Training for customers. Increasingly, training activities are crossing organizational boundaries. Besides training their own workforces, many organizations help their customers train and develop their workforces. Siemens USA-one of the world’s leading manufacturers of high-technology equipment- conducts a variety of training programs to meet the special needs of customers and their markets. Training for customers ensures that all the capabilities of the company’ technologically advanced systems are fully utilized and that all their benefits are fully realized.
When Chesterton, a company that makes sealing devices, developed a training program for its sales force, it never intended to offer it to customers. But the course proved to be very effective within the company, even among managers who initially thought it was unnecessary. Before long, Chesterton realized the training could also benefit customers by educating them on the uses and operation of their new equipment. Chesterton doesn’t give the training away, however, they preferring using it to generate additional revenue.
Ethics Training
Workforce Management magazine sponsors the Ethical Practice Award to recognize companies with world-class HR practices aimed at ensuring that employees meet high ethical standards. J.M. Smucker & Co. is one of the award winners. The approach used by Smucker’s is described in the feature “Managing Ethics: J.M. Smucker & Co.”
Knowledge Management and Learning Organizations
In recent years, some companies have elevated the importance of learning and related activities, recognizing them as potential sources of sustained competitive advantage. Organizations that strive to make learning an activity that occurs in many ways every day throughout all parts of the organization have been referred to as learning organizations.’
Knowledge Management Technologies. To support their learning agendas, companies such as Xerox, Booz Allen and Hamilton Consulting, General Electric, JP. Morgan Chase, and many others have adopted various types of knowledge management technology. Knowledge management is about making sure that knowledge from employees, teams, and units in an organization is captured, remembered, stored, and shared with others.
Knowledge management technologies provide software that makes it possible for people to share knowledge electronically. The systems, which usually operate on the organization’s intraner, can capture and distribute “soft” knowledge as well as quantitative data. For example, employees might enter narrative information about their successes and failures during a project. Later people working on similar projects can read these entries and learn from the experiences of others. Typically, knowledge management software organizes the stored knowledge and provides a mcans to search and retrieve it using key
For knowledge management technology to facilitate learning, employees must be willing to share their knowledge and experiences, and they must be willing to use the ideas and knowledge of others. Neither n of these behaviors is
J.M. Smucker & Co.
J.M. Smucker is a fourth-generation family business in Orville, Ohio, that wants its name to stand for integrity When James Monroe Smucker sterted the company in 1897, he personally inspected every jar of apple butter he produced. Today, with nearly 4,000 employees making jams, peanut butter, fruit spreads, shortening and ice cream toppings in 45 countries, that level of personal involvement by the co-CEOs, Timothy and Richard Smucker, isn’t possible. Instead, they rely on an integrated HRM system of practices to ensure ethical conduct. During job interviews, applicants hear Smucker executives refer frequently to the company’s basic beliefs: ethics, quality, people, independence, and growth, in the interview, applicants hear specific information about how ethics relates to the job they want. For applicants who do well in the interview, the next stage is reference checking. Here too, the company asks prior employers and other people serving as references to specifically address the applicant’s ethical conduct.
Those who pass these selection hurdles are hired and then they immediately attend a training session that includes executive presentations, videos and group discussions on moral awareness, moral courage, and values. Smucker’s training programs present employees with examples of the choices they may have to make, sure as making decisions that are good in the short term versus the long term, being honest versus being loyal, and doing what’s best for an individual versus doing what’s best for the community.
Throughout the training employees team about different approaches they can use to address the ethical dilemmas they face at work: the utilitarian approach, which involves seeking to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people a rules-based approach, which involves making decisions based on rules other have created: and the Golden Rule, which means treating other as you would want them to treat you, After completing their initial training and once a year thereafter, employees sign a nine-page ethics contract. Needless to say, ethical violations are all it takes to get fired from this company. To ensure that employees remember the lessons they learn as new hires, they also take refresher ethics training every three to five years.
Employees seem to respond well to the company’s ethical commitment. According to fortune, Smucker has consistently been ranked as one of the “100 best companies to work for in America” By using effective HR practices, this company hopes to prevent unethical employee behaviors that will harm the company.
automatic. As is true for all of the training and development opportunities that employers provide, a variety of other practices should be used to encourage, support, and reward the learning process. Managers may need to reward employees for sharing their knowledge so that other can benefit. They also may stored database, the knowledge management library.
Communities-of-practice. The Hewlett-Packard company strives to be a learning organization. Learning is especially important at HP Labs, the company’s central research unit. To promote learning, HP Labs uses communities-of-practice. A community-of-practice is a social network of people who share a common interest and who are committed to collaborating on projects related to their shared interest.
HP Labs is the innovation engine of the Hewlett-Packard Company. Its 900 engineers and scientists are charged with discovering and developing products that will fuel the company’s long-team growth. To ensure that HP Labs can deliver what the company needs, HP’s top managers challenged the lab to implement whatever changes were needed for it to become the world’s leading R & D facility.