sourcing strategy for current employees. The
use of internal social platforms to build employment brand and post jobs is
6

For more information, Predictions for 2014: Building a Strong Talent Pipeline for

the Global Economic Recovery, Bersin by Deloitte / Josh Bersin, January 2014. Available to
research members at www.bersin.com/library.
7
Source: LinkedIn has grown past 259 million members, according to Mashable
(“LinkedIn Tops 250 Million Members,” Mashable / Seth Fiegerman, October 29, 2013,
http://mashable.com/2013/10/29/linkedin-q3-earnings/), while Facebook claims it has 1.19
billion active users per month according to Facebook Newsroom (“Company Info – Key
Facts,” Facebook Newsroom, 2014, http://newsroom.fb.com/Key-Facts).
8
Source: An analysis by Staff.com suggested that 29 percent of job-seekers use social
media as their primary search tool—a figure that in certain sectors is undoubtedly low
(“Social Media for Recruitment – Infographic,” Staff.com, n.d., www.staff.com/blog/
social-media-for-recruitment-infographic/).



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a solid first step being taken by many organizations; however, most talent
acquisition teams could do more. For example, many organizations are
aggregating the vast array of information (e.g., demographic, performance,
and assessment data) on current employees, and then enabling employees
to supplement it with career aspirations, skills, knowledge, and abilities—
information that may not be as well known to the organization.
This approach provides talent acquisition organizations with a searchable
database of known internal candidates. Yet, despite the potential power
represented by creating such a database, few organizations are taking
advantage of this opportunity. Instead of identifying qualified internal
candidates, many organizations are dogmatically aligned to the mantra
of “employees must drive their own careers.” The result is that talent
acquisition organizations are taking a “post and pray” approach with
internal candidates. The irony is many of those employees do drive
their own careers—right out of that organization. The reason? These
employees are unable to find the right internal opportunity on their
own, and they are receiving little to no help from their organizations.
Instead of allowing this situation to continue, organizations should
leverage the wealth of information available to them—both inside
and outside the organization—to create a pool of qualified internal
candidates. For example, if an organization is looking to find a new
manager for a group of software developers, then it could use its talent
management data to find individuals who fit the basic requirements (e.g.,
tenure, location, position, performance rating). The organization could
then leverage both internal and external online social tools to determine
whether the person has taken on leadership roles in the past within the
organization’s online forums (e.g., by being a leader within an employee
resource group) or through extracurricular activities (e.g., as shown on
LinkedIn or Facebook). The talent acquisition lead could then provide
the hiring manager with a list of relevant internal candidates that the
manager could “casually” get to know better. This can be done before it is
ever suggested to the employee that he or she apply for the new role.
Although many individual recruiters have adopted social media tools,
most organizations are still in the early stages of developing and
implementing comprehensive social sourcing strategies. This adoption
gap is creating an incredible opportunity for talent acquisition teams.
Those that move quickly will likely gain an enormous advantage over
the competition when it comes to finding appropriate employees for
their organizations.



Recipe
Creating a Talent Acquisition Function with
Exceptional Social Sourcing Capabilities
Ingredients
ZZ Sourcing specialist / talent community manager who is equal parts
subject-matter expert / organization cheerleader / talent sleuth
ZZ Recruiter who is equal parts organization cheerleader / close-at-all-costs
salesperson / empathetic hand-holder
ZZ Strong partnerships with hiring managers to identify critical skills and
capabilities, as well as target-rich environments for candidates
ZZ Flexibility and enthusiasm to try interesting and promising new solutions
(in small batches) for talent community build-out and sourcing

1. Determine the critical skills and capabilities needed across the
organization. This process should be initiated by surveying hiring
managers, workforce planning experts, and business leaders. Not only
will this help focus the talent acquisition organization on a clear set
of goals going forward but also it will help ensure alignment with key
stakeholders in the business.
2. Identify target-rich environments for candidates. Practically speaking,
this means identifying not only where candidates with the desired skills
live and work in the physical world but also where they spend time
online. To do this, leverage your relationships with hiring managers to
better understand your potential candidates. Also consider using tools to
determine where people spend time online and whether they are actively
searching for a new job or may be open to new opportunities.


10


Recipe (cont’d)
3. Attract candidates by inviting them to join small, online communities.
Develop a strategy for attracting active and passive candidates to a
specific online location (e.g., a LinkedIn page, a dedicated website), and
then develop a talent community9 within that location. Steadily warm
up the community by populating the site with interesting materials that
help candidates see inside the organization, and subsequently return and
participate. This can include videos from employees on what it is like to
work at the organization, blog updates from talent acquisition staff, reports
on exciting projects within the organization, crowdsourced solutions to
challenges the organization is addressing, and even employment branding
commercials. The idea is to pull people to the organization—to effectively
use these communities as talent magnets. Involve hiring managers in
developing ideas that can attract candidates with specific skills. As the
talent community builds, slowly and carefully identify qualified candidates
and steer them to a specific recruiting team member.
4. Explore suitability of alternate social sourcing solutions that can
provide you with detailed insights into candidates’ skills. Some
solutions, for example, enable the use of Twitter and Facebook as a way to
identify and interact with passive and active candidates. Other solutions
can search online meeting places and forums where candidates share
ideas or post examples of their work.
5. Continuously manage your organization’s brand. Scan and regularly update
third-party websites that employees and candidates use to gain greater
insight into your organization. Examples of these online destinations include
Glassdoor and Indeed. Additionally, it’s important to monitor, survey, and
then improve candidate experiences. Questions to ask include:
•
•

What did they not like?

•

9

What did they like about the process?

Were they contacted in a timely manner?

A “talent community” means different things in different organizations, but we

define it as an online and interactive community of candidates interested in a specific
organization. In these communities, potential candidates can interact with other
candidates and existing employees at an organization.


11


Recipe (cont’d)

You may want to also apply for “Best Place to Work” recognition.
Although these applications can be time-consuming, they can also be
important to an employment organization’s brand. The fact that they
are independently awarded bestows credibility above and beyond an
organization’s own content.

