Industry: Financial Services
Scope of Services and Products: Provider of investment, life insurance, retirement, disability, and health insurance products and solutions
Estimated Number of Employees: 4,000
Year e-Learning Introduced: 1999
Offices and Locations: Main office in Johannesburg, South Africa
Web Site: http: www.liberty.co.za
Number of e-Learning Programs in Entire Curriculum: 25
The Liberty Group, one of the largest insurance companies in South Africa, provides a comprehensive range of insurance products to both corporations and individuals. As such it relies heavily on an extended sales force to market a wide range of products to a diverse target audience throughout the country. The extended sales force consists of approximately 2,500 sales consultants employed by Liberty with an additional 2,000 contracted individuals and 6,000 brokers.
In June 2001, Liberty implemented an accreditation program for their extended sales force. This was a result of various factors including the high number of new agents joining the company each month, frequent product launches and the escalating costs of training the sales force. In addition, a new policyholder protection regulation had been introduced in South Africa that required all agents to be licensed and accredited to sell insurance and other financial products.
To meet the needs of the diverse group of learners, the program combines:
Self-paced learning modules that present theoretical knowledge
Regional facilitated workshops that focus on marketing-related knowledge and skills
Accreditation exams
Depending on the level of experience, the sales consultants complete all parts of the program, or in some cases, they can qualify to complete the exam only.
Liberty selected an e-learning approach because they needed to:
Assess the current skill levels
Train a large geographically dispersed audience
Provide accreditation to meet new legislative requirements for agent licensing
The overall goal of this e-learning program was the accreditation of the sales force in line with the insurance industry’s new legal requirements for policyholder protection. The legislation came into effect in July 2001, and it stipulated that any sales intermediary selling within the insurance environment would have to be accredited to sell insurance products.
At the time, this new requirement was a challenge for Liberty because a large percentage of Liberty’s sales force was not accredited. There was an immediate need to create training for a large number of agents in the field.
The training had to be delivered within a six-month period to a geographically dispersed audience. Therefore, it was necessary to get the assistance of all the regional training staff and help from the regional managers to schedule and support the training.
This business goal was also in alignment with Liberty’s overall business drivers—to increase sales and productivity. Within the insurance industry time-to-market is a critical success factor, as well as controlling associated costs, including those for training a large sales force.
Assess the sales force competency levels
Educate sales force about products and market position
Bring learning to large numbers of new employees
Ensure accreditation of agents
Comply with new industry legislation
The Phase One Accreditation program (see Figure 16-4) is a combination of a self-paced e-learning, instructor-led and live e-learning workshops, and online assessments. It includes both product knowledge and marketing content.
Figure 16-4: Liberty’s Phase One Accreditation Program
Although Liberty markets a broad range of products, they selected eight key products to be included in the Phase One accreditation process. Liberty strongly believes in using a blended learning approach and included both online and classroom elements in the design of this program.
The basic structure of the program includes:
One introduction module
Eight product modules
Eight workshops
Eight accreditation exams
The introduction module provides an understanding of the insurance industry with particular reference to the way in which Liberty structures its services and products. It also covers terminology and legislation. This self-paced, e-learning module is approximately two hours in duration and consists of mostly text screens.
The eight product modules provide a theoretical understanding of Liberty’s main products. Information is conveyed in both a text and video format with links to pre-recorded Web conferencing sessions. The product modules contain a number of self-assessments and enrichment questions. Each of the product modules focus on:
Overview of the product
Product specifications
Business rules
Marketing opportunities
These modules can be completed in smaller segments whenever the agent has available time, and it takes approximately two hours per module to complete.
The workshops are a combination of instructor-led classroom sessions and live e-learning sessions using Centra. They focus on understanding the market and the opportunities in each product line. The workshops further enhance the learner’s understanding of the various products as covered in the online self-paced sessions. Learning methodologies used in the workshops include application-based role plays that are interactive and based on real experiences. In some instances, the workshops include process and technical exercises.
Initially, Liberty chose not to record the live e-learning sessions, but they do use recorded Centra sessions now in the interest of speeding up time-to-market and also to add another dimension of learning for a diverse target audience.
Macromedia Dreamweaver
Centra live-learning and recorded sessions
HTML and JavaScript
Adobe PDF files, Microsoft PowerPoint, and
Microsoft Word
The eight accreditation exams consist of a bank of randomized multiple choice questions and open-ended questions based on various case studies and scenarios. The questions were designed to test application of knowledge. The learners could select whether they wanted to complete the assessments online or as a paper-based assessment.
The design team for the Phase One Accreditation program was grouped according to specific product sets. At any one time there were at least three teams developing the content required for this program. A typical design team for this project included:
1.0 Project lead
1.0 Subject matter expert / Instructional designer
1.0 Developer
0.5 Technical support
When Liberty first investigated the use of e-learning for the delivery of training to their sales force, they had very little of the required skills and experience internally to develop this blended learning program. They made a decision to update the skill set for their existing training staff so that they could act as the instructional designers and developers for the Phase One Accreditation program. It is important to note that the trainers are subject matter experts, and it was therefore possible for them to fill that role and the instructional designer role.
It is estimated that the project team was able to develop a single two-hour online module as well as the associated workshop and assessment in a period of approximately six weeks. These numbers varied depending on the availability of content, level of interaction, complexity of media elements, existing workshop material, and the skill level of the design team.
Liberty deployed the learning program to the Liberty agents, as well as to the brokers, through the company’s existing intranet portal and the TopClass learning management system.
