ITU AbsorbTech Shares Strategies for Achieving Award-Winning Training Culture Four Years in a Row.

ITU AbsorbTech has earned the prestigious ATD BEST® Award in 2017, 2016, and 2014, and the Excellence in Practice Award in 2015. HR Director, Heather Chung, outlines ITU AbsorbTech’s key strategic initiatives that contributed to its success as one of the top companies in the world for workplace learning.

Tony Bingham, President and CEO, ATD; Heather Chung, HR Director, ITU AbsorbTech; David Leef, Vice President, ITU AbsorbTech; Erica Kloppenberg, Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist, ITU AbsorbTech; Tara Deakin, Chair-Elect, ATD.

New Berlin, WI – On October 5, 2017, ITU AbsorbTech was presented with its third ATD BEST Award in Washington, DC, ranking 20th among the 40 international award winners. Winners also included well-known names such as IBM, Verizon, and Cigna.

The BEST Awards are the talent development industry’s most rigorous and coveted recognition. The BEST Awards recognize organizations that demonstrate enterprise-wide success through talent development.

“Having a knowledgeable and skilled workforce is a key component to our overall success,” says Heather Chung, HR Director at ITU AbsorbTech. “We are proud to have a vibrant, innovative learning environment capable of sustaining our leading edge position in the marketplace.”

Talent development is highly valued at ITU AbsorbTech.  Chung highlights five key strategies for developing and maintaining a top-rated training program at the company:

1. Commitment to our business tenets. This permeates all areas of our business including Organizational Development. We invest in our employees’ success and in turn, this drives our business success.
2. Top leadership involvement. Leadership is heavily involved in driving commitment to organizational development initiatives throughout the organization.  Leadership helps determine learning topics and participates in content development as subject matter experts (Stewards of Organizational Development).
3. Leveraging our Talent Acquisition philosophy to “hire the best” and teach them how we go-to-market. We strive to hire people who will thrive in our culture and we invest in their success. We teach them our way of doing business so that each person tells that same story throughout the organization.
4. Succession Planning and Career Pathways. As our organization grows, we communicate the opportunities to our employees and what this means to them and their future. We align employees’ aspirations with the organization’s goals to drive sustainability in both employee and organizational performance.
5. Investment in Sustainable “AbsorbU” Certified Education Modules. We have developed customized training modules as part of our comprehensive AbsorbU training program to further enhance consistency and quality, and to deliver a unified message throughout the organization. Example of these modules include LEAD (Leadership Excellence and Development), GSE (Genuine Service Excellence Certification), CPE (Certified Production Excellence), Safety training, and GBOW (Growing Business Our Way).

“The continued success at ITU AbsorbTech is a highly collaborative effort by leadership, organizational development, talent acquisition, the safety team, and all of the employee participants” says Chung.

ITU AbsorbTech competed against nearly 175 organizations from 11 countries. Every organization submitted quantitative and qualitative information to ATD about their talent 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 field.