Bersin & Associates Announces the 2010 Learning Leaders Winners

OAKLAND, Calif., March 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Bersin & Associates, the only research and advisory firm focused solely on enterprise learning, talent management, and talent acquisition, today announced the winners of Bersin & Associates' 2010 Learning Leaders Program.  Based on detailed criteria compiled over years of research, the Learning Leaders Program, now in its fourth year, recognizes organizations which have developed and implemented effective and efficient approaches to employee learning and talent management, resulting in significant business improvement.  

The Bersin & Associates 2010 Learning Leaders include 15 organizations across technology, consumer products, media, financial services, telecommunications, real estate, and accounting and staffing services firms as well as ten providers of training and talent management solutions and services.  

The winners are:  

Operational Training and Development Excellence:

• AT&T, for its program to increase the number of users who received training on the AT&T BusinessDirect portal.  The program led to a 20% increase in worldwide adoption of the self-service tools.
• CA, for its highly effective, ongoing training workshop and coaching program designed to standardize sales processes, go-to-market strategies, and customer negotiations.  
• Cisco, for retooling 40 hours of instructor-led sales channel training into a 16-hour virtual training program.  The new program reduced per-student costs by 85%.      
• Coldwell Banker Commercial, for its blended training program for sales/lease agents new to commercial real estate.  The program increased sales transactions from new hires by 30%.  

Learning Organization and Governance Excellence:

• Booz Allen, for its structured governance process to ensure alignment of learning with business and effective use and sharing of learning-related processes, tools and best practices.
• Kelly Services for its strong leadership and governance approach, organized around a global working model, that supports collaboration and focuses on measurement, improving learning culture, skills and bottom-line results.
• NetApp for the learning organization's focus on business outcomes including a sophisticated approach to measuring the impact of formal and informal learning, which provides a solid platform for business discussions, supports alignment, and ensures that learning initiatives are meeting business needs.

Leadership Development Excellence:

• Amway, for its highly successful executive development program that uses an innovative action-learning process to create teams of global top-performing executives experienced in solving important strategic business challenges.
• Qualcomm, for its successful redesign of its flagship leadership development programs for emerging leaders and senior executives, resulting in higher levels of participation and increased skill development.  
• Redwood Trust, for its integrated leadership development, role realignment and performance systems – all part of an initiative to change how the company develops talent.  Efforts include strategy case studies, an enterprise management simulation and action learning designed to significantly impact the bottom line.

Learning and Talent Initiative Excellence:

• Baker Tilly, for creating highly consistent processes that improve and integrate every area of talent management, including the use of competencies.  This initiative took place at Beers + Cutler, now part of Baker Tilly after a December 2009 merger.
• Booz Allen, for its on-boarding program which has improved job readiness of new hires as well as produced efficiency gains, stronger employee affiliation with the firm, and reduced attrition.  
• Seagate Technologies, for utilizing the company's internal enterprise wiki to build a highly popular and cost-effective "virtual coach" that provides action-oriented information on key management topics for all employees to build management and leadership skills.

Learning and Talent Technology Excellence:  

• Accenture, for its very well-received and highly cost-efficient podcasting program designed to bring high-priority content to 2,000 strategy professionals.        
• Nielsen, for successfully leveraging existing enterprise tools to centralize its numerous learning organizations and training professionals scattered globally into one learning community aligned with corporate strategies and goals.

Vendor Innovation in Learning and Talent Management:

