Designing Impactful & Scalable Training After Multiple Acquisitions
Problem
A financial services organization had undergone several acquisitions and as a result, was operating with five disparate resource centers. The organization wanted to design a future state that would transform the service of the centers under one, consistent operating model. In addition, they wanted to implement new technology to better support a hybrid in-person and remote employee working structure. Both initiatives would create a need to design a change management and training process to support the employee experience while minimizing distribution to the business.
Excelerate was engaged for both their experience working with financial institutions as well as their expertise in training and development. The organization wanted Excelerate to help design the future state with training methodologies that were scalable, engaging, and efficient. They also wanted to ensure that best practices were adopted regarding their people, processes, and technology needs.
Approach
Excelerate began the project by reviewing artifacts and interviewing key stakeholders. With this background, the team was able to conduct a comparison of the current vs. Future state. The second phase of the project included the facilitation of values and behaviors workshops as well as a training design and alignment workshop. During this analysis, a series of consistent themes began to surface that would have a significant and direct impact on the final deliverables. These findings were in areas of culture and communications, gaps in onboarding training and retention, addressing remote workforce challenges within the content of training and rethinking the path to proficiency throughout an employee’s career. Excelerate also identified a need to address systems training – providing employees with a more hands on approach over time with opportunities to continually review and practice their skills.
Results
Excelerate provided a complete and thorough roadmap for the first 90 days of training that would support the customer’s transition into their future state model. The team also mapped out a revised comprehensive training plan that leveraged best practices grounded in adult learning theories and expanded modalities for optimal and scalable delivery. Lastly, Excelerate provided the client with recommendations of how to assess learning from this new training framework to operationalize the prioritized training areas.