BY LINDA GALLOWAY

THE 2007 LEARNING LEADER IN INITIATIVE EXCELLENCE

Since 1985, Snoopy, the dancing beagle from“Peanuts,” has served as MetLife’s brand ambassador. More than 20 years later, Snoopy is dancing even faster – perhaps to keep time with the pace of change set by the company and its Learning and Development (L&D) organization.

The pace of business change has been matched by the company’s learning and development organization, which has practically reinvented itself. Until 2005,MetLife relied primarily on traditional instructor- led training and had no learning technology infrastructure. Today, it is an innovative and highly effective learning leader. Its learning infrastructure, MetLife Performance- Learning, was recognized by Bersin & Associates in January 2007 for initiative excellence. The company’s best practices in change management, organizational structures, shared services, and enterprise-wide learning initiatives provide valuable lessons for any learning organization seeking to align itself with corporate strategy.

STRATEGY DESIGNED TO BUILD WORKFORCE OF THE FUTURE
“As the company changed, learning needs became very complex and demands came at an accelerated pace,” said Doris Fritz, vice president of learning and development. “Business leaders looked to us to solve major corporate challenges, not to simply provide basic training. We also recognized that MetLife’s strategy depended on us to build the workforce of the future. We knew we had to change in a big way.

“Without change, even doubling our budget would not have been enough to address the strategic learning needs of MetLife’s diverse and global workforce. MetLife’s vision called for us to completely rethink our approach to learning.”

Fritz and her teamset out to implement a three-part strategy:

1 Transform the learning and development organizational structure to increase efficiencies. MetLife had begun centralizing its learning function – encompassing approximately 200 professionals — in 2002. In 2005, jobs were redefined and aligned to support the new vision of learning while maintaining dedicated training support of business units. New employees were hired to fill new roles and to support technologies planned for implementation.

2 MetLife’s Enterprise Learning Solutions team was created to provide shared learning resources – encompassing technologies, design and curriculum services – across the enterprise.

3 The learning organization increased its focus on enterprise-wide learning needs, such as customer service and sales skills, new hire orientation, and indepth product knowledge. A newly created senior learning council, composed of senior vice presidents from major operational, service, and sales units, would provide input into these initiatives.

Through her work with colleagues and business partners, Fritz knew a robust technology infrastructure would be required to meet the learning and development needs of MetLife’s rapidly expanding global workforce. These resources were provided and managed by MetLife’s Enterprise Learning Solutions group, headed by Rick Rabideau, who was hired.

NEW TECHNOLOGIES, NEW PROCESSES PROVIDE THE FOUNDATION
“When I started,MetLife had focused almost all its training investments on instructor-led programs. So, we had the advantage of starting with a clean slate,” said Rabideau. “Unlike other companies with vast e-learning libraries and legacy technologies, we had the freedom to build a learning infrastructure with mature technologies and lessons learned from other companies.”

When Rabideau joined MetLife in April 2005, his mission was to create a state-ofthe- art learning platform and design infrastructure to address MetLife’s aggressive business goals. In order to efficiently meet compliance requirements, manage learning activities, and provide insight into results, a high priority was the selection and installation of an LMS. In 2004, Fritz and her team spent the summer conducting interviews and needs assessments with stakeholders and other learning professionals throughout MetLife. By March 2005, the team had successfully installed an LMS (PeopleSoft) and had begun conducting pilot tests.

Rabideau also knew he had to find a way to manage the thousands of existingWord and PowerPoint documents used for instructor- led training throughout MetLife, as well as e-learning content and future learning resources. Eedo’s ForceTen LCMS was installed in early 2006, along with centralized and standardized learning design and development processes, to ensure enterprisewide consistency and ongoing reusability. The team also implemented a virtual classroom solution later that year. With the infrastructure now in place, the entire L&D organization is aggressively leveraging the new tools.

THE CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS
How did the MetLife L&D team accomplish, in less than two years, what takes many companies much longer? Rabideau cited several critical success factors, including a highly methodical approach.

“Implementing major technology requires careful change management. Success is highly dependent on having the right skills and organizational structure in place to support the change and demonstrate positive value,” said Rabideau.