• Adobe Systems, for Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro software, a web communications solution that enables live, interactive web meetings, virtual classes, on-demand presentations and courses, and group collaboration.
• Bellevue University's Human Capital Lab, which brings together business and academic leaders to research, measure, and isolate the impact of learning investments.  
• Cornerstone OnDemand, for Cornerstone Connect, a comprehensive enterprise social networking platform that allows organizations to drive workplace collaboration, foster informal learning and innovation, capture valuable corporate knowledge, and engage and support external customer and partner communities.  
• Executive Conversation, for its Know it Now learning framework, an online sales skills development portal accessible in a standalone, hosted environment or for installation on a client's internal learning management system. 
• General Physics Corporation, for its Via Training Division, which provides custom sales training solutions to increase sales channel effectiveness through brand and product advocacy programs.  It prepares sales professionals to sell, influence customer behavior to purchase, and support sales transactions.
• Halogen Software, for Halogen eLearning Manager, a performance based learning management system that integrates fully with the other modules in Halogen's talent management suite, enabling learning managers and HR leaders to seamlessly link and track employee performance and learning.
• Kelley Executive Partners, for its customized executive education such as its Alternate Reality Game, which combines social and mobile technologies along with collaborative and competitive team problem solving.
• Plateau Systems, for The Plateau Talent Gateway, which combines social networking, portal, and Web 2.0 tools to facilitate knowledge sharing, collaboration, and learning activities and provides a direct connection to the capabilities of the Plateau Talent Management Suite.  
• RWD Technologies, for RWD uPerform, an authoring and content management application that enables organizations to create and deliver learning and performance support content and information to employees.
• Vangent, for its year-long program for client Rockwell Collins, "Leading in an Operations Environment," designed to transform managers' leadership approach from a metrics/reporting focus to a people-centered approach, accomplished with a blend of training, support, collaboration, assignments, surveys, and mentoring.

According to Josh Bersin, president, a recurring theme among the applicants was how to meet learning and talent management needs with fewer resources.  "Several of these organizations faced severe workforce reductions last year.  But their learning organizations were able to focus on the most critical business needs, find ways to adapt to the changing needs of learners, and facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing," he said.  "Others found ways – despite budget cuts – to meet the needs of increasingly global learning communities, build leadership strength among junior executives, deliver results-focused sales training and improve employee retention.  

"These Learning Leaders represent the very best of enterprise learning and talent management with high impact on the business.  We believe that all training and development professionals can gain valuable insight from their success stories," he added.

The Bersin & Associates report, Learning Leaders 2010:  Lessons from the Best, provides an in-depth look at the best practices of the 25 winners.  Click here to receive a complimentary copy.    

Learning Leader winners will be recognized at Bersin & Associates upcoming research conference,  IMPACT 2010: The Business of Talent®.  In addition, senior practitioners from Learning Leader winner organizations – past and present – will participate in panel discussions and present in-depth case studies on a wide range of topics.  The organizations include Accenture, Amway, AT&T, The Boeing Company, Booz Allen, Caterpillar, Cisco Systems, Coldwell Banker Commercial, Deloitte, Philips, RWD Technologies, Seagate, and Vestas.  

Learning Leaders program partner Elearning! magazine features the 2010 winners in its March special issue.  "We congratulate the 2010 Learning Leaders," said Catherine Upton, CEO and publisher of Elearning!.  "Readers, and the industry as a whole, can learn from how these winners conquered huge challenges in 2009."

For more information on the Learning Leaders Program, click here.  To be added to the Bersin & Associates mailing list for Learning Leaders Program news, updates, and the 2011 call for applications, please contact [email protected].  

About Bersin & Associates

Bersin & Associates is the only research and advisory firm focused solely on research in enterprise learning, talent management, and talent acquisition.  The company's WhatWorks® membership program offers actionable guidance, improves operational effectiveness, and delivers business impact to companies in all industry segments.

Bersin & Associates research members gain access to a comprehensive library of best practices, case studies, benchmarks, and in-depth market analyses designed to assist professionals in making fast and confident decisions.  Members also have direct access to analysts and a wide range of tested tools and models to address both strategic and day-to-day challenges.

More than 5,000 organizations worldwide have used Bersin & Associates' research and advisory services to guide talent and corporate learning strategies.  Research areas include planning and strategy, learning programs and delivery, talent management, leadership development and succession planning, talent acquisition, technology and infrastructure, informal learning, social networking, measurement and analytics.

For more information, go to www.bersin.com or call 561 455 0622.

About Elearning!

Elearning! helps business executives build smarter companies with enterprise-wide learning technologies.  Elearning! Magazine provides executives a roadmap to building a high performance organization by focusing on industry best practices, real-world case studies, trends, analysis, new products and services.  Elearning! Magazine, Government Elearning! Magazine, e-zines, E-News, Alerts, Elearning! Summits and Web sites are produced by B2B Media Company, LLC.  To learn more, visit www.2elearning.com.

SOURCE Bersin & Associates