Communicating the Value ofa Corporate University
Strategic learning and organization-wide performance enhancement are keys to sustaining an organization's competitive advantage. Communicating this value to senior management is central to a corporate university's mission. Senior managers will support learning activities with widespread employee participation. But if you cannot stimulate employee participation, the arduous tasks of achieving senior management buy-in-and creating a strategic learning infrastructure-are wasted efforts. What if you gave a class and no one came?
One target of internal marketing is the customers-the employees who stand to benefit directly from learning offerings. Another focus of marketing efforts is the senior executives and business unit leaders. You must demonstrate that learning is an integral and indispensable part of the business. You can settle for a tactical, "throw it out there and see what sticks" kind of marketing, or you can develop a strategic marketing plan. Strategic marketing allows you to tie together different services so that you are consistently building on successes as you prepare for the future.
Your strategic marketing plan should include marketing objectives that answer the following questions:
Who is the target audience?
What are the objectives (desired outcomes) of the marketing plan?
Where will we implement our marketing (posters, e-mail, presentations, etc.) When do we need to begin the marketing plan? How long should the marketing plan last and HOW much should
we spend?