England’s highly prestigious Henley Forum 2020 Awards selected Western & Southern’s Knowledge Services program as the overall winner in the category of “advancing knowledge and organizational learning.”
The win was announced at the Henley Forum 20th Annual Conference, Feb. 5–6, after two associates from Western & Southern’s Talent Development department, Heather Swensgard and Derek Bostic, shared their experiences in developing and implementing the program in a workshop session. The Henley Forum is an academic research center within Henley Business School, one of the oldest and most respected business schools in the United Kingdom.
W&S Knowledge Services program is designed to achieve three key organizational objectives: mitigate talent risk, enable better and faster decision-making, and support innovation and growth efforts. Knowledge Services consists of Knowledge Transfer approaches, Communities of Practice, Organizational Network Analysis and other Knowledge Management methods and techniques focused on creating learner-driven solutions to support a continuous learning environment.
The Henley Forum award came on the heels of Talent Development winning two major third-party awards. In February 2019, the department was ranked 113 among the top 125 learning and development programs in the world by Training Magazine, and in October, it ranked 53 out of only 59 organizations across 120 countries to win a 2019 ATD BEST Award. In addition, the department was notified that it will be ranked by both organizations again for 2020.
The recognition Talent Development has received reflects the importance Western & Southern places on the growth and development of its associates and the investment it continues to make in talent-related services and offerings. By participating in industry awards, Talent Development is able to benchmark against the best Learning & Development programs across the globe.
