Corporate Academy (summary)
A corporate academy is essential for success in a market characterized by a shortage of skilled workers, specialization and innovation.
We recommend the following steps for creating a company academy:
1. define the objectives of your corporate academy.
2. involve the most important people at an early stage.
3. develop a curriculum.
4. define the learning formats.
5. select the right learning platform.
6 Enrich your company academy with the best additional features.
7. learning content: Create and/or purchase.
8. test your corporate academy thoroughly before the launch.
9 Involve managers and authorize your employees' "learning time".
10. market the corporate academy as if you were marketing a product.
11. secure the acceptance and commitment of your corporate academy.
12 Measure and Improve: Improve your corporate academy regularly.
We go into these points in detail below:
What is a corporate academy and why is it important?
A corporate academy - sometimes also referred to as a "company academy", "company campus" or "corporate academy" - is a structured learning environment that companies use to impart knowledge and skills.
Today, corporate academies are used for employees, customers, business partners or even entire industries.
In this article, we look at the most common case of the company academy for employees.
In an economy that is increasingly driven by skills shortages, specialization and innovation, corporate academies provide the foundation of a learning culture that is necessary for sustainable business success.
A study conducted by IBM entitled "The Value of Training", which was carried out among 4,183 C-level executives in 70 countries, impressively demonstrates the importance of employee training:
71% of CEOs see employees as a key factor for sustainable growth - even more so than products, customer relationships or branding.
For 75-80% of managers, effective employee training is one of the most important factors critical to the success of projects and the achievement of objectives.
84% of employees in the best companies receive the further training they need. In contrast, only 16% of employees in the least successful companies receive such training.
Improving a team's competencies by 30% leads to a 10-100% higher probability of achieving challenging goals.
Companies that use learning technologies record 16% higher customer satisfaction and a 22% faster rollout of products and processes.
New employees are 42% more likely to stay with a company if they receive adequate training.
With our MaxBrain solution, we specialize in the establishment, operation and further development of corporate academies.
Our customers include Zweifel Pomy-Chips AG , the best employer in Switzerland, for whom the Zweifel Campus is a central component of their further training.
We at MaxBrain can consistently confirm the results of the IBM study thanks to such examples.
We go even further:
Corporate academies have the potential to change an organization from the ground up and make it many times more successful in terms of sales, customer satisfaction and employee motivation.
Otherwise, the following applies from a business perspective:
1. determine the needs and set the objectives of your company academy.
As in other contexts, we always recommend defining the need for a measure and the objectives as clearly as possible in quantitative or at least qualitative terms at the outset.
The specific questions that need to be asked:
What exactly do you want to achieve with a company academy for employees?
Which employees would you like to train? All or only certain functions?
Typical objectives that we encounter at MaxBrain and that are crucial for corporate academies:
Ensure must-have knowledge: Topics such as occupational safety, data protection, compliance or IT security are a must in some industries today and are important in every company.
Optimize the onboarding of new employees so that they become productive as quickly as possible.
Improve leadership: Train existing and aspiring leaders to realize the full potential of their employees and themselves.
Increase sales performance: Train sales staff so that they sell faster and more.
Customer support training: Training employees who are in contact with customers in such a way that customer satisfaction increases or more sales are generated with existing customers.
In addition to these operationally relatively clearly definable goals, the corporate academy offers further important potential for your organization that represents a sustainable goal:
A company academy can significantly increase the intrinsic motivation of employees.
According to bestselling author Daniel Pink in his book "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us", three factors determine employee motivation:
- Skills ("mastery"): Employees want to develop their skills and expertise and feel that they are improving in their work over time.
- Freedom: Employees need a certain degree of control over their work and the feeling that they can make decisions that affect their work.
- Purpose: Employees want to feel that their work has meaning and contributes to a larger goal or vision.
According to Pink, these factors lead to greater job satisfaction, more commitment and ultimately better performance.
A company academy can help to positively influence these factors for the motivation ("drive") of employees:
2. involve the most important people at an early stage.
Our experience is clear:
Corporate academies that are conceived in secret by one or a few people with no connection to the outside world are more likely to fail than those that involve the most important people from the outset.
Who are the most important people?
The most important people in a modern organization are the employees themselves.
Form focus groups or conduct surveys to align the conceptual aspects of your company academy with the needs of your employees at an early stage.
Of course, it is important to mobilize managers who play an important role in the company or who are at least influential at an early stage. These are often members of the management, sometimes people from the extended management team and occasionally employees who enjoy a special reputation among colleagues or for whose work employee training is even a prerequisite.
"Important people" are also those who will later help you to increase acceptance and commitment when you launch the company academy. More on this below.
3. develop a curriculum.
Based on the needs analysis and the definition of objectives in step 1, develop a curriculum in which the courses, training modules and other learning content are structured.
