“I know what I know.” The older and wiser we become, the more we stick with what we know and what works. And because of our confidence or stubbornness, we like to read articles and research that backs our experience, assumptions, and beliefs. We all have a little belief perseverance, holding on to a set of beliefs in spite of being faced by evidence that proves otherwise. If you are not open to changing your mind, then you can stop reading this blog now.

So, let me show you that what you believe may not be true. Learning professionals have a broad belief that younger people prefer to learn differently.

One research study by Wainhouse Research reported, “ILT (classroom) is significantly less preferred by those under age 50.”

However, the 2018 Voice of the Learner report showed that classroom was preferred by all age groups.

We asked in our survey, “How do you prefer to learn?” And we forced people to make a choice rather than select all.

“Learn in a classroom with a group” was chosen the most by all age groups. And yes, older people chose classroom more than the other age groups. But I would say that younger learners prefer to learn in ways that are not all that different from other generations. All learners want learning that is relevant, applicable to the job, and effective. The goal is to provide learning that meets the needs of all ages of learners.

Even if you are not convinced by this data, would you be convinced with data about effectiveness of classroom training?

We also asked people about the effectiveness of corporate classroom training. (Rank the effectiveness of each of the following learning programs/modalities on a scale from 1 to 5 [highly ineffective to highly effective]).

The percentage of people who chose effective or highly effective did not differ by age group.

Age 53 to 71, 90%

Age 41 to 52, 86%

Age 22 to 40, 89%

All age groups thought corporate classroom training was effective.

Now this data many not change what you believe about young people, but as learning professionals we need to design learning experiences that are preferred and effective.

If you are interested in learning more about your learners, then consider a Voice of the Learner survey in your organization. Contact us to help you get started.

About the Authors

Scott Weersing

What is learning analytics and why am I passionate about it? Way back when I was a newspaper photographer, I really wanted to know the who, what, when, where, and why about the story I was assigned to. I loved to find out more information so I could be in the right place at the right time in order to get the best photograph. The more information I had, along with personal experience, prepared me to take an impactful photograph. My journey to learning analytics follows the same path of asking questions and finding the right tools. When I started working in Learning and Development as an instructional designer, I always was curious about what the learners were going to do with the training on the job. Oftentimes, I would get a response from the SME that the new knowledge would just change behavior on the job. I guess I am a little cynical about the magic of training. Just wave the magic wand, attend the training, view the WBT, and your problems will be solved. I did not know the questions to ask to ensure that the training would be applied on the job, but my leaders noticed that I was curious and liked to ask questions. They asked me whether I would you like to be a performance consultant. After telling me what a performance consultant does, I said that it sounded great. Who wouldn’t want to solve business and performance problems with a series of interventions? It was my time as a performance consultant that I learned about the right questions to ask to get to outcomes and, in turn, I became fascinated with metrics. My favorite questions are still as follows: Can you tell me more about the problem? What have you have already tried to solve the problem? What would it look like after this problem is solved? What metrics or data do you have that show there is a problem? I became data driven to find the causes of problems and then track the solutions to see if we were moving the needle. The tools to find the root cause of a problem are the same tools to see whether the training is being applied on the job. I use interviews, focus groups, observations, checklists, and surveys to find out what is causing a problem, and then I use the same tools to find out what is happening after training and, in turn, making an impact on business outcomes. I would say that learning analytics and photography are similar in that you need to plan with the end in mind to collect the right information in order to tell a story and make an impact.

By Zach Curtis, Leadership Development Consultant

“Career” doesn’t mean the same thing as it used to. The traditional quest for promotions and raises is giving way to an entirely different set of priorities. More and more people are interested in building careers composed of meaningful experiences, interesting work, and work-life balance.  

The good news is that this means there are more ways than ever for you as a manager to help employees find fulfillment and satisfaction in their jobs. The challenge is that the path to career development is much less obvious now and often less linear. 

What Is Career Development Management?  

Career development management is the process of actively planning an employee’s career path. During this process, individuals identify their priorities, set plans, and create short- and long-term strategies designed to help them reach their goals.   

As employees begin to think about their futures, they need someone in their corner who can provide individualized guidance and support. As a manager, you can fill this role in several different ways. This support can be as simple as providing honest feedback on an employee’s strengths and opportunities. You can also take a more hands-on approach by connecting them to people and opportunities across the organization, or in helping team members to brainstorm roles that align with their unique skills.     

Tips for Facilitating Career Development Conversations  

Conversations are a crucial first step in the career development process. Research suggests that when managers provide regular career conversations, it has a noticeably positive impact on their employee engagement. Yet despite this, many managers are reluctant to discuss career opportunities because they fear their employees will request a raise or a promotion that the manager can’t provide. 

While these conversations may occasionally be challenging, they are essential if you want to hold onto your employees. According to a Gallup poll regarding employee turnover, the number one reason employees left their current jobs—accounting for 32%—was for advancement or promotional opportunities. If you don’t prioritize career development, your employees may decide to go elsewhere. 

If you’re unsure how to begin career conversations, here are a few ways to help make things easier: 

Get to Know the Person. 

People want to do work that resonates with who they are as individuals. Yet, each employee has a different set of values, strengths, interests, and goals, which impact their definition of what they find meaningful and interesting. 

