Background
Canon UK forms a major part of the European operation of Canon Inc., the well-known Japanese corporation that specialises in all forms of imaging products. Canon operates in over 20 European countries and the European headcount in 2006 was over 10,000. The organisation differentiates itself in this fast moving environment through delivering leading edge imaging technologies to both domestic and business customers. The potential to innovate and bring pioneering new developments to market is a key issue for this fast moving company.
Canon Inc. operates through three business channels. Canon Business Solutions aims to meet the needs of individual, home office, small and medium enterprises as well as large corporations and governments. Canon Consumer Imaging is the consumer focused photography and peripherals part of the business and the Industrial Products Unit specialises in products to suit specific markets such as medical applications, broadcast companies and IT conglomerates.
Reflecting the Japanese heritage of the organisation, a corporate philosophy based on Kyosei is prevalent throughout Canon Inc. Kyosei literally means living and working for the common good and a key challenge for learning and development at Canon has been to develop and embed the learning and training implications of Kyosei for the benefit of customers, the business and employees.
The contribution of learning
Caroline Price, the Strategic Business Partner, Human Resources, is a member of the executive management team and has responsibility for all aspects of human resources, including learning and development. Caroline describes how, for a company like Canon where growth and innovation are key objectives, learning makes a strategic contribution in three key areas.
“First, the organisation has to focus on developing capability for the present and the future. The strategic learning contribution, therefore, is to enable the organisation to grow skills and productivity to prepare for future business as well as to cope with current business challenges. This involves the development of flexible attitudes that continue to ‘fit’ with the Canon philosophy as it evolves in very dynamic market situations.”
Building people management and leadership capability, and effectively managing the talent pool is another priority, particularly as Canon develops a flatter and more European organisation in order to develop the responsive customer orientation that is crucial to strategic success.
Learning also makes a crucial contribution within the Kyosei philosophy and the longer-term expectations of employees make the management of the psychological contract strategically important. Caroline comments:
“It’s not just about the job, the current pay, and the training that you’re going to put them on for that job. It’s about all of the other aspects of being at work – employees’ longer-term career potential; their work-life balance; how flexible the organisation can be to help them meet their current as well as their future plans.”
Learning investment and alignment processes
Canon UK is an organisation which has a high level of trust in learning as part of the management process. The organisational culture promotes: learning and continuous improvement and development; honesty and integrity; participation and commitment. At the same time it is an achievement orientated organisation where ‘facing reality’ is also a key company value and metrics and measures form an important part of regular management processes.
Maintaining the alignment of learning with business priorities is an ongoing process. Canon has a very systematic business planning and budgeting process that is informed by a range of metrics and benchmarks that enable each part of the organisation to identify how it compares with relevant ‘world class’ companies. Customer and employee satisfaction metrics both have their part to play here and learning investment decisions will be influenced by ‘what will bring the biggest benefits to the business’ as well as ‘what is the biggest gap in performance terms’.
Each business channel has its own business planning process and it is important that these are brought together to ensure a consistent approach across the organisation. Regular business review processes, involving HR business partners for different channels and relevant channel directors ensure that alignment is maintained on an ongoing basis.
In addition to these formal processes Matthew Norton, a Channel Director within Canon Business Solutions highlights the strong levels of informal alignment of learning with the business that is achieved by managers and HR business partners. Spending time with each other ensures they stay close to business realities, are as aware as possible and communicate all the time about strategic needs and priorities.
Measuring and reporting on the value of learning
Measuring and reporting on the value of learning is a key issue for Canon UK. Key indicators that form part of the ongoing assessment of the value of learning are metrics related to broad HR priorities such as recruitment and retention, employee satisfaction and pay. These form part of a wider approach to benchmarking and the use of a balanced scorecard.
As a key contribution of learning is to equip the organisation to meet future orientated challenges, it is also important that measures of value are future orientated. ‘Return on investment’ models for assessing the value of learning are tailored accordingly to focus more on ‘return on expectation’ and achievement against business targets. In line with this, Canon makes sure that some measures of value are built into the learning design process for major corporate learning initiatives.
In a company like Canon, where metrics and measures are an important part of management processes, it is important that learning and development professionals are able to measure and report on the value of their activity. A challenge, however, is to ensure that inappropriate data is not ‘forced’ into a scorecard measure or metric for the sake of completeness. Caroline Price highlights the importance here of understanding ‘what is behind the figures’, taking account of the very fast pace of change within the organisation and its environment that can make comparative data go out of date very quickly. For Price, evaluating ‘what is different’ as a result of learning processes in the organisation is as important as completing a numerical assessment.
Canon is aware that ‘soft’ measures can be just as useful as hard data. Numerical and quantifiable data, therefore, is complemented by informal and often anecdotal assessments of the value that learning is adding to the business. Like many organisations Canon has come some way with the process of assessing and reporting on the value of learning but they are also aware that there is scope for further work in this important area.