6. Consider implementing prehire assessments to screen and enable stack
ranking as early as possible. Solutions that offer online collaboration
with hiring managers can help recruiters quickly develop tests for
knowledge, skills, and abilities. These assessments can go beyond those
metrics, however, and include personality assessments to help facilitate a
match between organizational culture and work environment.
7. Carefully align your candidates with the job requirements you have
discussed with your hiring manager. This will help make sure that you
are focused on the candidates with essential “must have” skills first.
If the steps you have followed to this point have been well aligned,
coordinated, and administrated with your hiring manager partners, your
organization will have an online presence that will help enable you to identify
the leading candidates inside and outside your organization. e


12


Bersin Blue Plate Special: Using Social
Sourcing to Gain a Holistic View of Candidates
An international software development company with a large
roster of FORTUNE 500 clients recently found itself in a challenging
position. The organization’s success in what was once a niche
technology field had blossomed, but with that growth came
competition from other large industry players. Not only was the
software company suddenly competing against larger organizations
but also it faced dramatically increased competition in the job
market for a particular type of engineer.
An early adopter of technology and social sourcing as a recruiting
tool, the talent acquisition team at this company was searching
for an advantage over the competition. The organization began
to question whether it was missing qualified candidates by only
seeking out the most active voices on social media. Furthermore,
it was looking to become more efficient. Historically, the company
would spend up to 21 days identifying and assessing candidates
before it began the formal interview process. Although recruiters
would often come up with a list of 40 to 50 potential candidates
for open jobs, in most cases only four to five candidates were
actually qualified for any particular position. If they could narrow
down the search early in the process, then the talent acquisition
team believed that it would see increased efficiency and better
candidates to share with hiring managers.
To address these issues, the talent acquisition team enlisted the
help of the organization’s CTO (chief technology officer) to assess
different vendor solutions. The organization launched a one-year
pilot program with a solution provider whose platform offered
the team several advantages over its existing model.
The solution provider’s platform was capable of searching more
than 60 social media sites, some of which included the world’s
most popular forums and others that were specific to software
and developers. By aggregating this information, recruiters were
given a more holistic view of candidates and could thus make
more objective assessments. The tool also ranked candidates based


13

Bersin Blue Plate Special: Using Social Sourcing (cont’d)

on their skills. This predictive analysis allowed recruiters to narrow
their search to a smaller group of candidates.
Further, recruiters found that the broader view of candidates
made their conversations more relevant to candidates and
enabled the recruiters to engage on multiple levels. Another
feature of this broader picture meant recruiters had multiple
channels for contacting clients.
As of this writing, the software organization has just begun
analyzing the results from its one-year pilot project, but its own
anecdotal evidence has been so strong that it has since rolled out
the solution across the global organization. One early test of the
solution proved particularly telling. The software company asked
the vendor to use its candidate analysis feature to rate a blinded list
of 100 candidates and recently hired employees. When the rankings
came back, they showed that the employees with the top rankings
were either already enjoying successful careers at the organization
or were high on the recruiter’s lists. For the talent acquisition
team, these findings confirmed that the team could use the new
solution to more quickly identify the top talent, bring them in for
interviews, and then hire them into the organization. e


14


15

Entrée #2: Continuous Learning
As we mentioned in the Introduction to this report, both the workforce
and the workplace have changed. The result is that employees need
new skills, knowledge, and abilities to adapt to this new, ever-evolving
business environment and help their organizations compete effectively.
To enable this adaptability, organizations are moving to a model of
continuous learning, relying less and less on the traditional classroom
and blended learning approach.
What do we mean by “continuous learning”? As the name suggests,
continuous learning means that the organization does not look at
learning and development (LD) only in terms of formal, planned,
learning activities. Rather, the company organizes its resources,
expectations, and learning culture in such a way as to encourage
employees to learn continuously throughout their tenures.
Figure 1 shows the Bersin by Deloitte Continuous Learning Model,
which illustrates the key concepts of continuous learning. This model is
different from other learning models in two important ways:
1. It accounts for immediate, intermediate, and transitional learning
needs of employees.
2. It facilitates a holistic approach to development across learning
paradigms.



16

Figure 1: Bersin by Deloitte Continuous Learning Model

Source: Bersin by Deloitte, 2014.

Learning Needs
Our Continuous Learning Model reflects the fact that employees learn
constantly in a variety of ways. We have classified those learning needs
into three main categories:
• Immediate. Regardless of their position or even tenure in the
company, at one point or another, all employees will need access to
information that helps them perform their current job functions.
• Intermediate. The second circle in our Continuous Learning Model
represents the types of learning elements employees need to develop
in their current positions—and to continue to expand competencies.
• Transitional. The outer circle of the model represents learning
elements necessary to develop employees to meet long-term business
goals or systemic career jumps. This can be a new role, a shift in a
career, or other related move.



17

It is important to clarify that the rings in this model do not indicate
skill level. Although employees at a higher management level may
find that more of their development activities are located on the outer
transitional ring, these categories are descriptive, not prescriptive.
Typically, employees will find themselves moving between the three rings
regularly. This model allows employees, LD, talent management, and
line management to take stock of available development activities, and
then tailor the path based on employee interests and business needs.

Learning Paradigms
Although many LD organizations focus on formal education, research
tells us that 70 percent of learning occurs outside formal programs.10 Our
Continuous Learning Model accounts for learning in four contexts (not
just one):
• Education. Learning elements that fall into this context are
those that most of us think of when we refer to learning and
development. These learning elements have a beginning and an
end, are often seen as events, and are trackable (e.g., classroom
training, e-learning, simulations).
• Experience. Learning in this context occurs while the employee is in
the workplace. Learning elements in this category can include stretch
assignments, job rotations, and special projects.
• Environment. This learning context encompasses tools and systems
that employees use on the job to learn or support them in their work.
These systems include information systems, search engines, job aids,
performance support tools, and online asset libraries.
• Exposure. Exposure includes learning elements that involve
interactions and relationships. This context helps employees develop
by building connections through professional conferences and
organizations, volunteer assignments in the community, communities
of practice, and coaching and mentoring activities.

10

For more information, The Learning Architecture: Defining Development and

Enabling Continuous Learning, Bersin by Deloitte / David Mallon. Report is due to be
published Q1’2014.



18

One final point: If we think of the continuous learning circle as the
entirety of the learning activities that an employee will be exposed
to over his or her tenure in a particular role, then the percentage of
learning accomplished through education, experience, environment,
and exposure will vary by employee. For example, an accountant who
needs to remain informed and compliant with financial and legal
regulations may be assigned more education than exposure elements.
Likewise, a new employee may need to focus learning in experience
and environment, whereas a seasoned manager may find more to learn
through exposure.

The Continuous Learning Landscape
Is a continuous learning model all that important to success? We think
so. This type of model has several advantages over the traditional
training model:
• Knowledge retention and development. Perhaps the most obvious
reasons for adopting a continuous learning model are greater
retention of knowledge by employees and continuous employee
development through a steady stream of learning elements
that reinforce new ideas. In a traditional event-driven learning
environment, employees’ knowledge retention is initially high
but declines precipitously over time. Continuous learning enables
employees to return to the knowledge they recently acquired and
reinforce it over time.
• Agility and adaptability. A continuous learning model helps
businesses remain agile and responsive for several reasons. First, it
aids in creating a culture of learning that encourages employees to
seek information at the moment of need. Instead of insisting on a
rigid learning format dictated from higher up, a learning culture
showcases an organization’s desire to fully develop employees.

