Defining the Role and Purpose of Training in Your Organization

Defining the Role and Purpose of Training in Your Organization

by Terrence Donahue, National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation
Daily Hotel Industry News 2007-09-13


Here is a scary statistic: 85 percent of training department heads have never read a copy of their own company's strategic plan or annual report.

It's not surprising, then, that many training departments have trouble aligning their objectives with those of their organizations-and that most training activities continue to hit the expense side of the ledger, rather than the investment side. The solution? Develop a training mission statement that both defines the role of training and establishes its worth to the organization.

If a senior executive in your organization asked you about the role and purpose of training in your company, what would you say? If you find yourself struggling for an answer, you might be in trouble. When an organization's leadership is confused about the purpose of training, there won't be a commitment to training in that organization's day-to-day activities-and your initiatives will have little chance of success. But that confusion doesn't always begin at the leadership level, it's often the result of a training department that is uncertain about itself.

Through the process of creating a training mission statement, you can erase that uncertainty and increase your value as a strategic business partner within your organization.

Step 1: Ask Role Definition Questions. Clarifying questions-like 'Why is training important to our company?' and 'What would happen over the next year if the training department were eliminated?' (see the end of this article for a complete list)-will provide the basis for the training department's mission statement. Ask these questions of as many key stakeholders-both inside and outside of the training department-as you can. The answers will help you define the scope of training objectives and provide a framework to ensure business decisions are informed, consistent and non-political.

Step 2: Summarize the Role Definition Answers. Based upon the answers to your role definition questions, write a one-paragraph description of the role of training in your company. While this won't be your final mission statement, it will help you narrow your focus to include only the objectives most important to your organization.

Step 3: Develop a Training Mission Statement. This statement describes the reason your company has a training department, and it must be aligned with the corporate mission. Your mission statement will have three components: Product (what you do), Market (whom you do it for) and Function (why you do it). For example: 'The mission of training at ABC Restaurant Corp. is to provide measurable performance improvement that leads to an improved dining experience and increased sales and profits in our restaurants. Our internal customers include all corporate departments and restaurant employees and managers. Our external customers are vendors, distributors and restaurant guests.'

Once you've developed your mission statement, you're ready to establish and prioritize training objectives, create departmental policies and implement a training strategic plan. But you're not quite finished, if you really want to keep the support of C- and V-level stakeholders ( e.g. CFOs and Vice Presidents), there are four conversations you should have with them every year. They each start with the following questions:

1. What makes you pound the steering wheel on your way home from work?

2. What is your biggest concern, and how do you think I can help?

3. What does training do today that you would like it to continue doing two years from now?4. What do you see as training's biggest miss over the last two years?

When you give these stakeholders a chance to voice their honest opinions about training, you gain political equity in the organization-without having to be political.

Role Definition Questions

1. Why is training important to our company?

2. What is the purpose of training in our company?

3. Why should we conduct training programs?

4. What are the internal and external markets (clients, customers and consumers) that we support?

5. Who should be trained?

6. When should training be provided?

7. To what level should they be trained?

8. What do we expect training to accomplish?

9. How should training programs be designed?

10. What are the limitations of training?

11. What would happen over the next year if the training department were eliminated?

12. What would happen over the next year if the training department doubled in size?

13. What responsibility do employees have for their own learning?

14. What responsibility do supervisors and managers have for learning?

15. What responsibility does senior executive leadership have for supporting a learning culture?

16. What responsibility does the training department have to its clients, customers and consumers?

17. What responsibility does the training department have to other departments in the company?

18. Is training considered an investment or an expense?

19. How will the effectiveness of training be measured?

20. How should continuous learning be viewed?

21. What must training do with regard to innovation to support the organizational mission?

22. What is [insert your name here]'s role as the one who leads the training function?

Point of View: How HR Can Become A True Strategic Partner of Sales

Point of View: How HR Can Become A True Strategic Partner of Sales

Mercer's Global Human Capital Perspective Newsletter - Issue 3

In a recent Mercer survey exploring the relationship between the HR and Sales functions, some very interesting findings emerged. Our research reveals that although establishing a strategic partnership between HR and Sales may seem a distant goal, it is possible...and very important. By employing the best practices of successful partnerships and using fundamental customer-centric strategies, HR can become an effective business partner with Sales and a strategic asset in the revenue-generating function of a company. This excerpt from Mercer's survey report looks at the characteristics of a successful partnership between HR and Sales.

Despite the challenges of developing a solid partnership between HR and Sales, our research found companies in which both groups had escaped the tendency to maintain the status quo and had successfully overcome the barriers. In the following best practices, we describe the key distinctions we discovered between "Strategic Partner" organizations and "Support Function" organizations - that is, companies in which Sales perceived HR as a "full strategic partner" and those in which HR was relegated to a supporting role or "basic support function."

Best Practice 1: They collaborate frequently on key business issues.

Both Sales and HR cited a lack of knowledge about Sales' business as a key impediment to partnership. Leading companies, however, remove this impediment through frequent communication. First, they share their respective business agendas at very senior levels. When asked how frequently Sales collaborates with its HR peers on important business issues, we found that Strategic Partner companies did so with much greater frequency than their Support Function counterparts. This practice ensures that HR understands Sales' burning issues and is able to respond with appropriate types of initiatives. Without this executive collaboration, HR and Sales can become strategically misaligned, especially in light of their company's overall goals and objectives.

Best Practice 2: They dedicate HR resources to Sales.

Strategic Partner organizations do not limit the exchange of information to their senior executives. To further facilitate communication between the groups, they commit resources at the field level to work side by side with one another. In more than half of the Strategic Partner companies, we found that HR maintained at least one dedicated resource to support the sales force. In stark contrast, not a single Support Function company assigned HR resources to team with Sales on an ongoing basis. Dedicated support resources offer a unique opportunity for HR to view the inner workings of Sales and to develop a deeper understanding of its business objectives and processes. Without this inside information, HR is disadvantaged and hampered in its ability to provide meaningful advice and support.

