Swisscom, Switzerland’s main telecom operator and Area9 Lyceum, leader in innovative adaptive e-learning, won a coveted Brandon Hall Group:

  • Gold award for excellence in the ‘Best Advance in Competencies and Skill Development‘ category,
  • Gold award for excellence in the ‘Best Program for Sales Training and Performance‘ category, and
  • Bronze award for excellence in the ‘Best Learning Program Supporting a Change Transformation Business Strategy‘ category.

Swisscom’s and Area9´s win was announced on August 21, 2020.
The winners are listed at:
http://www.brandonhall.com/excellenceawards/past-winners.php .

About Skills IQ

As incumbent telecom operator in a saturated market, Swisscom needed to increase sales of its new IT Portfolio solutions to offset the falling prices of telephony products. Rather than a conventional ‘one size fits all’ training, Swisscom adopted an unusual approach, in partnership with Area9 Lyceum. Skills IQ is a bespoke multi-stage and highly personalized learning program that sensitively addressed a barrier to success that is so often overlooked – unconscious incompetence in Sales and Distribution departments. The program was heavily informed and designed by data analytics from the Area9 learning platform Area9 Rhapsode™. This learning approach was an important step towards changing the learning culture at Swisscom and also a brave investment, but one that paid off; the company is now well on its way to deliver its goal of growing revenues through proficient Sales experts that are capable to sell Swisscom’s diversified portfolio.

The main elements are:

  • A skills assessment which reveals conscious/unconscious competence/incompetence.
  • Actionable data and analytics for managers to make data-informed decisions and inform their staff about the findings.
  • Involvement of managers: these findings and recommended development activities are given to learners’ managers to feed back to employees and agree the next steps.
  • A substantial menu of learning interactions to meet the wide variety of development needs highlighted. This includes face-to-face training, expert communities, 1:1 coaching, e-learning content, webinars and curated content.
  • The availability of content in three languages: German, French and Italian.
  • A thorough evaluation exercise post-learning, after enough time has elapsed for people to assess the true impact.

“A central part of the reports was, of course, the data relating to scoring on the assessment. However, the unique but of equal was the information on learners’ metacognition. What is meant by this, is that Swisscom could see how confident learners were in their responses to questions, and if learners were aware or not of the things they did know or didn’t know. In other words, they were able to detect unconscious incompetence, where learners thought they knew the answer but in fact did not.” Martin Holmes,Product and Implementation Excellence Manager,
Area9 Lyceum D-A-CH

“Organizations around the world highly value Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards – so much so that we received a record number of applications in the middle of a global pandemic,” said Rachel Cooke, Brandon Hall Group COO, and leader of the HCM Excellence Awards Program. “The awards provide valuable recognition and validation of best practices in all areas of HCM at a time when they have never been more important to both employers and employees.”

Award entries were evaluated by a panel of veteran, independent senior industry experts, Brandon Hall Group analysts and executives based upon the following criteria: fit the need, design of the program, functionality, innovation and overall measurable benefits. Excellence Awards winners will be honored at Brandon Hall Group’s HCM Excellence Conference, January 26-28, 2021, at the Hilton West Palm Beach, Florida. Select winners also will serve as presenters in breakout sessions, sharing their leading practices during the conference.
“The Excellence Awards serve the critical function of reinforcing the essential business benefit of creating great experiences for candidates and employees,” Brandon Hall Group CEO Mike Cooke said. “All award winners must demonstrate that their HCM programs drive bottom-line business results. That’s what sets our awards program apart from all others.”

About Area9 Lyceum 

Area9 Lyceum builds 21st century skills and competencies through the world’s first four-dimensional learning platform, Area9 Rhapsode™. Based onmore than 20 years of research into human factors and cognition, our AI-based platform delivers truly personalized learning at scale -cutting training time in half, guaranteeing proficiency and making lasting impacts on careers and business outcomes.

About Brandon Hall Group

Brandon Hall Group is an HCM research and advisory services firm that provides insights around key performance areas, including Learning and Development, Talent Management, Leadership Development, Talent Acquisition and HR/Workforce Management. With more than 10,000 clients globally and 25 years of delivering world-class research and advisory services, Brandon Hall Group is focused on developing research that drives performance in emerging and large organizations, and provides strategic insights for executives and practitioners responsible for growth and business results. Our mission: Empower excellence in organizations around the world through our research and tools each and every day. At the core of our offerings is a Membership Program that combines research, benchmarking and unlimited access to data and analysts. The Membership Program offers insights and best practices to enable executives and practitioners to make the right decisions about people, processes, and systems, coalesced with analyst advisory services which aim to put the research into action in a way that is practical and efficient.
(www.brandonhall.com)

About Swisscom 

Swisscom, Switzerland’s leading telecoms company and one of its leading IT companies, is headquartered in Ittigen, close to the capital city Berne. Outside Switzerland, Swisscom has a presence on the Italian market in the guise of Fastweb. In the first half of 2020 about 19,000 employees generated sales of CHF 5,443 million. It is 51% Confederation-owned and is one of Switzerland’s most sustainable and innovative companies.
(www.swisscom.ch)