Executive Summary
Creating an environment that promotes learning and professional development is central to the corporate culture at Bank of Oak Ridge, a community bank with locations across North Carolina. To foster those values, the bank needed a talent management solution that could link performance and development while also meeting regulatory requirements.
Since implementing Halogen eAppraisal™, Halogen eLearning Manager™, and Halogen Job Description Builder™, Bank of Oak Ridge has standardized its performance management and learning management processes to:
- Support reporting requirements for state and federal banking regulators.
- Support the management of a variety of learning delivery methods.
- Empower employees to take charge of personal development.
- Decrease classroom time.
- Identify and address roadblocks to success.
- Integrate and align required competencies into job descriptions.
- Provide centralized and integrated on-premise performance management control.
Learning and Development Central to Bank’s Culture
Bank of Oak Ridge is a community bank with locations in Greensboro, Summerfield and Oak Ridge, North Carolina. The bank is deeply rooted in the communities it serves, supporting many local civic organizations and events. Established in 2000 with the goal of delivering Banking As It Should Be, its promise is realized through the employees who serve as the face and voice of the organization. Creating an environment that promotes learning and professional development is central to the institution’s culture. At the same time, ensuring Bank of Oak Ridge staff has the skills and training needed to meet industry regulatory requirements is critical to the bank’s ability to deliver innovative services and products to its clients.
In 2008, Bank of Oak Ridge identified several business requirements that led to its implementation of a performance-based learning system. The bank’s existing process couldn’t be used to deliver actionable feedback that could then be used to support appropriate development planning.
Second, changes in the financial services industry - largely brought on by the faltering economy and strict compliance training and reporting regulations - had created a heavy administrative burden.
In soliciting input from employees and managers across the organization, it became clear there was a generally held consensus that performance and development were not viewed as ongoing priorities. Reviews got tucked away into a drawer. Employees were not receiving what they needed to learn and grow. There were no development plans to address weaknesses. Yet industry standards were clamping down on the need for policies and procedures to document training.
Moving to a Performance-Based Learning Approach
“We decided to implement an integrated technology solution that would address both our shortfall in the performance management process, as well as our regulatory administrative burdens,” says Wanda Ladd, Director of Human Resources.
Prior to beginning its search, the bank identified five business and operational requirements that needed to be addressed. The automated solution needed to:
- Support reporting requirements for state and federal banking regulators.
- Track and link competency training to areas needing improvement.
- Support the management of a variety of learning delivery methods ranging from online courses and webinars to in class training.
- Enable employees to assume responsibility for their own learning and development – therefore ease of use was essential.
- Provide an on-premise deployment option to meet internal IT and security policies.
After establishing a business case for moving to an automated solution, members from IT and HR researched Learning Management System (LMS) tools, identified a short list of vendors, requested information and proposals, and reviewed options.
A litmus test of two key IT business imperatives narrowed the scope. First, how well would the solution integrate with other technologies and HR software used at the bank? Second, which solutions could be hosted internally?
“We were already using Halogen eAppraisal as our performance management solution and were pleased with the implementation experience and methodology. As a result, we were interested in learning more about Halogen eLearning Manager. We liked that it offers a performance-based learning approach to help us link our training and development programs to the performance needs of our employees. That Halogen also provided an on-premise deployment option in addition to an on-demand model made the solution an even easier choice,” says Ladd.
Purpose-Built Solution Links Learning to Competencies
Because Halogen’s talent management suite is designed from the ground up to link performance to other talent functions, Ladd and team were confident they could implement the performance-based learning approach the bank required.
Following Halogen’s proven implementation methodology, Ladd and team quickly defined how organizational competencies and learning activities would link to Halogen eLearning Manager and Halogen eAppraisal. By simply clarifying employee roles and responsibilities through the Halogen system, Bank of Oak Ridge could quickly identify the learning options, units, and paths that would support employee development, and in turn, the goals of the organization.
With the provided training for administrators, managers and employees in place, Bank of Oak Ridge was set to introduce its new, centralized system to employees.
“As part of our training we set up a “process” within the system so that each person trained would already have work to do in the system and practically apply what they had learned in their training,” Ladd notes.