Getting to know your employees is one of your most important manager development opportunities. Until you know what matters to your people, what they’re good at, and what they enjoy doing, you will not be able to help align their personal goals with what the organization needs from them. 

As a manager, you can learn a lot about your team members simply by observing their behaviors and asking the right questions. Think about some behaviors you’ve noticed on your team recently, good or bad, that stand out in your mind. What might those behaviors suggest about an individual’s identity or career goals? 

However, the best way to learn something about one of your team members is to simply ask them. Questions like, “What do you enjoy doing? What are you curious about? What would an ideal job look like to you?” can provide you with valuable insights into how your employees think and feel.  

Provide Perspective  

Providing perspective is a vital component to the manager’s role in career development management. As a manager, your perspective is necessary for individuals to achieve alignment between who they are (their identity), what they want (their goals), and what the organization needs from them.  

That perspective is most important when team members are experiencing gaps, which keep them from accomplishing what they set out to achieve. One type of gap arises when an employee’s perception of their identity differs from their reputation (i.e. how their manager and others perceive them). Gaps can also arise when an individual’s goals are misaligned with those of the organization. These gaps can have significant impact on an employee’s career development, and it is the manager’s responsibility to communicate them to their team members and offer perspective on how to close them. 

Explore Opportunities  

The third way that you can help support your team members’ career journeys is by creating opportunities for them. As a manager, you have a unique vantage point within the organization. You work closely with your team members each day, which allows you to develop a good understanding of their values, strengths, interests, and goals. At the same time, you are also aware of the larger organizational strategy and routinely work with people that your team members may never come across in their day-to-day responsibilities—whether it’s senior leaders in the same department or managers and leaders across other parts of the organization. 

One of the best ways to add value to your team members’ career development is by connecting them to new opportunities within the organization and introducing them to valuable people they might not otherwise meet. 

Creating a Career Management Plan 

After you’ve shared several career development conversations with an employee, the next step is to put together a career management plan that lays out their goals and the steps necessary to achieve them. While every employee’s management plan will look slightly different, it should include these basic steps:  

Step #1 Determine Employee Goals 

The key here is to help your team members set goals that reflect their unique priorities. Encourage them to set both short-term and long-term goals and make sure that the objectives they set are measurable in some way, so you can check in later and measure their progress.  

Step #2 Identify Employee Skills Gaps 

Once an employee has identified a set of goals, it’s important to determine the skills necessary for them to reach those objectives. Discuss the qualifications they already have and take note of areas where they need additional training.  

Step #3 Connect Employees to Resources 

As a manager, you are often aware of training and other resources that employees may not know about. Keep your employees apprised of any personal and professional development opportunities, particularly when they align with your employees’ goals.  

Step #4 Check in with Employees 

Be sure to schedule time to meet with employees and check in on their progress. If you don’t have additional time in your schedule, you can build this into your existing employee review cycle.  

Step #5 Celebrate Wins  

When navigating a career path, it is easy to get discouraged. Celebrating accomplishments will help employees feel like they’re making progress and provide them with the motivation they need to keep moving forward.  

Step #6 Update Career Management Plans 

When checking in with employees, be sure to adjust the plan based on the progress that they are making. As they begin to fill skills gaps and check off short-term goals, it is important to create new goals and benchmarks to help move them along the path toward their long-term objectives.  

Empower Your People to Drive Continuous Growth 

It can be challenging to align individual aspirations with the constant pressure of organizational expectations. For many managers, it can feel like two jobs in one. However, the steps outlined above can go a long way toward demystifying the process and help you create a culture of career growth. When learning becomes continuous, employee become more loyal, well-rounded workers, and better equipped to handle change.  

To learn more about career development management, check out our coaching services. 

About the Authors

GP Strategies Corporation

GP Strategies is a global performance improvement solutions provider of sales and technical training, e-Learning solutions, management consulting and engineering services. GP Strategies' solutions improve the effectiveness of organizations by delivering innovative and superior training, consulting and business improvement services, customized to meet the specific needs of its clients. Clients include Fortune 500 companies, manufacturing, process and energy industries, and other commercial and government customers.

This week, six new interns started at GP Strategies. We are thrilled to have them here for the summer, working on some great initiatives for our clients as well as future-proofing our offerings and solutions. As we worked tirelessly to plan and decide what their onboarding experience might include – from meeting our president to participating in design thinking exercises – we also had to decide on team norms, including collaboration and learning platforms.

Some of us had a preference for Slack. Others liked Microsoft Teams. Or Yammer. Or just keep it simple with email and Skype. And because we get to work with so many great technology partners, we were also considering a series of learning experience platforms to tee up curated resources on topics such as augmented reality, virtual reality, AI, and chatbots.

And it gets more complicated! Because many of us work remotely and the interns will all be located at our World Headquarters near Baltimore, MD, we could integrate video coaching, as well, to practice common situations our interns might face throughout their experience. But, how would we track time and projects? With Excel or bring in another SaaS provider to provide utilization optimization?

We were having a tools and technology meltdown! The choices were too many! This made me realize that large organizations have to navigate this every single day, and I’m only planning for a small group of six!

