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Reinventing Training at Rockwell Collins

By Sarah Fister

Publication: Training

Date: Saturday, April 1 2000 A strategic plan and reallocation of training resources brings an old-line company's employee training into the 21st century.

Rockwell Collins? new learning strategy will allow the company to expand its training offerings by 40 percent while it saves $14 million over three years?and that's a conservative estimate.

Did that get your attention? It should. During the next three years, training at the communication and aviation electronics giant will evolve from a fragmented classroom curriculum into a centralized, technology-based approach to learning.

To pull off this feat, Rockwell Collins began by formulating a plan, an 82-page strategic plan, that outlines a move from primarily classroom-based training to "alternative" learning formats?self-paced Web-based training (WBT) at the desktop, computer-based training (CBT) courses on CD-ROM via kiosks and learning labs, and live training via online virtual classrooms. By 2003, year four of the plan, 70 percent of the curriculum will be delivered via technology, and many of the courses that remain in the classroom will have CBT or WBT components to make them more efficient, says Cliff Purington, manager of learning and development at RC's headquarters in Cedar Rapids, IA.A key component of Rockwell's transformation is the collaboration it created among training vendors to ensure it could build an efficient training system. But more on that later.

History Lessons

An organization with 50 years of history behind it, Rockwell Collins today manufactures cockpit instruments, in-flight entertainment systems and ground-communication tools. It has 15 international offices in addition to its 42 domestic locations. How do you change the approach to learning in a company as vast as this?

First you need to find out what you're dealing with. Purington was hired in September "98 to change the way the company delivered training to its 14,000 employees, half of whom are based outside the Cedar Rapids headquarters. He and his team, which included The Performance Engineering Group Inc. (peg), an organizational effectiveness and change management consultancy in Santa Barbara, CA, began by investigating the training environment and collecting existing training data."We needed a thorough understanding of the culture, structure, infrastructure, perceptions of the current training, and any other data that would allow Purington to get a clear picture of the organization," says Chris Butler, president of peg. "Rockwell Collins has always been committed to training. They've always invested a lot of money and resources on training." Even in hard times, when many companies were cutting back training staffs, Rockwell maintained its training investment, he says.

"The problem was that 100 percent of the investment was going to classroom instruction," says Purington. The training department simply couldn't keep up with the company's changing needs through classroom training alone, he says.

The learning and development team interviewed and surveyed hundreds of employees about their reactions to traditional training and their take on outside-the-classroom alternatives. The team reviewed past training budgets and delivery methods, digging up figures on hours spent in training per employee per year, repeat rates for certain classes, student cancellation rates, no-show rates and class evaluations. They also analyzed Rockwell's "best place to work" attitude surveys, which are conducted every two years to measure job satisfaction.

Seven years? worth of historical data, results from more than 300 employee surveys, interviews with key leaders, and several focus-group discussions revealed some startling facts. For example, of the 1,400 courses offered during that time, 72 percent were conducted only once. On average, 28 percent of registered participants were no-shows, and the 7,000 RC employees outside the Cedar Rapids headquarters had very limited access to training. Almost 40 percent of them received 15 or fewer hours of training per year.

Fifty-three percent of those surveyed said work demands had forced them to cancel out of a scheduled training session. Another 48 percent said they'd had to leave training because of work demands, and 92 percent said they'd been unable to attend scheduled training three or more times.

Surveys also reflected support among RC employees for a new approach to learning: Sixty-two percent wanted to receive training outside of traditional classrooms; 72 percent wanted to be able to start and stop training when they wanted to; and 75 percent wanted to learn at their own pace. In other words, Rockwell employees were ready for the change to computer-based training.A Map for the Future

With this data in hand, the team developed a plan outlining the future of training at Rockwell Collins. It calls for delivering 70 percent of Rockwell's curricula via computer-based learning methods by the end of 2001. In December of 1999, the company was already at the 30 percent mark.

The new learning system will use a number of elements to create a rich training environment. All business units will have learning councils, made up of RC managers and internal learning consultants, who will oversee training needs analyses and evaluate whether training is the right solution for performance problems. RC will participate in an industry cooperative of large organizations that share specific training needs, creating an extranet of computer-based courses that all co-op members can use, thus reducing the cost of training for all. RC also hopes to offer online graduate courses and possibly degree programs to employees through Kansas State University.

The learning and development (L&D) team tied the strategic training plan to the company's vision and bottom line to ensure upper-management buy-in. But the new approach to learning wasn't too tough to sell once the team determined that technology-assisted delivery would reduce Rockwell's training budget by a minimum of 40 percent during the first three years of implementation.

