Corporate education

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Corporate education refers to a system of professional development activities provided to educate employees. It may consist of formal university or college training or informal training provided by non-collegiate institutions. The simplest form of corporate education may be training programs designed "in-house" for an organization that may wish to train their employees on specific aspects of their job processes or responsibilities. More formal relationships may further exist where corporate training is provided to employees through contracts or relationships with educational institutions who may award credit, either at the institution or through a system of CEUs (Continuing Education Units).

Many institutions or trainers offering corporate education will provide certificates or diplomas verifying the attendance of the employee. Some employers use corporate and continuing education as part of a holistic human resources effort to determine the performance of the employee and as part of their review systems.

Increasingly organisations appear to be using corporate education and training as an incentive to retain managers and key employees within their organisation. This win-win arrangement creates better educated managers for the organisation and provides the employees with a more marketable portfolio of skills and, in many cases, recognised qualifications.

The difference between corporate education and corporate training

Most organisations tend to think of corporate education as corporate training. Corporate training programs are often competency based and related to the essential training employees need to operate certain equipment or perform certain tasks in a competent, safe and effective manner. The outcome of a corporate training program is a participant who is either able to operate a piece of equipment or perform a specific task in an effective manner according to pre-determined training criteria.

The primary role of corporate training is to ensure an employee has the knowledge and skills to undertake a specific operation to enable an organisation can continue to operate. Fundamentally, corporate training is centred on knowledge transfer, with an instructor teaching or demonstrating a particular function and the student learning and demonstrating they can apply what they have learnt to a particular operation.

Corporate education, however, adds another dimension and depth to training by involving learners as participants in generating new knowledge that assists an organisation to develop and evolve, rather than maintain the status quo. Corporate education focuses on developing the capability of an organisation to be able to do things and, in particular, the right things in order to be a sustainable and successful organisation.

Corporate education involves a facilitator, rather than an instructor or trainer, to engage participants and encourage them to think about the what, how and why of what they are doing and to challenge their current paradigms. Corporate education is centred on introducing learning techniques to stimulate employees to think about what their organisation does, where it is heading, potential new opportunities for the organisation and new and better ways of doing things. While the role of corporate training is to develop the operational competency of individuals, the purpose of corporate education is to promote the development of capability of both an individual and their organisation. [1]

Increasingly organisations appear to be using corporate education as an incentive to retain managers and key employees within their organisation. This win-win arrangement creates better educated managers and employees for the organisation and gives individual employees a more marketable portfolio of skills and, in many cases, recognised qualifications. [2]

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Training is teaching, or developing in oneself or others, any skills and knowledge or fitness that relate to specific useful competencies. Training has specific goals of improving one's capability, capacity, productivity and performance. It forms the core of apprenticeships and provides the backbone of content at institutes of technology. In addition to the basic training required for a trade, occupation or profession, training may continue beyond initial competence to maintain, upgrade and update skills throughout working life. People within some professions and occupations may refer to this sort of training as professional development. Training also refers to the development of physical fitness related to a specific competence, such as sport, martial arts, military applications and some other occupations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mentorship</span> Guidance relationship

Mentorship is the patronage, influence, guidance, or direction given by a mentor. A mentor is someone who teaches or gives help and advice to a less experienced and often younger person. In an organizational setting, a mentor influences the personal and professional growth of a mentee. Most traditional mentorships involve having senior employees mentor more junior employees, but mentors do not necessarily have to be more senior than the people they mentor. What matters is that mentors have experience that others can learn from.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internal communications</span>

Internal communications (IC) is the function responsible for effective communications among participants within an organization. The scope of the function varies by organization and practitioner, from producing and delivering messages and campaigns on behalf of management, to facilitating two-way dialogue and developing the communication skills of the organization's participants.

Employability refers to the attributes of a person that make that person able to gain and maintain employment.

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Skills management is the practice of understanding, developing and deploying people and their skills. Well-implemented skills management should identify the skills that job roles require, the skills of individual employees, and any gap between the two.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Facilitator</span> Person who helps a group understand common objectives & reach them

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Management development is the process by which managers learn and improve their management skills.

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Talent management (TM) refers to the anticipation of required human capital for an organization and the planning to meet those needs. The field has been growing in significance and gaining interest among practitioners as well as in the scholarly debate over the past 10 years, particularly after McKinsey's 1997 research and the 2001 book on The War for Talent. Michaels, Ed; Handfield-Jones, Helen; Axelrod, Beth (2001). The War for Talent. Harvard Business Press. ISBN 9781578514595. Talent management in this context does not refer to the management of entertainers. Talent management is the science of using strategic human resource planning to improve business value and to make it possible for companies and organizations to reach their goals. Everything done to recruit, retain, develop, reward and make people perform forms a part of talent management as well as strategic workforce planning. A talent-management strategy should link to business strategy and to local context to function more appropriately

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Training and development involve improving the effectiveness of organizations and the individuals and teams within them. Training may be viewed as related to immediate changes in organizational effectiveness via organized instruction, while development is related to the progress of longer-term organizational and employee goals. While training and development technically have differing definitions, the two are oftentimes used interchangeably and/or together. Training and development have historically been topics within adult education and applied psychology but have within the last two decades become closely associated with human resources management, talent management, human resources development, instructional design, human factors, and knowledge management.

The term managerial assessment of proficiency (MAP) describes a methodology for the assessment of managerial competence in human resource and training applications. MAP is designed for evaluation of a manager's proficiency in 12 prescribed competencies, and other criteria. Assessments can be generated for an employee, as well as for a department or the organisation as a whole. Normative values, used for comparative purposes in each assessment, are based upon the performance of over 110,000 managers, across 17 countries, in more than 600 organisations that have used MAP, according to the UK-based company, Development Processes Group plc, that licenses the tool into organisations. The Managerial Assessment of Proficiency - (MAP2), copyright 2012, 2014, HRD Press, Inc. is an assessment tool published by HRD Press, Inc. Amherst, MA USA, and is available throughout the world. "Development Processes Group plc" is the exclusive representative in the United Kingdom.

SFIAplus is the IT training and development model of the British Computer Society (BCS). Based on the original Industry Structure Model, first published by the BCS in July 1986, which was remapped to the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) and rebranded as SFIAPlus.

Competency-based recruitment is a process of recruitment based on the ability of candidates to produce anecdotes about their professional experience which can be used as evidence that the candidate has a given competency. Candidates demonstrate competencies on the application form, and then in the interview, which in this case is known as a competency-based interview.

TVET refers to all forms and levels of education and training which provide knowledge and skills related to occupations in various sectors of economic and social life through formal, non-formal and informal learning methods in both school-based and work-based learning contexts. To achieve its aims and purposes, TVET focuses on the learning and mastery of specialized techniques and the scientific principles underlying those techniques, as well as general knowledge, skills and values.

References

  1. Ryan, L: "Corporate Education: A Practical Guide to Effective Corporate Learning", p2-3. Griffin Press. 2010. ISBN   978-0-646-52812-0.
  2. Prince, C: "Strategic Change: the role of in-company management education". Strategic Change: 9, 167-175. John Wiley & Sons. 2000