Home > Helping people learn

Aligning and reporting on training and learning at Capital One

Capital One® Financial Corporation, headquartered in McLean, Virginia, is a diversified company with more than 50 million customer accounts worldwide and 27, 000 associates. Through its international lending businesses and banking franchise in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Texas, and Louisiana, Capital One offers a wide range of financial products, including credit cards, auto loans, small business loans, home loans, instalment loans, commercial loans, deposits and savings products. In 1996 Capital One launched its first overseas operation in the UK.

Focus on innovation


Capital One’s culture encourages innovation and entrepreneurialism. Capital One’s success is directly attributed to progressive efforts in information technology, customer acquisition, and customer retention. Through its proprietary Information-Based Strategy (IBS) and analytical capability, Capital One has the ability to tailor products to the appropriate customers as well as ensure that each individual customer’s needs are being serviced efficiently.

One of the best workplaces in the UK


The Bank has won numerous industry awards for its products and services as well as accolades for its consistent work within the communities in which it operates. Capital One is also a Laureate of the Great Place to Work Institute having featured in regularly in the Top 100 employers list.

Aligning learning to business needs


Kevin Hogarth is the UK Managing Vice-President for Human Resources. He describes the approach to prioritising learning, training and development as being dependent upon HR’s understanding of the strategic agenda and the ability to provide development to support the delivery of that agenda. At the heart of the process there is continuous dialogue with the senior management team, particularly the Head of the UK business. He says “we must understand our market, what our business priorities are, agree the learning outcomes and then design and implement the interventions”. This is an ongoing process based on an annual cycle. However over the last four years the emphasis has shifted in two important respects.

Firstly the HR department has become more proactive in determining the main priorities for organisational learning. The organisational learning agenda aims to address the broader change management programmes and priorities needed to achieve the business goals. “We identify senior sponsors for our work and, based on our understanding of the business need make recommendations about the development requirements and the benefits and consequences of each proposal.”

Secondly, as a consequence of business priorities the balance has shifted for the HR team away from functional learning to broader organisational learning. The functional learning agenda concerns the specific skills required to perform certain roles (for example in IT, human resources and finance or in customer contact activities).

This shift has been enabled in a number of ways. Line managers are actively engaged in the learning process and are committed to supporting their teams at the level of the individual in the acquisition for skills to perform their roles. Greater use of technology, individual development action planning and work based assignments are amongst a number of ways that individuals get the specific development they need.

In the HR team almost two-thirds of the learning, training and development effort is now concentrated on organisational learning priorities. Kevin Hogarth offers the following example; “An important objective of the development agenda has been to deliver the brand promise of valuable products. We have a win win philosophy of value for our customers. Lower margins on our products means we need to focus on volume and our costs”. To meet this need the HR team have focused development on improved process management and the removal of waste. Improved capability in this area has made a clear contribution to reducing costs and substantial savings have been achieved.

Delivering training and development


The Organisational Learning agenda and much of the functional learning activity is managed through the Capital One University. Established in the UK in January 2005, the University team partnered with the business to analyse learning needs and source effective development interventions. Through the use of its learning management system associates (the term used by Capital One for its employees) can view the extensive range of development that is available to them. They can also register interest in courses and participate in computer based learning which they can access at their desk top. The functionality is such that reporting and management information is readily available at the individual, departmental and organisational level.

Reporting on activities


Given Capital One’s business model, which is based on high-quality data analysis, metrics and measures feature prominently in its operating culture, a version of the balanced scorecard has been implemented. The Capital One University scorecard contributes to the HR scorecard and the HR scorecard rolls up to the scorecard for the overall business.

However the focus is not on a narrow set of learning and development metrics. Kevin Hogarth explains “quantifying the amount of training that has been delivered is not seen as important. Senior management see and trust that there is a need for learning and development in creating a well managed business, lowering operating costs and delivering valuable products. What is most important is the contribution we make to the key business priorities. In this sense the learning interventions are often part of a wider organisation intervention. Therefore the HR scorecard focuses more on the broader priorities and the progress being made on those than on detailed training metrics.”

Regular production of a more detailed Capital One University scorecard is still seen as necessary but is just one element to help support the alignment of learning. According to the Head of Capital One University in the UK, “we must be prepared to offer credible metrics on our activities. This is essential given the sort of organisation we are. More importantly however, we must always ask what data people want to see given their specific interests and priorities. We must be targeted and aligned in what we do if we are to make a significant contribution. Increasingly our discussions with key stakeholders about development metrics have been supplemented with the requirement for feedback on the qualitative and less tangible measures of effectiveness”

It can be seen that Capital One places a considerable emphasis on alignment of learning activities with business needs. Reporting of activities is undertaken in a way that is consistent with the approach used in a business which is comfortable with metrics. However, there is limited emphasis placed on individual learning and development metrics or on ‘proving’ the ‘return on investment’. Rather the focus is on the wider contribution to overall business change.

 
 
 
 
Bookmark and share
What are these?