Solving the Corporate University Inequality

It has become the norm for great companies to set up their own universities, but the results have been mixed.

In 2001, when Yili Group first started to implement the division system management, its milk powder division took the lead, and smugly set up its own business school in cooperation with Renmin University of China. But after a year of operation, the business school died down and was put on hold for the time being.

Founded in 2000, UT Starcom University has successfully provided an average of 5,000 person-times of training to customers and corporate employees every year, but there have also been some confusions and explorations on how to develop the university---Being feel good about yourself After more than two years of operation, it encountered a small slump, and its performance was mediocre, with no bright spots.

The management school established by Siemens in China in 1997 draws on the general experience of previous operations in other countries and adapts to the special needs of localization, and has been running smoothly. Recently, the academy celebrated that the number of employees who participated in management training courses in China exceeded the thousand mark, the highest number of participants in Siemens' global management training programs outside of Germany.

How should a corporate university work to effectively promote the learning of all employees within the enterprise and improve the performance of individuals, teams and organizations? The practice of these three companies undoubtedly provides us with enlightenment in many aspects.

Good intentions ≠ ideal results

The original intention of Yili Milk Powder Business School was good. First of all, they strongly felt that the company's original training work was sporadic and unsystematic, and there were shortcomings in what was missing and what was made up for. Secondly, they clearly see that if outsourced to third-party training institutions, the targeting is not very strong. Although the training company also does preliminary research to understand the needs of corporate training, and is very professional when doing training, it is impossible to deeply understand the corporate culture, development direction and strategic goals as well as myself. Furthermore, in cooperation with well-known universities such as the National People's Congress, you can use external resources. Based on the comprehensive consideration of these three aspects, they established their own business school, trying to train employees in a systematic, standardized, comprehensive, long-term and theoretically high level.

Zhang Baoping, Human Resources Director of Yili Group's Milk Powder Business Department, recalled that during the year of operation, Yili Milk Powder Business School also did a lot of useful work, such as better training for employees of the marketing system. Most importantly, business schools have changed people's perceptions. The management's emphasis on training has been further improved, and employees' awareness of training has changed from passive to active in the past, from passively participating in the company's compulsory training to consciously learning to improve personal knowledge and quality. to gain a foothold in the future competitive environment.

The reason for the subsequent suspension of Yili Milk Powder Business School was, on the surface, the change of the relevant person in charge, and the subsequent connection work did not keep up, but the deep-seated reasons were two aspects.

First, the establishment of a business school led by a separate business unit is insufficient in terms of financial support and other support. Dr. Dagmar Riehle, Dean of Siemens Management School, believes that it is obviously more expensive for companies to build their own internal universities than to buy related training products directly from outside. For such a huge project, the headquarters must first take the lead in order to provide a strong enough backing.

The Yili Group also realized this problem later. Since 2002, it has been making overall planning and preparing to establish the Group's training center, or training academy, which is expected to be officially launched at the end of this year at the earliest and at the beginning of next year at the latest. In this way, the mission of the milk powder business unit to be a business school alone has come to an end.

Second, it mainly relies on the teachers of the National People's Congress to teach. For a university within an enterprise, the teaching force is too weak. In Siemens Management School, the ratio of internal to external faculty is 9:1.

Dagmar also pointed out that a corporate university cannot be carried out solely under the guidance of HR departments, but must have a solemn commitment and strong support from the top. Because it is a arduous project that requires long-term investment in order to truly penetrate the company's philosophy, corporate culture, business model, management process and tools into management training.

Providing courses ≠ solving problems

The problem that UT Starcom University encountered in 2002 was that after a period of operation, there was confusion in the grasp of the new direction.

Ju Wei, the director of the university, introduced that in 2000 and 2001, their work was basically looking for and determining courses. At the beginning, everyone felt that it was quite good to be able to provide such a course, and the employees were quite satisfied with the university. The first year the university won the best team award within the company is a proof.

With the rapid development of the company's business, employees have encountered many problems in actual work, and have higher requirements for the services that the university can provide. But they didn't capture that change, and in 2002 they spent their time improving the quality of the curriculum, not doing a great job of catching business unit problems quickly and accurately to help improve performance.

In response to this problem, the university has made a clear positioning for itself, that is, the university should become a strategic partner of enterprises/business departments, not only to provide simple training, but to help business departments identify problems and solve them in a targeted manner , to help business units achieve their strategic goals.

To this end, the university has also adjusted its organization. First, a special person is assigned to understand and analyze the needs of the business department, determine solutions, and monitor the quality of teaching. At the same time, all training managers or supervisors of the university are required to have business analysis capabilities, and lecturers must first participate in the training for lecturers and pass the certification. The university's requirement for the business analysis level of the faculty is not only to analyze the problems existing in the business department, but also to solve the business problems as much as possible in the course of teaching.

For the operation process of course setting, they have made a clear division of responsibilities. At the beginning of each year, the HR department is responsible for collecting and providing preliminary information. The university then interviews department directors and middle-level managers to find out what their business development goals, problems and needs are. On top of this, the university has made an overall framework, which is not particularly detailed. It is only a preliminary project. The specific courses can be adjusted, added or deleted at any time according to market changes and problems arising in business development.

UT Starcom University's current core courses are divided into three parts: product technology training, employee management skills training, and customer skills training.

In product technology training, the University and Engineering Services work together to refine knowledge and develop core technology courses. Then in the business unit, talk about these technologies that help the company continue to innovate and stay ahead of the market. In the training of employee management skills, in addition to providing courses required by companies, universities also provide solutions to problems existing in the business sector. For example, the original engineering department's customer service level was weak. The university and the engineering department worked together to formulate service specifications, design corresponding courses, and train several internal lecturers to train engineering service personnel nationwide. In addition, a small handbook has been developed for your reference, including what is the process of serving customers, how to answer difficult questions raised by customers, etc. This project has achieved good results.

