ASTD “Best Award” Recognizes Organizational Commitment to Employee Learning
MADISON, WI — Summit Credit Union is among 30 organizations from Bahrain, Canada, India and the United States to receive an American Society for Training & Development’s (ASTD) BEST Award, the training industry’s most rigorous and coveted recognition.
Summit Credit Union, the smallest of the organizations from across the globe and one of only two credit unions to receive the award, ranked 10th out of the 30 international BEST Award winners. Kimberly Frederickson, assistant vice president of learning and development, received the Award on Summit’s behalf during a ceremony held in Washington, D.C., on October 3.
The ASTD BEST Awards recognize select organizations that demonstrate enterprise-wide success through employee learning and development each year.
This is the second year in a row that Summit has been awarded the honor. In 2011, Summit was recognized for its organizational commitment to employee development and its Learning & Organizational department’s performance-consulting approach to learning.
This year, Summit was recognized for demonstrating best practices in the following:
- Organizational learning and development, including strategically aligning the learning function to support organizational initiatives such as efficiency and loan growth
- Leveraging Summit’s learning function to drive its organizational culture and brand
- An integrated approach to talent management at Summit by partnering the learning function and the HR function
- Excellence in both quality and effectiveness of learning initiatives
- Flexibility and agility in driving organizational learning through a variety of delivery channels such as instructor-led class room training, live webinars, self directedweb-based courses, best practice learning blogs as well as a development of a library of performance support tools and resources.
In all, Summit’s 323 employees engaged in 12,108 hours of learning throughout 2012.
“Combined, our training & development area has more than 1,130 hours of learning opportunities available to our employees,” said Frederickson. “This demonstrates our commitment to helping drive not only the individual success of each of our 323 employees, but that of the organization as well.”
Specifically, the honor recognized Summit’s training of its employees in 23 locations to prepare for an internal core-system conversion that will continue through June 2013. Summit also implemented a successful employee development, retention, and organizational succession planning initiative called “CEO of Your Career,” which included a “Career Night,” where employees heard from leaders of each frontline area then participated in breakout discussions with experienced employees serving in those roles.
Other investments in learning and employee development include instructor-led classroom, remote delivery, web-based and self-directed options. These custom solutions cover everything from new employee orientation and systems to sales, service and management development.
"Learning is one of our core values, and we're strongly committed to growth and development," says Kim Sponem, president and CEO of Summit. "The learning function has a strategic consultative role in supporting our organizational initiatives, and in preparing our employees to skillfully and knowledgeably guide our members toward better financial decisions that inspire positive change."
For the 2012 BEST Awards, Summit competed against 84 organizations in 13 countries. These organizations submitted quantitative and qualitative information to ASTD about their learning and development practices and programs. Applications were assessed in a blind review by members of the BEST Awards advisory committee, a select group of experts in the learning and development field.
“These 30 companies get it,” says Tony Bingham, ASTD president and CEO. “They excel in creating innovative, vibrant learning cultures that clearly align with strategic business goals. The leadership of these organizations values learning and knows that having a knowledgeable and skilled workforce drives success.”
This is the tenth year of the ASTD BEST Awards. More information about the 2012 ASTD BEST Award winners may be found in the October 2012 issue of T+D magazine and online: www.astd.org/best. Details about the 2012 ASTD BEST Awards program will be available February 2013.
In October, 2012, Summit Credit Union also won the CUNA National ELLy eLearning award for successfully incorporating technology into staff training. The ELLy Training Awards are the only national awards presented to credit union trainers that recognize excellence in professional staff development. For more information, visit: http://events.cuna.org/ell12/ellys/ell-awards.
About Summit Credit Union
Established in 1935, Summit Credit Union is a member-owned financial cooperative open to anyone in Wisconsin. Summit holds $1.8 billion in assets and has more than 125,000 members with a total of 23 locations throughout the Madison and Milwaukee areas. For more information, visit www.summitcreditunion.com or call (608) 243-5000 or (800) 236-5560.
About ASTD
ASTD (the American Society for Training & Development) is the world’s largest association dedicated to the training and development field. ASTD’s members come from more than 100 countries and connect locally in 125 U.S. chapters and with 20 International Partners. For more information, visit www.astd.org.