One school of thought was to give them access to everything. Allow them to navigate and determine what experience best worked for them. Make it personal! But then, if everyone is using different platforms to collaborate, then no one is collaborating! I imagine this is what it’s like for a lot of organizations. The choices are too many. Many features can be redundant from one technology to another. What tends to be a deciding factor is where the “work gets done.” If work is getting done via email, then email may be the best choice. If work is getting done via Slack, there you go!

So, we needed to come up with a specific experience for the interns. How do WE want THEM to get the work done? What tool had the best support from our IT partners? What was the easiest learning curve that most of the support team for the interns had access to and knew how to use? When we crafted the answers to those questions, it became easier to decide. I was surprised by our decision. We did NOT choose the latest, whiz-bang technology to collaborate. We used one that is standard and consistent, integrated with emails and calendars, and allowed for the functionality we needed for a small team to collaborate with each other. I’m not going to tell you what it is…that will ruin the fun.

Moral of the story—we made a choice (for better or worse) and we are going to stick with it for 12 weeks. At the end of the summer, I’ll share what we did, what went well and what didn’t.

About the Authors

Britney Cole

Britney is a learning leader with experience in organization development, human performance, and corporate learning and has worked remotely, managing virtual teams for more than a decade. Britney lives in Minnesota with her husband and three small children (ages 5, 7 and 8) where she keeps warm with plenty of blankets and cozy hats. She likes to talk, so you might see her at learning conferences as a speaker. Britney has provided consulting for clients in the financial services, pharmaceutical, steel, chemical, media, technology, retail, manufacturing, and aerospace industries. She forms lasting partnerships with her clients helping them with learning design and architecture, content development, leadership and professional development, performance consulting, technology implementation, and change management. Most recently, she is helping pioneer new experiential learning methods and defining learning 3.0 taxonomy.

A coaching culture is not created by scheduling one-on-one meetings to discuss performance. A coaching culture is not created every Wednesday from 10:00 am to 10:45 am in the conference room. A culture of coaching in the workplace is pervasive and ongoing; it is a constant in every interaction, because it’s not about the topic being discussed but how it’s being discussed. A culture is defined and reinforced by the relationship between the conversation’s participants, and once that relationship is established the coaching becomes continual. While some organizations hire external coaches, and some count on HR professionals, we believe that creating a coaching culture at work relies on the manager/employee relationship. It is imperative that managers learn the skills and develop the abilities to be effective coaches, but once they do, coaching can be done in ten minutes or less.

Helping others succeed

The term “coaching” has acquired a plethora of definitions and interpretations over the last decade. Within organizations, we’ve heard of career coaching, performance coaching, developmental coaching, peer coaching, coaching teams, and more. Outside of organizations, we’ve heard of a wellness coach, a spiritual coach, an athletic coach, and even a dating coach. The field of coaching has become quite silo’d, yet our research has shown that the common thread is actually the cornerstone of coaching: Helping others succeed. Whether on the baseball field or in the boardroom, a coach helps others succeed in whatever endeavor they choose. The vision of success may be different for every employee, but given the right tools, a manager can be pivotal in helping his/her employees get there. The key to creating a coaching culture at work is to provide development and structure so that managers can learn the skills they need to coach effectively. Once these skills are learned, managers become coaches by practice, not by schedule.

Coaching happens at the water cooler, in the hallway, and on the way back from lunch. Coaching occurs in casual conversations, through status updates, and even in team meetings. By asking questions instead of giving specific instructions, a manager is creating the coaching culture. When a manager asks for input to explore his/her employees’ approach to a project, the manager is creating the coaching culture. When a manager walks with an employee down the hall and listens to his/her hopes for his/her career, they are creating the coaching culture. Successful managers devote energy, and sometimes extra time, to developing relationships with their employees. They seek to understand each employee’s unique needs and have regular, honest conversations with them more frequently. Trust is at the core of the coaching relationship, but it doesn’t have to happen in formal meetings only. With every interaction comes an opportunity to create a coaching culture in the workplace. The tools necessary for a successful coaching relationship revolve around increasing an employee’s satisfaction and contribution. Employees’ satisfaction levels are based on their own personal values, goals, career aspirations, work-life needs, etc. In order to maximize their satisfaction, managers need to coach for satisfaction. These conversations include career ambitions, personal goals, family, personal development needs, and more. Managers are also responsible for consistently improving the performance of their employees, and maximizing the impact each employee has on the company. In order to maximize their contribution, managers need to coach for contribution. These conversations can include developmental opportunities, performance feedback, career progression, etc.

Equipping managers with the know-how to have these conversations will result in the creation of the coaching relationship, which is the basis of a coaching culture.

Step 1: Train managers to think like coaches. They need coaching to build awareness about themselves, and the tools to have the conversations to build trust and accountability with their teams. Developing a coaching culture requires positive relationship with their employees, and leaders need to learn the skills to do that effectively.

Step 2: Identify opportunities for coaching. With every exchange comes an opportunity for coaching, and it takes attention and practice to lead and respond as a coach in those conversations.

Step 3: Engage in the coaching conversation. Asking questions, listening actively, seeking to understand, and encouraging exploration… these are just a few of the attributes that underscore an effective coaching relationship.

