Skills & Practice Module 5 Assignment

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TrainingtheOrganizationsStrategicPlanLecture.ppt
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Training and the Organization’s Strategic Plan

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Training and the Organization’s Strategic Plan

Learning Objectives

By the end of this unit, students will:

Define training and strategic training.

Explain various elements of a strategic plan.

Describe how the organization’s strategic plan should influence training.

Understand and conduct a SWOT analysis.

Explain the training needs created by business strategies.

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Objectives for this section of the course

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What Is Training?

  • What is training? Training is any planned effort by an organization designed to facilitate employees in the acquisition of job-related competencies. It is a method of enhancing human performance.

  • How is training strategic?

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What is the goal of training?

The goal of training is for employees to master the knowledge, skills and behaviors emphasized in training programs and to apply them to their day-to-day activities.

How is training strategic?

Training is strategic to the extent that it helps achieve the organization’s strategic plan or business strategy.

Strategic Planning

  • A strategic plan:

Is a visionary, conceptual and directional outline of the organization.

Integrates the organization’s goals, policies and actions.

Helps direct the organization’s activities to reach specific goals.

A good strategic plan must be realistic and attainable to allow trainers to think strategically and act operationally. Strategic training and development initiatives are based on the business environment and an understanding of the organization’s goals and resources. The training function adds value to the organization when it is oriented toward helping the organization reach its goals.

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Strategic Planning

  • Strategic training starts with an understanding of the organization’s strategic plan. The strategic plan influences how the organization uses:

Physical capital: Facilities, technology and equipment.

Financial capital: Assets and cash reserves.

Human capital: Employees.

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Strategic Planning

  • A good strategic plan must be realistic and attainable to allow trainers to think strategically and act operationally. Strategic training and development initiatives are based on the business environment and an understanding of the organization’s goals and resources.

  • The training function adds value to the organization when it is oriented toward helping the organization reach its goals.

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Strategic Planning

  • Focuses on developing an organization’s identity. This includes defining the organization’s mission, vision and values. Defining these elements requires consultation with all the relevant constituents and stakeholders, including competitors and partners within the internal and external environments (Camillus, 2008).

  • Phase 1: Identify the organization’s business strategy:

Mission: Describes the organization’s reason for existence.

Vision: States the organization’s picture of the future.

Values: What the organization stands for.

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Strategic Planning

  • The mission statement of the American Red Cross:
  • The American Red Cross, a humanitarian organization led by volunteers and guided by its Congressional Charter and the Fundamental Principles of the International Red Cross Movement, will provide relief to victims of disaster and help people prevent, prepare for, and respond to emergencies.

  • The mission statement for Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream:
  • Ben & Jerry’s is founded on and dedicated to a sustainable corporate concept of linked prosperity. Our mission consists of 3 interrelated parts: product mission, economic mission and social mission. Central to the mission of Ben & Jerry’s is the belief that all three parts must thrive equally in a manner that commands deep respect for individuals in and outside the company and supports the communities of which they are a part.

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Strategic Planning

  • Part of establishing a corporate identity involves articulating a vision for the organization, i.e. “where do we want to be in one, five, ten years?” A vision statement should be presented as a picture of the organization in three or more years in terms of its likely physical appearance, size, activities, etc. It should also take into consideration future products, markets, customers, processes, location, staffing, etc. It should be idealistic and futuristic in orientation.

  • Business values govern the operation of the organization and its conduct and relationships with society at large, including customers, suppliers, employees, local community and other stakeholders.

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Strategic Planning

  • Phase 2
  • In the second phase of strategic planning, organizations create action plans to attain the vision established in the first phase. Whereas vision describes where the organization is going, this second phase addresses how the organization will get there by outlining the strategies to be implemented to achieve the organization’s desired goals and objectives.

  • Phase 2: Develop action plans:

How should the organization attain its vision of the future?

Goals.

Objectives.

Strategies.

Programs.

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Strategic Planning

  • Goals are broad aims for an organization. Goals can be interim or ultimate time-based. Goals should be quantifiable, consistent, realistic and achievable. They can relate to factors like market (sizes and shares), products, finances, profitability, utilization or efficiency.

  • Objectives relate to the expectations and requirements of all the major stakeholders--including employees--and should reflect the underlying reasons for the organization’s existence. Objectives should include growth, profitability, technology, product offerings and markets.

  • Strategies are the tactics, guidelines and processes by which the mission and objectives are achieved.

  • Programs set out the implementation plans--including training plans--to achieve the key strategies.