A continuous learning model is also often more adaptable. Employees
increasingly require information that is new, timely, and delivered in
small, bite-size pieces. With a continuous learning model, informality
and simplicity can be built into learning assets—often at a lower
price. Further, with these types of assets, employee development
plans can leverage a variety of learning assets to make the learning
experience more tailored.



19

• Learner responsibility. Finally, a continuous learning model puts some
of the responsibility for development on the employees themselves.
This is not to say that the LD function does not play a crucial role;
however, continuous learning changes the nature of the game. With
a continuous learning model, employees do not wait around to be
spoon-fed information in the same way that they do with an eventbased or programmatic approach. Instead, they are expected to
take an active role in their own development and use the available
resources to solve problems. In essence, learners adopt the mantra of
librarians: “I don’t know the answer, but I know how to find out.”

Implementing Continuous Learning
Success in implementing continuous learning is contingent on
organizations developing a learning architecture.11 A learning
architecture is a documented set of elements that define what the
LD organization will accomplish and the impact it will leave on the
organization—not a task checklist. This architecture enables LD leaders
to project their organization as a solution provider and business asset.
Although each organization’s learning architecture will be different,
reflecting its own strategies and business demands, there are some
essential and common components of a successful learning architecture.
These include the following:
• Solutions. High-impact learning organizations take a “solution”
approach—instead of a programmatic approach—to learning,
synthesizing all relevant learning elements to offer complete solutions
that meet business needs.
• Approaches. Approaches are the learning and development elements
accounted for within the organization. They can be defined as the
building blocks used to create solutions.

11

A “learning architecture” is an organization’s unique map of agreed-on learning needs,

learning strategies, and delivery strategies for its training. This gives designers, trainers, and
managers a clear view of what types of problems the organization will solve, how they will solve
them, what tools they need, and which approaches the organization will take. It deliberately
limits the organization’s options by deciding how and where the training organization will focus
its efforts, and it builds on the organization’s culture and history of learning.



20

• Core processes. These are the processes that are essential to the
functioning of LD. Common examples include performance
consulting, design and development, content development,
communication and internal marketing, and support.
• Disciplines. The skills that an LD organization needs to function are
its disciplines. Generally, these include elements such as instructional
design project management and content development.
• Tools and technology. These are the tools and utilities required to
both create and consume training within an organization.

Recipe
Building a Learning Architecture to Support
Continuous Learning
Ingredients
ZZ Several strong-willed leaders willing to stake out a clear position on the
types of challenges LD will solve in an organization
ZZ Several (as many as possible) innovative and creative LD managers
interested in applying different learning approaches
ZZ Skilled communication techniques to explain your LD organization’s
essential role in business success
ZZ Time and budget to invest in continuous learning approaches (amount
will vary by scope of learning initiative and organization size)

1. Define the scope of your learning and development organization.
When cooking any meal, you first need to understand your overall goal.
In this case, that means identifying the types of solutions the learning
organization will provide. Start by clarifying within LD, and then to
the rest of the organization, what development looks like in this company.
To do this, organizational leaders should answer the question: “What
does it mean to develop employees in our organization?”



Recipe (cont’d)

You can begin building this answer by assessing what your organization
does currently. Work with senior leaders to consider questions such as
the following:
•

•

What are the outcomes we want to achieve? What would great
development look like in the future?

•

What is currently working and what is not?

•

What do we need to stop doing?

•

What outcomes are we trying to reach as a result of our current
development efforts? To what extent are we achieving those
outcomes today?

What do we need to start doing?

Keep in mind that what may be an appropriate definition in one
organization may be completely wrong for another. Yet, it is crucial
to get this definition right because it affects everything that LD
does. If development means encouraging participation in professional
organizations, then this will become a part of the learning architecture
and therefore a part of development plans. Likewise, if development
means participating in cross-functional job rotations, then this, too,
should be integrated into the definition. The point is to know what
development looks like in your organization.

2. Clarify the needs of the business and the audiences that LD serves.
If your LD organization lacks a clear understanding of the most
pressing business challenges and LD’s role in helping address them,
now is the time to obtain that understanding. Engage in conversations
with business leaders about their most critical current business needs and
what they anticipate them to be in the future.

To determine your audience, itemize the knowledge, skills, and abilities
the organization needs to develop today and in the near and long-term
future. Analyze how and where your audience works and learns. For
example, does your audience travel extensively to global locations? Or do
they primarily work from a single location?


21


Recipe (cont’d)
3. Build your organization’s learning structure around the four
core learning elements that reflect today’s business environment
(education, experience, environment, and exposure). Collaborate with
business leaders to develop an understanding of the breadth of resources
that will be most appropriate for each audience. Remember to include
the critical elements of a learning architecture in your design (solutions,
approaches, core processes, disciplines, and tools and technology).
4. Align your learning architecture with your learning culture. For
example, if your organization is moving from a strictly formal learning
framework to one that relies on learning beyond the classroom—
including experience, environment, and exposure—then make sure
your organization’s culture is willing to embrace this change. If your
organization’s existing culture does not reflect this approach, then
consider how to change the culture. For some organizations, that change
should be evolutionary and gradual in nature; for other organizations, it
may need to be revolutionary. Understand which approach is appropriate
for your organization. If your organization’s culture already aligns with
your learning architecture, then it is important to leverage that culture.
5. Communicate the learning architecture. Success here requires two
elements. The first is to create an easy-to-understand visual that should
be widely shared within your organization. Some companies call
this a “simple face.” This graphic enables employees outside LD to
rapidly understand the goals and tools your organization will use to
develop employees. It also lets employees see how they can expect to be
supported throughout their careers. If your organization is moving from
a traditional learning model to a continuous one, then the visual can also
be a tool to discuss the transition. See Figure 2 for an example of how
BJC HealthCare explains its learning architecture.


22


23

Figure 2: The Simple Face of LD from BJC HealthCare

Source: BJC HealthCare, 2010.