Creating a coaching culture

Rating and ranking employees in the performance management system isn’t producing results… for anyone. Organizations need to be focused on creating a coaching culture at work – coaching to drive performance, coaching to drive career growth, and coaching to drive personal success. Today’s view of coaching is agile and dynamic, conversational, developmental, and often very personal. And it can yield major results. Developing a coaching culture can result in improved retention, productivity, engagement, and even stock price. High levels of employee contribution result in a better bottom-line; high levels of employee satisfaction result in increased retention. When both are maximized the individual is engaged and the company reaps the benefits. Creating a coaching culture can take a mere ten minutes. When managers are skilled and aware of the opportunities before them, they can capitalize on every interaction with their employees, leading to dynamic and robust coaching conversations. For such a small effort, the company – and the individual – will gain significant returns on the investment.

About the Authors

GP Strategies Corporation

GP Strategies is a global performance improvement solutions provider of sales and technical training, e-Learning solutions, management consulting and engineering services. GP Strategies' solutions improve the effectiveness of organizations by delivering innovative and superior training, consulting and business improvement services, customized to meet the specific needs of its clients. Clients include Fortune 500 companies, manufacturing, process and energy industries, and other commercial and government customers.

The excitement of virtual reality (VR) has hit learning and development organizations. VR was once considered only for companies with big budgets that were also technology savvy. But now VR experiences can be developed quicker and easier than ever before.

The promise of VR is that people can experience the work environment in a safe and risk-free setting. But before we go down the road of investing and building interactive VR experiences, we should stop and ask, does a VR experience make an impact on performance? Does using VR for training result in learning transfer to the workplace?

Yes, VR experiences can make a difference, when they are well designed and part of a complete learning experience.

If a VR experience is a tour or a visit, then there will be less transfer to the workplace because the learner did not get to practice a task and receive feedback on how they did. For example, if the VR experience is a tour of a nuclear power plant control room, the learner would become familiar with the environment, but we would be unsure if they could read and react to important settings and controls.

The VR experience should be designed so that learner experiences and practices tasks in the environment. The benefit of VR is that the learner can practice tasks in a safe way without jeopardizing the company or customers. For example, you can design a VR experience to assess the learner on the steps to replace a broken electrical switch. The VR experience prevents the learner from shocking themselves or turning off the power to thousands of customers.

Another best practice to designing a VR experience that results in transfer is ensuring that you are also providing other learning supports and elements. There should be eLearning, classroom training, job aids, and videos to show the learner the expected task and behaviors. VR by itself will make little impact on performance.

Another issue in using VR for training is that the learner only practices one task and does not get a variety of scenarios. Will Thalheimer, an expert on learning transfer, believes this problem can be overcome by asking learners to brainstorm other relevant scenarios and then plan for actions in those contexts.

So, in choosing when to use VR, remember that VR will be just one part of the overall learning experience and that learners need to think about other scenarios not included in the VR experience. The right design, using the right technology, leads to the best outcomes.

About the Authors

Scott Weersing

What is learning analytics and why am I passionate about it? Way back when I was a newspaper photographer, I really wanted to know the who, what, when, where, and why about the story I was assigned to. I loved to find out more information so I could be in the right place at the right time in order to get the best photograph. The more information I had, along with personal experience, prepared me to take an impactful photograph. My journey to learning analytics follows the same path of asking questions and finding the right tools. When I started working in Learning and Development as an instructional designer, I always was curious about what the learners were going to do with the training on the job. Oftentimes, I would get a response from the SME that the new knowledge would just change behavior on the job. I guess I am a little cynical about the magic of training. Just wave the magic wand, attend the training, view the WBT, and your problems will be solved. I did not know the questions to ask to ensure that the training would be applied on the job, but my leaders noticed that I was curious and liked to ask questions. They asked me whether I would you like to be a performance consultant. After telling me what a performance consultant does, I said that it sounded great. Who wouldn’t want to solve business and performance problems with a series of interventions? It was my time as a performance consultant that I learned about the right questions to ask to get to outcomes and, in turn, I became fascinated with metrics. My favorite questions are still as follows: Can you tell me more about the problem? What have you have already tried to solve the problem? What would it look like after this problem is solved? What metrics or data do you have that show there is a problem? I became data driven to find the causes of problems and then track the solutions to see if we were moving the needle. The tools to find the root cause of a problem are the same tools to see whether the training is being applied on the job. I use interviews, focus groups, observations, checklists, and surveys to find out what is causing a problem, and then I use the same tools to find out what is happening after training and, in turn, making an impact on business outcomes. I would say that learning analytics and photography are similar in that you need to plan with the end in mind to collect the right information in order to tell a story and make an impact.

Many articles have been written about People Analytics and the value of converting people and HR data into actionable insights to gain competitive advantages. This year seems to be one of digital transformation everywhere—and analytics is an important part of the business case. Having worked for leading companies in various industries and geographies over the past few decades, I have experienced the trend towards streamlined business processes across those geographies and industries. This is especially true for the HR space where standards are moving in fast and where the war for talent is never ending.

Anyway, I can admit that I am part-time data nerd and have a strong feeling for analytics. For the past 18 months, I have been fortunate to work extensively with analytics related to Human Capital Management. In this blog, I will share some more in-depth experiences with the newest addition to the SuccessFactors software suite: Workforce Analytics on HANA (WFA on HANA). This innovation allows companies to analyze data over time, understanding the trends shaping your workforce and providing you with actionable insights. And since it is based on the in-memory architecture of HANA, most of the insights are provided in just a few seconds.

