Samantha Hammock
VP of Learning & Communications
American Express
What is the role of technology in your training?
SH: We have a partnership with our internal IT department wherein we can discuss our business needs and they can either deliver an in-house or market-based solution. They turn our wishes into actuality.
What is the role out of your LMS, reporting and analytics?
SH: Measurement is our biggest need. If we’re going to mandate training, we had better be robust in tracking and reporting. Is the experience getting better, is the knowledge increasing. We have put it thru workforce analytics to slice and dice some of those metrics.
How do you control the costs of regulatory training?
SH: You have to balance business needs with legal needs. We’re mindful of what behaviors we’re trying to change. If you’re doing it the right way, the training is succinct. We focus on creating succinct training targeted to the specific topics or modules applicable to which employees.
How do you determine who to train for what tasks?
SH: We partner with compliance and legal to determine who the training should apply to. We segment markets, business or larger groups.
How do you engage employees in trainings that do not relate to their day-to-day jobs?
SH: We have a strong culture around complaince and wantting to do the right thing. People want to make sure we’re doing the right thing. The trick is determining who is low risk for certain topics and eliminating those training modules to provide oly those modules that are applicable, which increases the engagement level.
What are the biggest challenges to learning and training at American E and what are you doing to address those challenges?
SH: We strive to streamline the training content to keep employees engaged while keeping required content in the training. We want to focus on ensuring the content is absorbed. We are always focused on targeting only the right people.
What are you working on for 2015?
SH: We are focusing on building a much better learner experience that is applicable, fun and engaging.