Recipe (cont’d)
The second element is to create a plan for discussing your learning
architecture as a business solution and a related plan for discussing it with
your learning audience. As a business tool, it is important to position
LD as having a set of rules that defines how the organization selects and
develops tools, content, and learning programs. To the learning audience, it is
important to broadcast that LD is there to make sure employees have the
development opportunities they need to grow professionally and be an asset
to the organization. e



Bersin Blue Plate Special: Yum! Brands
Implements Blended Learning to Create a
Consistent Dining Experience
Yum! Brands is one of the world’s largest restaurant companies,
with 39,000 Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut restaurants operating
in more than 100 countries, and generating more than $13 billion
in annual revenue. It takes more than 1.4 million employees to
keep these restaurants clean, and to cook and serve food in a
welcoming environment.
Keeping the experience uniform across different countries and
cultures is important to business success. Creating this uniformity
requires a learning environment that provides consistent, highquality development and training—an enormous task. Another
challenge facing the company is low retention rate in an industry
known for high turnover. The open question at Yum! became
whether improving learning and development within the
company would lead to improved retention and business results.
Historically, each of Yum!'s three marquee restaurant brands
developed—and delivered—its own training. Even within regions,
and from restaurant to restaurant, training was inconsistent. Some
restaurant managers tracked development and training using
handwritten notes in personnel files, whereas others improvised
with spreadsheets. As a result, it was difficult to measure a
learning program’s effectiveness across the organization.
To transform its learning and development organization, Yum!
implemented a new solution it branded as the “Learning Zone.”
The platform was designed to manage learning across the
employee lifecycle. As such, the learning and development program
needed to encompass not only traditional educational learning—
such as food-handling courses—but also on-the-job environmental
learning such as online access to checklists, recipes, and assessments.
An integrated communication platform also enabled scheduled
and impromptu meetings and discussions across time zones and
countries. This allowed, for example, managers to share ideas and
discuss solutions to problems they were facing.


24

Bersin Blue Plate Special: Yum! Brands Implements Blended Learning (cont’d)

Initially tested with just one brand, the new learning platform
is now being rolled out globally. Thus far, the results have been
impressive. Today, more than 21 online courses are completed
every minute, translating to 30,000 courses completed each day.
This solution has led to tangible business results. In locations
where the Yum! Learning Zone is heavily used, there has been
a significant uptick in individual restaurant hospitality scores
and employee retention. “The hospitality score, in some stores,
has improved by two and a half percentage points, which is a
big jump in our world,” says the company’s director of learning
technologies. “We have also seen an increase in ‘refer a friend’
scores to become team members, as our associates are more
comfortable, confident, and happy in their roles.” e


25


26

Entrée #3: Operational and
Compliance Learning
As business has become more global, more social, and more
interconnected, operational and compliance training has become
increasingly complex. The reality is that all organizations must engage
in some form of operational training. This can include everything from
onboarding to safety and regulatory compliance training. Organizations
need to perform this operational training well, especially because lapses
in compliance—and by extension compliance learning—can introduce risk
and lead to substantial fines, penalties, and legal action. Although these
are age-old worries, in today’s highly interconnected environment, lapses
can go viral in a matter of hours, impacting public opinion and damaging
a company’s bottom line.
This type of training is also essential because these learning exercises are
one of the few times that organizations will have a captive audience of
large groups of employees together at one time. If operational training,
and by extension compliance training, are done well, then they can help
reinforce the emphasis the organization places on learning, and thus
underscore the organization’s learning culture. As such, performing this
type of training well should also be treated as a core part of supporting
your learning organization’s brand.

The Operational and Compliance
Learning Landscape
Today, organizations must contend with regulatory bodies from multiple
countries, international organizations, and state and local agencies.
Additionally, compliance learning has taken on a wider meaning,
having an impact on operation-critical issues such as quality control
and employee safety areas that can have a profound effect on costs
and employee productivity. Finally, compliance learning impacts an
organization’s culture by establishing expectations and acceptable
behavior around business ethics and codes of conduct.
This underscores the importance of operational and compliance
learning. Solutions can be either customized or off-the-shelf content,
and may include a variety of learning paradigms including education



27

(instructor-led sessions or online training and written exams), experience
(on-the-job training), environment (job aids or performance support
tools), or exposure (communities of practice). Regulatory compliance,
for its part, requires a detailed auditing trail, which can make the use
of traditional educational approaches valuable. That said, the use of
continuous learning approaches (discussed in the previous section)
are also appropriate, because these resources can be rapidly evolved,
accommodating the particular need of compliance and operational
learning to be regularly updated to reflect new rules and regulations.
Increasingly, organizations are leveraging e-learning and online
gamification solutions to replace or reduce instructor-led training,
resulting in cost savings. Generally speaking, on-demand training enables
employees to participate at a time that is best suited to them—and
minimizes the time away from their primary job. Web-enabled platforms
also enable learning executives to scale offerings quickly without the
need to schedule more teachers and book more classrooms. In addition,
results of questions and quizzes given within the context of e-learning
can be shown to governance bodies to indicate that employees appeared
to comprehend the compliance materials given to them.
Many organizations use comprehensive learning management systems
to manage the breadth of operational and compliance learning
offerings. These software platforms can help organizations integrate
disparate learning solutions, enable the delivery of content, measure
results, manage certifications, and provide the all-important audit and
reporting process.



Recipe
Designing an Operational and Compliance
Learning Program
Ingredients
ZZ LD leaders with a substantial commitment to high-quality
compliance training that develops employees and does not just satisfy
minimum requirements
ZZ LD managers with strong vendor relationships
ZZ Understanding of various laws, rules, and regulations with which an
organization needs to remain in compliance
ZZ Understanding of the knowledge, skills, and competencies required for
your employees to meet compliance standards

1. Understand and quantify the cost of noncompliance. The best
way to put value on a compliance program is to calculate the cost of
noncompliance. This will allow you to justify investing in the appropriate
learning approaches and help you gain organizationwide acceptance of
the compliance solutions.

Some questions to ask as you calculate the cost include the following:
•

What would be our legal costs if we were found to be out of
compliance?

•

What revenue would be at risk if we were not compliant?

•

What would be the impact to our brand reputation if we were not in
compliance?

•

To what extent would our corporate officers risk legal troubles if we
were out of compliance?


28


29

Recipe (cont’d)
2. Audit your current operational and compliance learning programs.
This will avoid duplicated efforts, potentially leading to decreased costs.
Tackling compliance issues regulation by regulation can lead to adding
new processes for each regulation when, in fact, one solution can cover
multiple regulations / compliance issues.12 As you continue the recipe,
continually reassess for overlap or duplicated efforts.

Some questions to ask as you analyze your existing operational and
compliance learning approach include the following:13
•

What is the ideal state of your compliance program?

•

How would it be different than it is today?

•

What would you decrease or discontinue, and why?

•

What would you expand, and why?

3. Identify specific training requirements based on the three principal
drivers of operational and compliance training.
•
•

The second driver is operation-critical issues, which include training
on critical topics such as safety and quality control.

•

12

The first of these drivers is regulatory compliance, including training
that focuses on legal compliance and worker safety.

The final driver is organization-imposed issues, which involves
training to avoid litigation and maintain workplace quality standards.
Reach out to stakeholders in legal, HR, and the business units to
identify objectives for each driver.

