Question

Your company’s newest goal is to accelerate NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT. As director of training, you want to assist the company in achieving its goals. Create a plan to ALIGN your training plans with your company’s new goal. Please answer each question below.

1. Choose a training and development initiative from the following list:

• Diversify the learning portfolio

• Expand who is trained

• Accelerate the pace of employee learning

• Provide developmental opportunities

• Improve customer service

• Capture and share knowledge

2. Select 2 training and development activities from the following list:

• Formal training on a specific topic (specify topic)

• On-the- job training

• Develop website for information sharing

• Develop a mentoring program

• Arrange job rotation assignments

• Develop online classes

• Include suppliers in training

• Develop new employee orientation program

3. Determine a metric to measure success.

4. Put your plan together (steps 1-3) explaining each element. (This is the only part you need to write.)

Answer 1

1. • Capture and share knowledge

2. • Develop website for information sharing and Develop a mentoring program

3. Metrics are: Employee engagement and productivity rates over time.

4. Plan:

The first step to accelerate new product development in my company is to have training and development initiatives to capture and share knowledge. Sharing of knowledge and learning from others’ experiences sparks new ideas which is required for new product ideas (idea generation phase). For example, best practices that are shared ideas for process improvements. This eventually results in new products or processes for the efficient growth of the companies.

The second step is to develop a website for information sharing and developing mentoring programs. Since I have identified the training initiative is information sharing, the next step to connect globally is ‘How’. How to get globally connected to share the knowledge? Developing an intranet website for knowledge sharing is the best tool for sharing the information. This encourages new ideas for products and encourages employees to involve in conversations. Another training and developmental activity is to develop a mentoring program. Mentoring programs helps in guiding employees to new product developmental initiatives.

The third step is to assign metrics for the development of websites and mentoring programs. Metrics to measure the effectiveness of the training program are employee engagement and productivity rates over time (percentage increase in new product ideas) when compared to past records.