Raytheon Case Study: Creating a Brand for Learning

Topics: Branding

Contents

Raytheon's Corporate Learning Unit, Global Talent Development and Learning (GTDL), is part of the Corporate Human Resources function. Its mission is to ensure the right people are in the right roles with the right capabilities at the right time to maximize individual potential and business value. Following a structural reorganization that moved the learning organization under Corporate Human Resources, GTDL determined that confusion existed about the identity of learning and development and that there was limited awareness of the resources and benefits of learning and development across the employee population of 75,000. 

GTDL's communications leader put together a cross-business, cross-function team to develop a large-scale communications and branding campaign for learning and development. They adopted the 5-step model originally developed by Raytheon's Missile Systems business. The model's five powerful words — Act, Grow, Learn, Perform, Strengthen — captured the essence of each business' learning model and provided a simple, actionable framework for employees to follow. The team also recognized the importance of facilitating alignment between Learning and Development, Career Management and Performance Development, and made it a priority to develop a cohesive approach. Extensive outreach through advertising posters, interactive web surveys, in-person events and more were used to deliver the new messages. 

The results of the campaign have been significant. The businesses have shown a great deal of support in rolling out the messaging, and feedback from employees has been overwhelmingly positive. The GTDL communications leader developed a measurement strategy for the campaign that creates an overall picture of effectiveness by linking activities, attitudes and actions and has the numbers to show that the campaign is definitely accomplished its goal of branding learning as a critical asset in the company's business success.

Members of CorpU read more detail about these award-winning efforts and see samples of the branding used at Raytheon.