Source: “Avoid duplicated efforts to cut the cost of regulatory compliance,”

SearchCompliance.com / Kevin Beaver, May 2011, http://searchcompliance.techtarget.com/
tip/Avoid-duplicated-efforts-to-cut-the-cost-of-regulatory-compliance.
13 Source: “The long-term consequences of not addressing compliance programs today,”
SearchCompliance.com / Kevin Beaver, April 2011, http://searchcompliance.techtarget.com/
tip/The-long-term-consequences-of-not-addressing-compliance-programs-today.



30

Recipe (cont’d)
4. Prioritize each type of training based on strategic importance, and
determine priorities by analyzing cost, financial impact, and legal
requirements.14 When conducting this analysis, identify the target
audience of each type of training, as well as the preferred delivery
method, to help you better quantify the cost.
5. Reach out to regulators as you build your solutions.15 Asking for input on
regulatory compliance issues can prevent problems from developing later.
Indeed, one recent survey found that 65 percent of compliance officers expect
to increase their outreach to regulators this year.16
6. Identify content and appropriate learning paradigms. A number
of off-the-shelf programs are available for some of the more standard
types of operational and compliance trainings. Consider whether your
organization already owns in-house solutions or whether off-the-shelf
options are appropriate. In addition, consider the breadth of potential
learning paradigms (education, experience, environment, and exposure)
that can be used to make learning maximally effective (see “Entrée #2:
Continuous Learning” on page 15 for more details on the different
types of learning approaches available). Further, note that regulators can
potentially provide out-of-the-box solutions, quizzes, and other materials,
saving money in lieu of developing or purchasing content.

14

To our previous point, do not forget to consider the quality of this
training—do not let cost and “checking the box” be the only drivers.
Remember that a large portion of your employee population will take
this training; do not leave them with a bad taste in their mouths from
training that does not reflect well on your learning organization.
Finally, based on the content, reassess costs, potential overlap, and
feasibility, and decide on the appropriate solution.

Source: “Compliance Training ‘Best Practices’ for STARS,” Stanford University,

Internal Audit Institutional Compliance, July 13, 2011, www.stanford.edu/dept/InternalAudit/stars/help/compliancetraining.html.
15 Source: “Cost of Compliance Survey 2013,” Thomson Reuters Accelus / Susannah
Hammond and Jane Walshe, 2013, http://accelus.thomsonreuters.com/sites/default/files/
GRC00186.pdf.
16 Ibid.



Recipe (cont’d)
7. Test and roll out. It is essential to verify functionality, content, and
delivery method in a test phase, as well as to identify who within LD
will be responsible for monitoring enrollments, tracking, and auditing—
as well as enforcement of completion. Partner with the legal department
on internal audit procedures, as they will typically be the function liaising
with regulatory bodies.
8. Assess the effectiveness of learning resources. Did the content
and solution meet objectives and requirements? How effective
was the delivery method? Survey employees on effectiveness and
quality of training. For example, did it have an impact on employee
development? Or was it simply a matter of checking off boxes to
satisfy legal requirements?
9. Track compliance and certification dates. Some compliance
programs or certifications have expiration dates. Make sure you have
the reporting in place to alert individuals, managers, and HR when
certifications need to be renewed. e

Bersin Blue Plate Special: Allina Hospitals
and Clinics Uses Continuous Learning to
Efficiently Deliver Compliance Training
Allina Hospitals and Clinics runs 11 full-service hospitals and 90
clinics across Minnesota and western Wisconsin. The system’s
24,000 employees and healthcare professionals—plus an additional
5,000 associated physicians—provide care during 100,000 hospital
admissions and 4 million clinic visits. In addition to performing 35,000
surgeries and delivering 11,000 babies, the system also manages
more than 800,000 pharmaceutical prescriptions per year—and they
do so 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. Healthcare is a complex
business in which highly trained professionals must stay up to date
on the latest research and comply with a wide range of government
regulations on patient care and privacy.


31


32

Bersin Blue Plate Special: Allina Hospitals and Clinics Uses Continuous Learning (cont’d)

As Allina expanded its business, the organization committed
itself to using learning to help it provide the highest level of care
available anywhere. However, providing formal classroom training
in an organization with employees who work different shifts at 101
different locations proved to be logistically complex and expensive.
To address these challenges in a highly accessible and costeffective way, Allina Hospitals and Clinics launched a pilot
learning project to train its staff to use a sophisticated electronic
medical records solution. This early program used an online
platform to coordinate and deliver 39,000 online and classroom
instructor-led courses. The success of this program led Allina to use
an integrated learning management platform to monitor, audit,
and deliver nearly all of its learning programs. When it comes to
regulatory compliance, the entire suite of e-learning options can
be fully audited to ensure compliance with rules overseen by the
Centers for Medicare Medicaid Services, U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Allina has also taken its learning approach one step further, using
social learning and online forums within their learning platform
to supplement their offerings. These “communities of practice”
enable employees to share documents and other resources, join in
online discussions, and participate in QA boards. Employees can
also collaborate on the creation of wikis that other employees can
consult as needed.
The learning program has been so successful that physicians
outside the Allina system are now signing up for select Allina
offerings and attaining required certifications. The cost savings
are impressive. For each course that migrates from the physical
classroom to an online environment, Allina estimates that it saves
approximately $250,000. e



33

Entrée #4: Modern Performance
Management
If you were to select a random employee at a random organization and
ask her about the importance of performance management, the question
would almost certainly elicit a groan and stories of misdeeds and good
intentions gone awry. There are no two ways about it: Employees
generally revile traditional performance management—and they are not
alone. Its value is also regularly questioned by frontline managers and
senior leaders alike.
Part of the problem with classic performance management—which
remains in place at most organizations—is that it is seen as a series of
distinct annual steps that occur outside the day-to-day manager-employee
relationship. The three primary steps include goal-setting, assessing,
and rewarding. This process was intended to build a high-performance
organization by evaluating people on whether they achieved their annual
goals. The highest performers would be rewarded, whereas the lowest
performers—at least in some well-known organizations—would be shown
the door. Although this might sound like a fine and fair meritocracy on
paper, in reality the process in many organizations is broken. One problem
is that goals are set and rarely updated to reflect reality. Another is that
performance feedback is given infrequently and inconsistently. As a result,
when assessment time arrives, the criteria for performance are unclear, and
employees have little understanding of their performance to date. It is no
wonder that many managers and employees have found the process highly
subjective and not useful.
Today, many organizations are attempting to evolve performance
management to make it more relevant—less focused on assessment and
more focused on coaching and development. This modern perspective
operates under the theory that performance is enhanced through a
series of ongoing activities that are, in fact, part of the very fabric of the
manager-employee relationship. These include:
• Goal-setting and ongoing discussion of goals
• Regular managing and coaching
• Development planning as a part of regular check-ins
• Rewarding and recognizing that occur on a daily, weekly, monthly,
and yearly basis


34

As a result of these regular interactions, managers are also expected to
engage in an ongoing assessment of performance—as opposed to just an
annual review. The approach will vary by organization but can include
monthly, quarterly, biannual, or annual feedback sessions. In addition
to these established meetings, informal and regular feedback is often
given from a variety of individuals knowledgeable about an employee’s
performance. What is discussed also varies by organization but can
include goals, responsibilities, capabilities, and readiness for promotion.
This type of performance management can have a powerful impact
on employee retention. Consider a U.S. Department of Labor study
that found that nearly two-thirds of working Americans leave their
jobs because they don’t feel appreciated.17 Another survey by Harris
Interactive found that two of the top four reasons why people leave
their jobs are:
• “My efforts are not recognized or appreciated”: 46 percent of
respondents
• “Not enough career advancement opportunities”: 42 percent of
respondents18
The ultimate goal of ongoing performance management is to create
a high-performance organization that is tightly aligned with business
strategy and culture. This new model seeks to develop employees to
their fullest potential through regular coaching and development. The
overriding principle is that ongoing development and feedback are
essential to organizational success.

