Bersin by Deloitte Announces Winners of the WhatWorks® Awards

OAKLAND, Calif., March 6, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Bersin by Deloitte, a leading provider of research-based membership programs in human resources (HR), talent and learning, today announced the winners of the WhatWorks® Awards, the research-driven awards program that was included in Bersin by Deloitte's recent acquisition of substantially all of the assets of Bersin & Associates LLC.

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Winners were chosen by Bersin & Associates LLC in 2012 from hundreds of applicants and include industry leaders in business processes, consulting, financial services, food products, government, hospitality, information technology, insurance, media and software.  Bersin & Associates LLC conducted the awards program in cooperation with Human Resource Executive® magazine.

"Implemented in a climate of ongoing market turbulence, winning programs this year focused heavily on business agility, analytics, continuous development, collaboration and change management," said David Mallon, vice president of research, Bersin by Deloitte. "Among the other themes that emerged were the need to invest in tomorrow's leaders from within their ranks to combat a worldwide shortage of leadership talent; having a simple, sustainable framework for matching competencies to roles for better talent management; and a need for organizations to mine current and past employee populations to compete for the best talent."

"The WhatWorks Awards showcase real solutions that demonstrate measurable real-world success to challenges that inevitably arise in a world where change is the only constant," said David Shadovitz, editor, Human Resource Executive magazine. "We are honored to present the WhatWorks Awards to the global community in our role as the premier publication focused on strategic issues in HR, talent and learning."

WhatWorks categories and winners include:

Developing Tomorrow's Leaders

• Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ), for a three-phase multidimensional program in which more than 3,000 people completed a globally consistent suite of bespoke flagship learning programs for each leader level. Internal leader appointments increased 58 percent from 2010 to 2012, resulting in recruitment cost savings equating to 62 percent of total program investment.
• BMO Financial Group, for its three-tier Leadership Development Curriculum. More than 1,600 leaders have participated since 2008, resulting in revenue growth, improvements in productivity, employee engagement, retention, morale and greater collaboration between executive and middle managers.
• Merck & Co., Inc., for a highly customized and innovative multi-modular program for senior executives that included action, virtual live and on-demand learning over 12 months and that advanced competencies, changed behaviors, and led to significant financial outcomes realized by new market opportunities.
• New York Life Insurance Company, for its Accelerated Leadership Program to bring high-potential leaders to a position of readiness for senior leadership roles.  Fifty-two percent of ALP alumni report they have taken on broader managerial capabilities, and 47 percent have broader spans of control.
• Thomson Reuters, for Project Generate, designed to develop, challenge, and engage the global pool of high-potential future leaders. Seventy-five percent of participants have been promoted, 23 percent have been promoted twice, and 95 percent of participants still work with Thomson Reuters.
• Trinity Health, for the Strategic Leadership Program which led participants through case studies, team-based simulations and exercises, action learning and didactic presentations. Participants completed multiple clinical and non-clinical projects with measurable results and impact survey respondents said that SLP helped them become more effective leaders.

Enabling High-Impact Learning

• Electronic Arts, for building strategic action teams of senior executives that strengthened EA's culture of learning and cross-boundary sharing. The 10@10 Strategic Action Team, for example, implemented six innovations and created EA's first internal developer's conference.
• Fifth Third Bank, for 13 new sales training programs that included design and delivery of a skills development system that instilled consistent selling and service behaviors across the bank. The Bank's Customer Contact Center achieved an increase in sales of complex products and average revenue per sales agent rose in just five months.
• HCL Technologies,  for its Technical Academy for Competency Enhancement (TechACE), which increased and improved training, resulting in more internal certifications and certified employees, improved customer satisfaction and a cost savings of $3.1 million in fiscal year 2012.
• Marriott International, Inc., for its Leadership Learning Guide, a resource that maps formal and informal learning activities to core competencies. It resulted in savings of more than $1.2 million annually while increasing the number of development opportunities available to employees.
• SAP America, for its launch of mobile learning, including SAP Now, a mobile app, and an innovative game called Road Warrior that simulates a full sales cycle. SAP Now has been downloaded more than 7,000 times and used by more than 80 percent of the sales force. Road Warrior has been downloaded nearly 1,500 times and contributed to the success of numerous SAP Mobility Solution deals.
• The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, for its VA Learning University, a modern, competency-based and flexible corporate university that caters to the needs of VA Employees at every level, 24/7. On average, learners experienced an increase of 19 percent between the average pre-course score of 50 percent and the average post-course score of 69 percent.

