Then vs. Now

Fred Harburg, former CLO of Motorola University, said from the start corporate universities have been evolving to keep pace with changes in technology, learner needs and corporations themselves. He said one of the most significant changes is online learning. “People think of it as a relatively recent occurrence, but it started more than 40 years ago in the military when people did what they called computer-based training,” he said. “It was terrible and typically extremely boring and difficult.”

Harburg said technology in learning has progressed slowly over time. “People think technology is moving at lightning speed — well, the technology of online learning moved at a snail’s pace over those 40 years in terms of the improvements from the very early times to now,” he said. “What we see now is this huge shift. Technology is changing the whole nature of work and the world.”

But Harburg said as the nature of corporate universities continues to change, they are still needed for talent acquisition, onboarding, performance evaluations, employee engagement and other aspects involved with growing talent and meeting the future needs of the company. He said someone will always need to steward those systems and processes.

“The two most important things in a business are its people and its culture. The two are so meshed it’s hard to separate one from the other,” Harburg said. “Some companies have separated the talent management role from the learning role, but I think that’s an artificial separation.”

Harburg said the ideal corporate university today understands the business, the customers and the talent of the organization and helps close the gaps that exist between what is and what might be to provide better services, better quality products and a more engaged and empowered workforce.

A Dual Focus

AT&T University was created in 2008 with a vision to drive alignment across the telecommunications company from a leadership, culture and knowledge perspective. AT&T Vice President and CLO John Palmer said his company’s original model for the corporate university is still viable, as it’s always been aligned with business objectives. “We used it in its early inception to drive alignment of many companies that came together through mergers and acquisitions,” Palmer said. “Now we’re using it as the driver for our reskilling program that will help us transform this business into where we’re going in the future.”

Palmer said at AT&T, they pride themselves on having direct alignment to each business unit at every level of learning. “That’s the key to maintaining relevancy as a corporate university — to ensure that you understand the business needs and you have the connections to the business units so you are jointly driving programs and jointly driving the key decisions about the curriculums that are necessary to keep the employees equipped for the future.” Palmer said if corporate universities are heavily focused on business strategy, that itself will drive the employee engagement.

Texas Health’s Gandarilla emphasized that corporate universities should be used as a strategic tool with a situational focus. “If we know that our organization is struggling with engagement, that may be the most appropriate use at that time,” he said. “But if we’re struggling to make some sort of organizational transformation, it might be more focused on what the knowledge is related to the industry and how it’s changing.” (May 3, 2018 https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2018/05/03/future-corporate-un...)