The curriculum should follow a clear system:
In this way, you later convey the feeling that the company academy is well thought out and goal-oriented. The "common thread" that emerges from the curriculum also helps to better internalize the learning content.
The curriculum structures the learning content without having worked it out in detail.
The curriculum may be adapted later when it comes to detailed work on the learning content.
4. define the learning formats.
Define the delivery methods for your courses and training.
You can choose from a range of options, e.g. online learning, classroom training, on-the-job training, workshops or coaching.
The exact learning formats depend very much on your organization, the day-to-day work of your employees and the complexity of the learning content.
The more complex the learning content, the greater the need for support and guidance from a teacher, coach or mentor.
The more mobile the employees, the more online or mobile formats make sense.
5. choose the right learning platform.
Invest in technology that supports the delivery of your training program.
This usually includes a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Learning Experience Platform (LXP), which links and centralizes the curriculum and all associated forms of learning.
We have explained in detail what makes a good LMS in the blog article "What makes a good LMS? (for 2023+)".
In summary, a good LMS is characterized by the fact that it:
- is user-friendly,
- identity and adapts its look and feel to your organization,
- offers a comprehensive range of basic functions,
- can be technically integrated with existing technologies and platforms,
- remains adaptable to your own objectives in the short and long term,
- offers regular updates and innovation,
- does not compromise on security and data protection,
- is operated by a service provider who solves your individual problems,
- supports you in the provision of learning content,
- enables all participants to collaborate on the learning platform,
- works perfectly via mobile devices, and
- enables meaningful evaluations that help you to optimize your corporate academy.
If you are interested in a modern learning experience platform and would like an insight into specific examples, you are welcome to request a test account with MaxBrain or let us explain to you how a modern learning platform works.
6 Enrich your company academy with the best additional features.
The Learning Management System is the operating system, the basis of your corporate academy.
To make the company academy more interactive, exciting and communicative, we recommend integrating additional tools and technologies into the learning platform.
These include, for example:
Video conferencing or communication tools such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Slack,
Collaboration tools such as Miro, which employees can use to explain learning content to each other visually.
Feedback tools to obtain regular feedback on learning content, curriculum, tools, etc.; for example with providers such as SurveyMonkey or TaskBase.
Providers of universal, relevant learning content such as Elucydate or Goodhabitz.
However, make sure that you only integrate features that are really relevant and needed. Keep the corporate academy simple.
7. create or purchase learning content
The next step is to develop engaging and interactive content that is tailored to the needs of your employees.
This topic is very diverse.
We recommend our blog article "Creating optimal learning content for your LMS [Checklist 2023]".
There are various options for providing learning content:
1. create learning content completely by yourself
The advantage: learning content is more likely to be adapted to the needs of the company's own employees.
The major disadvantage is that creating learning content takes time and requires a certain amount of knowledge in terms of didactics. Many organizations quickly reach their limits, especially with large volumes of learning content.
2. purchase learning content from external providers:
For pure e-learning, we recommend providers such as Goodhabitz or Elucydate.
For courses and learning content with a teacher, at a course location or in the company itself, we recommend professional providers of further training such as the Goethe Business School, the WEKA Academy, digicomp and many more.
3. have learning content created by specialized agencies and consulting companies
Somedia Learning in Switzerland and the ML Group in Germany are our preferred partners for all kinds of topics.
For more strategic topics, such as training on specific values and visions of a company, there are also some companies, such as Jester Advisory, which is active throughout Europe.
4. a mixture of the three options mentioned above.
8. test your corporate academy thoroughly before the launch.
Before you publish your company campus, test your first version with a small, representative group of employees.
Today's people are used to IT systems working perfectly and content being of high quality. Even minor quality losses lead to disproportionate criticism of the entire system or even the idea itself.
Think of the situation when you watch YouTube, Netflix, Disney+ or the like. Imagine if these apps were difficult and slow to use. Or: The films and videos on offer would be irrelevant and boring for you. Would you still use these providers?
The fact is:
Most people are not impressed by technology, but they are impressed by high-quality, exciting content and brilliant design. Technology is only an issue for the vast majority of people in the negative case, when it doesn't work.
As a project manager, you can be in love with the features of your company academy or be convinced by your concept: If the learning content is irrelevant or the learning platform seems slow and old-fashioned, you will never inspire your colleagues.
So be a bit of a perfectionist during the test phase of your corporate academy so as not to write "paranoid".
Try to fully empathize with the interests and needs of your employees, whose job it is NOT to design and publish a corporate academy, but to do their own work well.
Answer questions about learning content, learning platform and other feedback, for example:
Learning content: Does your content fulfill its purpose? Does the learning content lead to the intended learning outcomes? Is the learning content engaging?