Best Practice 3: They develop additional skills.

Another barrier to strategic partnership that both HR and Sales executives identified was the level and mix of skills within the HR function. Whether the result of better hiring or better training, we found that Strategic Partner organizations perceived a higher level of HR skills across the board than did their Support Function peers. This discrepancy was most pronounced in areas such as analysis, leadership and general business acumen - skills deemed relevant to providing more sophisticated support to Sales.

Perhaps these distinguishing skills enable HR in Strategic Partner organizations to perform more support tasks for Sales than their Support Function counterparts can - on average, performing eight sales support tasks rather than five. It is also interesting to note the nature of the tasks where the Strategic Partner group outpaced its peers to the largest degree: training, performance benchmarking and the other tasks that Sales more frequently elects to perform itself. It seems that when HR is willing and able, Sales will hand over the reins of many of its mission-critical activities.

Both HR and Sales have much to gain from a strong strategic partnership. At a minimum, HR can showcase its ability to create measurable value for the company, and Sales can focus its attention on doing what it does best - winning and retaining customers. While there a few real barriers to developing this relationship, they are not insurmountable, and many companies have successfully overcome them through close collaboration and HR transformation.

Survey: Companies Making Major Strides in Implementing, Streamlining HR Technology Systems

Survey: Companies Making Major Strides in Implementing, Streamlining HR Technology Systems
Talent Management Magazine September 4, 2007 Volume 3, Issue 34

In a recent annual survey of HR service delivery trends among global organizations, Towers Perrin found companies are finally reaping the benefits of IT investments in human resources systems and moving from core upgrades to streamlining for greater efficiency and effectiveness.

The percentage of companies in the current survey that are focused primarily on upgrading their HR systems dropped by close to 20 percentage points from the year before, and the top objective for this year's respondent group was "streamlining HR processes/systems."

The survey also found many organizations have moved beyond implementation and into more strategic use of upgraded technology systems.

Large companies are increasingly focused on talent management applications, especially the strategic use of manager self-service (MSS) for this purpose.

This year's survey group also reported rapid growth in the PeopleSoft and SAP applications that streamline and support attraction, retention and engagement of employees.

"Organizations have mastered and are moving beyond traditional aspects of HR service delivery, which address core benefits and compensation delivery programs," said Thomas Keebler, Towers Perrin global HR technology practice leader. "With basic transactional processes firmly and successfully in place, forward-looking organizations are turning their attention to the more strategic and arguably more value-added areas of recruiting and other people and performance oriented processes."

The survey showed HR service delivery professionals are increasingly focused on helping their organizations find, attract, retain and engage employees.

Among top service delivery issues for 2007, recruiting and staffing were in the top three, along with talent and performance management.

Nearly a third of respondents reported each of these related issues near the top of their service delivery agendas, and detailed survey results on systems and applications support those views.

"What we see this year is a wiser, better-planned approach to delivering talent management," Keebler said. "Organizations are now using words like 'streamlined' and 'integrated' to describe their HR service delivery processes and systems related to talent management."

"Having made many of their key strategic investments, companies can focus on both optimizing the work they have done and making new investments to broaden out their talent management systems. Onboarding is a notable example, with the number of participants with a planned onboarding solution likely to reach 61 percent (from just 19 percent) by year end 2008."

Another new development for 2007 is the dramatic upsurge in MSS applications to help deliver HR programs across the board, from traditional manager-directed processes to newer and more innovative ones.

In many HR domains, the prevalence of new MSS applications has doubled in the past 12 months, along with intent to implement these new systems before the end of 2008.

As organizations begin to realize the breadth of areas that MSS can support and the effectiveness that MSS solutions can now deliver, they are more willing to investigate and invest in these applications.

And for programs ranging from benefit delivery to performance management and pay, a well-designed and well-executed MSS program provides a highly valuable overlay to existing employee self-service (ESS) programs and other channels for HR service delivery.

ESS has become the primary means of HR service delivery for most organizations, with 98 percent of the survey respondents offering online benefit enrollment this year.

Whether an organization insources or outsources HR, ESS is the most common means of delivering HR services to employees.

In addition, the majority of survey respondents reported significant reductions in workload as a result of ESS deployments. And these reductions affect not only HR departments but also employees themselves.

"The benefits of ESS are widespread and include a more empowered workforce that is more apt to take responsibility for its own HR and benefit decisions, greater accuracy of employee data and faster HR processes," Keebler said. "ESS is an area that has truly lived up to the hype of relieving HR from administrative work to focus on more strategic activities. Done properly, it offers only upside and no downside."

This year's survey highlights two important developments in the ESS world right now. Certain core processes delivered through ESS have become ubiquitous, and as a result, HR is now looking at a far broader and more sophisticated set of processes for ESS going forward, particularly in the realm of talent management.

Survey findings on the use of both PeopleSoft and SAP products showed a continued interest in investing in applications that help organizations attract, retain and engage the workforce from staffing to onboarding to performance management.

Current users are moving rapidly to ensure their systems have more impact from a people standpoint, primarily by implementing such programs as:

1. Recruiting solutions:
Nearly one-quarter will implement by the end of next year, an increase of more than 50 percent among current users.

2. Performance management:
Nearly 25 percent will implement by the end of next year, almost doubling the number that currently run such programs.

3. Workforce analytics:
Twenty-eight percent will implement by the end of next year, a more than 200 percent increase over the 13 percent of respondents currently offering this functionality.


For more info: http://www.towersperrin.com/hrservices