INTERNAL ASSESSMENT Executive Summary
June 2014
Internal Assessment
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Internal Assessment Contents
1. Recommendations 1. Structure (Governance, Staffing, Financial) 2. Strategy (Programs, Portfolio, Integration) 3. Infrastructure (Technology, Information, Facilities) 4. Operations (Actions, Pace, Priority)
2a. Internal Assessment
2b. Internal Findings
1. College Business Plan Review 2. Dean and Trustee Interview Summary 3. Stakeholder Survey 4. Financial Data Review 5. Systems Review 6. Job Title Mapping Review
3a. Case Studies
1. Wyoming DOT 2. North Dakota DOT 3. South Dakota DOT 4. Oklahoma DOT 5. City of Tucson 6. Motorola Solutions 7. Sprint University 8. Salt Lake County 9. General Electric 10. Disney Institute 11. Travelers Insurance
1. Introduction 2. Comparisons With Best Practices 3. Alignment Issues and Gaps
3b. Literature Search Report of Corporate Universities 1. Structure and Staffing Considerations 2. Infrastructure Insights 3. Partnerships 4. Needs and Results Assessments
4. Project Work Plan Goals and Elements 4.1. Analysis of UDOT training structure and staffing
4.2. Options for staffing alignment and performance indicators
4.3. Allocation of training related financial resources
4.4. Review training delivery methods
4.5. Review catalog and calendar functions
4.6. Recommend 4.7. Other best practices areas of for training review delivery
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Internal Assessment
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Introduction The vision of UDOT University is to become an outstanding educational system that is fully integrated into UDOT's culture, ensuring an exceptionally knowledgeable, diversely talented, and broadly experienced workforce. The mission of UDOT University is to create a culture of continual learning and improvement among the people associated with UDOT by: •
Providing quality educational opportunities through a well-organized training infrastructure,
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Monitoring and assessing department training and educational needs in real time, and
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Addressing needs through development of training and educational programs, and
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Assisting UDOT as an internal strategic partner in its mission to provide quality transportation today, better transportation tomorrow.
Central to the role and function of UDOT University in carrying out its mission are a systems view and an integration orientation. The ability (authority) of the University to leverage discussions on organizational sustainability, corporate social responsibility, organizational resilience, as well as organizational health will be essential to determine ‘right priorities’ for the University’s limited resources.
Comparisons with Best Practices The focus of the literature search and the benchmarking outreach was guided by the scope of work and by subsequent conversations with members of the Board of Trustees and the Deans of the Colleges of the University. These focus areas narrowed the research enough to target those issues of most importance to UDOT, while providing enough latitude to capture innovative ideas, successes and direction from others that could and should be explored by the University. The research protocol focused on the a) structure of the corporate university model, b) infrastructure design and support, c) partnerships for learning, and d) needs and results assessments. A summary of best practices and comparisons follows.
Structural Organization UDOTu is structured as a ‘corporate’ enterprise reporting to a Board of Trustees that reports to the Director of the enterprise. Among other entities studied, this strong corporate model is seen as the most successful structural model – compared to examples where a business unit leads the university (HR or Operations for example), or where the university is operated as an independent enterprise (either as a T&D organization internally or as an external ‘spin-off’ business). Primary reasons given for endorsing this corporate model is that it is seen as the best way to get and keep the university focused on the strategic needs and interests of the business enterprise, and to keep top leadership engaged in the important business of learning.
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Some of the challenges of this model are ones that UDOT is experiencing. Running a corporate university is a full-time job and then some. UDOTu is primarily a ‘voluntary’ organization, where key players provide university and college services in addition to their primary job functions. Making important strategic and tactical decisions for the university takes time, commitment and often, additional learning. Adequately staffing, funding, and supporting a learning enterprise involves continuous investment, evaluation, partnerships and course corrections.
Best practices for structural organization •
Develop a well-defined and transparent strategy for executing the company’s holistic learning functions.
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Create a clear vision and mission for supporting learning performance in the organization – this means clearly articulating where you are going, what you want to become, and describing what ‘good’ performance looks like.
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Partner with Corporate (State) Department of Human Resource Management to create performance competency roadmaps for employee advancement.
Infrastructure Design and Support The coordinating mechanisms of a working corporate university include tools and technology –often called learning management systems (LMS) -- such as an on-line course catalog, transcript data base, content-management tools for on-line training courses, virtual and on-line training infrastructure (everything from screens to data storage), video conferencing facilities, and field technology. This ‘suite’ of tools is ideally designed to function well together, serve the entire corporate enterprise, be easy to use, and be cost effective to maintain and upgrade. The best corporate universities studied demonstrate the ability to leverage their choice and use of technology and tools to engage with their target audience, market their services, track success, make course corrections, and generally be ‘leading’ (anticipating and being ahead of) employee needs. Those CUs that are late adopters of the basic tools find it is difficult to keep popular course material current and available to staff and difficult to keep highvalue training and development courses fully enrolled. Best-practice strategies include essential data management tools (linked to HR databases) that assure employees that their learning investments are translating to career investments through a transcript management system. UDOTu uses an assortment of tools, which are interim solutions as the university grows. The Adobe Connect platform and other Adobe suite tools are excellent for instructional design support and for collaborative learning support tools. In work at UDOT University is a focus on transcript management, specifically for the TransTech program through development of an internal Access data base. Eventual migration of these data to an enterprise or HR-supported system (job tracking) may facilitate creating ‘education roadmaps’ and career paths through training for many UDOT job classes.
