Strategic Training

• In most companies, training and development are provided by trainers, managers, in-house consultants, and employee experts.
• Training and development are sometimes outsourced to entities outside the company like colleges, universities, and trade organizations
• Human resource development integrates training, organizational, and career development to improve individual, group, and organizational effectiveness.
• Organizational development focuses on team building, conflict avoidance, employee development, and change management.
• Talent management identifies top talent and ensures they receive necessary training for promotions or new positions.
• Learning professionals focus on formal training, informal learning, and knowledge sharing through social networking.

Strategic Training

• Business strategy integrates company goals, policies, and actions, influencing the use of physical, financial, and human capital.
• Business strategy directs activities (production, finance, marketing, human resources) toward specific goals, achieving short, medium, and long-term objectives.
• Business strategy impacts the type/amount of training, resources, money, time, and program development.
• Key Strategic Factors:
  • Amount of training for current/future job skills
  • Alignment to specific personnel/units/divisions
  • Whether all or select employee groups receive training
  • Timing of training alongside planning, or as a reaction
  • The priority given to training vs. broader HRM concerns

Learning as a Strategic Focus

• Many companies strive to become learning organizations, emphasizing the strategic importance of learning for adaptation and change.
• Training processes are scrutinized and aligned with company goals in a learning organization to create human capital.
• Knowledge Management is emphasized as learning occurs at individual/organizational levels

Learning Organization Qualities

• The Supportive Learning Environment fosters open expression of ideas, risk-taking, and appreciation of different perspectives
• Managers Reinforce Learning by encouraging dialogue, actively listening, and rewarding new skills.

Human Capital Implications of Learning

• Effective learning must improve employee performance and achieve business goals.
• Tacit knowledge, shared through employee interactions, presents competitive edge that's hard to imitate.
• Companies support informal learning via mentoring, social networks, and job experiences due to the difficulty of acquiring tacit knowledge in training programs.
• Learning requires physical, technical, and psychological support.

Learning Capabilities

• Alignment of learning goals to business goals
• Measurement of the overall business impact of the learning function
• Movement of learning outside the company to include customers, vendors, and suppliers
• A focus on developing competencies for the most critical jobs
• Integration of learning with other human resource functions, such as knowledge management, performance support, and talent management
• Delivery approaches that include classroom training as well as e-learning
• Design and delivery of leadership development courses

Strategic Training Development

• Five components of a new or revised business strategy:
  • Mission: The statement of a company's reason for existing
  • Vision: The picture of the future a company wants to achieve
  • Values: The ideals a company stands for
  • Goals: What a company hopes to achieve (satisfying stakeholders)
  • SWOT Analysis: Internal strengths/weaknesses, combined with external opportunities/threats
  • Strategic choice: strategy believed to be the best alternative to achieve the company goals.

Training's business goal Influence

• Productivity
• Reduced scrap and rework
• Increased customer satisfaction
• Reduced operational risks and accidents due to employee carelessness
• Increased employee satisfaction and retention
• Increased time and value-producing goods, such as increase in billable project time hours
• Better management decisions
• Increased development of human capital
• Succession planning needed for competitive advantage and growth.

Strategic Training Initiatives

• Strategic training aligns with a company's business strategy, goals, and resources to prepare for potential opportunities.
• The roadmap guides specific training and development activities, ensuring they contribute to company goals.

Implications of Strategic Training

• Diversify the learning portfolio through on the job training that includes informal learning
• Expand training to all employees who are customer facing
• Accelerated pace of employee learning needed in order to deal with changes in technology and customer needs
• Employees should also have knowledge about the product or service, they need to have customer service skills, and they need to understand the types of decisions they can make
• Provide development opportunities and communicate learning to attract and retain talented employees

Training and Development Initiatives

• Identify specific training/development activities that align with business strategy.
• Examples include developing new technology skills, increasing access to training, reducing development time, and expanding offerings.

