April 2005 Issue
Spotlight
What's going on in your world?
Take our fourth annual staffing trends survey.
What issues are topmost in your mind right now? Are you focused on improving your recruiting process, expanding or refining your talent sources, figuring out how to screen candidates fairly and legally, dealing with irate hiring managers or just plain swamped with too many requisitions?
For the fourth year in a row, we are conducting a short survey on trends and issues, which will give all of us a better understanding of how recruiting is changing to meet new business needs and a changing economy.
Last year GLR published a free white paper with the results, which we will, of course, do again this year so you can get a quick overview of what your colleagues are experiencing. All survey respondents will be notified when the report is available to download from our site.
To complete the survey and help give all of us a clearer picture of recruiting trends, simply click here: http://www.glrsurveys.com/recruitingtrends/. You will be taken to our survey site where you can quickly and anonymously give us your thoughts.
Thanks for your interest and participation!
p.s. This is the same survey as publicized through Kevin Wheeler's ERE articles this month, so if you have already taken the survey within the last 4 months, please do not do so again...and thanks if you have.
Future of Talent Workshop®
For Staffing and Employee Development Leaders
Limited to just 24 senior leaders, act now to reserve your spot before it is sold out.
GLR is conducting its inaugural Future of Talent(R) workshop retreat for senior staffing and employee development leadership October 9-11, 2005 along California's famous Highway 1 in the northern California coastal area of Tomales Bay - about an hour north of San Francisco.
This workshop will be like no other you've attended - one where conversations with your colleagues and experts take center stage. No keynotes and no vendors!
You will be forging the future of talent by engaging with a core group of experts and leaders from various aspects of talent acquisition, development, succession planning, and retention. The workshop will focus on developing a "map" of the talent trends and issues that are emerging. We see more and more overlap between talent acquisition, development, succession planning, workforce planning and retention. But how this will all play out remains a mystery.
Attending experts will shed light and provide fresh data about these trends. This, combined with your own hands-on knowledge and the techniques of trend analysis, will allow us to interactively create a "talent trends map." We will then work to architect action plans to better ready our organizations and ourselves for the coming changes. You will come away refreshed and with an action plan in hand to welcome new challenges with a vision and strategy for long-term success.
Various attendee and membership levels are offered, all include the cost of the workshop, housing, and meals. Sponsor and Research Partner packages provide cost-savings, access to additional follow up materials, and other benefits.
Attendance is limited to the first 24 paid participants, so contact us immediately to reserve your spot before this retreat is sold out.
For more information, and to register, visit http://www.futureoftalent.com/
How is a Corporate University Different from a Training and Development Function?
By Kevin Wheeler
Author of the newly released "Corporate University Workbook: Launching a 21st Century learning Organization." This book is available at http://www.corpuworkbook.com or at Amazon.com.
Three features distinguish a corporate university or learning institute from the normal training and development function.
First, the corporate university is not focused on improving the personal skills of individual employees through classes or seminars. Rather than teach presentation skills, time management or other generic skills; a corporate university aims to improve a broader set of skills that will have a measurable impact on corporate goals, or business results or on customer satisfaction.
An example might be developing a curriculum devoted to improving sales. Emphasis would be on analyzing what the weaknesses are and then in designing a set of activities, programs and interventions that would deliver some predetermined results.
The second major difference is that a corporate university aims to have an impact on strategic thinking and decision making at the senior levels of the organization. The corporate university incorporates elements of change management, team effectiveness, negotiation into its programs and activities so that overall organizational capabilities are improved and strengthened. Most training and development functions are tactically focused and have little effect at senior levels.
Lastly, the corporate univeristy has an interest in the future and in helping the organization understand and develop appropriate responses to opportunities and threats in the marketplace.
Instead of being reactionary, the best corporate universities anticipate competition and change, and help senior management understand and craft ways to take advantage of opportunities or defect challenges.
General Electric's John F. Welch Leadership Development Center at Crotonville is often used as an example of an effective corporate-based learning institution and for good reason. Crotonville has consistently helped the CEO and his staff to assess market opportunities and challenges and then develop forward-looking curricula to educate management on how to deal with those challenges. Its Workout program helped GE become more nimble and less bureaucratic just as the ability to respond rapidly to market changes became critical to success.
It is unfortunate that many organizations fail to grasp what power they could unleash if they created and gave appropriate resources to a corporate university instead of a training and development function, albeit a great one. The two functions are no more similar than bookkeeping is to financial management. Both essential, but not the same.
About the Author
Kevin Wheeler (kwheeler@glresources.com), is the President and Founder of Global Learning Resources, Inc., publisher of this newsletter. GLR can be explored at http://www.glresources.com.