Three years ago, Harley-Davidson's company-wide climate survey, Fuel Our Future, revealed that existing onboarding for HR wasn't working as well as it needed to. After some additional probing through interviews of survey respondents, key HR leaders found that many of their new hires felt they didn't belong at Harley—that they didn't fit into the company culture. The world's most recognized motorcycle brand sought to ease new hires' transition into their unique culture by creatively utilizing that culture and brand to help make working at Harley-Davidson really mean something to them.

It was imperative that they dive down into their embedded culture and come up with a concise learning program. This imperative sparked a very challenging and rewarding adventure.

Pinpointing the Destination
Two Harley-Davidson HR leaders, Jim Brolley, Director of Learning and Development, and Dan Menden, Manager of Management Development, were tasked with generating a new onboarding program expressly for HR and envisioned that it might then be replicated across the organization. Their goal for the initiative is to ensure that all HR employees feel connected to the company and their work, through gaining an understanding and appreciation for the company's products, history, and culture—early on in their career. In addition, Harley's HR leaders envisioned a consistent program that they could deliver to one employee at a time, and that would look the same to every person, no matter where they were. They also wanted it to be a "sunrise to sunset" development program, one that would start at the beginning of employment and continue throughout an employee's career. Finally, they wanted the program to be innovative and engaging: to facilitate learning by being easy to access and fun to use.

For it to work in the Harley context, the program had to be custom-built for the needs of Harley new-hires. It also had to be infused with Harley-Davidson culture to be a Harley-branded program, and to really get results within the Harley context. To attain this high level of Harley branding, as well as the level of creative innovation they desired, would require the help of a "thought partner." A thought partner is professional developer who acts as an objective adjunct to the organization, and who brings subject matter expertise to an initiative and readily adapts that expertise to the particularities of the organization's needs.

Finding the Good Traveling Companion
As serendipity would have it, Jim Brolley took a professional "ride" to a CLO (Chief Learning Officer) conference in 2005. Lady luck was riding along on that trip because Jim just happened to sit next to Maryann Billington, a certified executive coach and performance solutions architect at Lore International Institute. They met and connected on some creative ideas, and then months later, Jim called to ask her for help with this initiative. The initial relationship with Maryann grew into an institutional relationship with Lore, and three years later, the partners still enjoy sharing what developed into an ongoing ride.

That collaborative ride began with creating the concept for an interactive and dynamic onboarding solution. The Harley team leaders brought to the partnership's design efforts their inside knowledge of all things Harley, and their expertise in learning and development. Jim Brolley's experience was centered in Action Learning: maximizing individual competencies through actually implementing solutions—a form of learning by doing. Dan Menden contributed his experience in developing enterprise-wide learning initiatives. As a former Technical Educator, Dan really saw that if learning is going to stick, it must be relevant to real-world work situations and needs.

The Lore team added its subject matter competencies that supported the content development and delivery—as well as a unique ability to customize content and delivery to its clients' needs. Lore partnered with Harley-Davidson to create learning events that responded specifically to their onboarding and development vision, and that were branded with Harley culture every step of the way.

In order to accomplish this, Lore had to be entrusted with access to Harley-Davidson's processes, to their archives, to dozens of Harley leaders for interviews—in short, to cull through massive amounts of data, so that they could fully understand the culture and its needs, and then pull together a highly customized and concise learning experience. There had to be enough trust between the riding companions for Lore to be admitted to Harley's world. It was much more than merely getting concrete details to drive a program design—it was a journey into understanding Harley's culture.

 

A Great Ride
The jointly created customized learning experience is called HR EDGE (Employee Development Generating Excellence), and it is an integrated learning experience that consists of self-guided study and activities, topical modules, online gaming, face-to-face events, and both live and e-seminar action learning. The Let's Ride component eases new employees through their first 90 days of employment and guides them in the subtler aspects of not only surviving but thriving at Harley-Davidson. Participants build networks and knowledge by interviewing colleagues and bosses, explore many Harley-Davidson online systems, and get an introduction to Harley history, organizational structure and strategic aims, as well as to the particularities of their job.

