For more than 10 years, Training magazine has honored some the most successful employer-sponsored learning and development programs in the world with its Top 125 Awards (or Top 50 or Top 100 in earlier years).   Honorees are a “who’s who” of corporate America: Intel, Qualcomm, Verizon, Nationwide, Harrah’s Entertainment, Continental Airlines, Capital One, Bank of America, KPMG, MetLife, Microsoft, Aetna, Sun Microsystems, Best Buy, Wells Fargo, Steel Case, ADP, EMC, McDonald’s, MasterCard, and PricewaterhouseCoopers, which has won the top spot for the last three years.   Nine companies have been inducted into the Hall of Fame over the years for having held a “Top 10” spot in four consecutive award lists; they are Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, General Mills, IBM, KLA-Tencor, Pfizer, The Ritz-Carlton Company and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.

The Top 125 Awards applications are judged both quantitatively (75 percent of the total score) and qualitatively (25 percent of the total score). On the qualitative side, Training editors look for demonstrable results, progress of programs, innovation, success factors, training strategically linked to business goals, corporate commitment to training, the potential applicability of best practices companywide and to other organizations and industries, and the ingenuity of outstanding initiatives (usually a fairly new program that hasn’t had a chance to demonstrate long-term results) and their potential to become best practices.   On the quantitative side, an outside research company scores the application on five different sections as follows:

• Training Program/Scope (including hours of training, number of trainers, training budget, best practices, and outstanding initiative) (worth 25 percent of score)
• Tuition Reimbursement (worth 10 percent of score)
• Training Infrastructure and Delivery (worth 20 percent of score)
• Evaluation/Metrics (worth 25 percent of score)
• Human Resources (including competency maps, compensation tied to training, employee satisfaction surveys, length of service and turnover, job openings filled by internal candidates, and percentage of new hires referred by employees) (worth 20 percent of score)

The deadline for application submission is September 27, 2010 and the entry fee is $179. Winners will be featured in Training magazine’s February 2011 issue including the final rankings and feature stories on the Top 5 companies, plus Best Practices and Outstanding Initiatives Award winners.   Winning companies receive awards at the annual black-tie Top 125 Gala to be held on Monday, February 7, 2011, during the Training 2011 Conference & Expo in San Diego.

To learn more or to apply, visit Training Magazine: http://www.trainingmag.com/

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