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Next steps on the systems journey follow strategic planning/direction for the University and its Colleges, since there are several options that may make sense, depending on direction and priorities. •
An overall coordinating system is of little value without some content that is useful to the broad audience that such a system reaches. Investment in a broad system may be more appropriate when desired core competencies targeted at the broad audience are well-defined.
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Across-college T&D/learning priorities versus within-college learning also drives the need for and nature of the broad system and the type of transcript management tools the university can “sell” to users. The more ‘siloed’ the learning, the less impetus there is for a broad system, and interest in maintaining a large course catalog.
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Immediate system needs may overwhelm the practicality of the investment required to create and implement a broad system. Immediate system needs are defined as instructional design tools (Adobe Connect and more), video conferencing and facility support systems, on-line, video and e-learning technology support, and technology ties to State HR systems (for transcripts, etc.).
Best Practices for Infrastructure Development •
Any system needs to include access to learning programs via online (distance learning) technologies, including virtual technology.
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Best systems use a comprehensive Learning Management System (LMS) that gives all employees access to information about courses available, provides transcript management, gives learner insight and control, and enhances ability to market the university.
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Best systems are user-friendly, easy to update and maintain, and cost-effective to operate.
Partnerships for Learning A hallmark of many successful corporate universities is the formal partnerships the enterprise uses to help deliver training and education. These partnerships are typically with local public and private universities and colleges, contractors, consultants and professional organizations. UDOT has a number of such partnerships. Not all these partnerships for training and learning are managed by or under the guidance of UDOTu.
Best Practices for Partnerships •
Corporate universities partner with academic universities, professional organizations and consultants for customized design and/or delivery of noncredit learning programs.
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Corporate universities partner with academic universities for existing and customized credit and/or degree programs, and for classroom delivery support in basic academic coursework.
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Partners introduce new learning modalities and model new ways of learning. Partners provide cost-effective, timely and state-of-the-art training and development services.
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Partners can help develop internal ‘adjunct faculty’ through contract ‘train-the-trainer’ programs and mentoring for additional service delivery expertise and flexibility.
Needs and Results Assessment Capturing the various practices corporate universities use to cost effectively conduct training and learning needs assessments, define and articulate core competencies, and assess results from the investments in training and learning was a part of this benchmarking research. A strong trend in determining how corporate universities define and measure success begins with considering the results they hope to achieve in terms of human resources (retention, development, etc.), the impact related to customers and stakeholders, and finally, results related to business goals and strategies.
Best Practices for Needs and Results Assessment •
Corporate Universities focus on creating learning programs that are aligned with the Performance Appraisal processes; e.g., augment core competencies and desired behavioral outcomes.
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Corporate Universities provide skill-based and/or job-based programs customized for specific business units; e.g., tied to what is important to that business unit’s performance.
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Corporate Universities provide competency-based curricula for entry-level employee learning; the more well-defined the competency, the easier it is to evaluate whether an individual meets the competency criteria.
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T&D programs target specific employee groups so that clear job function, competency criteria and performance outcomes can be developed.
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The university (curriculum and program designers) works together with line managers to determine requirements and design learning programs.
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The university evaluates learning programs by measuring organizational-level results and/or impact to the business units; return on investment is a metric used for evaluating learning programs and learning efforts; business units measure the transfer of learning to the job role/tasks sometime after the completion of learning programs.
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Corporate Universities partner with academic universities for faculty exchange and/or faculty development programs.
Alignment Issues and Gaps While a strength of the UDOT University is the corporate structure with business unit-led colleges, there are some alignment issues and gaps evident at UDOT in how the learning strategies play out using this structure. The following are some observations:
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Opportunities
Issues and gaps
Centralized authority and facilitation of policy and principles (values) around Training and Development (T&D) decisions so that UDOT:
As framed by UDOT SMEs, the current structure and strategy fails to make deep connections into the business units, as follow: 1.
Training-related work that is targeted for outsourcing represents a significant percentage of University funding, as well as representing a strong historical practice. Creating transparent, routine (annual) business planning practices that are both investigative and evaluative in nature (audit) will enable decision-makers to quantify results and expectations, balance benefits and costs, and adjust targets.
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Enterprise-wide technologies must serve the interests of all the colleges and all the current and planned T&D programs of UDOT. Shared vision, commitment and resources will ensure that these stakeholder interests are captured and met.
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An indicator of misalignment of T&D resources emerges when core competency development work (such as leadership development) happens unevenly, inconsistently and to different standards across UDOT. It is incumbent on the University to set standards for some types of core competency training and be involved to assure alignment.
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A key indicator of failure shows up when BUs and the colleges begin to procure their own programs and work around the University to meet their own learning needs. While the university works to achieve credibility as a strategic partner, alignment of the existing – particularly successful – T&D programs within the business units must be integrated into the University (e.g., TransTech, Project Management, Asset Management, etc.). Only by doing so is the University believed to be a partner in achieving and assuring quality service delivery.
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Alignment of all formal T&D efforts (documented learning) with formal HR and talent management systems in UDOT is essential for high leverage employee benefit of T&D efforts.
1. Can quantify the (trainingrelated) work that might be targeted for outsourcing; 2. Can leverage enterprise-wide technologies to streamline T&D administrative processes (such as tracking and reporting within a single system for an enterprise view on costs, utilization rates and accomplishments against the learning strategy). 3. Can adhere to and enforce standard practices for core competency training and development. 4. Can apply continuous improvement practices to the T&D processes that reach across the enterprise. 5. Can institute a common approach for integration points between T&D and other HR and Talent Management processes.
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