Acquiring Top Talent

• Accenture, for its Accenture Alumni Network, a large-scale program catering to a diverse multinational alumni population by following a holistic global approach with local customizations. Global alumni hires increased significantly between 2009 and 2011.
• CACI, for its Recruiting and Assimilation Team, merging the two key functions of marketing and technology and for investing significantly in technical solutions to improve the candidate experience. The company increased 12 percent the number of hires, decreased from days to hire from 26 to 24, and decreased cost per hire 8 percent to $2,633, allowing CACI to realize revenue more quickly than in past years.
• Mars, for a more holistic marketing approach to enhance the overall brand that included up skilling the HR community to think and deliver holistically. As a result, 16 of the key markets – including six for the first time – have put three- to five-year plans in place to deploy and strengthen their brand presence.  
• UnitedHealth Group, for its research-based Employer Branding strategy. The transformational effort served to educate the talent market on the sophistication of its business model, its place in the evolving health system, and roles within its high-performing environment. The effort resulted in a rise in overall hiring management satisfaction, a boost in candidate satisfaction and a decline in marketing cost per hire.

Transforming HR

• Accenture, for a renewed program to align HR professionals at the front of the business. This program redesigned the client account HR delivery model, increasing the breadth of the Global Client Account HR Lead program.
• Booz Allen Hamilton, for leveraging data analytics to gain better insight into the causes of attrition and which contributed to the development of a model that could significantly increase the predictability of voluntary attrition. It used the information to identify 15 high-valued employees that required additional focus and to address high turnover in a junior staff segment.
• First Data Corporation, for a multi-year program that revamped HR's structure, process, governance, technology and measurement resulting in a drop in HR cost as a percentage of revenue. First Data also rebuilt the talent management and learning function, which in six months built a global university called MindSpring, and a 10,000-square foot Learning & Innovation center.  
• Ryan, for myRyan workplace flexibility program, to measure employees on results achieved, not hours worked. The program reduced the voluntary turnover rate to 12.4 percent in 2011 from 22 percent in 2008 vs. an industry average of 25.9 percent. It also produced stronger client satisfaction scores and better employee perception of work-life balance.

Optimizing Talent Management

• Dimension Data, for its integrated job and career framework, which allows the organization to define, document and classify jobs across all operations. The program helped Dimension Data better understand core competencies per region/location and identify skills gaps per location to more effectively plan recruitment and development.
• Infosys BPO, for its redesign of the internal job posting process, resulting in increased employee motivation, improved retention of multi-skilled workers, and reduced attrition.  A reduction in external hiring, vendor and training payouts resulted in cost savings.
• Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company, for a four-pronged approach to boosting the perception that employees could attain their career goals at the company. The program included the launch of a web portal called The Career Resource Center, and after a year, more than half of Massachusetts Mutual Life's employees had used the tool.
• Universal Weather & Aviation, for its Trip Representative Integration Program, designed to improve the way client-facing company representative candidates are identified and trained to perform extremely technical jobs. The program has reduced to six months from two years the time for such representatives to achieve proficiency in their roles.

Delivering Innovation

• Axonify, for a bite-size, personalized learning game leveraging game mechanics to encourage engagement.
• Blatant Media, for its HTML5-based learning management system interface, which easily can be adapted for different hardware platforms, both on the desktop and on mobile.
• Glassdoor, for its Enhanced Employer Profiles which provide employers a channel through which to have targeted conversations with informed job candidates. 
• Jobvite®, for a social recruiting and applicant tracking system.  It targets relevant talent in LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, managing all sourcing programs and measuring the results.
• oDesk, for its online workplace, allowing businesses to hire, manage, and pay contractors from around the world, while giving skilled workers access to jobs that are personally, professionally, and financially rewarding.
• PDI Ninth House, for creating and implementing a multi-year, integrated development campaign with a large energy industry client that nearly doubled the number of employees with development goals from half to 99 percent, and in 2012 prompted nearly all employees to strive to meet those goals (up from 25 percent who met their goals in 2011).
• PeopleMatter, for its specialized talent management support for hourly workforces and for the services industries, including applicant tracking, onboarding and learning management, shift management, and recognition.
• RiseSmart, for its outplacement solution which combines defined methodologies, support and a cloud-based technology platform enabling their clients to place workers in jobs faster.
• Tech Transfer Services, for a specialized, blended online learning experience called ODESIE (Online Dynamic Enterprise Solution for Industry Excellence), incorporating videos, social media, serious games, and a basic virtual industrial plant to explore. ODESIE incorporates constant feedback and reinforcement using mixed media.
• Xyleme, for Bravais, a cloud-based content delivery solution that enables personalized learning anytime, anywhere, building onto their existing XML-based learning content management system.

