Chief Talent Officer

The Evolving Role of the Chief Learning Officer

Tamar Elkeles, Jack J. Phillips

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317749349
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

In the face of rapid changes and challenges to the business environment, learning and talent are key to the success of businesses. This is an area in which the Chief Learning Officer (the CLO) is vital and has evolved into a Chief Talent Officer role in organizations. The Chief Talent Officer is now responsible for working to drive value, focusing on issues such as talent, organization design and development, culture, business alignment, managing resources, innovation, technology, utilization, customer service, and ROI. Chief Talent Officer discusses the critical, value-adding role of the next generation CLO, and the strategies that can be used to fulfill this role. With a wealth of perspectives from some of the world's best talent executives, this book illuminates the role from the CLO's perspective.

This revised and refreshed edition of the text includes the latest illustrative examples, explanations, and data. The reader is shown the role of the CLO from diverse, multinational points of view, and taken through the varying aspects of business strategy in a range of international environments.

This book is a vital tool for managers and students, providing techniques and methods for the training, talent, and HR communities alike. It will help its readers to demonstrate and understand the potential value that can be added to any organization when it is managed and organized well, and equipped with appropriate leadership.

1
The chief talent officer

Evolution, trends, and opportunities

Much has changed in the world of learning and for the individuals who lead the learning enterprise. Recent trends and developments show that the Chief Learning Officer (CLO) is gaining the attention and respect needed to be successful in the organization. The opening comments in this book from Mike Prokopeak, Tony Bingham, and Peter Cheese provide insight into the trends and issues for the CLO role in an organization. This opening chapter provides additional information on how the CLO has evolved in the last ten years. The most pronounced trend is that the CLO must constantly add value to ensure success in the organization. There are numerous opportunities for new CLOs and those aspiring to be CLOs. For the seasoned CLOs, these opportunities represent challenges that must be addressed to sustain the growth and development of the learning enterprise.

Opening stories

The changing role of the CLO

One of the most prominent CLOs is David Vance, former president of Caterpillar University, who had a successful run in this position for several years. Dave continues to support this field as executive director of the Center for Talent Reporting. In his own words, here is Dave’s take on the changing role of the CLO.

The role of the chief learning officer or VP of training has evolved over the last ten years into a more strategic, business-oriented position.¹ Of course, this has not happened in a vacuum and more is also now expected from the chief human resources officer or SVP of HR as well as other key positions in the organization like chief financial officer. The change is more evident in larger organizations where the CLO has staff and a significant budget, and where the CEO may demand it, but it is also present in many smaller organizations, even those with a one-person learning and development function.

The change is driven by the need for organizations to be as effective and efficient as possible in achieving their outcomes. While you may say that this has always been true, increased competition and the great recession of 2008–2009 have elevated the importance of hitting targets (especially for publically traded companies) more than ever. These targets include “hard” goals such as a 10 percent increase in sales, a 5 percent cost reduction or a three point increase in retention as well as “soft” goals like better leadership and higher employee engagement. Typically, learning will have a role to play in achieving both the hard and soft goals, and smart CEOs or SVPs of HR are now challenging L&D leaders to be more proactive and strategic in their planning to ensure alignment to their key goals. And, just as the CEO is under pressure from the board of directors, shareowners, and analysts to deliver results, the CLO is under increasing pressure to deliver results in terms of effective and targeted programs that demonstrably deliver the promised results in an efficient or least-cost manner.

So expectations are now higher and more is demanded of the CLO, particularly with regard to business acumen. A successful CLO, especially for a large organization, now must be a business person first and an expert in L&D second. A combination of both skill sets is optimal, but the key skill set is business. This explains why more CLOs during the last ten years have come from outside the ranks of L&D or HR and why those who are promoted from within HR are more business and results focused. It also explains the rise in universities offering a PhD in human capital for practitioners instead of just teachers or researchers. (Bellevue University, University of Southern Mississippi, and University of Pennsylvania are three examples in the last seven years.) This trend toward a more business-focused skill set for CLOs is likely to continue since the internal and external pressure for results is not likely to diminish.