Hoping you will still read on, I will give you the conclusion first:

WFA on HANA is the most important feature that has been added for a long time to the SuccessFactors suite.

And knowing intimately what innovations have been provided in the last 30+ releases, this is a big thing to say. Read on, and I hope you understand why I am making this bold claim!

First things first: define what you want to know.

Before embarking on an analytical journey, it is important to define what key performance indicators or metrics are important to your organization. What is it that is most important to you? What makes your company different? What trends in the demographics do you need to be aware of? What hypothesis do you want to test? The definitions can rely on your own historical experiences, but you can also take advantage of the experiences from GP Strategies and SAP who define a framework of standards for Human Capital Measures. These ensure that you follow good industry practice and allow you to compare your own organization to market data provided by SAP.

Workforce Analytics on HANA lets you look at your data like you have never been able to before so you can understand more about the trends that are shaping your workforce over time, and so you can make better People Decisions to secure your future. WFA on HANA has a set of predefined metrics following good industry practices and is flexible enough to allow companies add their own dimensions and filtering capabilities. For example, you can run headcount reports over different time periods, split by different dimensions, drill down, filter, and even combine metrics (e.g., “managerial headcount split by gender”). So, in that sense, Workforce Analytics is a flexible tool that allows you to report on the items that give you a competitive edge while on the other hand following good industry principles. End users are intended to be not only business analysts and reporting specialists, but also HR professionals and senior managers.

Case: Headcount Reporting

Let’s say that you just want to know the headcount for the past 4 years. WFA on HANA allows you to get this with the measure “EOP Headcount” (End-Of-Period Headcount). If you were to do this in other reporting tools, such as Online Report Designer, this report would take minutes to load and would not be suitable for online analytics.

This shows you, hopefully not surprising, that there has been significant growth in your company headcount (or that there have been acquisitions or other major events). More analysis will reveal where the growth has been, what employment types are the most significant, and more.

Case: Headcount Reporting and Diversity

Then you may want to know what the gender distribution looks like over time for your headcount. Easy, just specify that you want to analyze data by gender (multiple other analytical dimensions exist).

Now this report shows you that there were some data quality issues in previous years (gender “Unallocated”), but also that the gender split is fairly linear across the years. It is possible to drill down to, for example, Country level to look at differences in geographical areas. So, this is what we want to document to our CHRO who asked the question.

Case: Headcount Reporting and the Five-Generation Workforce

Next you may want to look at headcount and age distribution over time. Simple—just add Age as an analytical dimension and the numbers are displayed.

Instead of Age, you could also use the dimension Generation, which converts age to a descriptive text in case this is more meaningful to you. You can also click out any of the dimensions as to emphasize the changes in the others, if you, for example, would be interested in knowing the “over 40” and “below 40” groups.

Case: Managerial Positions Split by Age Ranges

But these three, you may say, are just simple data, not really insights. OK, then let’s try to answer a little more complex question about managerial positions—how are we staffing them? To answer this, let’s first look at how many managerial colleagues we employ.

As expected, as we have grown, the number of managerial positions has also grown. We can also see that the growth has been significantly larger in the older segment than in the younger. Again, this is not a surprise but important to know. The data tells you something about what promotion principles you have had the past years, and this can be used going forward.

Case: Managerial Positions Split by Gender

Like the regular headcount dimension, you could also look at the gender dimension instead of age ranges. Just add Gender to the Dimension and the report generates. This allows us to understand if we are applying any gender-based biases towards our hiring policies and where in the organization this bias is most profound. We also see which areas can serve as role models so that we better understand what practices we should learn from and apply in other areas.

Like all other measures, you can drill down to understand if there are geographical differences, business unit differences, or which managerial lines have the best mix. If, for example, you have a large presence in Southeast Asia, you can look at that region only to see how the numbers are stacking up. I didn’t include these details in the images—I hope you get the point.

Employee Central Is the Core

All data you source in WFA on HANA is delivered directly from effective dated transactions in Employee Central. Data refreshes happen daily and take only a few minutes to complete. With the latest Q1-2018 release, WFA also respects GDPR requirements such as ability to perform read level logging of personal or sensitive information such as Gender. Events and Event Reasons are mapped from Employee Central to relevant Dimensions in WFA, allowing you to compare your own trends to market benchmarks for measures such as Voluntary Termination Rate.

Concluding Remarks

OK, this blog covered almost 2% of the capabilities in WFA on HANA. I did not mention anything relating to termination trends (voluntary vs. involuntary terminations per business area), combining different data sources such as performance ratings and termination trends, or looking at average salary and salary ranges split by gender or generations.

As mentioned in the introduction, I think it is fair to say this is a major improvement in the SuccessFactors suite. Best of all, WFA on HANA can be implemented now if you have Employee Central in place—or are planning to. WFA sources data from relevant SuccessFactors modules and optimizes your data views from the transactional database into cubes that run in the background, automated via impressively speedy daily (or hourly) processing.

