Bersin & Associates Gives a 2011 Learning Leaders Award to Amway

New Amway training courses designed by Allen Communication receives prestigious award in the Operational Training and Development Excellence category.

SALT LAKE CITY (March 15, 2011) — Bersin & Associates announced that Amway North America is a recipient of a prestigious 2011 Learning Leaders Award for the Operational Training and Development Excellence category. Amway received this distinguished honor in recognition of its new training program, designed in partnership with Allen Communication Learning Services, which substantially improves the productivity and retention of new Amway business owners.

“Powerful support for our Independent Business Owners is a foundational element of Amway’s philosophy,” said Alison Hague, Director – Training & Education for Amway. “Partnering with our IBOs to provide effective skill-building programs like these enables them to grow their businesses. These selling programs help them show their clients how the products they represent fulfill important roles in living better lives.”

The Amway learning team conducted an extensive analysis to understand the realities of the new business owner experience,” said Josh Bersin, president. “Once it identified the big derailer for new owners — not landing that first sale early on — the company was laser-focused on the skills and information absolutely necessary to help achieve early success. We named Amway a Learning Leader for its research-based approach to building a sales training model with high impact on retention and productivity.

The business owner training is the result of an extensive needs assessment Amway conducted to determine how to help new business owners become more successful. Amway provided the needs assessment results to Allen, an innovative change management and performance improvement firm, where it was developed into a series of web based training and instructor-led training courses. These courses, administered through Amway’s Learning Center, teach new Amway business owners product knowledge and effective business skills.

“This award is recognition of what can be accomplished by corporations when the right information is put in the hands of the right people,” said Ron Zamir, chief executive officer of Allen. “Allen’s partnership with Amway shows that it’s not enough to just design a course and hope it works out. True change management is a process that encompasses systematic research, clear goals, defined evaluation and measurable results.”

The efforts of Amway and Allen proved to be a success. The average productivity of the new business owners who received the training was 27 percent higher than the matched control groups, and renewal rates were significantly higher than previous overall first year renewal rates.

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About Bersin & Associates

Bersin & Associates empowers HR and learning organizations to drive bottom-line impact through world-class research and consulting. The company’s WhatWorks® membership gives human resources, learning, and talent acquisition professionals the information and tools they need to drive change in their organizations as strategic business partners.

Bersin & Associates members use our insights and tools to benchmark themselves against best practices, design and implement programs across the HR and learning spectrum and select and implement systems. More than 5,000 organizations worldwide, including more than half of the Fortune 100, use Bersin & Associates research and consulting to guide their learning, talent, and human resources strategies.

About Amway

Based in Ada, Mich., Amway is part of the Alticor group of companies, founded by the DeVos and Van Andel families. Alticor is the parent company of Amway, Access Business Group and Alticor Corporate Enterprises. The company offers consumer products and business opportunities, as well as product development, manufacturing and logistics services in more than 80 countries and territories worldwide. The company reported annual sales of $8.4 billion for the year ending December 31, 2009.

About AllenComm

For three decades, the learning and development experts at Allen Communication Learning Services () have helped many of the world’s largest companies sharpen their organizational performance. Allen expands their client’s capabilities by using progressive approaches in custom training, e-learning, and blended learning development, as well as learning portal development and technologies. This bold approach results in highly-customized organizational training solutions that help departments scale and achieve more, while improving ROI.