The ELearning Fieldbook [Electronic resources] : Implementation Lessons and Case Studies from Companies that are Making eLearning Work نسخه متنی

Case 3: The Hartford

Company Facts and Figures

Industry: Financial Services

Scope of Services and Products: Provider of investment products and insurance

Estimated Number of Employees: 27,000

Year e-Learning Introduced: 1994

Offices and Locations: Nationwide in the U.S. with headquarters in Hartford, CT

Estimated 2002 Revenues: US$15.2 billion

Web Site: http://www.the hartford.com

Number of e-Learning Courses in Entire Curriculum: More than 200

Introduction

The Hartford, one of the largest insurance companies in the United States, began supplying professional development and learning to its workforce via CD-ROM and LAN-based applications in the early 1990s. In 1994, as they moved away from their mainframe/dumb-terminal based infrastructure to a PC and server/client-based infrastructure, they began to offer e-learning as a training alternative. As Dennis Finnegan, Director Assistant Vice President of Corporate Education at The Hartford explains, “Unfortunately, we were a Wang terminal organization, so e-learning was a bit of a challenge.” Originally, all e-learning material was purchased from external vendors, but in recent years, The Hartford has built a small internal development team.

On October 25, 2001, the United States Congress passed into law H.R. 3162, the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001. Several sections of this law charge banks and other financial institutions with the responsibility to detect, prevent, and report possible money laundering activities as one method for combating international terrorism. The Training Council and the Chief Compliance Officer for The Hartford identified early on that the company may be affected by this law and sought to develop training for employees who may handle or monitor financial transactions as part of their standard job description.

Why e-Learning?

The Hartford selected an e-learning approach to:

Meet the learning objectives mandated by the USA PATRIOT Act in a minimum amount of time

Easily track completion of the mandated course for possible auditing and reporting to Federal agencies

Efficiently train a distributed audience of learners

Control training costs

How Was the Program Aligned with the Business?

At The Hartford, training initiatives and needs are overseen by a group of training leaders who report to a Training Council. When the USA PATRIOT Act was first signed into law, a training leader reviewed the regulation to determine possible training implications for The Hartford. Further review by the Training Council and the Chief Compliance Officer confirmed a training obligation that The Hartford would need to meet should Federal agencies choose to audit financial institutions.

In addition to complying with Federal mandates, The Hartford chose to build training to fulfill its own commitment to be a good corporate citizen by participating in practices and activities that monitor or combat international terrorism. Providing employees with training on how to spot and report suspect activity was The Hartford’s response to this corporate obligation.

Key Business Drivers

Complying with a Federal regulation requiring financial services companies to train employees about the provisions of the law

Meeting a corporate commitment to support the new regulation

Using e-learning as the most effective and efficient way to meet these goals

How Was the Program Designed?

The USA PATRIOT Act course is a 30-minute Web-based course, designed as self-paced e-learning. An internal team of three e-learning developers built the course in approximately 200 hours.

The objectives of the course (see Figure 12-1) are to:

Understand the intent of the USA PATRIOT Act and its anti-money laundering provisions

Be able to describe the basic elements of money laundering, as defined in the USA

PATRIOT Act

Be aware of The Hartford’s requirements regarding the USA PATRIOT Act

Understand the mechanisms for detecting and reporting suspicious activity

Have a basic understanding of Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) trade sanctions and regulations as they apply to The Hartford

Figure 12-1: Objectives of The Hartford’s Compliance Training Course

Interactions, such as drag-and-drop questions (see Figure 12-2), were included throughout the course to engage participants.

Figure 12-2: A Sample Interaction

The Hartford expects to leverage the shell or interface of the USA PATRIOT Act online course to develop several other courses in the future. There are also plans to expand the course to include a team-based classroom session that trains employees on using the electronic system that actually detects potential money laundering events.

Media and Tools

Macromedia Dreamweaver

Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP)

A learning management system (LMS) designed by Desai Systems, which manages and administers the Hartford Corporate University

How Was the Program Deployed?