Working with people analytics is both a project where you define a set of KPIs, implement a tool, and build processes and education around it. It is also a journey where you will be able to—if not forced to—adapt new KPIs as your business surroundings change and as your business matures regarding analytical thinking. It is important to understand that WFA on HANA is not the end result; it is the beginning of a continuous journey where you will improve your understanding over time, and your capabilities to make better people decisions will improve over time.

If you have any comments or questions, please do reach out to us. At GP Strategies, we have always been leading the path, and we are happy to be part of the first partners able to implement WFA on HANA for real. And hey—please do leave a comment here—it is always a great inspiration to get feedback.

About the Authors

Erik Ebert

For the past 25 years, Erik Ebert has supported organizations across diverse industries and geographies to implement digital transformation strategies, improving business performance within human capital management (HCM). Erik has a track record of building lasting relationships through a consultative approach, resulting in happy clients, successful projects, and effective teams. Erik works as a Business Development Director with HCT at GP Strategies in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Introversion Innovation

While I am far from an expert in innovation, I can sometimes come up with a creative approach or out-of-the-box idea. Inspiration often strikes at the strangest times—when I am drying my hair or coloring with my four-year-old.

Organizations will often hold innovative “events” or call meetings where the best and the brightest are brought together to brainstorm. Individuals come up with ideas, play off each other, and take the kernel of an idea and develop it into a full-blown product. They thrive on the interaction, the conversation, the finishing-of-each-other’s-sentences kind of energy.

But innovation often happens in quieter ways. And for some, the idea of driving innovation feels antithetical. How do you drive something that best happens organically? Putting me in a room full of innovation hackers is the fastest way to quell the ideas I might be percolating. Trying to drive it out will only scare it away. I want to tease it out. Quietly.

There is great power in not thinking…not doing…not innovating. When you stop trying so hard, you can often access the deepest, darkest, strangest, and most innovative corners of our minds. You can start to see patterns that weren’t apparent when you went looking for them. You can make connections that are just below the surface of our conscious but retreat when we try to grab them.

Innovation for some will not come when we try to drive it, spur it on, or make it happen. Even the terms “driving” and “hacking” conjure up an intensity that may not suit all styles. It’s a quiet energy that fuels the brain of your more introverted employees. It happens when we stop trying. When we quiet the mind.

And in the spirit of creating a culture of innovation, it’s smart to incorporate a diversity of styles into the innovation process. For introverted innovators, new ideas, creativity, and innovation may be more likely to come if you encourage innovation in the following ways.

• Give them the space and time to be quiet and to approach innovation in their own way.
• Thinking is the introvert’s playground. Let them stay there for a while so they can process their own thoughts and the ideas of others.
• Ask them. All of your team members, both those that are vocal and those that “hang back,” likely have ideas—you can draw them out by inviting them to contribute.
• Use technology like social collaboration platforms to give introverts a comfortable environment in which to express their creativity.
• Leverage the strong listening skills of introverts. In order for a good idea to be heard, someone needs to be listening. Introverts tend to be great listeners.
• Provide a safe space for ideas that are less than perfect so that even seemingly “half-baked” notions are easily surfaced.
• Remember the loudest ideas don’t always equate to the best ideas.

As a self-proclaimed introvert, I must confess—I don’t want a hackathon. I want a reflectathon. Please don’t build me an innovation kitchen. I’d like an innovation closet. To be sure, at some point introverts want and need to share their ideas and get feedback from others. Introverts often need their more extroverted friends to encourage innovation and help bring their ideas to life. If the innovative idea is kept in the world of concepts and ideas, it may never be tested against reality.

Driving a culture of innovation isn’t just about being open to new ideas. It’s also about being flexible with respect to how you get to those ideas. It’s about encouraging diversity of styles and thought. Be on the lookout for your introverted innovators—their internal world may be incubating your next big idea—if only you can coax it out!

About the Authors

Leah Clark

Leah Clark is the Leadership Practice Lead at GP Strategies, as well as an author and the founder of LeaderConnect. With over 28 years of experience in her field, Leah brings a unique perspective on the mindsets and skillset that are critical to leadership success to her coaching and consulting. Her clients benefit from her collaborative approach to crafting a well-connected and thoughtful leadership development strategy. Leah holds a Master of Arts; Organizational Psychology, Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts; English and Sociology, Boston College.

In a recent webinar we talked about how to prepare for a SuccessFactors implementation and what to avoid. If you were unable to join, we have gathered five key takeaways that all people who are embarking on implementing SuccessFactors should know.

Here are the five key takeaways:

1. Include the Necessary Experts Early and Plan Accordingly

Before you begin your project, you will want to have planning meetings and workshops with all stakeholders. It is important to make sure that representatives from every business unit are on board and understand the project plan from the beginning. This will mitigate any resourcing and timing problems that may arise. We also advise you to include at least one subject matter expert in your discussions to make sure that you understand everything about the implementation process, technical and functional.

2. Understand What You Have and What You Need

Your middleware can drive your requirements, so it is important to know and understand what your IT department is currently utilizing. Depending on what you are using, it might be a good idea to continue using that platform when you move to the cloud.

Your landscape is also extremely important. Because of the difference in instances between on-premise and cloud environments, consider asking SAP to match them for you instead of using the “out-of-the-box” environments. This will make your integrations and migrations easier.