Training Metrics

• Metrics involve measuring the value of training by assessing employee engagement, productivity, and quality.
• Training program evaluation involves measuring satisfaction, knowledge, skills, and overall business results.

Balanced Scorecard

• The balanced scorecard should assess all aspects of the business
• The balanced scorecard considers four different perspectives:
  • Customer (time, quality, performance, service, cost)
  • Internal processes (that influence customer satisfaction)
  • Innovation and learning (operating efficiency, employee satisfaction, continuous improvement)
  • Financial (profitability, growth, shareholder value)

Organizational Influences on Training

• Employee/managerial roles shape training focus:
  • Managers coach, provide feedback, and ensure alignment with company goals.
  • Continuous learning is encouraged, work assignments are explained, and a supportive environment is created.
  • Managers plan, allocate resources, and coordinate activities/teams.
  • Group performance is managed, decision-making is facilitated, and trust is maintained.

Support from Upper Management

• The CEO sets a clear direction for learning (vision), providing encouragement, resources, and commitment (sponsor).
• Active governance, development of learning programs, teaching, and modeling also come from upper management

Business Unit Intergration

• Integrated units require training to understand various units, services, and products.

Global Presence

• Global operations use training to prepare employees for international assignments, with a focus on effective learning across languages/cultures.

Business Conditions

• When unemployment is low or businesses are growing at a high rate its hard to retain quality employees.
• Training maintains productivity, and motivates/retains existing staff.
• Talent Retention: Colleagues, challenging assignments, career growth drive retention.

Unstable Business Conditions

• Training becomes short-term, focused on skill gaps, not new assignments.
• Employees need training on change-management as a result of mergers, acquisitions, or disinvestment

HRM Practices

• HRM consists of management activities related to money, effort and time
• HRM also looks at performance, training and benefits

Staffing Strategy

• Staffing strategy is about the company's plan regarding where and how to find the right employees.
• Assignment flow and supply flow are the two aspects of training in the companies staffing strategy

Company Interaction

• Four main types of company based on their interaction: Fortresses, Baseball teams, Clubs and Academics.

Employee Uniqueness

• In regards to strategic value, employees are either managers or indivdual contributors
• Employees can be strategic or unique, and that value is defined based on whether they are easily replaced

Human Resource Planning

• Human resource planning involves identification, analysis, forecasting, and planning
• Training helps prepare employees and identify their goals through job movement

Extent of Unionization

• Having unions involved in training efforts will bring better success
• All parties must be aware of development goals and work towards the same goals

Training Process

• Managers are more committed if they provide feedback and are given time to train
• Training and development planning helps set goals, and create expectations and results

Strategies Need Different Training

• Four strategies: Concentration, Internal Growth, External Growth and Disinvestment

Models of Training

• Training programs are available to all employees regardless of where they are located
• Programs are either by the company or through vendor

Centralized Training

• Resources are focused in one setting

Corporate University

• Help solve historical problems
• Can make learning more strategic by making it clear
• Can create better learning

Business Based Learning

• Function is characterized by five competencies: strategic direction, product design, structural versatility, product delivery, and accountability for results.

Four Necessary Conditions for Change

• Four conditions are necessary for change to occur: (1) Employees must understand the reasons for change and agree with those reasons; (2) employees must have the skills needed to implement the change; (3) employees must see that managers and other employees in powerful positions support the change; and (4) organizational structures, such as compensation and performance management systems, must support the change.

Problems with Change

• Four change-related problems: resistance to change, loss of control, power imbalance, and task redefinition

Marketing Training

• Internal marketing is important for internal consultants to keep generating fees
• Critical to overcome the resistance to change

Marketing Efforts

• Get feedback from employees
• Advertise
• Find the numbers that concern the top level people and relate the training to helping those

Branding

• Involve key personel in the training process to get more buy in
• Execute and create short term wins: let the training program show improvement
• Follow up re-evaluate and modify/adapt as things change and the need to improve

Outsourcing Training

• The role of a business to use outside companies to provide service to help with development
• Companies choose to outsource because of money and time saving