Have you ever heard about the corporate academy?
Behind a high-sounding name lies a world full of concepts, initiatives, training and activities aimed at the professional enrichment of human resources. This is exactly what we are talking about today, trying to understand what we mean by corporate academies, why they are implemented and what their advantages are.
Let's start here:
1. Corporate universities: what are they? Born in the 80s, with the aim of aligning training with vision, mission and corporate strategy; a corporate university is an educational identity, a strategic tool designed to help a company achieve its goals by implementing training activities that enhance people's knowledge and know-how.
2. Corporate universities goals:
a. Organize and deliver training
b. Promote continuous learning
c. Making the most of educational investments
d. Determine the sense of belonging to a corporate culture
e. Remain competitive in a rapidly changing economic environment
f. Keep employees to yourself
3. Which advantages bring corporate universities?
a. A model to follow: everyone has been to school, has learned to be in a group, to internalize rules and learning models that have helped us to learn for the rest of our lives. From school we then landed in the university world, renewing our commitment to learning, challenging conventional models and concepts of thought. The name corporate university is an invitation to continuous learning which consequently determines individual development.
b. Unique opportunity for the brand: probably one of the most important advantages that a corporate university can offer lies in its potential for marketing. An opportunity to develop a brand, sponsor a logo, site, master or certification programs. The concept of the brand conveyed through the corporate academy does not stop only with employees who benefit from the training activity but goes further, extending to project partners, suppliers, universities or local schools.
c. Involves executives: executives are the direction of a corporate university. Indeed, it is they who indicate the needs to which it must respond and the changes it must trigger. Business leaders must identify the primary needs of an organization and then offer the tools and knowledge necessary to trigger competitive advantage. When creating a corporate university, the focus lies precisely in training and constitutes a challenge for leaders, who are called to reflect on how learning can affect their organizations.
d. Decreases in turnover: ensuring people's development, their skills and knowledge, encourages them to stay in the company for a long time. The corporate university represents the means through which it is possible to create individual development paths.
4. Who uses corporate universities? The corporate universities behind them have a ten-year history, many are the companies that have implemented them. We mention some of the best known and most representative, also considered best practices: Charles Schwab University, Disney University, General Electric's Crotonville, McDonald's Hamburger University, Motorola University, Oracle University, Eni corporate University and University of Toyota. The ones we have just mentioned are the most representative training groups because they link training initiatives to corporate strategies, they use the most sophisticated technologies to improve learning while measuring results.
The corporate university is not just a virtual place where peole find training courses. A corporate university is something that goes beyond the content and is surrounded by a strategic role since it has the primary purpose of supporting the corporate mission. Its activities determine a joint development of the individual and the organization by improving the performance of its resources.
To be effective, a corporate university must be closely intertwined with the organization, it is the business leaders who support them, and they are catalysts for changing performance at all levels. Effective are those corporate universities that in addition to having the corporate brand and also reflect the vision of the company; and this is what constitutes the appeal in the eyes of a customer. Effective corporate universities are not just a "container" for training courses, but are the disel for the future with a strong link to business results.
