Strategies for Improving the Organizational Value of Training in a Corporate Setting

Training departments and the products and services they provide are often viewed by organizational leaders as expenses rather than investments. As organizations struggle to remain competitive and viable, the money and effort spent on training comes under increased critical examination. This Organization Improvement Plan (OIP) focuses on a training department, Corporate University (CU), operating within a specific organizational context at the Insurance Institute (II). The OIP examines the organization through various critical lenses including structural, human resource, technological, and symbolic perspectives to assess and propose practical actions the CU can take to demonstrate how the products and services they provide contribute evidence based organizational value. The path-goal leadership theory, the prominent leadership approach practiced at II, will be leveraged as the leadership approach to lead the change management process. An authentic change model, Agile Broadband Change Model (ABCM), which is a hybrid of Kotter’s Eight Stage Process (Kotter & Cohen, 2002) and Cawsey, Deszca, and Ingols (2016) Change Path Model, will be used to guide the change process. The OIP recommends the adoption of the New World Kirkpatrick Model as an evaluation framework with the implementation of a standardized approach to training evaluation and reporting. The OIP could be adapted to fit the needs of other organizations struggling with challenges related to demonstrating the value of training and striving to align training outcomes to organizational goals. Key words: organizational value, path-goal leadership approach, Agile Broadband Change Model, Kotter’s Eight Stage Process, Change Path Model, New World Kirkpatrick Model, evaluation framework, standardized approach to training evaluation, aligning training