Strategic alignment to business helps ADP’s learning organization gain buy-in and find continued success.
by Lauren Dixon
November 11, 2022
Many organizations, including the 54 finalists in Chief Learning Officer’s 2022 LearningElite awards, recognize that learning is a long-term investment and impacts the whole business.
Their commitment to corporate L&D and hard work were recognized at the annual LearningElite Gala on June 22, 2022.
As one of last year’s finalists, ADP reached the top spot this year as a result of its learning organizations’ 360-degree focus with the client at the center. The value chain for learning at ADP starts with highly trained sales professionals who recommend ADP solutions. They are backed by extremely capable service teams whose leaders are developed with a people-first, client-centered development strategy. Positioning clients as the North Star means that all learning at ADP is designed with client success in mind.
The learning value chain
“At ADP, we are making a concerted effort to link learning with what our key operational centers do, so that ADP is operating with this constant focus of: invest in your associates so they can deliver the most differentiated experience for clients that use our technology,” says Andrea Elkin, vice president of strategic enablement at ADP.
The sales learning and leadership development organization provides skills-based training to sales associates while developing sales leaders to support them. It embeds learning moments into each associate’s day through e-learning, live and virtual training. Concurrently, the enterprise learning team designs and delivers an ongoing learning path that starts on day one for all associates that service clients.
ADP also takes care of its associates through its leadership development function. The Leadership Solutions team enables emerging and existing leaders to expand their capabilities and become stronger, confident leaders who empower their teams to thrive. The team leverages each associate’s strengths, provides regular check-ins, and measures the results of the training for continuous improvement.
“At ADP, we know that leaders, especially front-line leaders, are the key to our associates’ experience. We have a robust portfolio of leadership development tools and resources to develop inclusive, strengths-based leaders,” says Tanuja Yalamanchili, senior director of leadership solutions.
Similarly, the career growth and development team provides resources to associates, offers stretch assignments, and drives a culture of career growth across the company. “As organizations continue to evolve, it’s critical they support the learning and growth of their talent. The best companies will create a culture that fosters the development of new skills and techniques, expanding opportunities for their workforce,” says Bob Lockett, chief diversity and talent officer. ADP learning teams ensure that these opportunities for learning are readily available and easily accessible.
While the learning organizations enable the approximately 60,000 associates at ADP, they also directly provide clients with world-class learning programs.
“It really does rest squarely on our shoulders to enable clients to succeed in the products and services that they leverage from us,” Elkin says. By helping client users get the most out of ADP and continually grow their capability, ADP enables them to be successful while ensuring they have skilled and confident associates ready to support them when needed.
“We really do invest in making sure that the learning that we produce and deliver brings a return to the client and, as a result, to the company,” she adds.
Strategic alignment across the board
Learning leaders gain buy-in from the teams they serve and also reinforce the business strategy on multiple levels by focusing on the strategies of individual business divisions, as well as ADP as a whole.
That alignment starts with enterprise learning’s mission statement, which is to help its clients, associates and company thrive as products, technologies and business practices transform. Ultimately, the goal is to drive an effortless and dynamic learning experience that positions stakeholders for success.
“We feel responsible for ensuring that ADP can seamlessly adapt, enhance and innovate, and we’re going to make sure everybody’s ready for that,” Elkin says.
One of ADP’s value propositions is helping organizations use data to drive greater success. The learning teams at ADP reflect that by relying on rigorous data collection, multiple dashboards and scorecards, and processes to demonstrate value, drive growth, and continuously innovate.
Concurrently, the learning organizations mirror the business structure, so the learning professionals can have a deep understanding of each business division’s unique needs. This enables the learning function to be agile and pivot as needed to quickly enhance learning for the various business divisions and support them effectively.
“We’ve constantly got our finger on the pulse of how we can flex and leverage our capabilities to offer the most value to the business,” says Alwyn Klein, senior director of learning operations at ADP.
Staying ahead of the curve
While ADP serves the learners of today, it also prepares for the learners of tomorrow by regularly developing its teams. For example, enterprise learning stays ahead of what the business needs for the future by continually advancing its own associates and their skills.
Each year, enterprise learning associates partake in a day-long, internal learning summit that hones their skills in learning design, project management, facilitator excellence, performance consulting, technology and more.
This focus on internal advancement of skills is critical to the team, “because investing in what we do and keeping our skills ahead of the curve has value for the entire company. I sometimes think that that’s an area of opportunity for other organizations,” Elkin adds.
Investment in innovation
An ongoing commitment to innovation and process improvements enable learning to continually increase efficiencies while never losing sight of the effectiveness of the solutions they deliver.
“We’re constantly scanning for internal opportunities, internal efficiencies, ‘how can we get better at what we are doing already?’ at the same time as looking to the outside world for opportunities to innovate whether through technology or methodology,” Klein says.
This goes beyond technology that was intentionally designed for learning and education.
One example Klein shares is around improving knowledge management search technology. Knowledge articles now load 81 percent faster, with a significant improvement in relevancy and accuracy, by leveraging machine learning. Last year 92 percent of all knowledge article clicks were in the first four search results presented. This advancement in search functionality helps associates find relevant and personalized solutions more quickly, enabling them to perform their jobs better.
Other technologies ADP taps include augmented reality for onboarding, guiding new hires through setting up their equipment and meeting the leadership on their teams. Additionally, robotic process automation helps reduce manual work so teams can focus on more complex requests.
As part of its commitment to personalizing the learning experience, ADP implements technology that recommends solutions for users while in the flow of work. For example, by surfacing in-product guided learning to a user in their moment of need, they can complete their task without navigating to external instruction.
This continued commitment to innovation has significant impacts in areas such as shortening time to competency for new hires, improved learning results and a strong return on learning investment.
Moving forward, Elkin says that ADP aims to inspire all associates to share their expertise internally. By tying learning to bottom-line results, more individuals outside of the learning function will be inspired to help the development strategy. “I want us to move from producing to enabling learning at ADP,” she says.