Employee Development at Cole Taylor Bank on Target with e-Learning The Challenge Cole Taylor Bank's corporate strategy requires employees to understand its customers' businesses and their unique needs. To accomplish this, the bank provides professional development and training - it has an incentive target that full-time employees complete 40 hours annually (the goal is 20 hours for part-time). Cole Taylor's Training and Development Department had two major challenges. First, there weren't enough people signing up for classroom training at one time to make it cost-effective - so employees had to wait for classes to fill up before they could get the instruction they needed. The second issue was making training accessible to everyone - the bank has 11 branches that are miles apart, people found it hard to leave work, and there were different shifts (some employees worked early mornings and others worked late nights).

"The program was just implemented earlier this year, and nearly 75 percent of our subscriptions with Element K are in use. There's no question that e-Learning is the training alternative we were searching for!" -  Jan Doiel, HR Development Specialist for Cole Taylor Bank Chicago, IL  [Download UK Format PDF]

"We needed to find just-in-time performance support that addressed different learning styles and provided flexibility for employees' schedules," said Jan Doiel, HR Development Specialist for Cole Taylor Bank. "We were looking for training that could be customized to the individual's skill level and allow self-paced learning."

The Element K® Solution
The solution was Element K, which offered a wide variety of online courses with sound instructional design and methods to address diverse learning styles.  "We'd been working with Element K for more than two years, and we were pleased with our initial online efforts. We were really impressed by the quality and affordability of the comprehensive online business management programs," said Doiel. "We easily integrated the e-learning curriculum into all of our other development resources."

Cole Taylor employees can now choose from more than 200 online courses, and access them whenever it's convenient - 24/7.

Element K resources are incorporated into Cole Taylor's "Training Advisor," an online tool that helps employees create their own professional development plans. The Training Advisor is job-specific: it lists the skills and knowledge required for a position, as well as the in-house and e-learning programs available to help develop those skills.

Element K is also part of the Manager's Tool Kit, which recommends courses to sharpen supervisors' knowledge and skills - and assist them in meeting their team's development needs. They can choose from courses such as Harvard Manage Mentor's "Leading and Motivating," QuicKnowledge's "Recognizing Employee Performance, " or the Situational Leadership® series that covers topics like the process of influence, readiness, leadership styles, and leaders being a catalyst for change.

To introduce the Element K e-learning program, Cole Taylor held rollouts at its individual branches. It also promoted the program at monthly meetings, on the company's intranet, through e-mail campaigns, and with flyers in payroll checks. HR managers and classroom facilitators also encourage the use of online learning. And it's working...

The Results
"Our development incentive is on target for full-time and part-time employees - and our online offering is a big part of that success," said Doiel. "The program was just implemented earlier this year, and already nearly 75 percent of our subscriptions with Element K are in use. There's no question that e-learning is the training alternative we were searching for!"