The flexibility and simplicity of the system has made adhering to the bank’s learning management process a hassle-free experience for Bank of Oak Ridge employees. Since so many of the bank’s employees are in customer service positions, they are now able to start an online course, stop it to serve a client, and pick up where they left off – effectively multi-tasking and using downtime to complete required training.
Flexibility and simplicity attributes also proved beneficial from an administrative point of view. According to Ladd, “Halogen’s learning management system now allows us to catalogue, schedule, manage and track all types of learning activities including: classroom, e-learning, seminars, webinars, on-the-job, certifications, etc. We can easily manage registrations, withdrawals, waiting lists, cancellations, bulk enrolments, instructor assignments, and resource bookings from a central interface as well as report on training hours, course progress, course completion and scores. And we provide access to all our learning and development resources from a single catalogue.”
What’s especially critical to the HR team, as Ladd pointed out, is that while the bank’s IT department handles the installation and hardware for on-premise deployment, the HR team manages the user center and processes administration independently.
Linking Job Descriptions to Performance
In 2010, Bank of Oak Ridge looked to further support high performance with Halogen Job Description Builder™. “What’s very critical to us is that access to organizational competencies, job profiles and training activities is all done from one location, shared with the same content in our employee performance management system,” says Ladd.
“We wanted every role in our organization to have a job description that reflects the competencies needed to succeed in the role, but that can also be mapped to our performance and learning management processes, explains Ladd. “With Halogen Job Description Builder we can ensure employees and new hires have the right skills to succeed because the associated competencies written into each job description are automatically integrated into our performance and learning management processes.”
This means if there are performance gaps or training requirements that need to be met managers can discuss them with employees during performance review meetings and immediately assign learning and training as needed.
Further, the ability to manage and update job descriptions from one central, shared online repository provides consistency to the process. By taking advantage of Halogen Job Description Builder’s automated email reminders, managers are prompted to review and revise job descriptions on a regular basis. And because employees always have access to the latest version of their job descriptions, the system helps to ensure they are aware of their job responsibilities.
For Ladd, Halogen Job Description Builder provides true value. “When a job description is created or updated those competencies are immediately reflected in the employee’s appraisal form. It’s seamless; it’s centralized, and we don’t have to think about it. We know it works, and the benefit is that we know our job descriptions and talent management processes reflect the culture and values of our organization as well as the critical job specific competencies for each role.”
A Bank with a Performance-Driven Culture
Through its implementation of Halogen Software, Bank of Oak Ridge has achieved significant return on investment. From a regulatory and auditor perspective the bank can quickly produce reports that provide a list of compliance and regulatory training as well as verified scores. Significant efficiencies have been achieved on the administrative side for HR and for managers. The organization is more development focused. From on-boarding to leadership development, each and every employee can view learning paths to see how they can move up within the organization via development activities. This alignment of learning and performance has also made employees more accountable for their own learning. They are clearly engaged in the process which, says Ladd, is a marked contrast to earlier days.
The bank also continues to benchmark results against ROI expectations. “We know that by bringing many of the regulatory training modules from the classroom to an online format, our employees can complete in 20 minutes what might have previously taking up to three days of time,” says Bank of Oak Ridge CFO, Tom Wayne.
Additionally, from a reporting standpoint, what previously was an untenable task of consolidating training and compliance reports for auditors is now done via a simplified training report run within the system.
Learning has become central to the Bank of Oak Ridge’s culture. Employees are empowered to take ownership of their own training. The expectation is that if an employee wants to take a particular class to further their development in a key area, they can easily find it and ask for it to be added to their development plan. And rather than managers chasing compliance training requirements, they’re now helping manage the development process. Where there was no real focus on development in the performance management cycle, now, if HR reviews a performance appraisal where something is getting in the way of an employee’s success, a development plan must be identified or the appraisal is sent back to the manager.
“We’ve created a corporate culture focused on learning, development and sustained high performance,” says Ron Black, CEO. “A high performance emphasis that is enabling our bank to deliver innovative services and products to our clients.”
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