The result of theses factors and other activities is MetLife Performance-Learning, the learning infrastructure for enterprise-wide learning at MetLife. The goal of the infrastructure is to drive individual and organizational excellence by using a blend of modern learning design tools and delivery techniques to formulate high-quality learning experiences that embrace the varied ways employees can learn, expedite learning delivery, and positively impact job performance.

MetLife Performance- Learning was unveiled to the entire MetLife learning organization at its third annual conference, held in Tampa, in May 2006. “We deliberately timed the launch to coincide with the conference,” said Rabideau. “We wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to introduce it to everyone ‘in person’ and to use the conference as a time for training and discussion. Acceptance by the L&D organization was fundamental to its success.

“We worked almost round the clock in order to get all the technology up and running for the conference. I was determined that the demonstrations would be the real thing – not smoke and mirrors. We also had to finalize many supporting materials that explained new processes and procedures. After all, these were the professionals who would be championing the infrastructure and using it almost every day. They needed to be fully prepared.”

He needn’t have worried. The demonstrations went off without a hitch. MetLife learning professionals were able to get hands-on experience with the newly implemented LCMS (Eedo’s ForceTen) and the new EasyPath process for centralized design and development.

The MetLife EasyPath process and the design advisor function provide learning professionals with an easy-tofollow design map, tools and templates and the advisory expertise to support the MetLife Performance-Learning infrastructure and approach. EasyPath was developed to ensure quality of learning content without requiring lineof- business learning professionals to become learning design and development experts. It also was designed to facilitate rapid development and document management.

Less than one year after MetLife Performance-Learning was launched, the company is already seeing results. Currently, 25 e-learning initiatives are complete or in progress. Many of these projects address training needs common across most business units, such as auto and home products and the customer response center. Projects are based on the EasyPath process and use centralized design and advisory services. Common learning objects, such asWord and PowerPoint files, are now centrally managed with MetLife’s LCMS.

For instance, one recently completed project was the redesign of a ten-week curriculum for customer response centers. By utilizing the EasyPath approach to content creation and taking advantage of new technology infrastructure, the course length was reduced to eight weeks and pass rates rose from an average of 65% to 80%. But even more important, learners completing the revised curriculum are handing more calls sooner and with higher accuracy than peers trained using the previous curriculum.

LESSONS IN CHANGE
According to Fritz, the dramatic changes in learning at MetLife were facilitated by three guiding principles:

The importance of creating a highly collaborative environment. By including all members of the L&D organization, the executive team had the benefit of input from all areas of the organization and had a high-level of buy-in.

Recognizing the need to delegate authority for decisionmaking to the right people in the right roles. The scope and pace of change required that decisions be made efficiently.

Understanding that learning is a business. As Fritz said, “Most of our budget comes from business units. They trust us to spend dollars wisely. They want us to run learning just as they run their own businesses.”

Fritz and Rabideau also summarized the lessons learned in the past two years: Learn as much as you can from other organizations’ successes and failures. Network at conferences, talk with vendors, read the trade publications, and take advantage of available research and web seminars. Although MetLife’s learning infrastructure is quite sophisticated, team members had the advantage of learning from other organization’s successes and lessons learned.

Make sure you have the right talent to support the vision early in the process. Although the tenure of MetLife’s Enterprise Learning team was short, team members had the right talents and skills to support the implementation of new systems and processes. They also had the knowledge and experience that promoted the trust of others in the L&D organization.

Limit the number of vendors involved as much as possible in order to reduce complexity. Create a solid business proposition that encourages select vendors to become vested in supporting your success.

Obtain executive support. MetLife L&D benefits from an enlightened leadership team with a clear corporate vision. The team regularly revisits goals and is willing to make the tough decisions to ensure a progressive leadership is in place. The company also recognizes the need for strategic investments.

Communicate regularly. Change will be challenging unless there is a forum for communication.

“Our business partners put faith and confidence in us to provide the learning environment and tools to support the performance expectations of the company,” said Fritz. “It’s our job to run learning as well as our company is run.”

Given the vision of this ambitious L&D organization, you can bet Snoopy won’t be slowing down anytime soon.

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To learn more about the MetLife learning program, visit www.elearning.b2bmediaco.com and view the on-demand web cast. To participate in the Learning Leaders 2007 program, visit: www.bersin.com. Applications are accepted until September 1, 2007.

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