LO's, Outcome Measures

FROM: Group Four,

DATE: October 18, 2016

SUBJECT: Strategy Alignment Assignment

Leah Valverde is the manager of the Learning and Talent Development and the Central Learning Academy at Central Washington University. The department is responsible for professional development and consultation to increase career opportunities.

Business Strategy

The learning and Talent Development Department strives to equip individuals with tools and trainings to assist them in growing in their current work positions as well as opening doors for future employment.

Mission Statement, Values, Goals

The mission statement for this department is: “Central Learning Academy empowers staff and faculty by providing professional development and consultation to  fulfill compliance standards, broaden skills and knowledge, enhance job effectiveness, increase opportunities  for career advancement, and  contribute  to the mission and strategic goals of the university.”

The values of Central Learning Academy (CLA) is preparing people for current and future work, by making them better at their current jobs and preparing them for any future opportunities that may come. CLA ties into the overall value and mission of the university with the some of the training it offers such as classes on treating people with dignity and respect, relating to diversity and inclusivity.

Leah spoke of goals for her department to provide professional development and consultation to fulfill compliance standards, broaden skills and knowledge, enhance job effectiveness, increase opportunities for career advancement, and contribute to the mission and strategic goals of the university. With the solid foundation the goal that is set is one that is challenging but achievable. Leah Valverde and her department are in charge of providing expectations without policing, while tracking compliance. The main goal is to prepare people for current and future work, and equip individuals with avenues of different career opportunities. The goal is one that has an overarching theme of continuous help and growth for both the department and those that seek help from it.

Strengths

Leah Valverde conveyed that the biggest strength of CWU for training is the people in her department that provide and create it. The department is compiled of people who really care Group Four, via Mohammed Aldubais

Module Three Assignment: Strategy Alignment Assignment

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about bettering others and providing people with opportunities so they can continue to learn.

Being part of a higher Ed education helps too, because there is already an expectation that continuing learning is important. Being part of higher Ed also equips the department with resources to reach out to improve the broadness of our programs. Central Learning Academy also has some senior level support for investing in professional development.

The use of technology to track the completions and progress, and give permissions to people who have completed appropriate trainings (FERPA for student info) is also another strength of the department.

Weaknesses

The weakness stem from the complexity of the audiences, reaching all the different types of people. They have temp hourlies, student employees, custodial, faculty, facilities, dining services, supervisors. Not only different audiences, but the different types of work within those audiences. Sometimes the topics are addressed with too broad of a brush.

The department has not spent enough time yet on customizing and categorizing what is already available to meet the needs of different areas. The goal is to organize the trainings and make them easier to navigate. They would like to save lots of time that is wasted trying to find the appropriate trainings.

Understanding expectations is the biggest challenge, having people really understand and take ownership of their responsibilities once they have taken on a job. Being accountable to their expectations. For example, everyone knows the department is looking for a diverse pool, but no one is doing anything about it. They say they can only hire from the pool they are given. But there are ways to make that pool more diverse

Strategic Training and Development Initiatives

While Central Learning Academy has a robust program in place, it could make improvements to their current program to help achieve CWU’s business strategies. Some possible strategic training and development initiates are listed in the chart below:

Group Four, via Mohammed Aldubais

Module Three Assignment: Strategy Alignment Assignment

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Training and Development Activities/Topics

One need that we saw in the Central Learning Academy’s current offerings of training was search committee training. The university strives for increasing our staff diversity closer to the level of our student diversity. The current training consists of individual conversations when applicant pools don’t meet the new guidelines. This is time consuming and slows down the process of hiring, as the committee is prevented from moving to the interview stage. In person training offered to all potential search committee members that provides them with the information and tools to get their most diverse pool before an issue arises would be beneficial. Search committees act fairly independently and having the Talent Acquisition Team, the Central Learning Academy and other knowledgeable employees pull together their talents to create the comprehensive training and also create a tool kit for the employees to access, would allow the committees to continue to move forward on their own without being delayed. To accommodate offsite staff and ongoing updates on training, an online version of search committee training for increasing diversity could be created. Recorded sessions, power points and even PowToons could be used. Another activity would be to increase communications of the reason for wanting to increase diversity, communicate responses to common myths or arguments against increasing diversity in the hiring pools and have the executive level staff communicate the mission and values of CWU that are met and exhibited by the ability to increase our staff diversity. The activities suggested are creating in person trainings, using subject matter experts to create tools to assist, creating online trainings and assist with a communication plan to support the reason why the training is important to CWU.

Metrics

Some of the metrics can be collected on the same feedback forms. The CWU systems collect some data automatically for us, it is just a matter of running reports and compiling the data.