The Modern Performance Management
Landscape
Although memories of traditional performance management can
cause employees and their managers to wince, the benefits of modern
performance management can be undeniable and profound. Whereas
traditional performance management could be almost adversarial
17

Source: “Why Is It So Hard To Say ‘Well Done’?,” Forbes.com / Matthew Kirdahy,

September 13, 2007, www.forbes.com/2007/09/13/workplace-careers-recognition-leadcareers-cx_mk_0913robbins.html.
18 Source: “Talent Retention: Six Technology-Enabled Best Practices,” Oracle, June
2012, www.oracle.com/us/media1/talent-retention-6-best-practices-1676595.pdf.



35

between employee and manager, modern performance management—
with its regular check-ins, goal-setting, rewards, and recognition—is
grounded in teamwork and shared success.
One of the primary benefits of modern performance management is
an organization that is better aligned throughout the year on business
goals.19 The sense of purpose that comes from shared goals enhances
business and talent outcomes. In recent Bersin research20, we found that
organizations were four times more likely to be in the top quartile of the
Business Performance Index21 if employees felt strongly that:
• Team goals are clear to members of those teams.
• The connection between team goals and the organization’s goals is
clear to employees.
• Employees understand how their work connects to the organization’s
goals.
More tangible benefits are realized when companies create continuous
goal clarity. Further research conducted by Bersin reveals that
organizations in which employees revise or review their goals quarterly
(or more frequently) were at least three times more likely to be in the
top quartile of the Business Performance Index than those that do not.
These goal-oriented companies are also more skilled at managing costs.22
The partner to regular feedback and goal-setting is coaching and
development, and when organizations facilitate this manager-employee
exchange, it helps employees feel supported. This coaching support also
19

For more information, The Performance Management Framework: Evolving

Performance Management to Fit the Modern Workforce, Bersin Associates / Stacia
Sherman Garr, May 2011. Available to research members at www.bersin.com/library.
20 For more information, High-Impact Performance Management: Five Best Practices
to Make Recognition and Rewards Meaningful, Bersin Associates / Stacia Sherman
Garr, November 2012. Available to research members at www.bersin.com/library or for
purchase at www.bersin.com/hipm.
21 The “Business Performance Index (BPI)” comprises employees’ responses to questions
on employees’ own level of engagement (as measured by four separate questions
and then averaged into a single variable), and the organization’s level of customer
satisfaction, cost structure (as compared with competitors), market leadership position,
and profitability (as compared with the previous year).
22 For more information, The Performance Management Framework: Evolving
Performance Management to Fit the Modern Workforce, Bersin Associates / Stacia
Sherman Garr, May 2011.



36

leads to improved business results. For example, Bersin research has
shown that organizations in which senior leaders coach “very frequently”
have 21 percent higher business results than organizations in which
leaders coach “rarely” or “never.”23 By engaging in coaching, senior
leaders are also establishing a culture of coaching, and this, too, leads to
improved business outcomes.24 These organizations report 13 percent
stronger business results and 39 percent stronger employee results.
Modern performance management, with its frequent manager-employee
check-ins, also encourages more recognition, resulting in higher
engagement levels. Bersin research25 has found that 71 percent of highly
engaged employees work in organizations at which their peers are
recognized monthly or more frequently. Further, our research finds that
the organizations in the top quartile of our Business Performance Index
are much more likely to have highly engaged employees.26
Last, but not least, modern performance management also helps senior
leaders gain a clearer picture of their talent pools’ skills and abilities—
or lack thereof. This insight enables leaders to rapidly hire new talent
to fill in gaps or develop skills internally based on a firm’s overriding
business strategy.

23

For more information, High-Impact Performance Management: Maximizing

Performance Coaching, Bersin Associates / Stacia Sherman Garr, November 2011.
Available to research members at www.bersin.com/library.
24 Ibid.
25

For more information, High-Impact Performance Management: Five Best Practices

to Make Recognition and Rewards Meaningful, Bersin Associates / Stacia Sherman Garr,
November 2012.
26 Ibid. Specifically, our research finds that of the top quartile of organizations in our
Business Performance Index, 68 percent of employees were highly engaged.



Recipe
Developing a Modern Approach to
Performance Management
Ingredients
ZZ Commitment by senior leaders to transform—not tinker with—
performance management
ZZ Several flexible-thinking leaders capable of moving from performance
management as a ranking process to an enablement and improvement tool
ZZ HR leaders to participate in brainstorming and give feedback on
proposed changes
ZZ Project manager to maintain momentum on the efforts to change
performance management
ZZ Communications expert able to assist in crafting messages around
performance management changes
ZZ Focus groups of employees willing to give feedback on performance
management changes
ZZ Four to six months to conduct a thorough analysis, develop
recommendations, and prepare for implementation

1. Engage senior leaders and HR to develop a performance management
strategy. This will help identify gaps between your current performance
management approach and your desired outcomes. Questions to ask to
develop this strategy include:
•

What is the purpose of performance management at your
organization?

•

What is your organization’s performance management philosophy?

•

How should performance management align with the organization’s
business and talent management strategy?


37


Recipe (cont’d)
2. Translate your performance management strategy into activities.
(Please note that any of the following recommendations can be tested
as part of a pilot with a smaller group before rolling the approach out
to the entire organization.) As you are creating these activities, identify
what, when, and where specific actions are to take place—and how it
will reinforce your organization’s performance management, talent, and
business strategies.