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Strategic Planning

  • Phase 3
  • This phase focuses on determining how well the organization is doing in achieving its strategic plan. This phase requires the identification of performance measures of success. What metrics or measures will assess how the organization is doing? How will the organization know when goals have been achieved?

  • Evaluate accomplishments:

How will the organization know how it is performing?

Measure results.

Performance measures.

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The Strategic Training and Development Process

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Noe, 2008

Business Strategy

Strategic Training

and Development

Initiatives

Training and

Development

Activities

Metrics that Show

Value of Training

  • Diversify learning portfolio.
  • Improve customer service.
  • Accelerate pace of employee learning.
  • Capture and share knowledge.
  • Use web-based training.
  • Make development planning mandatory.
  • Develop web sites for knowledge sharing.
  • Increase customer service training.
  • Learning.
  • Performance improvement.
  • Reduced customer complaints.
  • Reduced turnover.
  • Employee satisfaction.
  • Mission.
  • Values.
  • Goals.

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Training as a Competitive Advantage

  • All organizations must be competitive in their marketplace, whether they are producers of tangible goods or service providers. Customers look for value. If your organization can produce the value that the customer wants and can produce it at a lower cost or a higher quality, it has an advantage over competition in the marketplace.

  • Competitiveness:

An organization’s ability to maintain and gain market share in a specific industry.

  • Competitive advantage:

A competitive advantage exists when an organization is able to provide the customer a better value than the competition. For example, the ability to produce products at a lower price or of better quality can create a competitive advantage.

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Training as a Competitive Advantage

  • Training becomes a competitive advantage when:

It is linked to business strategy and organization goals.

It focuses on the organization’s future.

Employees are trained in the knowledge, skills and abilities required to achieve that future.

It moves from basic skills to learning, creating and sharing knowledge.

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Strategic Training

  • Improves performance toward goals.
  • Focuses on what is needed and when it is needed.
  • Formal training enhanced by informal learning.
  • Learning supported by the organization.
  • Knowledge transfer:

Explicit knowledge.

Tacit knowledge.

Regardless of how it is communicated, to be effective, learning must be supported by top management. Management must provide the physical and technical resources for learning to be accomplished and must encourage a psychologically supportive environment as well. Ideally, the organization supports training through intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.

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Strategic Training

  • Strategic training links to the organization’s long-term planning and focuses on the skills and knowledge necessary for employees to achieve the organization’s goals. It consists of both formal, planned learning activities, such as seminars, workshops and organization-sanctioned mentoring programs, and informal learning that takes place through spontaneous interactions between employees. A great deal of organizational information is passed on through employee interactions at the water cooler or during casual conversations.

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Strategic Training

  • Planned training activities focus on explicit knowledge, which is transfer of information that can be formalized and codified. Safety training and employee orientation are examples of explicit knowledge.

  • Employee interaction and casual conversation result in the transfer of tacit knowledge, which is knowledge based on individual experience that is impossible to codify and may even be difficult to explain to others. It is knowledge an employee gains just by being there over time. An experienced employee who shows the ropes to a new employee is likely passing on tacit knowledge.

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Understanding the Organization

  • SWOT – A strategic planning tool used to evaluate strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

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Strengths Weaknesses
Opportunities Threats

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Understanding the Organization

  • Strengths and weaknesses are internal to the organization. Opportunities and threats are external.

  • Strengths describe the positive attributes internal to the organization. It answers the questions:
  • What do you do well?
  • What is your advantage in the marketplace?
  • What resources do you have?

  • Weaknesses are areas that detract from your competitive edge. They are areas that are within your control but, for whatever reason, are not being addressed. It answers the questions:
  • What does the organization do poorly?
  • Where do we need improvement?
  • What problems could be avoided?
  • Are your employees poorly trained?

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Understanding the Organization

  • Opportunities are external factors in the marketplace that represent potential that your organization is not exploiting. It answers the questions:
  • What do our customers want that we are not providing?
  • What could we be doing that we are not?
  • What trends or changes in the marketplace could we exploit to our advantage?

  • Threats are external factors that are beyond your control and could put your organization at risk. It answers the questions:
  • What are your competitors doing well?
  • What obstacles does your organization face?
  • Is your market changing in ways that you are unprepared for?

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Practice

  • Write your organization’s:

Mission statement.

Vision.

Values.

  • Conduct a quick SWOT analysis for your organization.
  • Describe your organization’s business strategy.

  • If you struggle to answer any of the items here consider the short and long-term implications from an HR perspective.

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