Getting Up to Speed

Training & Development, Dec 2005 by Sussman, Dan

Revamped program compresses employee 'time to competency.'

PROFESSIONAL STAFFING companies devote their efforts to helping their clients fill open positions. Consequently, it only makes sense that these staffing organizations are skilled at filling slots in their own organizations as well and, in fact, it's an ongoing practice, since staffing organizations have an average turnover rate of approximately 50 percent per year.

One of the biggest companies in the field-Atlanta-based Randstad North America-is above average in this regard, with a turnover rate of about 45 percent. Nevertheless, says Vince Eugenio, the company's chief learning officer (CLO), the constant chum takes its toll.

The company always has a significant number of new, not-ready-for-prime-time employees whose productivity is limited by their need to get up-to-speed through experience and training. At Randstad, however, a new, improved onboarding program-anchored by a new, flexible learning management system-is yielding substantial benefits. The company is trimming new employees' time to competency, improving employee satisfaction, and increasing the accountability of managers.

Productive employees

Randstad North America is a subsidiary of Netherlands-based Randstad Holding, which is among the world's largest providers of professional staffing services. Randstad Holdings comprises 3,000 offices in 16 European and North American countries. In 2004, the company's 12,500 employment experts put 250,000 people to work every day.

Randstad's success is largely dependent on the quality of its staffing agents. They're the ones who are dispatched to branch offices throughout the continent to bring in the clients and provide day-today service. In Randstad's case, those activities generate a hefty $1.3 billion in revenue per year, so it's essential that new agents become as productive as possible as quickly as possible.

And that was the problem, says Eugenio. The content of Randstad's onboarding program was solid, but the manner in which it was delivered left a lot to be desired. For one tiling, most of the training took place in instructor-led classroom sessions that were time-consuming and resource-intensive. The entire program involved six weeks of concentrated effort by new hires. Speedy? Yes. Effective? Lots of room for improvement, says Eugenio.

"Generally, the new hires were getting so much information in their first couple of weeks that they were completely overwhelmed. They just couldn't absorb all that information," he says.

In addition, nearly all of the course materials were on paper, making distribution and reproduction difficult and a drain on resources. Further aggravating the situation was Randstad's homebrewed LMS, which had become outmoded and limiting.

"Its base functionality was around the registration and tracking of classes. However, it didn't provide us with the robustness we needed in registration, elearning, and reporting. It also didn't allow us to manage all types of delivery modes," the CLO says.

In addition, the learning and development group was blind to how well trained employees actually were. The lack of a sufficiently capable LMS made it difficult to determine whether employees had gone through the full course of training and to evaluate how much learning had actually taken place.

Onboarding overhaul

Clearly, meeting the challenges would require a substantial overhaul of the program, including improved methods of learning delivery, altered schedules, and better accountability. Key to accomplishing the task was Cornerstone, an LMS developed and marketed by Cornerstone (formerly CyberU).

"We looked at a number of different vendors before deciding on Cornerstone," says Eugenio. "They had a well-integrated human capital system that enabled evaluation and accountability. Also, we didn't want to host a system on our own servers, and Cornerstone is delivered on an Application Service Provider model, so that fit into our plans as well."

Cornerstone provides Randstad with the ability to make a consistent set of elearning courses available to employees regardless of their location. It also enables the company to track the progress of all employees in training as well as evaluate the effectiveness of the training. All coursework and reports are available through an easy-to-use Randstad web portal.

Cornerstone also gives Randstad the ability to develop and deliver training programs to its client companies-a service that adds only a trickle to Randstad's revenue stream, but helps build longterm relationships with clients.

With the new LMS in place, the learning and development team had a foundation for revamping the curriculum and delivery.

"When we rolled out this new version of our training in January, we took a step back and looked at all of our subject matter relating to the field staff," says Alison McIsaac, Randstad's national manager for curriculum development. "The field staff helped us identify the most critical things new hires needed to know."