" The most Important thing a company has are its intellectual assets, therefore ongoing learning is essential for corporate survival in today's global world"
Corporate University Definition: A corporate university is both a learning and educational process designed to help an organization accomplish its mission and straregic business plan by strengthening individual and organizational learning, knolwedge, competencies and skills.
Rationale and Drivers:
- Growth - Expand and dominate global markets through
smarter management.
- Talent - Make lesarning a competitive advantage for attracting
and retaining talent.
- Culture - Build a organization to exceed customers' expectations.
- Knowledge - Promote knowledge sharing and adoption of best practices.
- Alignment - Make learning strategies and programs consistent
company-wide.
- Accountability - Demonstrate learning's impact on business results.
Major Corporate University Components:
- Clearinghouse - Promote ideas and programs related to learning.
- Courses - Develop curricula and evaluate external vendor offerings.
- Events - Create learning conferences and seminars.
- Knowledge - Structire formal programs and encourage
transfer of expertise.
- Internal Communities - Sharing functional knowledge.
- Partnerships - Connect employees and managers to universities.
- Technology - Adopt state-of- the technology and expand online
opportunities.
- Orientation - Develop communication to teach new hires how
to contribute.
Critical Success Factors:
- Proactively doing research, field visits and interviews.
- Unified strategy across all functional units.
- Aligned with corporate business and strategic priorities.
- Learning resources focused on critical business challenges.
- Learning linked to career paths and management continuity.
- Specific metrics aligned to critical drivers.
- Programs that support the desired corporate culture.
- Core values and strategy reinforced by CEO, senior management
and all teams.
- Collaborative shared vision....no silo mentality.
- Consolidated programs sharing resources across corporate functions.
Corporate University Design Phases:
- Phase 1 - Project mobilization.
- Phase 2 - Current state assessment.
- Phase 3 - Benchmarking.
- Phase 4 - High level design
- Phase 5 - Development of business case.
- Phase 6 - Detailed design and development
- Phase 7 - Implementation
- Phase 8 - On going evaluation and renewal
Examples of Well-Known Corporate Universities:
- Motorola
- McDonalds
- Boeing
- IBM
- Caterpillar
- GM
- GE
- Dell
- HP
- Shell
-UBS
-Novartis
Closing Thought!
The question is not: "What if I train them and they leave?"
The question is: "What if I don'train them and they stay?"