UnumProvident keeps tabs on employee training

Citation

(2004), "UnumProvident keeps tabs on employee training", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 36 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ict.2004.03736eab.008

UnumProvident keeps tabs on employee training

UnumProvident keeps tabs on employee training

Tennessee-based disability insurer UnumProvident Corporation has bought a new system for delivering and measuring training for its 4,000 underwriters, sales executives, IT staff and field service and support workers.

Until now, executives at UnumProvident have relied on spreadsheets, paper files and databases to track their firm's training needs. But the growing complexity of the firm's education programmes has created the need for an automated training-management solution. The company has chosen a Pathlore Software learning-management system that not only registers employees for online and classroom training but also assesses how much workers have learned.

“If you are going to measure the impact of training, managers need to know what programmes people have attended and how they did,” said Sue Hynes, associate vice-president at UnumProvident. “An LMS provides a total picture of the activities, costs and impact.”

UnumProvident can tap the LMS to create and deliver training for each member of the field service group. The company can design and track classes and programmes for newly hired field employees, ongoing leadership programmes for management and a certified service-excellence training programme. The system also gives UnumProvident's executives a way to identify gaps in the know-how its employees possess. If, for example, an employee needs training around a particular procedure, then the LMS will alert UnumProvident's trainers to this fact.

“We expect to use the LMS as a hub that will inform, register, evaluate, track and report on every ingredient of our training,” said Rick O'Coin, Director of UnumProvident's learning resource network.

UnumProvident's Judy Donovan added: “The LMS tracks not only who is registering for classes but also what kind of courses they want. We now can prioritize training requests, which reduces redundancy and saves money”.

According to Judy Donovan, the LMS will save money in a number of ways. First, the product's editing features give trainers a way to break up classroom training into small pieces that workers can take online at a PC. This reduces an employee's time away from work.

Second, the LMS shoulders thousands of telephone calls and e-mails linked to registering 4,000 workers for courses each year. Without the LMS, that burden would otherwise rest with training staffers.

“The cost savings from automating the behind-the-scenes work required to train 4,000 employees each year would pay for an LMS,” said Carrie Picardi, senior research analyst at META Group, Inc.

But according to UnumProvident, the company has gone beyond simply reducing administrative costs with its LMS. The organization is using training technology to assess whether or not education is having an impact on the way business gets done.