GlaxoSmithKline
New Hire Program Audit & Restructure

Context
Top research-based pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has one of the most impressive pipelines in the industry and its market strength is legend.  GSK’s products include treatments for asthma, HIV/AIDS, malaria, depression, migraine, diabetes, heart failure, digestive conditions, and cancer.     
                  
Opportunity
To help maintain this leading position, GSK needed effective new hire sales training that translated into business results and reduced a representative’s time to selling proficiency. Given the Performance StrategX team’s success over the last two years auditing GSK’s new hire training and creating learning solutions, GSK requested that the Learning and Performance Solutions team reinvent the new hire sales training program. GSK wanted to:

1. Gain a comprehensive understanding of the effectiveness and efficiency of its current new hire training.
2. Ascertain whether training time dedicated to brands was adequate based on the complexity of the brand and the number of resources provided.
3. Evaluate its assessment and measurement system, including the validity of science and product exams in HomeStudy and current and new assessment programs for In-House training.

Solution
With our in depth experience in the GSK organization and in benchmarking best practice learning solutions within the pharmaceutical industry and other industries, along with a thorough audit process, the Performance StrategX team defined an effective future direction for new hires. It included:

1. A continuum of learning linking HomeStudy, In-House, and post-new hire field training through year one of New Hire development.
2. A comprehensive curriculum and assessment architecture providing explicit roadmaps for future implementation of the training continuum.
3. A blended approach including classroom learning and enhancing as well as extending e-learning modules.
4. Integration of new technology, including social networking and peer-to-peer learning, and activating learning with others from the start in HomeStudy.

Incorporating assessment from day one and throughout the learning continuum to provide checkpoints and linkages to core competencies so that learning was tracked to future performance.