Investigate the strategic role of training and development in an organization - Research Paper Example

Employee training at Verizon Introduction Verizon is a world leader in provision on communication infrastructure to individual consumers, firms, governments and bulk-purchasing clients. It has changed business names and ownership structure since its inception in 1983, originally referred to as Bell Atlantic. Its focus on customer satisfaction, coupled with investment in company employees, from the top brass to the lower cadres, has placed the company on a positive growth trajectory with annual average earnings of 110 billion dollars.

The company has a wide product offering to appeal to a market characterised by diverse needs; it has departments that are responsible for particular market segments. This includes provision of 4G and 3G networks within the American market and global internet protocol (IP) networks to businesses and home PCs. It also deals in tablets and smartphones running on widely used operating systems. Lastly, it provides several business solutions to corporate clients; this includes cloud computing and information security for better management of company and government data.

Justifications for Verizon’s good employee development rankings An online article by Training Magazine dated 21St. February, 2012 names Verizon as the company with the best employees training programs (Freifeld, 2012). This is after being part of the Top 125 list on specific categories for the past 10 years. Going by the benchmarks for this assessment, Verizon is recognised for its role in improving employee effectiveness; this is in line with overall company objectives. It allocates a high amount in annual company budget for training and has a considerably high percentage of revenues going into the employee payroll.

Also identified is the amount of time given to individual employees; this stood at 9 million training hours for company staff in 2011. This basically was to improve their customer service competency which has become an important focal point for technology companies in order to remain competitive. With increasing technological advancements, Verizon has a task of ensuring its employees fully understand the products they are offering to the market; last year, it allocated 60,000 hours for training customer care representatives and front office staff in the use of 4G technology and supporting devices.

According to Freifeld (2012), the company operates in a dynamic market that demands for extensive research and regeneration of ideas in order to stay ahead of competition. Its employees are thus an important company asset as they are the ones tasked with ensuring the customers are satisfied through engaging them in full time support. According to the company website, employees are part of the community it serves, therefore, they have to be culturally diverse, highly driven, and change agents.

Employee value rests in their talents and excellent performance is rewarded based on this. On becoming part of Verizon’s workforce, an individual has to discover his/her skills; it is upon this basis that performance targets are set by individual employee with guidance from company managers and supervisors. An employee is then taken through an extensive training program after selecting the relevant courses form the list provided. Internal training at Verizon is an online tutorial exercise, led by an instructor, which offers business and technological courses that develop an all rounded employee who is responsive to a changing business environment.

In this online training, technology is used as an effective tool of delivering quick and flexible tuition to employees. This incorporates use of video lesson streams, podcasts and blogs to engage the students in a continuous learning process. Apart from the wide ranging financial incentives it offers to employees, including profit sharing and investment schemes, it offers training to full time and part time employees working more than 20 hours a week (Freifeld, 2012). This category of employees is qualified for tuition assistance for bachelors and graduate degree courses as well as foundational certificate programs.

To add more punch to this effort, this is a full coverage with an additional provision of learning materials related to the course. Employee training at Verizon is a continuous process; it has a partnership with an American educational services provider to give training to employees on long term value creation. It also empowers them to be decision makers, at an individual level or working in teams; this is done by giving education on how the applied tools and frameworks contribute to overall improvement of shareholder wealth (Bray, 2006).

The company also has a certification program that rewards employees who show good mastery of company products and services. This has helped it improve employee reception of new technologies; a case in point is the recent introduction of Nexus one. The employees were ready for training even before this new garget was made available in the market (Chan, 2010). To put all these in terms of financial investment in workforce training, the company sunk in excess of 300 million dollars in training for the 2011 financial year.

This is coupled with a further 100 million dollar investment in tuition assistance to it’s over 30,000 global employees. Employee training and business strategy According to Haller (2012), the major challenge associated with employee training is the ability to maintain this workforce to achieve the full benefits in line with overall business strategy. However, employee empowerment at Verizon is credited for contributing to higher retention levels. This is because of talent maximization and reward mechanisms which the company has placed as part of long term growth strategies.

With this strategy, the company intends to align employee training with its long and short term goals. It has gone ahead to distinguish employee training with other human resource functions; training is under the marketing department and has a team in charge of ensuring continuity of this process. It did this after recognizing training as a key component in ensuring company growth. With this change in management approach, training can then be measured with overall improvement in product sales; this metric system can then inform strategic plans on altering or improving course content for the company to respond to changing consumer needs (Ireland, Hoskisson & Hitt, 2012).

In its long term strategy, flexible training ensures employees are trained without necessarily attending full time courses. It uses modern technology in this effort by use of company blogs and video streams to make employees attend classes remotely. Their performance at work is thus not compromised as time is managed effectively (Freifeld, 2012). Conclusion According to Evenson, (2012), employee training is very essential for businesses that have many levels of customer interaction; Verizon’s client bases are people who call in and send mails frequently to highlight network problems or any other issue they may have regarding the purchased product.

The business environment has also changed with smaller and large sized competitors eating into its market share; customer satisfaction is then recognised as key to sustainability. This makes it have a major task of bringing its employees up to date with the product it offers for them to effectively handle these clients in the shortest time possible. This is why it is recognized for its employee training efforts. References Bray, T. (2006). The training design manual the complete practical guide to creating effective and successful training programmes.

London: Kogan Page. Chan, C. (2010, March 8). Verizon already training employees on the Nexus One? What for? | Android Central. Android Central | Android Forums, News, Reviews, Help and Android Wallpapers. Retrieved June 4, 2012, from http://www.androidcentral.com/verizon-already-training-employees-nexus-one Evenson, R. (2012). Customer service management training 101: quick and easy techniques that get great results. New York: AMACOM. Freifeld, L. (2012, February 20). Verizon’s New Number is 1 | trainingmag.com. trainingmag.com. Retrieved June 4, 2012, from http://www.

trainingmag.com/article/verizon%E2%80%99s-new-number-1 Haller, G. (2012). Effective Training Boosts Employee Retention and Bottom-line Success - Perspectives - Inside INdiana Business with Gerry Dick. Inside INdiana Business with Gerry Dick. Retrieved June 4, 2012, from http://www.insideindianabusiness.com/contributors.asp?id=1007 Ireland, R. D., Hoskisson, R. E., & Hitt, M. A. (2012). Understanding business strategy: Concepts plus. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.