Excellence in Blended Learning recognizes vendors that have deployed a variety of tools in support of a client’s learning program that delivers engaging learning combining multiple modalities.
GOLD
The Regis Co.
BNSF Railway operates about 32,500 route miles of track in 28 states and three Canadian provinces. In 1995, the company developed its Leadership Model with a consistent set of principles to distinguish it from competitors. The desire to explain and reinforce the five tenets of the Leadership Model drove the creation of People Leader Training in 2000. Each year, the PLT focuses on one of those tenets. The tenet “Lead More; Manage Less” was established as an area in need of focus in 2016.
The specific behavior selected to be developed to support Lead More; Manage Less was titled Leadership Is Situational. Data analysis indicated a need for leaders to be more flexible in their approach. Because leading more and managing less involves complex social behaviors, such as coaching, teaching and enabling others, they needed the learning to be more than a typical instructor-led class.
BNSF had partnered with The Regis Co. in 2015 to create a simulation learning experience situated in the fictional railway town of Mainville. The 2015 PLT program modeled the mechanics of how the railroad is run. Incorporating this with its 2016 goals, The Regis Co. and BNSF designed a simulation that modeled what it takes to run the railroad business, from customer order to customer delivery. The result was a unique learning experience for leaders designed to reflect the real life day-to-day of the railroad industry.
SILVER
Entelechy
With 70,000 employees globally — including 7,400 leaders at a variety of levels — the leadership team at Thermo Fisher Scientific has huge responsibilities. Given the size and scale of the organization, a targeted program was developed to fully prepare a select number of high-potential employees for more senior roles by providing them with the skills and experience needed to operate at a more advanced level.
The original iteration of Developing Emerging Leaders had been in operation for a number of years. Then, in early in 2016, the Global Talent Development team conducted an assessment of the program and identified several areas of opportunity. Meanwhile, Thermo Fisher Scientific was growing rapidly outside the U.S., and more than half of employees are now millennials, so it was even more critical that the program be refreshed to be more relevant to the target audience.
Thermo Fisher Scientific and Entelechy worked together to design the current iteration of Developing Emerging Leaders. The foundational concepts of Developing Emerging Leaders are: know yourself, master your business and lead others. The two- to three-month journey includes self-paced prework, self-paced e-learning, two virtual instructor-led training sessions, a three-day instructor-led classroom training and management reinforcement.
Ninety-nine percent of participants agreed that they would be able to immediately apply the skills and knowledge learned during the program to their jobs.
BRONZE
Easygenerator
Before adopting a blended learning strategy, home appliance company Electrolux relied almost entirely on face-to-face training methods and some amount of e-learning that was costly and time-consuming. The very idea of going digital was daunting because the organization’s culture was deep-rooted in traditional training methods. But with several thousand store assistants and service technicians spread over dozens of countries, the old model was not sustainable.
The sales and services training team at Electrolux turned to Easygenerator to help launch a blended learning program. As the primary tool for launching the blended learning model, Easygenerator was able to meet all the company’s needs, including supporting mobile learning, providing cloud-based instant access and distribution, enabling collaborative creation, creating engaging content and more.
According to the sales and services training team, switching to a blended learning model has resulted in greater scalability, improved ROI and a more personalized learner experience.