For the problems that arise at any time in the business development of various departments of the company, the university deeply analyzes the crux of the problem and prescribes the right medicine.

A business unit once proposed that the university offer a middle management program. When receiving this demand, they did not immediately look for courses, but went to the business department to understand the problem and the cause. Later, they found that the cause of the problem was not only at the skill level, but also at the organizational and process level. To this end, the university first organized a departmental seminar for the business department attended by all managers. At the meeting, the vision, strategy and code of conduct of the managers were unified, and plans were determined for the existing process problems. In the second step, the training of the smelting team was organized for the cohesion and communication within the department, which improved and improved the quality of the team. At the same time, business units have also made process improvements. The final step in this program is the course that provides the skills.

Another example is the problem of the sales department, the university does not directly help them to sell, but to help them improve their confidence and enhance their ability. There was a time when the sales branch was skeptical of the sales targets at that time, and morale was not very high. The university will help them analyze where the market opportunities are and whether the difficulties can be overcome. By organizing team activities and constantly preaching that these problems can be overcome, they can improve their self-confidence. And help them break the original communication boundaries, through learning, better communication and cooperation between departments, and better mutual support with other departments, such as pre-sales sales personnel and after-sales engineering service personnel how to Support each other to complete the task together.

Simulated case ≠ practical exercise

The most basic content of Siemens Management School teaching is workshop, that is, the regular discussion and learning in the classroom, which is similar to the general training course. But the most important thing is to emphasize action learning. For example, in management training, through the Business Impact Project (BIP, Business Impact Project), which is a global unified method of Siemens, it analyzes some actual business problems, and then proposes appropriate solutions. solutions that provide individuals with real-world experience while improving performance for business units and companies.

Different from the case study (case study) commonly used in MBA teaching, which simulates the cases of other companies, the BIP of Siemens Management School is a case that actually exists in the company, and the students conduct actual role play (role play) . The content of the former may be good, but it may not be as practical as the latter in terms of actual operability in specific applications.

According to Tang Haiming, project manager at Siemens Management School, the business impact project is divided into several steps.

The first step is for students to propose projects from the current situation in their respective departments, which involves a selection and competition process. The trainees who come to participate in the management training have their own ideas, come from different departments and face different problems. They all listed their own problems, and each time there were at least a dozen projects, but only four or five projects were finally shortlisted for management training, and the criteria for their selection or the basis for guidance were provided by the lecturers.

The second step is to form a cross-functional, cross-business ad hoc project team, typically 4 to 6 people. "We do not advocate people from one department to get together, although it is easier to operate. What we encourage is cross-functional and cross-business communication, so that everyone can design and solve practical problems in the business together." Tang Hai Ming said. A large multinational company like Siemens has many internal departments. Everyone involves different majors and different work contents. Usually, the understanding between each other is very limited. This creates some tangible and intangible barriers. The establishment of temporary project teams is exactly the Give them a chance to get to know each other better.

At the same time, the School of Management will assign another identity to each trainee's boss - a coach, allowing him to directly participate in the project and help the group complete the task with his experience or knowledge. Generally, which department the project comes from, the manager in charge of this department will naturally be involved in it. This measure is organizationally guaranteed in Siemens. Managers at all levels of the company know that this is the company's requirement, and they have the responsibility and obligation to support the BIP project.

Siemens School of Management has a long history of improving company performance through business impact programs.

For example, in a joint venture factory of Siemens in Tianjin, there used to be a phenomenon that materials were piled up indiscriminately and could not find what they were looking for. As a result, the material model was incorrect and the material was damaged, which in turn led to the next stage of production being blocked or quality problems. . Through the business impact program, the plant has improved its incoming and outgoing processes, making better use of warehouse space. Finally, the inventory of 2 million yuan was reduced, and the profit increased by 800,000 yuan.

Another example is a department of a Siemens joint venture factory in Shanghai, which started with high-stock materials. After the business impact project ended, it reduced its inventory by RMB 38 million, freeing up some funds to do other things.

Employee development ≠ corporate development

When a company builds its own internal university, a fundamental question that must always be clarified is what you want to do and what is the ultimate goal. Undoubtedly, it serves the overall business development strategy of the company, just like the mission of Siemens Management School - cultivating talents for Siemens' business development.

The worst case scenario is that when a company spends a lot of money to train its employees and upgrade their professional knowledge and management skills, they run off to their competitors. To try to avoid this situation, corporate universities must closely integrate all training programs with the company's overall human resource development strategy.

In this regard, UT Starcom University has its own understanding. Ju Wei introduced that their university does not simply meet the training needs of employees from the direction of personal development, but is consistent with the company's business development and strategic goals. All solutions and training content are based on the needs of the company or business department. customized. Another major task of the university is to provide a platform for employees to learn, to help employees continue to learn continuously, and to provide corresponding training for employees who lack business-related content. As for the employee's own career development, it is mainly in the process of work, to learn what he needs and to exercise the ability he needs. In the learning platform, learn the knowledge he needs.

Siemens Management Institute has formed a mature and standardized management system in this regard. For example, in Siemens' global management training (S Program), Siemens Management Institute is responsible for providing management training from S5 to S4 in China, targeting potential managers in various departments. Managers have a reasonable and detailed plan for what stage of development they have reached and what kind of training they should attend.

Dagmar finally said: "In the current fierce market competition environment, companies must cultivate high-quality talents to help business development and improve company performance. Internal universities are the best way. We invest in employee training, not to send To competitors, but to develop talent for your own business development."