Learning is the business at ADP

When human capital management products are what you sell to customers, you’d better be pretty good at it yourself.² That’s the philosophy guiding Automatic Data Processing Inc.’s learning and development approach. They call it “HR leading HCM” and L&D is front and center.

“It’s really incumbent upon us to demonstrate our ability to be a best-in-class learning organization so we can back up our products with that best-in-class practitioner approach,” said Carrie Beckstrom, vice president of learning and performance at ADP Global Enterprise Solution.

ADP is a New Jersey–based company that employees 52,000 people, doing business in more than 130 countries. Learning and development at ADP is not just an internal priority. In addition to developing employees, Beckstrom and her team are also responsible for supporting ADP’s more than 610,000 clients, providing implementation and ongoing training on ADP products for companies of all sizes, from local small and medium businesses up to massive global corporations.

To meet the needs of that fast-paced global business, Beckstrom’s team embraced a dynamic delivery model to keep pace with demand. The aim is to use technology to ensure learning is both scalable yet personalized to the individual employee’s or client’s moment of need, she said. To make that happen, ADP embeds learning into the company’s customer relationship management system and uses social and collaborative tools as well as short, targeted bursts of learning, or micro-learning.

The Learning Bytes program, which delivers two-minute task demonstrations via video on demand, helped ADP reduce development time by 50 percent, reduce client curriculum training to seven hours from 24 hours and reduce calls to the service center, saving millions in costs, according to the company. That sort of internal and external effect is core to her team’s L&D approach, Beckstrom said. “It really doesn’t make a difference if you’re not able to substantiate in measurable ways the impact learning is having,” she said.

According to Beckstrom, 60 percent of investments are aligned to day-to-day operations such as development and delivery whereas 40 percent is strategic, which enables the learning group to introduce new offerings more closely tied to overall business goals. One of those goals is to grow a pipeline of “ready-now” leaders in the company’s sales organization. Started five years ago, the sales leadership development program provides a blended learning experience that combines rigorous assessment and selection with experiential learning, coaching, field activities, and interaction with ADP executives to cultivate the next generation of sales leaders.

All told, it’s an exciting time to be a part of L&D at ADP. “I love it,” Beckstrom said.

The role of the CLO

Challenges and changes

To begin examining important trends and issues, it is helpful to explore how top executives view the CLO position and the challenges facing organizations. Perhaps the best study that reflects this work was conducted by the research team of Rothwell & Associates at Pennsylvania State University, which partnered with the Association for Talent Development.³ The purpose of this study was to understand the trends and challenges facing the talent and development field, in particularly the chief learning officers. It also revealed how organizations can develop the individuals who are most important to the strategic success of the organization, both in the United States and globally. Figure 1.1 shows the talent development challenges facing organizations. These include aligning learning and business goals, measuring the impact of learning, being innovative, and addressing skill shortages and talent gaps among others. This also provides a hint at some of the current responsibilities for CLOs. Figure 1.2 shows the major challenges facing organizations today. The strongest concerns are building corporate strategy that is adaptive enough for a borderless, refocused world and building cultural awareness, eliminating cultural bias, and encouraging a global mindset.

Figure 1.1 Talent development challenges

Source: Adapted from “Global Outlook,” by Jennifer Homer, TD magazine, March 2016.

Figure 1.2 Organizational challenges

Source: Adapted from “Global Outlook,” by Jennifer Homer, TD magazine, March 2016.