The various online modules were scheduled for specific periods of time as Liberty only purchased 1,500 concurrent TopClass licenses. This meant that learners had to register to access a module for a particular time period (see Figure 16-5).
Figure 16-5: Learner’s Project Training Schedule for Phase One
At the time of deployment of Phase One, the workshops were scheduled by the branch managers and invitations were sent to the appropriate learners. The program was mandatory for the Liberty agents but voluntary for the brokers who form part of the extended sales force.
The sales force is a mobile one, and as such all brokers use laptops to capture information from clients and complete the required documents so Liberty wanted the program to be as easily accessible as possible. Both the overview and product courses were made available over the Internet, and the sales force was able to access the content from their office desk or from home. They could also access the modules directly, or they could download them to their PC. In some instances, it was necessary to make the program available on a CD-ROM due to server problems, bandwidth issues, and other technical difficulties.
The workshops were scheduled within the various regions and the sales force was required to attend them. Sometimes the marketing workshops were combined or integrated with existing courses. The workshops were facilitated by the existing field trainers and occurred mostly in the regions, thereby avoiding additional missed work time for travel days.
Accreditation exams were scheduled once a month at specific times. Due to the diverse target group, some people were already competent enough in some areas to take the exam without completing a particular online module or workshop.
For management reporting and certification, the assessment results were sent to a database. Managers were able to access the database to generate reports for a particular branch or an entire region. These reports primarily tracked completion percentages and scores. Once the learner passed the assessment with at least an 80 percent, they were sent a system-generated certificate via e-mail.
The program was launched three months after the new accreditation rules came into effect, thereby placing enormous pressure on both the training team and the sales consultants themselves. Leading up to the launch, the training team conducted a number of road shows in the various regions with the purpose of exposing the sales team and management to the program. As part of the overall communication plan, the sales team received various marketing items such as mouse pads.
The main strategy however was to use the field managers and field trainers to promote the program to both the Liberty agents as well as the brokers.
Presented road shows in all main regions
Established champions in the regions to encourage and monitor participation
Gave out marketing items
Placed notices on the internal Web site
The Phase One Accreditation program was deployed to 6,000 learners in September 2001. Within a six-month period, almost all of the 2,500 Liberty agents had completed the eight accreditation exams. The brokers’ completion rate was much lower, as they had not been mandated to complete the program during this timeframe. At present approximately 250 consultants are completing the program each month.
As a result of the program Liberty has managed to certify its sales consultants and is also providing the brokers with an opportunity to become accredited to sell Liberty products.
As part of the overall strategy to use e-learning as a delivery medium for training the sales force, it was important to gather feedback from the learners who had completed the program as well as from the regional managers and the program sponsor.
"I was not restricted to a particular study method."
"Learning is available 24 hours per day."
"The online environment allowed me to study in my own time."
"I improved my sales potential."
The learners were required to complete an online questionnaire. For many of them this was their first online learning experience, and it took some time to get comfortable and see the benefit. Once the learners started working through the modules, they were able to provide valuable feedback
Some constructive conclusions drawn from the feedback are that the program needs to:
Consider a more blended learning approach
Adjust for different learning styles
Take into account the specific requirements of the different audiences, such as agents versus brokers, and well-experienced versus new hires
Have more interactions
Focus on essential content versus nice-to-have
The training team has also reported a positive impact. Before the implementation of an e-learning infrastructure they were not able to cope with the number of new staff joining the company each month or the regular launching of new products and product updates. Other impacts include being able to:
Deliver training to the sales force as and when they need it
Use the reports to draw a correlation between training and performance
Gain high profile for training and support from executives
Liberty’s management team has fully supported this initiative and has identified a number of business impacts, including:
Stakeholder satisfaction: A large percentage of their sales force meet the regulatory compliance requirements
Efficient deployment: 2,500 people accredited in six months, with additional accreditations monthly
Increased market share and new business, although these achievements cannot be directly attributed to the impact of the program they have undoubtedly influenced the results
Recognition in the market as being focused on the development of the Liberty staff
Credibility in the market place due to accredited sales consultants
Purpose: To provide product education for the extended sales force to meet legal requirements, improve sales and productivity, and reduce training costs
Program Structure: The program consisted of:
Eight self-paced, e-learning modules
Eight marketing workshops, with a combination of instructor-led classroom sessions and live e-learning sessions
Online assessments
Number of Learning Hours per Learner: A total of approximately 41 hours, as listed below:
Overview: 1 hour
Product modules: 16 hours
Workshops: 16 hours
Assessments: 8 hours
Number of Learners: 6,000
Completion Requirements:
Mandatory for Liberty agents and voluntary for brokers
80 percent proficiency on assessment
Media and Tools:
Macromedia Dreamweaver
HTML and JavaScript
Adobe PDF files, Microsoft PowerPoint and Word
Centra live-learning sessions
Deployment Mechanism: The program was deployed over the Internet, on CD-ROMs, and in a classroom environment. Marketing approaches included:
Road shows in all main regions
Established champions in the regions to encourage and monitor participation
Understand the target audience.
Get the right blend for the different target groups.
Pitch the content at the correct level.
Train the training team.
It is extremely important to identify potential change management issues and then address these before, during, and after the learning intervention.
Don’t forget about the training team–address their fears and concerns too.
Understand your requirements for a learning management system and check that it can integrate with existing systems and infrastructure.
Work closely with IT.
Get senior management buy-in early in the process so that they will champion the program.
Marketing, communication, and feedback mechanisms must be in place.