Leveraging WhatWorks

• ANZ Bank, for using WhatWorks research to implement a new approach to developing a globally consistent leadership culture. WhatWorks research provided key industry benchmarks that prompted ANZ to consider consolidation and focused spending and that provided important guidelines for establishing goals for its Learning function. WhatWorks research also was used to shape the technologies and methods used within the curriculum.
• Accenture, for leveraging WhatWorks research and services to benchmark and refine its efforts in better aligning HR professionals at the front of the business.
• Edelman, which gave access to WhatWorks research to more than 70 HR professionals around the globe -- a move that played a significant role in its ability to prepare the global senior executive team to take a strategic approach to succession planning for the first time in the company's 60-year history. Using the WhatWorks Leadership Development Maturity Model and relevant research laid the foundation for identifying future leaders.
• Citi, which cited Bersin & Associates benchmarks on learning spend, hours of training and headcount as a critical input into building the business case for a new flagship program for MDs called the "Citi Leadership Forum." The rigor and variety of frameworks available through WhatWorks research reports, case studies and other materials helped the Citi Learning team facilitate conversations during the design and development of learning modules tied to strategic priorities.
• Grundfos, which used WhatWorks to scan for reports for insights on sales management, blended learning and learning culture to design and develop the Leading Sales for managers of sales teams, a successful program to increase sales annually.
• HCL Technologies, for using WhatWorks models, frameworks and methodologies to design, develop and implement its award-winning TechACE program.The WhatWorks High-Impact Learning Culture Model, Continuous Learning Model and the Enterprise Learning Framework helped the organization develop a structured approach for informal learning.
• Kaiser Permanente, which used WhatWorks High-Impact Learning Organization research, which provided major frameworks for the design and development of its National Learning Leaders (NLL) group, created to improve governance of learning.
• Xerox, for using WhatWorks evaluation tools to identify specific, actionable gaps that helped Xerox improve development and accelerate targeted initiatives for learning transformation. The WhatWorks research on high performance - high impact learning culture helped to define a strategic focus, develop credibility and even influenced the Global Learning re-organization.
• SAP Sales University, for leveraging the WhatWorks Membership to validate its mobile learning approach An onsite review conducted by Bersin & Associates provided valuable feedback on learning strategy, gamification and mobile learning approaches. SAP Sales University also leveraged the membership to guide the development of learning strategy and a mobile learning initiative.
• VA Learning University, for using its WhatWorks membership to research answers to questions about how to prepare its employees for their roles as leaders, advisors and educators. Access to WhatWorks has provided the organization with best practice approaches to constructing successful curriculums and initiatives, including Change Academies, MyCareer@VA initiative, and VA Learning University itself, benefitting thousands of employees across the United States.

Winners will be recognized at Bersin by Deloitte research conference, IMPACT 2013: The Business of Talent, April 22-25. In addition, HR, learning and talent practitioners from winning organizations – past and present – will participate in panel discussions and present case studies on a wide range of topics. Organizations to be represented include CACI, Mars, Kaiser Permanente, Merck, New York Life Insurance Company, Ryan, and UnitedHealth Group.

For more information on the WhatWorks Program, go to www.bersin.com/wwawards/. Those interested in learning more about Bersin by Deloitte or its WhatWorks membership may email [email protected] or call (510) 251-4400. 

About Bersin by Deloitte

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. For more information, please visit www.deloitte.com/bersin or www.bersin.com. 

As used in this document, "Bersin by 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.

SOURCE Deloitte