3. Don’t Get Comfortable

No matter how much you plan, things can always change during your implementations. Be flexible and react to any changes that come up. Implementing new technology can be and should be disruptive, so capitalize on it to make the most positive impact on your organization.

4. Time Is Everything

Never underestimate how much time you will need, especially testing and data migration. There can be up to four or five rounds of testing throughout the project, so make sure that you plan for all that it will take.

Data migration is an area that is always underestimated and takes a great deal of time. Because data migration is an opportunity to revise and update your data, it is smart to make sure that you plan enough time to confirm that it is done correctly.

5. Don’t Forget Your Users

Change management and platform adoption are critical to the success of a project. The implementation of new technology will impact your employees in their day-to-day activities as well as possibly impact their productivity if they aren’t properly trained on the new technology. So, it is critical to have a change management expert on staff and a plan in place to train your end users on the new platform and processes.

If you have any questions or want to discuss further with David or Michael, you can contact them at the emails below.

David Nesper                                                               Michael White

Senior Director at GP Strategies                              Director, SAP Technologies at GP Strategies

dnesper@gpstrategies.com                                       mwhite@gpstrategies.com

Want to watch the webinar? Click here.

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About the Authors

GP Strategies Corporation

GP Strategies is a global performance improvement solutions provider of sales and technical training, e-Learning solutions, management consulting and engineering services. GP Strategies' solutions improve the effectiveness of organizations by delivering innovative and superior training, consulting and business improvement services, customized to meet the specific needs of its clients. Clients include Fortune 500 companies, manufacturing, process and energy industries, and other commercial and government customers.

The future of work and the digital era is getting a lot of attention in today’s learning and performance space. New workforce dynamics, end-to-end digital technologies, and internal/external organizational transparency all are aspects of the future of work and digital era that organizations are confronting today. We can’t be lulled into thinking that the future of work is something not yet happening. It is here now! The need for increased relevancy and improved performance within this transforming environment has created the need for learning organizations to rethink how they bring value to the organization. Content curation is one very important component of an overall learning transformation strategy.

In our recent webinar, Kerry Hearns-Smith spoke about the importance of having a content curation strategy that is anchored in business outcomes. By working with the end users in the business to better understand the day-to-day challenges being faced and the demand for specific knowledge and skills, you can build a content curation strategy that supports actual needs rather than perceived needs. Another aspect of building an effective content curation strategy is ensuring that it is supporting the desired learner experience. Curation plays a critical role in establishing the desired learner experience. Being able to have the right content, in the right modality, accessible at the right moment for the learner drives that relevancy and improved performance. Curation plays a key role in this. A content curation strategy that has strong governance in terms of the quality, type, standards, and maintenance of the right content facilitates learning in a way that can bring maximum engagement, leading to improved performance.

Some key considerations when creating your content strategy include the following:

• Be anchored in business outcomes.
• Take the complex and filter to the contextually relevant, preventing wasting people’s time wading through irrelevant content and delivering at the moment of need.
• Help build self-directed journeys that include context to the employee’s role and function and push learning into the workflow…blurring the lines between work and learning.
• Identify the most relevant content and use enabling technologies to create a learning ecosystem that provides a frictionless, all-access point for the learner to acquire knowledge and skills.
• Reduce the requirements for new content development by leveraging existing internal and external content in order to provide a truly blended experience.

Below are responses to a couple of the questions we did not have time to cover completely during the webinar.

Q: How do you get started with a curation strategy with a heavy risk/governance model to go through?

A: In a heavy risk/governance model, curation can be used as a good supplemental option to help support growth and reinforcement of the topic and skills. It helps to provide alternate mediums and perspectives that can be used to broaden applicability of the skills being focused on.

Q: What are the biggest mistakes you see people make in creating a content curation strategy?

A: The biggest mistake we see is that the content curation strategy is not connected to a broader transformation strategy that addresses the change in approach to learning, how the learning is accessible for the end learner. Another mistake is how the learning organization ensures that the learning professionals have the right mindsets and skills to effectively curate. Ensuring the content curation strategy is connected to a broader learning transformation strategy with strong governance and change management approach helps to avoid many of the common mistakes made in creating and implementing an effective content curation strategy.

Q: What business challenge is not good for content curation?

A: Curation works best when the focus is on building awareness around a topic or a skill area. When proficiency in a complex, precision-type skill, such deep statistical analysis or how to perform a surgery, is the focus, curation can be something that supplements but should not be the primary approach to building the learning and assessing the proficiency level.

About the Authors

GP Strategies Corporation

GP Strategies is a global performance improvement solutions provider of sales and technical training, e-Learning solutions, management consulting and engineering services. GP Strategies' solutions improve the effectiveness of organizations by delivering innovative and superior training, consulting and business improvement services, customized to meet the specific needs of its clients. Clients include Fortune 500 companies, manufacturing, process and energy industries, and other commercial and government customers.

It seems wherever you turn, people are talking about innovation.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines innovation as “a new idea, method, or device” and innovative as “characterized by, tending to, or introducing innovations.” These are broad definitions so we need to define innovative thinking more closely. For me, innovative thinking is not just a new way of thinking about something; it’s thinking that has the potential to result in a change that improves situations.

People can be innovative thinkers and achieve nothing if the thinking is not harnessed. There needs to be something new and better come from the thinking. In short—outcomes of value.

