HP Innovation Journal Issue 05: Winter 2016 | Page 7
I feel I’m in an innovative
company…thank you for this
change.
Becoming a “learn it all”
So imagine what’s possible when an entire
company adopts a growth mindset—if our
leaders and employees focus on improv-
ing their abilities instead of just relying on
their current strengths. If they believe it’s
safe to learn from failures and criticism,
they’ll be more willing to take on challenges.
Fundamentally, our employees will be more
innovative, creative, and resilient. That’s our
goal.
To transform the company, we must in-
grain the growth mindset into the very fab-
T
hat’s what I heard from one of our
managers, talking about HP’s changes
to our performance management ap-
proach. Another said, What a breath of fresh
air. And yet another called it a positive and
brilliant approach.
Comments like these started piling into
my mailbox once we announced that we were
doing away with yearly rankings and ratings
in favor of more meaningful performance
management conversations. What
was the big idea driving this change?
The Situation
The growth mindset.
We heard from you and other HP employees that
you need an easy way to access great content,
The big idea
stay ahead in your field, and tap into the minds
of the best HP experts around the world.
87%
of employees say that
sharing knowledge
with teams is vital for
learning at work. 1
81%
of employees depend
on time-consuming
web searches for
job-related learning. 1
80%
of workforce learning
happens via on-the-job
In 2016, we launched Brain Candy, adding
a powerful new and innovative tool to our
learning portfolio.
Brain Candy is an online learning platform
that hosts videos, articles, courses, and other
content. It’s searchable, easy-to-use, and full
of information that can build an employee’s
skills or knowledge any time—even if they
only have a few minutes.
Like the minds that use it, Brain Candy
grows and gets better because employees
can easily add content to it for any area of
interest. They can also share and recom-
mend items, network with colleagues who
have shared interests, and track
their learning.
There’s even a learning path on
Brain Candy for building a growth
mindset. In fact, remember that Carol
Dweck TED Talk I mentioned? It’s the
most liked video on the platform.
Just a few months in, we have ap-
proximately 40 percent of employees
using the tool. It’s a good start.
interactions with peers,
teammates, and managers. 2
Fuel your mind
When HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard
Enterprise separated a year ago,
we made a commitment to Keep
Reinventing—and we didn’t just
Share
Connect
your
mean our products.
with
ideas
In partnership with our leadership
2. Have meaningful
experts
team, HR is applying that spirit of in-
conversations
novation to our culture and extending
it to every employee. We’re putting in
We’re also reinventing how we evalu-
place new people processes designed
ate and reward performance. Rather
The Solution
Introducing Brain Candy,
to create an environment that fosters
than classifying employees as effec-
HP’s new learning
platform where you can
both company and individual growth.
tive or not, successful or not, we’ve
tap into our collective
brain
fueled
by
50,000+
Our foundational belief is that
eliminated ratings in favor of more
of the best minds at HP.
skills and intelligence can be devel-
frequent, meaningful conversations
hp.com/go/braincandy
oped; that with learning, effort, ex-
focused on learning and growth in
ploration, and practice, people can
service of individual and company
always keep growing. This not only
goals.
helps drive innovation, it drives employee ric of how we work, learn, and develop. And
We had more than a few challenges in
engagement and satisfaction.
it will take more than just distributing TED taking that big idea from theory to practice.
There’s a term for this theory: growth Talks and business psychology books—we When we separated from Hewlett Packard
mindset. Perhaps you’ve read Carol Dweck’s need the right mix of mechanisms in place Enterprise, our newly formed (and much
book on the topic, titled Mindset: The New to support this change.
smaller) Human Resources team was tasked
Psychology of Success, or seen her popular
Here are some of the ways we’re helping with building a new company while continu-
TED Talk, The power of believing you can employees and managers make the shift:
ing to support its day-to-day HR needs. Most
improve.
processes, like performance and rewards,
The simplest way to think about it is that 1. Foster continuous learning
were cloned from the former company, but
it’s about learning it all rather than know-
our team was motivated to develop programs
ing it all.
Since we believe that every employee can that supported the culture we wanted for
grow their capabilities, be more creative, and the new HP.
more collaborative, it’s easy to make a case
With only a few months to plan and roll
for investing in learning.
out changes to performance and rewards,
Access a wide range of content
custom-tailored to fit your needs
on topics like innovation, design
thinking, and technical mastery.
Share your own
valuable ideas and
contribute to our
collective intelligence.
Brain Candy makes
it easy to find and
connect with an
ever-growing group
of experts around
the world.
1 Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, Learning in the Workplace Survey, 6/2014
2 Bersin by Deloitte, Meet the Modern Learner, 11/2014
Issue 5 · Winter 2016 · Innovation Journal 7