Each year, the ATD Excellence in Practice Awards celebrate the efforts of individuals and organizations whose commitment to talent development sets them apart. Awards are presented to practices that have demonstrated clear and measurable results of achieving organizational goals, meet a demonstrated need, have appropriate design values, and are clearly aligned with other performance improvement initiatives. These practices have long-term, sustained results.
“ATD Award winners reflect a deep commitment to the value of developing people in the workplace. Winning organizations demonstrate how aligning talent development to business needs can increase the performance and success of organizations worldwide,” said Tony Bingham, ATD President and CEO.
The ATD Excellence in Practice Award for learning technology is presented to practices that use technology and learning to develop, connect, and engage the workforce. Lake Trust Credit Union is one of ATD’s recent winners.
Lake Trust Credit Union is a community-based credit union headquartered in Brighton, Michigan. It is a not-for-profit financial cooperative owned by members of the credit union and regulated under the authority of the National Credit Union Administration. Lake Trust serves approximately 180,000 members throughout Michigan in 20 branches and headquarters.
Unfortunately, at the end of 2016, satisfaction with L&D was at an all-time low with a score of 58. To improve internal communication and employee engagement, Lake Trust Credit Union redesigned its L&D portal.
The Lake Trust L&D team formed a project team to create a one-stop shop for all things learning and development with on-demand, self-paced learning, coupled with social learning through communities. The L&D team changed LMS content providers to Lynda.com.
With Lynda.com resources, Lake Trust Credit Union redesigned its LMS into an L&D portal. The redesign focused on improving the interface and user experience; content offerings; and social learning and collaboration functionality. Social learning communities for Member Experience, Operational Excellence, and Social Purpose were housed in the portal.
At the end of 2017, almost a year after the portal redesign, satisfaction with L&D rose to 75, a 29 percent increase. With better course offerings, voluntary courses watched grew from 334 courses in 2016 to 1,637 in 2017, a 490 percent increase.
Internal communication improved 55 percent, too. L&D created an internal newsletter with HR called Engage, which highlights the various learning opportunities in the portal.
Collaboration in the portal drove business impact. For example, Lake Trust created a lending community, where employees could share and discuss lending issues and knowledge, and there has been a 23 percent decline of errors across the entire lending lifecycle over the six months after implementation.
Do you have an awarding practice? If so, the 2019 application is now open! The deadline to apply is August 15, 2019.
