Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield’s training curriculum for its managers has been so effective that the company is now designing courses for employees who want to be the company’s next generation of leaders.

Last year, Wellmark started requiring that everyone in its leadership pool – more than 170 of its employees – complete 40 hours of training each year by taking classes in the company’s leadership curriculum. The classes range from four to 16 hours in length, and address interpersonal development, managing others and business literacy.

Kristi Burma, Wellmark’s team leader for talent development, said this training has made a difference in a number of ways.

“We’ve definitely seen that there’s been a positive impact,” she said. “One example is that it used to show up in our talent review that maybe presentation skills were a gap. Since we offered some presentations training, it hasn’t shown up as a gap.”

Now, Wellmark sees an opportunity to develop some of these same skills earlier on by offering more self-development courses for employees on a leadership track.

“We’re now dabbling in some emerging-leader-type programs and offering those for people who are maybe not in a position of leadership now, but are either in a position of influencing of others by being the person people go to when the boss is gone, or they’re interested in being a leader in the future,” Burma said. “We’re setting aside some classes specifically for those groups so that we can start developing them and have them ready if a position would come open.”

Wellmark already offers training programs for employees working at all levels within the company. According to Melody Justice, the company’s group leader for organizational development, Wellmark divides its training programs into three main categories: a leadership curriculum for managers, an employee curriculum focused on business-skills competencies and systems training specific to internal processes.

Classes such as time management and business writing are always offered, and new courses are introduced as the company addresses national trends or areas in which it wants to see improvement. Situational leadership is a new class that began this year, along with others such as self-mastery and understanding Wellmark’s financial position. In addition to building their skills, employees learn more about each other by taking part in the training.

“The networking going along amongst leaders is having a great impact, and people are saying that’s one of the greatest advantages of this curriculum,” Burma said.