Länsförsäkringar Alliance - 
Enlight helps modernize test design & delivery

To date, around twelve diplomas have been designed to train and assess Länsförsäkringar’s 5 500 employees in the company’s 24 independent regional insurance companies, scattered across Sweden. In 2007, the plan is to develop another five to six diplomas for different working groups within the organization.

To cater for such a large number of employees in so many different working groups and a highly decentralized organization, designing and conducting an extensive range of diplomas is no easy task. This is one of the reasons why Länsförsäkringar turned to Enlight in 2004 to help them reform their work within test development.

Lena Strand, a project leader at Länsförsäkringar AB’s education unit in Stockholm, is responsible for developing the company’s internal training diplomas in personal property insurance. “Two years ago, we really had to change our whole training concept because we wanted to build up more diplomas and it was too much work for us to manage the whole test development process and design the tests ourselves,” Strand acknowledges. Another strategic factor was pressure from the management level. “Our management team told us that we needed to modernize our training methods so that employees did not have to travel so often to attend training sessions. Attending long training sessions in Stockholm took too much time from their work duties and the cost of travel expenses was high,” she continues.

As Strand’s team is a “service” company for the 24 independent Länsförsäkringar companies, another challenge was how to get these 5 500 employees interested in the new form of training. “We have to make our employees interested in what we offer, sometimes the different companies want to do their own courses or use external sources,” she admits.

Covering the entire test development and delivery process

Several external companies were invited to present their solutions and Enlight was selected to reform Länsförsäkringar’s assessment methods. Today, the cooperation also includes test design, reviewing the questions, test delivery and administration of tests and candidates via Enlight’s internet solution. In essence, Enlight is covering the whole process – from test design to test delivery. As Strand says, “Having Länsförsäkringar employees involved in test design workshops run by Enlight also means that we have a better and more standardized structure for our tests.” Test design is by no means an easy or straightforward task. “It is extremely important when you are creating these complicated diplomas that you make sure you ask the right questions,” Strand explains. This means that before embarking on the test questions, she and other specific experts sit down with an Enlight representative to discuss the needs and purpose of the test which should be developed.

Having excellent teachers does not automatically guarantee that they are also excellent in formulating questions. “It is a tremendous advantage for us to use external test consultants to help us with our question review as they often see things that we might miss in the formulation of the test questions,” she says. However, Strand was not always so optimistic about the thought of having external input for the concept of web-based tests. “I did hesitate in the beginning before we made the move,” she admits. Now she would not even consider looking back at their old system and routines. Länsförsäkringar has even taken Enlight’s test development methods a step further and incorporated it into their “word-document”-based test case studies.

Keeping training time and costs to a minimum

Nowadays at Länsförsäkringar, employees from all over the country can take advantage of the new diploma studying system. Before a diploma course starts, employees take a pre-diagnostic test to identify their level of knowledge. Then, the employee only needs to attend a course that fits his/her specific knowledge gap. The diploma course ends with a final exam test. Through this process, Länsförsäkringar covers Enlight’s entire T3C-model that secures a high quality level in each step of the diploma course. In addition, Strand highlights another major advantage for the training department. “We don’t need to pay teachers to correct the tests as they are self-correcting automatically which means that this is a fast, easy and efficient method for us."

Strand says that in the past the employees have complained about attending an internal training course in Stockholm due to time and cost restraints. However, the new training method has paid off. “People have been very positive to our new form of training courses. They say it is very easy and they appreciate the fact that they don’t have to travel so much,” she says.

Länsförsäkringar has also started a new project of developing upgrade tests for employees who have already passed the final exam. The project started in 2006 and the new education will include Enlight’s web-based test delivery solution.

Combining a perfect solution with personal service

Highly satisfied with having the test development concept functioning successfully, Strand has a very good relationship with her Enlight contacts. Added flexibility and an extra touch of personal customer service have not gone unnoticed. She refers specifically to a test design workshop organized for her working group. Due to work commitments and illness, some of her colleagues could not attend. Enlight counteracted this problem by offering to set up an extra interactive tool so that her colleagues could sit at a remote location and be talked through the workshop.

“I am very satisfied with Enlight’s service. In the beginning, we had some initial teething problems but Enlight helped us through the rough patch and came back with an effective solution. Enlight’s working method and delivery system is perfect for us. I can’t imagine a more convenient solution,” she concludes.

About Länsförsäkringar

Länsförsäkringar is one of Sweden’s largest insurance players and it is the country’s only customer-owned locally established banking and insurance alliance. It consists of 24 independent regional insurance companies and a central service office. Länsförsäkringar is the market leader within Swedish non-life insurance, with a market share of over 30 percent. Länsförsäkringar holds 8.5 percent of the market for life assurance and pension insurance, and three percent of the bank market. The Länsförsäkringar group also includes the animal and crop insurance division, Agria Djurförsäkring. In total, Länsförsäkringar manages assets amounting to SEK 173 billion.