The Let's Ride component is divided into three, 30-day sections. Each 30-day section includes a "Scheduled Maintenance" meeting with their supervisor and ends in a test in the form of an online multimedia game: the Poker Run. The Poker Run is one of the favorite components of the initiative. Lore brought the idea to the table and did a masterful job of infusing it with Harley rider culture and of maximizing the use of innovative technologies to make it fun and engaging.

This multifaceted HR EDGE program will also include the following components:

• Round Up: a three-day event at the end of the onboarding training that provides additional skills training and networking opportunities. During this event, program participants are also surveyed about the effectiveness of the HR EDGE program.
• The Knowledge Warehouse: a Web page that is exclusive to recruits and which stores valuable information for participant learning within the HR EDGE program.
• ReFuel: ongoing development events, available to all HR employees

A Beautiful Trip
The HR EDGE initiative has yielded its first fruit: the deployment of Let's Ride, the onboarding portion of the program.  It has been highly successful. The right information is getting delivered at the right time, and new hires are being successfully onboarded and retained. The mile-post metrics establishing the success of the Let's Ride component come mostly from a participant survey, which Lore embedded in the Round Up meeting activities.

• 82% of Let's Ride participants felt that the program was timely, relevant, and helpful in acclimating to HR at Harley-Davidson.
• A strong 82% agreed that the Poker Run was a fair evaluation of the knowledge gained.
• 96% of program participants found the Poker Run game easy to access and use.
• 89% said that their computer was able to access and run the Let's Ride program components with minimal help from Tech Support.
• The learning curve for new employees has been reduced from 6 to 9 or 12 months to 30 days or less, and the onboarding process accelerated. New employees have expanded their networks and built relationships critical to success at Harley. 
• The cost for the program came to approximately $250 per employee, a cost Jim and Dan affirm is very reasonable, because the program has been so effective and because it can be easily replicated and customized for any function.
• New HR employee retention has increased; and critical information is consistently getting to new employees, which was not the case with their previous onboarding program.

Additionally validating, the initiative has been the recipient of two industry awards. Jim Brolley and the HR EDGE initiative won the CLO 2007 Silver Award for Innovation in the area of "Learning in Practice." The "Learning in Practice" Innovation Award "recognizes learning executives who have sought out and successfully applied emerging technologies and/or methodologies to create a stimulating and engaging combination of content and modalities." The HR EDGE initiative was also a finalist for the 2007 SHRM (Society for Human Resources Management) Strategic HR Leadership Award, which "is presented to an HR department that plays a key role in driving performance by leveraging organizational human capital and demonstrating how HR aligns with corporate strategic goals."

Gracefully Handling Unexpected Turns in the Road
How did Harley and Lore International Institute deal with the challenges that arose as they made this journey?

The initiative started about two and a half years ago. It took nine months to get a green light on deployment from the HRC (HR Council) and the Vice President of HR. Once they got the green light, it took another nine months to deploy. The Let's Ride and the Round Up sections have been deployed, but the Hot Topics and Refuel components, which were created for the development of seasoned employees, have yet to be launched, though that should happen soon—possibly within the next month or two. The total development time ended up being about three years, and the HR EDGE continues the ride toward reaching the initiative's objectives.

What is behind the delay in full implementation? First of all, reflective of the particularly horizontal organizational structure Harley had at the time of this initiative, the process of getting buy-in for any new initiative at Harley involved a major internal selling effort. The project creators had to put thoroughly re-worked versions of the idea before the Harley decision makers many times. In the time it took to evolve a component and bring it back to the top-dog stakeholders, the latter had often changed their minds about what they wanted. Harley's HR EDGE project leaders plan, in the future, to apply a more rigorous project management process to ensure that the developing stages move along more efficiently.

