At the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, CLO Jody Hudson fuses his scientific training with a passion for development to generate learning power.
by Mike Prokopeak
January 1, 2010
In nuclear physics, two processes — fission and fusion — have the potential to create massive amounts of energy from tiny amounts of atomic matter.<br /><br />Fission, used in most nuclear reactors today, harnesses the power released when the nucleus of an atom is split apart to generate electricity. Fusion, on the other hand, is not nearly as widely used and understood. Scientists continue to experiment with how to fuse together separate atoms to generate power. But at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, CLO Jody Hudson has created his own brand of personal fusion, melding his scientific background with a passion for development to generate learning power.<br /><br />Established by the U.S. Congress in 1974, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is the government agency charged with oversight of civilian use of nuclear materials in the United States. As NRC’s CLO, Hudson is responsible for ensuring the agency’s employees — engineers, scientists and administrative specialists working in the NRC’s licensing, inspection and enforcement and regulatory research arms — have the skills needed to carry out the agency’s mission. Planners expect the agency to grow due to an expected resurgence in the use of nuclear energy in the coming years.<br /><br />“Many people are referring to this as a nuclear renaissance,” Hudson said, noting that the nation’s 104 current nuclear reactors generate about 20 percent of the nation’s electricity. “We expect about 23 applications to come in over the next several years for a combined total of approximately 34 new reactor units.”<br /><br /><strong>Experimenting With Development</strong><br />Educated in environmental chemistry, Hudson joined the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), first working in scientific and regulatory roles and eventually moving into management over the course of his 22-year EPA career. As he advanced up the career ladder, Hudson came to realize and appreciate the importance of training and development to mission success.<br /><br />“What I observed over time was it was a lot easier to accomplish success when you had a well-trained workforce and the people that you needed had the skills necessary to do the job, both in terms of technical skill sets as well as the general professional skill sets,” Hudson said.<br /><br />Hudson found his passion as he took part in leadership development at the EPA, leading him to join the U.S. Department of Energy in 2005 as the agency’s first CLO. His scientific training proved to be beneficial as he made the transition to the softer science of learning and development. <br /><br />“I was able to bring a scientific discipline and more of a systematic approach to learning and development than many of my peers [who] grew up as trainers and then evolved into a chief learning role,” he said, adding that his experience in business line management further enriched his perspective. <br /><br />“That strategic alignment between the business needs [and] the skills employees need, to the learning and development necessary to get those skills, was always what I was focused on,” Hudson said.<br /><br />He joined the NRC in May 2009, attracted by the agency’s reputation for high performance and the challenge of working with a growing, technical audience. Every two years, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management conducts a federal human capital workforce survey in conjunction with the Partnership for Public Services to create the “Best Places to Work in Federal Government” report. The NRC ranked No. 1 on the last two reports.<br /><br />“It was combination of [the NRC’s] reputation as being a great place to work — being a high-performing organization — and being able to contribute toward some very important energy-related challenges for this country,” Hudson said of his decision to join the NRC.<br /><br /><strong>From Classroom to Control Room</strong><br />Hudson estimated that the NRC conducts 90 percent of learning for the agency’s 4,000-strong workforce in classrooms and 10 percent online, although he expects that mix to change as the agency continues to implement and expand a recently acquired learning management system (LMS). A recent internal study showed that approximately 80 percent of the NRC’s classroom training can be delivered online. <br /><br />“Our intent is to systematically convert those courses to online delivery,” Hudson said. “Ultimately, where I see us being is somewhere close to 50/50.”<br />The NRC’s lack of an LMS hindered its use of online learning, but since then the agency has realized the efficiency inherent in making greater use of online learning. <br /><br />“There are more and more demands being placed on the workforce all the time,” Hudson said. “People’s time is very valuable, and we want to keep them focused on accomplishing the mission, and while learning and development is an important part of that, we want to try to condense the time frame necessary to develop our employees.”<br /><br />The agency uses simulations as an important part of its learning mix and plans to increase their use. Nuclear power plant simulators re-create the look and feel of a plant control room to allow inspectors, for example, to experiment with a variety of scenarios.<br /><br />“We have our people involved in doing the regulatory work run-through simulations so they understand what is going on in the plant and under certain scenarios how various controls at the plant effect the operation,” Hudson said. “It gives them a better and much deeper understanding of nuclear power plant operation and what the nuclear power plant operator should be doing under various scenarios.” <br /><strong><br />The Nuclear Options</strong><br />While the NRC’s reputation was a major factor in his decision to join, Hudson didn’t let that keep him from seeking out ways to improve learning at the federal government’s top-rated place to work. He met with business leaders soon after joining and asked a series of business-related questions to determine where to focus.<br /><br />“Through those diagnostic questions, I realized we can do a lot better in tying the strategic alignment between our learning and development solutions to the business needs of the organization and be able to do that at less cost and more effectively,” he said.<br /><br />With that goal in mind, Hudson has begun to move to a competency-based learning and development model, beginning with identifying the general, leadership, business management and technical competency sets required across the entire enterprise.