With 70,000 employees in 150 countries, Eaton sought to better organize, structure, model and manage the various skills required by its front line managers and supervisors. Until 2007 the organization's leadership development had been largely the responsibility of each separate segment and therefore lacked cohesion across the enterprise. It was also difficult to measure results across the company's global footprint. It was shortly thereafter that a new initiative was enacted that got the company's various segments sparking on all cylinders together.

Leading up to this initiative, an analysis of the company's then-current onboarding process for new and promoted front line supervisors and managers found quite a variance in this process. The company's goal was to create a standardized global learning and development model for onboarding that would also provide consistent and ongoing leadership development training across the organization.

To assist with its goal, Eaton leveraged a core of five leadership development modules from AchieveGlobal, an international performance improvement company. The modules help front line managers and supervisors develop the interpersonal skills and leadership behaviors necessary to manage more effectively. AchieveGlobal also developed a series of tools to reinforce these new skills long term.

Today, Eaton reports increases in manager effectiveness ratings. In the future, Eaton will look at rates of internal promotions of managers and supervisors, and the level of engagement of managers and supervisors with their staff. They expect noticeable improvements in managers' performance ratings. These will be part of more formal ROI measurements.

Identifying gaps and meeting needs

With a 90-year history, Eaton Corporation is a diversified power management company with 2008 sales of $15.4 billion. The company is a global technology leader in several power-related business segments, including Electrical and Industrial Sectors, the latter including Hydraulics, Aerospace and Vehicle groups.

Leadership development has always been important to Eaton, and in fact, the company has used leadership development training modules and courseware from AchieveGlobal for more than a decade. To enhance its leadership effectiveness wherever Eaton does business, the company knew it needed to better organize, prioritize and structure its new managers' and supervisors' training and development.

The Eaton frontline leadership development training team working as part of Eaton University first conducted needs assessments throughout the organization, and then, using global surveys and focus groups, verified data and identified others' recommendations for competency needs for front line leadership. Analysis of existing training materials and courseware identified these materials' strengths and gaps, including additional translation needs for the many languages spoken by Eaton's global workforce, including Serbian, Romanian, Thai and Finnish.

Also critical to program success were the company's internal communications. Changes to improve internal communications encompassed getting senior management and key functional leaders engaged in the program, as well as obtaining location-specific Human Resource managers' buy-in. These managers are responsible for program implementation, measurement and accountability in their locations.

Cohesive, systematic solution emerges

Front line leaders were directed to a core curricula, delivered onsite via classroom instructor-led as well as via e-Learning technologies. Five AchieveGlobal modules were established to be delivered in this sequence: Principles and Qualities of Genuine Leadership; The Hallmarks of Supervisor Success; Building Team Pride and Purpose; Giving Recognition; and, Providing Constructive Feedback.

Knowledge reinforcement from AchieveGlobal supports these competency modules for continuity of learning. Each reinforcement tool is a 30-minute session focusing on a key element of the module; essentially each is designed to initiate a conversation on a particular management topic between the front line leader and their manager.

Nikki Deskovich, Director of Leadership Development, explained: "These reinforcement tools are intended to help front line leaders think through the various skills and knowledge learned through coursework and to identify their own development needs. And by helping them construct tactical ways to practice those skills on the job, they're better able to bring real impact to the business."

Early results predict success

With the front line leadership development training program now standardized throughout Eaton for the last several years, effort now turns to careful measurement of program ROI. Continuing improvement efforts included fine-tuning compliance and utilization measurements, and future plans include measuring utilization of the Core 5 programs and reinforcement tools. Metrics related to front line leadership's application of core program skills and behaviors will be captured in Eaton's Human Resource management system so results and impact can be measured and assessed by location, region and individual across the global enterprise.

"A standardized approach across the enterprise which includes reinforcement learning is a paradigm shift for Eaton, and what we are after is this cohesive training's benefit to the business,"Deskovich said. "We are asking our front line leaders to put some feet to what they learned and apply that to the job."

With more formal metrics analysis coming shortly, early indicators are hopeful. For instance, the company is realizing an increase in people utilizing the Core 5 modules, which is expected to translate into increased manager effectiveness and into performance rating increases and other results.