The participant survey revealed that they may have gone overboard in their effort to make the program robust. New hire participants have suggested that their onboarding activities, combined with their growing regular workload, make for an overwhelming amount of work. In addition, they have noted that in some places, program information already needs updating. Initiative leaders are now working with the Lore team to taper the program work load so that it lightens as the new hire's workload increases, and they are updating program information so that it is more flexible over time. For example, instead of saying, "Download the 2005 annual report," the program would now say "Download the most recent annual report."

Additionally, implementation of a creative use of new technologies was initially thwarted by inconsistent internal systems capabilities. It took a lot of time and thought to rework program design so that each component would function identically for everyone, despite these inconsistencies.

Because of the dedication of both the Harley and Lore teams, challenges were overcome, yielding lessons learned which turned into best practices in building customized talent initiatives, and specifically, in successfully transitioning new hires into a new organizational culture. A key point is that both contributors to this process became joint, shared learning partners.

What lessons and best practices have been garnered from their experience?

Some Best Practices Garnered from the HR EDGE Initiative:

1. Accurately assess the situation. Harley-Davidson clearly has a best practice in their Fuel Our Future climate survey, which was a great tool for getting a clear picture of pressing talent needs in the organization.
2. Choose a subject matter expert such as Lore International Institute, who can be an agile thought partner and can custom-build a program to meet your organization's unique needs. A thought-partner can also be used as an outside source for objectivity, to validate the soundness of your plan and make sure it's going to achieve what you need.
3. Build a customized solution. The Harley-Davidson HR EDGE initiative is a great example of how an organization benefits from not accepting an off-the-shelf onboarding program. The HR EDGE experience confirmed that real solutions are created when all parties are willing to dedicate time and brainpower to the collaborative exploration of creative solutions.
4. Have realistic expectations for project management deadlines that respect the realities of your organization's culture. For example, to build buy-in for the initiative across the organization.  Harley's HR leaders had to honor its culture's decision-making process which, at the time of this initiative, valued coming to a consensus with all stakeholders—even if it meant that rollout wouldn't happen all at once, but in a segmented, modular fashion.
5. Remain somewhat flexible about timelines, deadlines, and timetables. Timelines are guidelines, not absolutes.
6. Make the program fun. One factor attributed to the HR EDGE program's success is that it's a "good ride." People enjoy it and enjoyment facilitates learning.
7. Close collaboration between thought partner and client produces best work; listen carefully to each other and create a jointly owned roadmap for success.
8. Measure progress directly and frequently to assure that this is the right plan and direction. Lore and Harley-Davidson did this through the post HR EDGE participant survey, which could then be compared to the pre-HR EDGE "Fuel Our Future" survey.
9. Go into any large-scale development initiative with your eyes open to the possibility that the program will need to be scalable and adaptable to meet ever-evolving needs. Because an organization is made up of living beings, it will always be changing. Having an ongoing partnership can be very helpful for effectively adapting to perennial change.

A Ride Worth Repeating
Harley-Davidson succeeded in creating an epic learning journey that is energetic and engaging—a creative way to accelerate its new hires' transition into successful participation in its unique and wonderful ways of doing business. And Lore has been lucky enough to share that ride with them.

After a full year of successful initial HR EDGE implementation, this initiative has established itself as a Harley-Davidson "brand" and is expected to be the long-standing umbrella for current and future learning needs.

We asked Dan Menden, one of the leaders of the HR EDGE initiative, "If the HR EDGE program is a Harley motorcycle, which one is it?" His response:  "The V-Rod, because it's built on our past and our traditions. It is true and respectful to those, and yet it is a newer, faster model with higher performance than ever before."

 

Allison Andersen has been an integral part of developing the HR EDGE program since its inception. As Lore’s Client Solutions Director for this project, she has both managed the program's development and contributed to the program’s content, and assisted with its rollout. Projects she has led include organizational change initiatives, leadership development within large organizations, and developing organizational strategies for development of senior leaders. She has nearly 20 years in sales and sales management experience. She has held various management positions, working with all levels of sales and customer service representatives.