In the first phase of deployment, an e-mail from the Chief Compliance Officer was sent to all employees of The Hartford, notifying them about the USA PATRIOT Act and highlighting some specifics of the regulation. Employees who are directly responsible for financial transactions can access The Hartford’s Corporate University and register for the online course. An external Internet site was also developed for other constituent groups, such as agent-brokers, to access the course. The target audience uses computer workstations and has access to the corporate intranet, so the course is not available for viewing offline, such as on a CD-ROM.

Periodically, the training leaders run reports to determine who has and who has not completed the course. The training leaders communicate directly with employees who have not completed the course and personally encourage them to do so.

Marketing Approach

An e-mail from the Chief Compliance

Officer was sent to all employees about the new USA PATRIOT Act and notifying them that an online course was available for employees who handled financial transactions.

As a reminder, when an employee registers for the course in The Hartford’s Corporate University, a feature allows the learner to place an appointment in their Microsoft Outlook calendar for when they plan to take the course.

What Was the Business Impact of the Program?

To date, approximately 6,000 employees of The Hartford have completed the USA PATRIOT Act online course. A major concern of the learning development group at The Hartford was not to exceed a training seat time of 30 minutes. Initially, when reviewing similar content created by external vendors, The Hartford could not find a course that was shorter than 60 minutes. By conducting a content analysis with input from the Chief Compliance Officer, The Hartford identified the critical requirements of the regulation, thereby designing a shorter training course that addressed the essentials. Following this approach, The Hartford met critical training needs without demanding a large amount of learner time. This has been well received by both learners and stakeholders.

Other impacts of developing this course were that the internal learning development group at The Hartford increased its competence in building e-learning, and the project sponsor within the company saw a good example of the application of e-learning. This project sponsor, who was initially skeptical of an e-learning approach, has now become an e-learning champion within The Hartford.

Finally, the participants completed a learning evaluation as part of the course, and overall results (see Table 12-1) indicate that learners:

Feel comfortable with the e-learning course

Find the content appropriate

Find the interactions engaging

Would recommend the course to others

Learner Perspectives

Learners view the course as being concise and pleasant to take.

Learners view the course as being easy to access.

Learners felt they were able to learn and retain what they needed to know about the regulation from the e-learning course.

Summary

Purpose: To provide an overview of the USA PATRIOT Act and the Office of Foreign Asset Control’s requirements under the Act so that learners would:

Understand the intent of the USA PATRIOT Act law

Be able to describe basic elements of money laundering

Be aware of The Hartford’s requirements regarding the law

Understand the mechanisms for detecting and reporting suspicious activity

Have a basic understanding of trade sanctions and regulations as they apply to The Hartford

Program Structure: Each learning objective for the course is addressed as an individual module, each approximately 5 to 6 screens in length.

Total Number of Hours of Learning in the Program: 30 minutes

Number of Learners: Of the 12,000 targeted learners, 6,000 have completed the course so far.

Completion Requirements: Learners must finish all modules of the online course to get credit for completing the course.

Media and Tools:

Macromedia Dreamweaver

Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP)

Deployment Mechanism: The course is deployed online through The Hartford’s Corporate University, which is managed and administered through a learning management system designed by Desai Systems. Marketing approaches include:

E-mail notification from the Chief Compliance Officer to all employees

Reminders through individual’s Microsoft Outlook calendar for taking the course

Lessons Learned

Build a library of "success stories" that you can use to market the value of e-learning to leadership.

Develop high-quality, interactive programs to help overcome resistance with learners who may remember the "bad old days" of computer-based training (CBT).

Carefully review and judge promises offered by external vendors. Identify what fits best with your corporate culture and get commitment from vendors to work towards that.

Complete a cost/benefit analysis to determine whether it makes more sense to buy courses or build in-house.

When using external development vendors for the first time, select a low visibility project.

When buying content from an external vendor, thoroughly investigate whether it is more cost-effective to buy a large site license or use a "pay-per-view" approach.

Develop clear processes about who is responsible for decision-making, especially with regard to content. This is important if you will be relying on numerous subject matter experts (SMEs).

Use media judiciously and verify that all media is educationally appropriate and necessary.