Aviation Week & Space Technology
08/20/2007, page 92
Printed headline: New Courses
When Aviation Week launched its annual review of job opportunities and the workforce in the late 1990s, Bell Helicopter was named among the innovators, even though it wasn’t a young company then. Issuing computers to each employee, it offered online access to information, data and learning to help employees and families stay connected to the company.
Four years ago, Bell Helicopter looked at upgrading its learning potential again, this time reverting to a measure used in the early 1990s offering every employee 40 hr. of learning per year. “This isn’t an average across the company,” explains P.D. Shabay, chief operating officer. “It’s every employee having 40 hr. of learning. It means taking people out of their slots at work, and we measure the outcome every month.
“In today’s environment, where there is a war for talent and keeping that talent, it’s important that our commitment to creating a learning environment is at the top of our concerns. It’s part of our company’s brand.”
In addition to setting a measurable goal for learning for each person, Bell Helicopter’s leaders also linked up with Textron University (TU), offered by Bell’s parent corporation. More than 1,000 courses appear online via TU. Employees can complete a full course as time allows, and they can access what they need to resolve an immediate problem. Among the most popular programs is Culture Wizard, which helps team leaders build global, virtual teams.
Shabay then turned to Bell’s director of professional development, Wanda Burghart, and challenged her to take a different look at learning and the future. Her answer was to develop a catalog of education organized by career category. She called upon nearby Texas Christian University (TCU) in Fort Worth to develop graduate coursework geared specifically to Bell, known as Crucial Conversations. Its purpose is to develop the next generation of leaders, combining TCU’s upper-level education with Bell-specific leadership coursework.
Bell also shifted its approach to mentoring. Instead of automatically assigning mentors to everyone, Bell employees and mentors now must apply to participate in the program. They are then chosen based on their commitment to the effort.
Shabay’s team also is working to resolve the issue of a leadership gap in the middle-experienced ranks of the company, resulting from industry-wide layoffs during the last downturn. “The gap is deeper than most of us realized,” he says. Bell’s response includes re-energizing support of affinity and special-interest groups. Right now, the new-hire group is putting together an event that resembles speed-dating, providing an opportunity for more experienced employees and new employees to start relationships based on what they have in common.
The result of these initiatives is a learning environment where graduate-level course work mixes with certification-training for highly skilled trades; every employee has a 40-hr.-per-year learning opportunity, and voluntary attrition stands at less than 5%.
|
