Case Study

Published June 2008

Thinking Globally, Learning Locally

Drew Darnbrough

Global consulting firm Mercer has turned to a learning platform to better manage workforce performance, deliver employee development programs and capture knowledge worldwide.

When asked what their most important asset is, most companies will respond that it’s their people. And accordingly, these companies invest hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of dollars into learning, performance management and talent management programs to nurture and develop the employee expertise that ultimately leads to competitive advantage.

When a company specializes in consulting, among other things, the pressure is on to use the same tactics, programs and initiatives internally that it advocates to its customers.

That’s exactly the challenge that Mercer, a leading global provider of consulting, outsourcing and investment services, encounters on a daily basis. With more than 17,000 employees in multiple lines of business located in 40 countries around the world, Mercer’s global talent management organization is responsible for promoting consistency through a single way of doing things and supporting behavioral competencies across their core disciplines and across the world.

In 2000, Mercer implemented Mzinga’s KnowledgePlanet global learning management platform. That enabled the company to launch Partnering for Success (PfS), Mercer’s worldwide performance and development program. PfS provides one way to help Mercer employees around the world set goals, receive feedback, plan their careers, identify learning and development opportunities and achieve appropriate rewards.

“We had a global learning group for a number of years, along with a global approach to performance management, but having it and having people use it are two different things,” said Deborah Wheelock, leader of Mercer’s Global Talent Management Center of Expertise (COE). “Having a global learning and performance infrastructure in place has enabled us to reach a wider audience with consistent learning, messaging and processes. We became truly global with the advent of PfS online, and we now have an enterprise-wide process and approach to performance management that enables us to report across all global businesses.”

As a company that is dispersed both geographically and functionally, Mercer needed a learning platform as flexible as it was robust to accommodate its global delivery requirements and the subsequent challenges associated with implementing a talent and performance management initiative.

“Talent management is about creating and engaging the right workforce to meet business objectives and is centered on workforce capabilities. Performance management is making sure we have the right processes in place to build high performance so development can be targeted to areas where there are gaps in capabilities,” Wheelock explained.

“We have global programs that are tactile, such as sales skills, presentation skills and an array of subjects to support the various competencies,” said Louise Gale, the technology manager in charge of Mercer’s learning and performance platforms. “We use the LMS to advertise the programs and determine who they’re targeted to. We don’t take away the emphasis on the importance of face-to-face meetings and instructor-led training, but we want the programs to be globally consistent. Often, we have prerequisites and follow-up activities as part of the global face-to-face meetings. The KnowledgePlanet infrastructure helps with that, as well as the registrations and the different tasks needed to deliver such programs.”

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