Learning platform: Is the learning platform intuitive enough or does it still require too much explanation? Is it integrated with other relevant systems? How easy is it for employees to access the learning platform? What is the first impression of the learning platform: very good or boring?
Has a representative group of employees tested the company academy? Have these employees gone through the entire process from sign-up to learning paths to learning objective checks?
What feedback did you collect? What was rated very good, good, bad or very bad?
Take these questions seriously and improve your corporate academy in as many areas as possible that are relevant to employee success.
This significantly increases the chance that the company academy will inspire all other employees.
9. involve managers and ensure that employees have their "learning time"
At the latest before the official launch of your corporate academy, we recommend involving your organization "top-down":
Employees should have the opportunity to find out about the company academies from their line managers.
People in management positions should be behind the company academy and help you to position it among employees as a valuable, personal offer.
Not only that:
Employees need time to learn at the company academy.
It is a common mistake to think that employees should and can automatically learn alongside their work.
If you ask your employees to take care of further training in their free time, you will severely weaken the acceptance of your company academy.
Allow employees enough time to engage with the learning content and acquire knowledge during working hours.
Give your employees a learning time budget.
Consider this time as an investment in productivity and employee satisfaction, which will pay off many times over in relation to the normal working time lost.
It is essential to inspire people in management positions, to clearly explain the value of the corporate academy for their team and to obtain the commitment of these managers to allow their employees sufficient time for further training.
10 The big day: Launch of the company academy
After all these steps, the time has come: you can now publish your great company academy among all employees!
Consider the launch of a company academy as an internal marketing task that draws attention to the new offer via many touchpoints.
Follow the "FBI principle" in your communication - Features, Benefits, Impact.
In German: Communicate what it is about, what it brings to employees and what they can actually achieve thanks to the company academy.
The communication channels are varied depending on the organization.
We often see the following options for promoting the company academy across organizations:
Internal influencers: Have managers or other internal influencers communicate the value of the corporate academy to their respective teams.
E-mail or message: Send general information to all employees in consultation with the management.
Intranet and group chats: If your organization has an intranet or uses group chats, use them to announce your great new Corporate Academy and regularly communicate particularly interesting learning content or courses.
Promote your company campus via offline touchpoints; for example, in the company canteen, in the elevators, in front of the printer, the restrooms or at the highly frequented coffee machine to establish small "learning culture reminders".
Communicate seasonally relevant topics and learning content. For example: Vitality in winter, strategy or agility during the summer break, special topics that are currently particularly important for the company.
Consider other ways to most effectively market the corporate academy to employees specifically in your organization.
11. secure the acceptance and commitment of your employees
A corporate academy does not only live from the technology and the learning content, but above all from the acceptance and commitment of the employees.
To ensure acceptance and commitment, we recommend the following:
Time budget: Give your employees enough time at work to learn and develop their skills.
Many employees today are under pressure and can hardly afford to leave work for 2-3 hours a week to learn something new without permission. It is therefore important to approve a clear time budget for further training.
As already written above:
Consider the learning time at the company academy for what it is:
A worthwhile investment in the productivity and motivation of your employees.
Next:
Communicate the values of the company academy regularly: Communicate the value and specific learning content of your corporate academy not only at the launch, but on a regular basis.
To generate more acceptance and commitment, your goal should be to inspire your employees.
Show your employees how they can become rock stars thanks to the company academy!
Be very specific:
For example, show the support team how the corporate academy can help reduce support tickets.
Explain to your sales team how the courses in the company academy help to close deals more often and faster.
Another idea:
Establish the company academy as a management tool .
Integrate feedback and evaluations of learning progress via the company academy into regular employee appraisals.
Have your employees take a course via your Corporate Academy that is as relevant as possible to their work and discuss the "learnings" with the team 1-2 weeks later.
There are of course many other ideas to increase engagement:
Rewards if possible: Reward employees who are particularly hard-working or who learn a lot thanks to the company academy. "Gamification or an internally visible reward system can significantly improve engagement.
Thank the employees who make the best suggestions for improvement. In this way, the company academy becomes a project of the employees themselves!
Whenever possible, show the leaders in your organization what the results of the corporate academy are and how it helps the company grow.
12 Measure and Improve: Improve your corporate academy regularly.
Last but not least: Don't just leave the corporate academy to its fate:
Collect feedback systematically.
Evaluate the feedback relentlessly.
Implement the suggestions for improvement that will have the greatest impact on the success of the corporate academy.
Regularly offer new, inspiring learning content and promote it specifically to the employees who are most interested in it.
If you follow these steps, you will build a corporate academy that will improve the skills and knowledge of your employees, increase the productivity of your organization and bring you a lot closer to your company's goals.
Success inspires. This also applies to your cool company campus.
Questions for you:
Now I would like to hear from you:
Does your company already use a company academy?
If so, what is particularly important?
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