The input from this particular study included 31 industry thought leaders from global organizations in Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and the United States. These two figures provide some insights and challenges that must be addressed by the CLO and the learning and development function. These challenges exist in private and public organizations and may come as no surprise to CLOs who routinely develop talent, serve customers, manage knowledge, and use technology appropriately. Being able to handle all of these in a global environment, within precise financial targets and constraints, is what makes the CLO role dynamic in today’s organizations. In response to these trends, the thought leaders identified several conclusions that require continued effort:

1. Technology on the rise. Organizations have been using technology for several decades as an efficient and effective way to deliver learning to the workforce. Increasingly, these organizations are delivering content to learners on mobile devices, through games, or on platforms that help learners consume content in an engaging and memorable way. Blending delivery methods for learning continues to be a focus for many talent development functions.
2. Building a strong talent pipeline. Skills shortages in the existing workforce combined with the pending retirement of leaders and managers continue to affect organizations’ talent pipelines. These realities are compounded by demographic changes, with an increasing number of millennials coming into the workforce and global organizations managing dispersed talent all over the world.
3. Talent development professionals as strategic business partners. Talent development professionals are responsible for a portfolio of functions across the breadth of the field. From instructional design to training delivery, change management, coaching, learning technologies, and 34 additional functions, individuals who lead and manage talent development are increasingly becoming trusted and relied upon as strategic business partners who help improve performance and achieve impact for the organizations they serve.
4. Building a global workforce that can solve problems and innovate. As organizations continue to grow and expand their global footprint, senior leaders require their workforces to be knowledgeable and skilled, and to understand how to address problems with creative solutions. This continues to be top of mind for CEOs: In IBM’s 2012 study, Leading Through Connections, more than half of the surveyed CEOs and senior leaders in the private and public sectors saw human capital, customer relationships, and innovation as key sources of sustained economic value.⁴
5. Developing partnerships that drive value. One of the three imperatives that the IBM study’s CEOs and senior leaders identified as essential for creating greater economic value and outperforming their peers was the notion of “amplifying innovation with partnerships.”

In Leading Through Connections, IBM noted: “Confronted with growing complexity and competition, organizations have found it nearly impossible to succeed by executing entirely on their own. In fact, only 4 percent of CEOs plan to do everything in house; two-thirds of the CEOs interviewed intend to partner extensively. But the majority of CEOs want relationships that do more than improve operations. They are looking for ways to anticipate – or create – disruptive innovation. They want partnerships that provide a differentiating strategy, giving them the edge they need to derive revenue from new sources, even upset entire industries.”

Top executive input

C-suite levels see corporate learning as a primary driver for global business success. But that doesn’t mean learning leaders can go light on strategy, delivery, and metrics.⁵ In 2015, a major study was released that gave the executive view of learning. The Economist Intelligence Unit, affiliated with The Economist magazine, surveyed 295 executives from around the world to explore the ties between workforce development and business outcomes on behalf of CrossKnowledge and Future Workplace. These executives – evenly balanced across the Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and North America – represent a wide variety of industries such as IT, financial services, telecommunications, and manufacturing, and occupy a variety of C-suite roles. Half of their companies have annual revenue of more than $500 million, and a quarter report annual revenue of at least $5 billion.

Figure 1.3 shows the desired business skills defined by these executives in two time-frames, the most important now and the most important in three years. It probably comes as no surprise that leadership development is at the top of the list as most studies show that there is a record amount of leadership development expenditures underway currently.

Figure 1.3 Desired business skills

Source: The Economist Intelligence Unit, September 2014.

Figure 1.4 shows the desired outcomes of learning and development. As expected, executives want business impacts connected to learning. This is consistent with previous studies that have been conducted by ATD, th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Expanded table of contents
• Figures and tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Author biographies
• Foreword from Norm Kamikow (from the first edition)
• Tribute to Norm Kamikow – Tamar Elkeles
• Foreword from Mike Prokopeak – Editor, Chief Learning Officer magazine
• Foreword from Tony Bingham – CEO, ATD
• Foreword from Peter Cheese – CEO, CIPD
• In the beginning …
• 1 The chief talent officer: evolution, trends, and opportunities
• 2 Developing the strategy
• 3 Setting the investment level
• 4 Aligning learning to business needs
• 5 Shifting to performance improvement
• 6 Creating value-based delivery
• 7 Managing the learning function for value
• 8 Working in a global environment
• 9 Managing talent for value
• 10 Creating a performance and innovation culture
• 11 Creating value with employee engagement
• 12 Developing global leaders
• 13 Demonstrating value with analytics and ROI
• 14 Developing effective business relationships
• Index