Brandon Hall Group, a preeminent research and analyst firm focused on human capital management practices, recently announced that HARMAN took home a Gold HCM Excellence Award in the “Best Results of a Learning Program” category. The award was received in recognition of the results driven by our problem-solving certification program, putting HARMAN on the podium with industry leaders, such as IBM, Google and Bank of America.

HARMAN’s Quality team partnered with HARMAN University to develop this certification program that enhances our talent’s problem-solving skills and reinforces a consistent and rigorous HARMAN approach across the company globally. The program has three different levels of certification: HARMAN Problem Solver, HARMAN Advanced Problem Solver and HARMAN Master Problem Solver.

“Our teams were solving the same problems over and over as a result of only addressing symptoms and not true root causes,” Mark Quint, Executive Sponsor and VP of Quality Excellence & Manufacturing Quality of HARMAN, said. “We developed this program to improve consistency in using problem solving tools that reduce the time taken to contain a problem and analyze its root cause.”

Within 12 months, our problem-solving curriculum reached more than 1,500 employees across all four of HARMAN’s business units. This program has also had a sizeable financial and cultural impact on HARMAN.

“We designed a curriculum that paired teaching with immediate implementation on the job to get real results. We saw great success with this approach,” Theresa Morris, HARMAN University Functional Academy lead, said. “It was an honor to be recognized for our innovative approach and for the business results we have been able to deliver in a short period of time.”