Question: Training and Development

Stand-Alone Project: Your Role as Director of Training

You should begin working on the Stand-Alone Project early in the course. Each lesson provides a benchmark for completing the Stand-Alone Project in a timely manner while working through the course. You will find this information in the "Stand-Alone Project Benchmark" section of each lesson. (A 10-page response is required for the combination of Parts A, B, and C.)

Instructions: Select a company of your choice and review its website. Assume that the company you select has just created a department to manufacture and sell a new communications device that will significantly reduce the time and cost invested in all transactions made by telephone and computer. Make sure that you select a company to which the addition of this new department would make sense. The device will be called the Automated Communications Wizard (ACW). The president of the division you work for has chosen you, the Director of Training, to be in charge of the training function for the newly created department, located in Tampa, Florida.

Your Stand-Alone Project requires that you complete two tasks: You will write a training program; then you will develop a presentation to sell your program to the president of the new division. Your report should be 15 pages in length, including a cover sheet, table of contents, and conclusion page. In addition, you must submit a minimum of 14 PowerPoint slides. Your Stand-Alone Project responses should be both grammatically and mechanically correct and formatted in the same fashion as the project itself. If there is a Part A, your response should identify a Part A, etc. In addition, you must appropriately cite all resources used in your response and document them in a bibliography using APA style.

(A 15-page, double-spaced response and 14 slides are required.)

Part A: Report/Training Program: Based on the company you selected, set up a training program that incorporates the seven major areas listed below.

1. Links: Explain the ways in which the training and development that you initiate will be linked to the company's strategic training and development initiatives.

a. Include the company's vision, mission, experience, understanding, innovation, cooperation, commitment, and the ways in which the training will be linked to these factors.

b. Include the company's customers, organizational products, existing and the newly created products and services, research and development, business systems, continuous learning, and how the results will be linked to the strategic training and development initiatives.

c. Include information about identification of needed knowledge, skills, abilities or competencies, ensuring that current training and development programs support the company's strategic needs.

2. Roles: Explain, systematically, the role that you will play in the training process, from beginning to end, and who will play additional roles. All must relate to the company's strategic business direction.

3. Type: Explain the type of training that you will initiate based on your needs assessment, including the use of a competency model.

4. Model: Select a model that you will use to organize the training department, addressing the following.

a. The reasons for your choice

b. The processes of learning

c. External instructional events

d. Forms of instruction

5. Transfer: What are four (4) ways the training will transfer?

6. Methods: What are the two (2) training methods that you will use and why?

7. Evaluation: How will the training will be evaluated? Include data related to Return on Investment.

Part B: PowerPoint Presentation: Prepare a formal PowerPoint presentation in defense of your training plan for this new department. You will deliver this presentation to gain the support for your training program from the president of the division. Your presentation must include the following.

1. Seven (7) slides, each summarizing and highlighting one (1) of the seven (7) components of your training plan

2. Seven (7) additional slides presenting a total of seven (7) charts and/or graphs to support each of the seven (7) components of your plan, as described in your report

Part C: Conclusion: Use your written report, together with your supporting PowerPoint presentation and charts and/or graphs, as your sales presentation to justify the training program that you are proposing.