Tad Waddington

Tad Waddington is the winner of the 2008 International Business Award(Stevie) for Best Human Resources Executive of the Year and the author of Lasting Contribution: How to Think, Plan, and Act to Accomplish Meaningful Work (Agate, 2007).

Kirkus described Lasting Contribution as follows:

A self-help guide that assembles scholarly and scientific material to illustrate why things happen, why people act and how those people can plan actions that make a difference. Unlike the average motivational guru who seems to have read a single book-the one he or she has just written-Waddington has read them all, so readers will learn what ancient thinkers, religious leaders, modern scientists and rival motivational guides teach about human behavior. ...This thin volume contains wisdom, scientific facts and insights from great figures, all in the service of planning a meaningful future. A thought-provoking work that bears rereading.

Lasting Contribution has won the following awards:

*USABookNews National Best Books Award
*Axiom Business Book Award
*Independent Publisher (IPPY) Gold
*Eric Hoffer Award

Waddington is Director of Performance Measurement at Accenture and is the co-author of Return on Learning: Training for High Performance at Accenture (Agate, 2006). The book tells how Accenture's training organization revitalized training and proved its value. To prove the value of training, Waddington performed an in-depth statistical analysis of detailed records on the 261,000 people who have ever worked for the company. These records include information such as cost rates, bill rates, total time with the organization, and promotion date. Accenture factored out the effects of personnel level, experience, inflation, and business cycles.

The analysis showed that employees who take more training (top 50% relative to bottom 50%):

*Are 17 percent more chargeable
*Have 20 percent higher bill rates (due to promotions)
*Stay with the company 14 percent longer

These combined benefits yielded a net return on the investment of training of 3.53. For every dollar Accenture invested in training, there is a return of $3.53 in net benefits, after costs are recovered.

Waddington's work on measuring return on investment in training won the following awards:

*Corporate University Xchange award for Excellence in Measurement
*Gold award from Brandon Hall for Accenture's Best Practice for Determining ROI
*American Society for Training and Development Best Award
*Chief Learning Officer Magazine Impact Award
*Accenture's Inventor Award

Waddington has been with Accenture since 1997. He is a former Gallup Organization Research Director, a writer at English Digest (Taipei, Taiwan where he published over 300 articles), and is a former translator and interpreter (Chinese/English).

Waddington received his BA in Psychology and Chinese from Arizona State University where he graduated summa cum laude with a 4.0 GPA, was inducted into the academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa, and won the Moeur award, ASU's highest academic honor. He also studied at the Beijing Foreign Language Institute and the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies (the Stanford Center). He received an MA from the University of Chicago's Divinity School in 1990 and a PhD from the Department of Education's Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistical Analysis program at the University of Chicago. He is also a graduate of the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business' Chicago Management Institute.

References

* http://www.stevieawards.com/iba/
* http://www.lastingcontribution.com
* http://www.agatepublishing.com/
* http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
* http://www.usabooknews.com/home.html
* http://www.axiomawards.com/
* http://www.independentpublisher.com/
* http://www.hofferaward.com/
* http://www.accenture.com
* http://www.corpu.com/
* http://www.brandon-hall.com/
* http://www.astd.org/
* http://www.clomedia.com/
* http://www.gallup.com/home.aspx
* http://www.asu.edu/
* http://www.pbk.org/
* http://www.blcu.edu.cn/blcuweb/english/index-en.asp
* http://ieas.berkeley.edu/iup/
* http://www.uchicago.edu/