Orkin Performance-Based Curriculum Planning Project
Goal
Improve training outcomes for Orkin technicians by redesigning the training curriculum to ensure it is focused on critical outcomes, improving the organization's Profitability, Growth, and Customer Retention goals.
Challenges
- There are approximately 3,608 Orkin Technicians across the 3 areas of Commercial, Residential, Termites
- There is high turnover in the field
- In the previous year Orkin/Rollins trained about 1,400 technicians
- Typical Technician is blue collar, high school graduate, with some who have a 2-year college degree
- While the majority are young (20s), more and more are older (40-50s) and are doing this as a 2nd career
- Technicians work across the U.S. and Canada, representing the following U.S. divisions: Atlantic, SE, S. Central, Midwest, Pacific, and Commercial. (This project is limited to the U.S.) While much of the performance runs across geographies/divisions, there are some local issues that must be considered.
Solution
Cognitive's approach was to manage an analysis of this population, coaching Orkin's training personnel to assist in analysis and curriculum planning. The solution involved the following:
- Coach and facilitate Orkin management in the selection of key performers in each specialty area: Commercial, Residential, and Termites; performer selection required the analysis of various types of corporate data associated with individual technicians
- Train Orkin's training designers in the use of Performance DNA as an analysis technique and provide the team with appropriate tools and templates for use in the process
- Train Orkin's training designers in Performance DNA Desktop, the system that was to be used to capture and share analysis data and to produce analysis reports
- Build a SharePoint team site to enable sharing of analysis data
- Assign teams to analyze key performers across the target geographic regions
- Coach team members in the three types of interviews: Work Process Analysis, Task Analysis, Training Needs Analysis
- Perform project management tasks to keep the project on track and continually analyze status
- Facilitate team's analysis of findings from the three sets of interviews
- Develop performance-based curriculum, taking advantage of appropriate portions of the current curriculum and augmenting it with new courses and modules targeting critical performance identified during the analysis
Cognitive Value Added
Cognitive Technologies provided human performance improvement specialists who had expertise in the Performance DNA methodology and toolset to coach and facilitate professionals with new skills in these areas in order to:
- Conduct a nationwide project across three functional areas, achieving buy-in from stakeholders in each region as well as functional areas
- Analyze data from interviews with over 50 performers and manage that data in a software system to ensure that no data was lost and to enable cross-interview data analysis and consolidation
- Develop a performance based curriculum targeted at improving performance across a number of critical metrics, including: customer satisfaction, customer referrals, safety compliance, employee engagement, employee retention
- Develop internal Orkin capability in performance-based analysis and curriculum development.