Impact Assessment of Sponsored Executive Education Programs for Organizations

Author Name(s): Mr. Bhooshan Malkani, Prof. Rijuta Joshi
Author Email: bhooshan.malkani@viacom18.com

Abstract

Various organizations across the globe invest in the higher education of their employees by sponsoring Executive Education Programs for the eligible employees in various Educational Institutes of repute. This initiative is undertaken as a part of their employee engagement as well as succession planning initiatives. Executive Education Programs provide the employees with long-term avenues of blended learning. As the employees attend courses while remaining on the job, they are able to take what they learn in the classroom and apply it to the benefit of the organization. The organization invests a sizeable amount in the reskilling and qualification up-gradation of its employees. Hence, it is imperative that the organization analyzes what returns they are getting on this investment. The employee in lieu is required to sign a service agreement with the organization for a period and amount decided by the Management of the organization. The study entails an understanding of what parameters are used by organizations in choosing an Executive Education Program while nominating their employees. It also tries to establish the possible ways in which an organization can gauge whether the nominated employees who have successfully completed the Executive Program have benefited from the program. The study will also help establish how the organisation can measure whether the organization has benefited from nominating employees for long-term Executive Education Programs.

Keywords Executive Education, Up-skilling, Training and Development

Introduction

Executive Education is a Talent Development activity undertaken by various organisations. Under the executive education programs employees currently working in the organisation to undertake higher education with institutes of repute. These programs are generally aimed at improving and honing certain specific skills in the employees or offer them a means of up-skilling their skills and education.[1] These programs can be short term or long term depending upon the skills and knowledge they intend to impart. The roots of Executive Education can be found in the works of Fredrick Taylor.[2] At present most universities and their affiliated college across the globe offer Executive Education Programs under various faculties. Executive Education Programs provide the employees with long-term avenues of blended learning. As the employees attend courses while remaining on the job, they are able to take what they learn in the classroom and apply it to the benefit of the organization.

Conclusion

Executive Education is an investment that an organisation is making in the Employee that work for the organisation. The organisations invest a sizeable amount in these programmes and hence it is important for the organisation to evaluate what is the impact that the organisation is able to create. In a constantly changing business environment like that being witnessed at present it important that the organisations make this investment. However, which programs to invest in and which not to; who should benefit from this investment and to what extend the investment needs to be made need to be studied. In the organisations studied under this research it was found that while the organisations had some mechanism to determine who should benefit, where they can attend the executive education program and till what extent the organisation will invest in the program there was a gap in the study of the impact that these programs generated. Especially, in terms of Return on Investment (ROI). While some organisations were evaluating on some aspects of the impact such as retention and promotions of the employees benefiting from the Executive Education programmes there needs to be some work done in deriving a system of calculating ROI in terms of Man-hours saved, increase in efficiency, improved quality etc. which can be calculated in monetary terms.[6] With HR Analytics picking up speed models may be created to statistically calculate the ROI.

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