<br /><br />“Once we define those, we then design learning and development solutions that are specifically intended to satisfy those competency needs, and at the same time, through using our LMS, conduct competency gap assessments,” Hudson said.<br /><br />The NRC defines competencies in four categories:<br /><ul><li>General professional skills, such as how to resolve disputes or develop emotional intelligence or communication skills.</li><li>Business management skills for projects or programs, along with the corresponding performance metrics.</li><li>Mission-specific technical skills, such as inspector competencies or financial analyst skills.</li><li>Leadership competency skills, but not just for those in leadership positions.</li></ul>“Leadership is for everybody,” Hudson said. “We develop leadership skills very early in a person’s career and then deepen them, broaden them and strengthen them throughout the life cycle of an NRC employee’s career, so that by the time they are beginning to think about positional leadership, they have a lot of the leadership already under their belt and they’re well positioned for success.”<br /><br />The end result of the competency model is a better prepared workforce but also a clear guide for learning and development investment, Hudson said.<br />“We can quantitate where the gaps are, how many people have that gap, compare that to the list of the competencies and begin to prioritize what courses we need to deliver and schedule over this next year to close the gaps where they are greatest or where they have the biggest drag on business success here at NRC.”<br /><br />While development of a competency framework requires a major investment of time and resources, Hudson said NRC leadership understood the value of the effort despite the complexity inherent in implementation. <br /><br />“We all came together quickly and recognized that competency-based learning and development is the way that we have to go if we’re going to be as effective and efficient as we can and to establish that direct line of sight between learning and development to overall mission success,” he said.<br /><br />Michael Johnson heads up the agency’s Office of New Reactors. He said learning and development plays a significant role in his 500-strong workforce responsible for reviewing, licensing and overseeing construction for the next generation of nuclear power plants. <br /><br />“The majority of our assets are in our people,” Johnson said. “Those people have to be trained and developed to do what they do. Many of them come to us as engineers or scientists, but they don’t know regulation, for example.” <br /><br />Hudson’s team works with Johnson to provide skill development and training tools that will meet his team’s needs. <br /><br />“Whether it’s helping us by pulling together a course on a new design and coming up with a way to teach that design so someone can quickly begin a detailed review, [or] it’s something that is more high tech in terms of building, through the use of IT or simulators, an online capability for us to make available, beyond the classroom, learning and development opportunities, that’s the kind of service we need from the training professionals,” Johnson said. “We’ve been well served by that organization.”<br /><br />Johnson worked particularly closely with Hudson and the learning team to develop his office’s approach to the use of simulations, balancing a need for customized simulators based on specific plant designs with the flexibility required to keep development costs in line.<br /><br />“We can’t proceed without these simulators,” Johnson said. “That organization has done a really good job in terms of putting us on a path to have what we need in time to support it.”<br /><br /><strong>Challenges and Opportunities</strong><br />As with many government agencies, the retirement of baby boomers looms as a significant challenge for the NRC. An estimated 30 to 50 percent of the federal workforce will be eligible to retire over the next five to seven years, Hudson said.<br /><br />“That’s pretty frightening,” he said. “Many of the people that are walking out accumulated their knowledge and skill sets over many years.” <br /><br />While some midcareer professionals will be able to step in, federal agencies will depend heavily on newly recruited, inexperienced workers to fill the gap. Given the highly technical and sensitive nature of the NRC’s work, that creates a significant challenge for Hudson’s learning and development group.<br />“We have a window of opportunity,” he said. “We have a workforce poised to retire with a lot of knowledge. How do we capture that knowledge so that we can pass it on to others, share it with others and use and reuse that knowledge?”<br /><br />The NRC is investing in knowledge management, using an approach that leverages communities of practice to create a virtual environment where mature, experienced workers can convene with young, less experienced workers, pose questions and be able to identify core issues for that community.<br /><br />“Quickly, the true experts in that community emerge and allow those individuals with far less experience to tap those true experts, have them answer questions, exchange knowledge [and] pass knowledge on,” Hudson said.<br /><br />This method of knowledge capture is a particularly important because some subject-matter experts have unique knowledge gathered from significant experiences, such as the core meltdown at the Three Mile Island power station in 1979. By leveraging knowledge management aligned with learning, the NRC can conduct interviews with people with that specialized knowledge and make it available, searchable and accessible in a way that’s going to add value to the current and future workforce, Hudson said. <br /><br />Hudson said the NRC’s executive leadership team members model the value of learning and development for the rest of the organization by making learning and development a priority themselves. The team takes part in executive development programs. <br /><br />“If their leadership is actively engaged in learning and development, that sends a powerful message that reverberates down throughout the organization,” Hudson said.<br /><br />By fusing continuous experimentation and improvement with a passion for development, Hudson hopes to find a learning and development plan that will continue to deliver significant power to the NRC.<br /><br />“The bottom line indicator of success is if the NRC is achieving its mission through its line mission programs,” Hudson said. “If they are accomplishing their performance targets, then I’m doing my job in terms of providing their workforce the skills they need to be effective in doing that.”