Corporate University - Planning For A CU

Planning For A CU

Before planning a CU a corporation should conduct a full learning audit and assessment, a series of design workshops, the creation of a business case and recommendations to senior management, implementation, and finally, further recommendations and review. One of the most important goals is to ensure that the project has support from the CEO down.

There are ten steps to implementing and sustaining a successful corporate university. These steps are:

1. Executives or top management of an organization must form a governing body for the corporate university, much like that of a traditional university, which will establish and profess the organization's commitment to the program.
2. The vision or strategic plan of the corporate university must be crafted; thereby,determining the organization's goals for the program.
3. The organization must then recommend a funding strategy. Most commonly, corporate universities are either funded through corporate allocations or through charges placed on individual business unit budgets.
4. Next the organization must determine its audience or stakeholders who will use the corporate university service.
5. In addition to determining the audience, the organization must also determine how the needs of the audience will be met while continually pursuing the strategic goal of the corporate university.
6. Following the completion of the above tasks, corporate university organizers must develop a template for how products and services will be designed to achieve university goals.
7. The organization must also select suppliers, consultants, traditional universities and for-profit firms who will act as learning partners, if appropriate.
8. The use of technology and resources to be used by the corporate university must then be determined.
9. Additionally, a measurement system should be developed that will allow the organization to continually monitor its progress against the university's strategic goals.
10. Lastly, the governing body must communicate the vision of the corporate university constantly and consistently. All stakeholders should be made aware of the mission, products and programs that make up their organization's corporate university.

These steps may need to be tweaked to align with the size or goals of your organization. CUs can be outsourced to a consulting firm or planned and implemented in house. It is a growing trend for organizations to partner with traditional universities. A traditional university brings organization, structure, and faculty. Universities are often interested in CU opportunities because of the economic gain. There are a number of consulting firms that will help you to set up you Corporate University, but that can become very expensive. This process can also take a long time, sometimes up to a two years. Forming a cross functional team of business stakeholders can be used to launch the corporate university.