Specifically, consider how your organization will:
•

Set guidelines for how goal-setting and manager-employee
discussions should unfold throughout the year

•

Build managers’ capabilities to coach and give feedback

•

Design a recognition and rewards approach that enables employees to
recognize each other’s accomplishments on a daily, weekly, monthly,
and yearly basis

•

Integrate development planning activities so they are part of the
more formal performance discussions

•

Create a performance feedback / assessment process that is fair,
recognizes high performers, encourages performance improvement and
development, and aligns with your organization’s values and principles

3. Clarify how different employee groups—leaders, managers,
and employees—will be impacted by performance management
transformation. One technique, borrowed from the world of marketing,
is to build a composite character for each layer in your organization. For
example, consider how a midlevel manager will experience the process
of setting and revising goals throughout the year. What support will she
need from HR and from her manager at different points throughout the
year? What tools might she need?

Once a draft of these composites—and their underlying assumptions—
are developed, share them with a broad range of employees and solicit
feedback. Then adjust your planned performance management activities
as needed.


38


Recipe (cont’d)
4. Identify who within the organization will be responsible for which
performance management activities. Potential owners and contributors
from within HR will include members of talent management,
compensation and benefits, and learning and development. Other
participants will be senior leaders, managers, and engaged employees.
5. Determine whether external vendors are needed. Potential solutions can
do the following:
•
•

Enable manager and peer-to-peer recognition and feedback

•

Integrate with your other learning solutions to help employees
achieve goals

•

Measure achievement and results

•

Track, monitor, and align individual and team goals

Manage performance reviews

Conduct a careful vendor selection process that prioritizes finding
vendors willing to help your organization implement its strategy and
processes. Invest in developing a comprehensive implementation
plan that will enable your organization to address unexpected
implementation challenges.

6. Develop a comprehensive change management approach. Collaborate
with any internal communication professionals who are available to help
you refine your plan and messaging. e


39


40

Bersin Blue Plate Special: Media-Saturn
Uses Performance Management to Align
Employees and Better Understand Talent
Media-Saturn is one of the largest electronics retailers in the world,
with successful online operations and more than 950 stores across
17 countries in Europe and Asia. The company’s 65,000 employees
work in more than 120 countries, and operations generate more
27
than $28 billion in annual revenues. Despite its global presence,
each business unit, and even each individual store, operates with
a high degree of independence. Individual store managers, for
example, are in charge of hiring, training and development, and
inventory management at their locations.
Although autonomy has been a core driver of financial
performance at Media-Saturn, it also led to haphazard and
uneven performance management across the organization.
Previously, many stores lacked tools to measure goals,
achievements, learning, and feedback. Other stores cobbled
together their own rudimentary solutions using spreadsheets and
word-processing documents. The lack of a cohesive system meant
the company had limited insight into which employees were
ready to move up, and which ones could benefit from coaching,
learning, and goal-setting. Equally important, the company was
not always aware of which employees already possessed the skills
needed to advance along their career paths.
“We really needed to get the right people in place and make sure
they had the right skills and were good entrepreneurs, but we
also had to understand their skill sets,” stated the company’s head
of HR and payroll solutions. “Additionally, Media-Saturn needed a
way to develop the talent of their employees, helping them move
from a shop-floor assistant up the ladder to country manager if
they so desired.”

27

Source: “At a Glance,” Media-Saturn Portrait, http://www.media-saturn.com/group/

EN/TheCompany/Portrait/Pages/Default.aspx.


Bersin Blue Plate Special: Media-Saturn Uses Performance Management (cont’d)

To fully develop its talent—particularly among its top 1,500
managers—Media-Saturn’s HR leaders searched for a solution
that could help them align performance management across the
organization. Equally important was the ability to manage their
learning, training, and performance management from within
a single platform. So, although stores would still operate with a
great deal of independence, they would have a common set of
cloud-based tools and solutions available to them. One of MediaSaturn’s primary goals was to develop its own leaders internally
so they could reduce costs spent searching, recruiting, and hiring
people from outside the company.
By putting assessments online, the platform enabled MediaSaturn’s store managers and talent management teams to identify
which employees had skills gaps. Managers could then address
those skills through coaching and training programs as well as job
rotations—then track improvements online.
Today, employees and managers have shared online access
to goals and goal achievement. If learning deficits emerge,
employees and managers can use the same portal to track down
continuous learning opportunities—both formal and informal—to
improve abilities. Meanwhile, both managers and employees have
a real-time dashboard to track and measure progress.
Although specific figures are proprietary, since the program was
implemented, Media-Saturn has seen an increase in employee
retention and a decrease in fees paid to outside headhunters.
“With the system in place we are able to know what our
employees can and cannot do,” says Media-Saturn’s head of HR
and payroll solutions. “And that dramatically reduces our risk.” e


41


42

Conclusion
Talent management has become one of the most essential assignments
for any organization doing business today. Finding the most appropriate
talent for each job means using tools and networks that did not even
exist until recently. Today’s employees have high expectations for the
workplace. They want to leverage their careers to maximum effect.
Developing employees through performance management techniques
such as regular check-ins, feedback, goal-setting, and recognition can not
only help satisfy that employee demand but can also be a competitive
advantage. In just one example, research from Bersin by Deloitte has
found that organizations that have employees revise and review their
goals quarterly (or more frequently) were more than three times more
likely to be in the top quartile of our Business Performance Index than
those that do not.
Integrated with that type of performance management is the need to
provide continuous learning to employees across all platforms available
to them. Although this can include traditional classroom learning, it
also leverages e-learning, social learning, cross training, on-the-job
experience, and any other resources that can help. It is a learning and
development organization’s challenge to develop those experiences as
part of an integrated learning solution. Finally, applying that type of
continuous learning to operational and compliance learning can help
establish a powerful culture of learning within an organization.
These recipes are a first step in establishing a fully integrated talent
management plan and reaping the benefits of a fully developed, fully
engaged organization.



 RECIPE NOTES: KEY TAKEAWAYS
Social Sourcing
•

Tools that survey industry-specific chat rooms and message boards
can reveal how skilled a candidate is at solving certain problems.
Some vendors can scan a wide range of social media looking for
candidates, including not only the largest networks but also niche
and social video sites.

•

Talent acquisition organizations would be remiss if they failed to
create a robust online-based sourcing strategy for current employees.

•

Identify the critical skills and capabilities needed across the
organization. This process should be initiated by surveying hiring
managers, workforce planning experts, and business leaders. Not
only will this help focus the talent acquisition organization on a clear
set of goals going forward, but it will also ensure alignment with key
stakeholders in the business.

Continuous Learning
•

Continuous learning is different from other learning models in
two important ways: (1) it accounts for employees' immediate,
intermediate, and transitional learning needs, and (2) it facilitates a
holistic approach to development across learning paradigms.

•

Employees increasingly require information that is new, timely, and
delivered in small, bite-size chunks. With a continuous learning
model, informality and simplicity can be built into learning assets—
often at a lower price. Further, with these types of assets, employee
development plans can leverage a variety of learning assets to make
the learning experience more tailored.

