System Optimization Enables Full Employee Rollout
Background
American Woodmark relies on their learning management system (LMS), Cornerstone OnDemand, to assign and track training for their employees. They needed to optimize their learning process in order to fully roll the system out to users.
Client
American Woodmark is one of the largest kitchen and bath cabinet manufacturers across the globe. With partnerships with retailers like Home Depot and Lowe’s, they operate a limited product line, high-inventory business model for in stock and made to order kitchens and baths. American Woodmark’s recent acquisition of RSI added an additional 11 brands and nearly 4,500 employees to their growing portfolio. They now have over 15 different brands and approximately 10,000 employees.
Challenge
American Woodmark was hesitant about giving employees access to their learning platform because they were having difficulty configuring the system to their needs. They needed to assign mandatory training courses to employees throughout the year, but had trouble setting up the system to assign and offer training on a recurring basis. Also, the majority of their employee training takes place on the floor and they needed an efficient way to capture training completions. Having waited almost a year to introduce the learning solution to employees, American Woodmark was eager to adapt Cornerstone OnDemand and transform their learning experience for users.
Solution
American Woodmark brought in Educe to help increase their Cornerstone system knowledge and set them up for success. To begin the process, Educe conducted an optimization workshop at American Woodmark’s headquarters in Virginia. Educe worked closely with stakeholders to understand how they operated as an organization, both from a business-level and department-level. They also collected information about current pain points and identified areas within the system that needed to be optimized. Educe developed a detailed action plan that encompassed American Woodmark’s goals. To improve internal system knowledge, Educe built specific job aids and conducted one-on-one training courses. Next, the team focused on updating configurations within the learning module, changing the criteria used for assignments to make it easier to set up and assign training courses to users. Since many of their employees are not in front of a computer most days, Educe provided American Woodmark with training resources to help their users adopt the system with ease once they received access to the learning portal.
Results
American Woodmark’s LMS was successfully rolled out to all legacy American Woodmark users in June 2019. After the completion of the optimization workshop, American Woodmark felt empowered to make key strategic decisions pertaining to their learning platform.
The optimization workshop helped American Woodmark:
- Deliver more than 1,300 training courses to 4,500 employees
- Reduce the time it took to build and develop compliance reports
- Improve learning processes by identifying early-on when assignment errors occurred
- Develop the internal team’s knowledge of Cornerstone to help administer the system
What’s Next
With the acquisition of RSI, American Woodmark will gradually be transitioning all users into their HRIS system and integrating the data with Cornerstone. The process will include getting users trained on the new system and teaching them how to register for new classes. American Woodmark also plans to give supervisors and managers more control over the system and support this transition by providing hands-on training. To encourage workforce development, American Woodmark is looking to build out a new library of content to foster continuous learning across the organization.
The amount of time and effort that Educe took to learn our business and structure was most valuable in helping us achieve our vision and goals within the system.”
Leslie Knotts, Organizational Development Project Manager, HR
American Woodmark
