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Mountain America Credit Union's Learning Council
November 02, 2009
By Sarah Boehle
From the Training Top 125 Best Practices e-newsletter
Mountain American Credit Union's educational services team needed to figure out how best to inform the organization of its capabilities and program offerings, according to Suzanne Oliver, senior VP of educational services at Mountain America.
So a "Learning Council" composed of 30 managers from various areas of the credit union was established in 2008. "Our rationale was that when managers are exposed to training and become better aware of the various programs available to them and their employees, they are more likely to put the training to use within their groups," says Shelley Muhlestein, assistant VP of educational services.
"Once managers join the Learning Council, they become more knowledgeable advocates of our services, and often also feed into the development pipeline itself by initiating the creation of new course offerings," says Oliver. "Then, on the back end of the development cycle, when we're ready to pilot a new program, Learning Council members serve as our initial test audience. It's an efficient dynamic."
Here's how it works. Each quarter, council members are given an assignment to help familiarize them with current training resources. "These assignments provide a stimulus for developing new ideas to improve the training we currently offer and to address areas where needs are not yet being met," says Oliver.
Assignments at quarterly meetings include activities such as visiting the Training Center page on Mountain America's company intranet, attending financial literacy courses offered by the company's educational services department, and participating in other training that may be of interest and value to council members' teams, Oliver says.
For others who may be contemplating the establishment of a Learning Council-style body of training advocates within their own organizations, Oliver and Muhlestein offer the following tips:
•Start with prospective council members' bosses. "We sought buy-in for the creation of our Learning Council from the bosses of those we intended to recruit," says Muhlestein. Oliver says this was key to getting the idea off the ground initially. "Our VP- and director-level executives appreciated that we took the time to explain how we thought the Learning Council could help make workforce development operate more efficiently and that we were coming to them first for approval before rolling anything out to their direct reports."
•Review existing offerings. Managers won't be able to use, let alone recommend changes to, your training if they don't know which programs are available in the first place, notes Oliver. "Our quarterly meetings generally kick off with a review of any learning and development updates," says Oliver. "Then we'll work through the assignments that are intended to bring everyone up to speed on current offerings and related training resources available through the educational services department."
•Provide council members with learning journals. "All council members are given a learning journal that they are asked to keep in a conspicuous place so they can easily grab it and jot down any ideas concerning training as they occur," says Oliver. "We use the journals at our quarterly council meetings to facilitate discussion about improvements to learning at Mountain America."
Mountain America Credit Union is a financial services organization headquartered in West Jordan, UT. In 2009, it placed 40th on Training magazine's Training Top 125 list, an annual ranking of organizations that excel at human capital development.
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