•

Clarify the needs of the business and the audiences that LD serves.
If your LD organization lacks a clear understanding of the most
pressing business challenges and LD’s role in helping address
them, now is the time to obtain that understanding. Engage in
conversations with business leaders about their most pressing current
needs and what they anticipate them to be in the future.


43

Recipe Notes: Key Takeaways (cont’d)

Operational and Compliance Training
•

If operational training, and by extension compliance training, are
done well, they can help reinforce the emphasis the organization
places on learning, and thus underscore that the organization has
a learning culture. As such, performing this type of learning and
training well should be looked at as a core part of supporting your
learning organization’s brand.

•

Organizations are leveraging e-learning and online gamification
solutions to replace or reduce instructor-led training, resulting in cost
savings. Employees can participate at a time that is best suited to
them—without the need for costly travel or taking employees away
from their primary jobs during key times.

•

Identify specific training requirements based on the three principal
drivers of operational and compliance training. These include
regulatory drivers such as compliance and worker safety; operationcritical issues such as quality control; and, finally, organizationimposed drivers such as litigation avoidance and workplace quality.

Performance Management
•

Performance is enhanced through a series of ongoing activities that
are part of the very fabric of the manager-employee relationship.
These include:
οο Goal-setting and ongoing discussion of goals
οο Regular managing and coaching
οο Development planning as a part of regular check-ins
οο Rewarding and recognizing that occur on a daily, weekly,
monthly, and yearly basis

•

Organizations that have employees revise or review their goals
quarterly (or more frequently) were more than three times more
likely to be in the top quartile of the Business Performance Index
than those that do not.

•

Modern performance management, with its frequent manageremployee check-ins, also encourages more recognition, resulting in
higher engagement levels. Bersin research has found that 71 percent
of highly engaged employees work in organizations at which their
peers are recognized monthly or more frequently.


44

Appendices



46

Appendix I: Glossary of Terms
Blended Learning
“Blended learning” is the combination of different training “media”
(e.g., technologies, activities, and types of events) to create an optimum
training program for a specific audience. Quite simply, blended learning
means taking a variety of delivery types and crafting them into an
integrated program designed to solve a particular training problem.
Blended programs can consist of a few or many elements mixed together
to meet a particular audience need. The Blended Learning Book by Josh
Bersin defines blended learning in detail and discusses the 16 different
media elements that comprise blended learning programs
Business Performance Index (BPI)
The “Business Performance Index” (BPI) comprises employees’ responses
to questions on employees’ own level of engagement (as measured
by four separate questions and then averaged into a single variable),
and the organization’s level of customer satisfaction, cost structure
(as compared with competitors), market leadership position, and
profitability (as compared with the previous year).
Continuous Learning
“Continuous learning” refers to the ongoing development of skills,
abilities, and knowledge through different means (including work on
the job, training, experiences, communications, et al), and is part of an
individual’s ongoing professional life at work and outside of work.
Crowdsourcing
“Crowdsourcing” refers to the method of acquiring necessary services,
content, or ideas by asking for input from a large community of
individuals, often from an online populace. Crowdsourcing is different
from “outsourcing,” which means turning over a business function or
process to a third-party organization. As it connects the efforts of various
entities, crowdsourcing allows a small amount of effort to lead to a much
greater outcome or product. The word “outsourcing” was coined in 2006.



47

e-Learning
“e-Learning” can be defined as any form of electronically delivered
learning material with an emphasis on Internet-based technologies.
Learning Architecture
A “learning architecture” is an organization’s unique map of agreedon learning needs, learning strategies, and delivery strategies for its
training. This gives designers, trainers, and managers a clear view of
what types of problems the organization will solve, how they will solve
them, what tools they need, and which approaches the organization will
take. It deliberately limits the organization’s options by deciding how
and where the training organization will focus its efforts, and it builds on
the organization’s culture and history of learning.
Onboarding
“Onboarding” refers to the process of hiring, orienting, and immersing
new employees into their roles and into the organization’s culture.
Social Learning
“Social learning” is a blended learning model that uses social media to
enhance the learning experience. Social learning produces a collaborative
learning environment when synchronous with asynchronous approaches
are combined. The goal of social learning is to create a community of
learners who work together during the class. When the class is over, that
community can then evolve into an ongoing and interactive community
of practice and continue learning and collaborating when they are back
on the job.
Social Media
“Social media” is an umbrella term for using computer-mediated
communications channels as new forms of media. Social media
sometimes refers only to newer tools such as blogs, microblogs, wikis,
podcasts, and video / media libraries (e.g., YouTube) but can also include
older tools (such as online forums and instant messaging). Like all media,
the point of social media is to share and distribute information. Social
media expands the flow of communications beyond simply being “one to
one”—to “many to many” and “one to networks.”



48

Social Networking
“Social networking” represents the use of person-to-person networking
approaches that facilitate collaboration, learning, knowledge-sharing,
the location of experts, and organizational communication. Social
networking refers to the use of web tools for individuals to post profile
information, share comments and notes with each other, collaborate,
and join groups—similar to the use of Facebook and LinkedIn in the
consumer market.
Social Sourcing
“Social sourcing” refers to the process of locating and engaging of active
and passive candidates through the use of social media, web platforms,
and networks for the purposes of recruiting. Recruiters use Interresident social media profiles, blogs, and online communities to find and
search for passive candidate data and information. “Social sourcing”
is sometimes extended to include distribution of jobs via social media
platforms, networks, or crowdsourcing to locations where job seekers
and others share job openings within their online social networks.
Talent Community
A “talent community” means different things in different organizations,
but we define it as an online and interactive community of candidates
interested in a specific organization. In these communities, potential
candidates can interact with other candidates and existing employees at
an organization.

Appendix II: Table of Figures
Figure 1: Bersin by Deloitte Continuous Learning Model

16

Figure 2: The Simple Face of LD from BJC HealthCare

23



49

About Us
Bersin by Deloitte delivers research-based people strategies designed to help
leaders and their organizations in their efforts to deliver exceptional business
performance. Our WhatWorks® membership gives FORTUNE 1000 and Global
2000 HR professionals the information and tools they need to design and
implement leading practice solutions, benchmark against others, develop their
staff, and select and implement systems. A piece of Bersin by Deloitte research
is downloaded on average approximately every minute during the business day.
More than 5,000 organizations worldwide use our research and consulting to
guide their HR, talent, and learning strategies.
As used in this document, “Deloitte” means Deloitte Consulting LLP, a subsidiary
of Deloitte LLP. Please see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description of
the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries. Certain services may not be
available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting.
This publication contains general information only and Deloitte is not, by means
of this publication, rendering accounting, business, financial, investment, legal,
tax, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute
for such professional advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any
decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or
taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified
professional advisor. Deloitte shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any
person who relies on this publication.
Member of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited.


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