The L&D team eventually calculated that over the three-year life of the grand plan, the company would save $14million on labor, travel and off-site expenses?airfare, hotel costs, and reduction of on-the-job hours lost to off-site training. "We used more than 40 algorithms to show payback, and those numbers were validated by the finance group," says Purington.

The $14 million savings does not reflect the return on investment attributable to improved job performance or better retention rates expected from offering increased just-in-time training. That's why the L&D team feels $14 million is a conservative estimate. Factor in these less quantifiable paybacks, contends Purington, and he'd expect a savings of twice that much.

Even though switching to online and computer-based training required a significant investment in 1999, the L&D team did it with the same training budget it had in 1998?6.6 percent of annual payroll. "We delivered all of the necessary training, bought the hardware and software, and hired four more people with the same budget," says Purington. Most of the savings came from the purchase of a library of information-technology courses from SmartForce (formerly CBT Systems), which saved RC the cost of sending 3,000 people to classroom courses.

Teaming Up Vendors

In January 1999, with management's support and a plan in place, the L&D team started looking for vendors. Rather than interviewing a slew of companies individually, listening to proposals, and handing down his decisions, Purington invited 50 vendors to a group meeting. First he outlined the plan, then he made an announcement: "No one of you can offer me a turnkey solution, and I don't want to manage a whole lot of vendors. I want a team, with everyone on a level playing field."Gathering the vendors together in this fashion caused a certain, shall we say, apprehension. "They were all fairly uncomfortable," says Steve Junion, an IT specialist at Rockwell and member of the L&D team. This is an uncommon approach, peg's Butler acknowledges. There's not one contractor and a lot of subcontractors; there'sno leader, except Purington and his team. In fact, many of the vendors balked at the idea. After the initial meeting, a few told Purington that it would never work.

But it has. Less than a year later, 12 vendors were on board, sharing secrets and modifying their products to work with competitors? products. Among those vendors are Allen Communications and Gulliver Ritchie, both of whom are customizing specialty courses for RC such as training on the damaging effect of static electricity; Pinnacle Multimedia is providing its Learning Management System to manage all of Rockwell's training online; SmartForce and The Belgard Group are supplying computer-based off-the-shelf IT and soft-skills courses; Centra Software is bringing its virtual-classroom offering to the table; and several others are providing hardware and software.

After their initial hesitation, vendors have overwhelmingly endorsed the team format. "I like this approach because the company has the knowledge and can judge the ability of the people helping them," says Steve Allen, technology chair at Allen Communications in Salt Lake City. "It's the most innovative approach we've seen," says Bill Belgard of the Belgard Group, a leadership training consultancy based in Portland, OR. "All of the vendors are working together like a symphony instead of a bunch of solo acts."

Still, putting a group of vendors in a room and telling them to work together isn't enough to make it happen. In this case it's working because Rockwell Collins has a detailed plan that maps out exactly what it wants and who is going to provide it. "The strategic plan is key to the process," says Jim Kosse, regional account manager for SmartForce. "We can see where we fill a role." For example, the plan lays out the criteria and contributions required to meet its return-on-investment goals for the CBT rollout in the first year. "It gives us a target," he says. "They're saying: "Here are our goals. How can you help us meet them?" "

"Without the plan it would be chaos," says Allen. A comprehensive strategic plan helps vendors to be less competitive because they see their place in the overall strategy and how they will profit from it. "This is what's missing from most organizations," he says.

A Meeting of the Minds

In November, Purington invited all the vendors who made the cut to Cedar Rapids to celebrate what they'd accomplished so far and to discuss the future. Thirty representatives from 15 vendors spent the morning sharing ideas.

The occasion marked the fact that in five months almost all of the Year One goals had been met, includingdelivering 30 percent of the curriculum via computer, establishing a common design process, creating learning labs for employees without computer access, and launching the first virtual classroom.

Meanwhile, employees got their first taste of the new and improved Rockwell Collins learning system last summer. The system went up in July "99, but with little fanfare, says Purington. And that was by design. Employees quietly discovered the 230 courses, allowing the L&D staff time to gauge responses and iron out any bugs.In November, Rockwell Collins officially rolled out the new system with posters, articles, corporatewide e-mail announcements, and a demo CD-ROM featuring highlights from the new training for all 14,000 employees. "We've had excellent responses," says Junion. "Lots of people outside headquarters had been neglected in the past, and they are very excited about Web-based training."

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