We know what we want to achieve from innovative thinking, but who do we turn to when we need it?

High performers are natural candidates to be involved in innovation. This is partly due a restlessness with the status quo displayed by most high performers. This is generally combined with a feeling they could be even better at what they do.

These feelings provides the motivation to explore how to achieve the better performance they seek. When working with top performers I have found they think they are a “work in progress” and there is always room for improvement. They genuinely don’t think they are different from others doing the role but have an unquenchable desire to be better at what they do.

We know that if top performers are left to work it out for themselves, they will. This generally results in them; reading widely and receiving email and blog updates on a wide range of topics and networking with other top performers to discover new ways of improving. They then research further into those areas that catch their interest or where they see a connection with what they already do.

One way truly innovative thinking happens is when previously unconnected ideas are combined to achieve a superior outcome. That can happen in isolation, but a far better approach is to bring top performers together—to create synergy through an incubator-style environment.

Sounds easy enough; just connect your top performers and wait for magic to happen….

In essence yes, but as with any incubator, the environment and clear success criteria are crucial to success. The skill is in balancing stimulating, new ideas and being clear about what is required. Providing a specific challenge being faced currently by your business, for the team to solve within a time period, would generate options business leaders may not have the bandwidth to generate.

Top performers will want to be involved as they will see potential to improve their performance. They approach things optimistically, again a general trait of top performers. Getting them together will be easy. Defining clear success criteria and staying focused on those criteria while maintaining the freedom to explore new ideas requires discipline and leadership.

Setting goals and an agreed-upon timetable for milestones/results is crucial.

• Determine a date for the incubator event.
• Set a date to review outputs and agree which will be worked on.
• Set a success or kill deadline—achieve the results by or before the agreed date or fail fast, and direct efforts to something more productive.
• Prototype and iterate.
• Develop progress reports on success.
• Launch, promote, and normalize innovative behavior/processes.

Incubators are not the only way…

Your current top performers achieve amazing results each day. They have already made innovations to their roles, quietly and effectively, to become top performers.

Extracting innovative thinking from your top performers is a great way to unlock hidden potential and find new ways to be successful. Working with top performers on a specific role is another way to capture and distribute innovation across your teams.

As mentioned above, if top performers are left to work it out for themselves, they will. They already know some of the best and most effective ways to perform in the role currently. Clearly those who don’t perform as well in the role would benefit from some of those unique insights.

Identifying the “secret sauce” of top performers in a particular role requires a different approach to the innovation incubator described above. Establishing what top performers do that actually makes the difference requires working with them individually—observing them, questioning to drill down to why they perform certain tasks and what outcomes they strive to reach. Top performers are unconsciously competent. They have internalized what they do to such a degree they need help to unbundle the specific combination of activities that create the secret sauce. Those outcomes combined with why and how top performers achieve them are crucial to understanding and duplicating top performance.

The best of both worlds

Your top performers may be philanthropic enough to want to help others improve their performance but they are also competitive. They are, after all, top performers! To be truly successful will require employing both approaches: raise the general level of performance to the level of the top performers and allow the top performers to drive forward to maintain their and the organization’s competitive advantage.

How can your top performers influence the performance of your organization immediately?

• What issues are facing your organization that the leadership doesn’t have the bandwidth to tackle currently?
  • Something that needs to be tackled and would drive your organization forward but that is overtaken by higher priority issues.
• What would be the value to your organization of having that issue resolved now?

Learn more about our innovation and emerging learning strategies here. To discuss these and other methods to identify and duplicate the outcomes achieved by your current top performers, please contact us.

About the Authors

Ian Croft

I have always been fascinated by performance excellence. Obviously, we don’t call it that when we watch our favorite sports team/heroine/hero winning at their sport or while we watch an amazing artistic performance—we just enjoy the moment. For me, that moment is frequently followed by these questions: • How did they do that? • How hard have they worked individually or as a team to be that good? • What do they do that others don’t do that makes them successful? Being a Performance Consultant with GP Strategies allows me to explore those questions with clients on a daily basis. I was born and raised in the UK and moved to the US at the start of 2007. My career started with a UK-based bank where I specialized in commercial banking. It was the chance to help clients build successful businesses that attracted me to commercial banking over the other alternatives on offer. I spent several years working with clients on expansion strategies, restructuring their businesses, and working through the day-to-day challenges of running their businesses. I moved into commercial banking training during 1998 after completing an MBA. That’s when I found my true passion: helping people become the best they can be at what they do. I moved to a global bank during 2000 in a training role and became a Learning and Performance Consultant with responsibility for four of the bank’s businesses in 2003. In this role, I traveled internationally, delivering training and working with the four businesses to solve performance issues. My final role with the global bank was as Head of Commercial Banking for North America. After leaving banking, I became a Solution Architect within the Global Learning Solutions division of a major consultancy firm. This gave me the opportunity to work with diverse clients on learning and performance issues and indulge my passion for helping clients improve the performance of their businesses. I have been with GP Strategies since 2016 and truly love what I do here. Each day brings fresh challenges as I partner with clients to solve performance issues at individual, department, divisional, or organizational levels. I live in Delaware with my wife Elaine and our dog Charlie. I am an avid cyclist and can be found out on the roads of Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Maryland most weekends.