I work at a financial institutions and I am in the process of creating a corporate university. I know that I need to do an analysis of the skills and abilities of the current staff. Someone told me that I need to have them write down all the tasks that they do and then watch them and see if what they write down is exactly what they really do. What is the opinion of the discussion board on this? If you disagree with this person, please give me advice of how you recommend doing this. Thanks!

Colleague, Heisenberg aside, have you decided on what tasks, responsibilities, practices your
staff will need to have for your university ?

Nero

It sounds like you are talking about a job/task analysis. There is usually someone in HR Compensation that does this. They may actually have this work on file. Theprocess is to study a job looking at responsibilities, duties, tasks and also job specifications/requirements. This then becomes a job description.

Having done job analysis for a number of years, I can tell you that, if done well, the end product is very good. Also, the documentation supports pay, recruiting, and legal action if you are taken to court on employment-related issues regarding the job.

Alternatively, ASTD has a listing of competencies by role. Many HRD business units have roles of: consultant, design/developer, facilitator, evaluator, then administration.

Personally, I wouldn't waste a lot of time directly observing various employees. What I've created is a "Job Task Diary" that we give to highly skilled employees. Then, throughout the day as they perform their various duties, they use the "Diary" to record the task, rate its relative difficulty, and tell us how much time they spent on it. Granted, you need some highly motivated and conscientious employees to ensure good results (and I certainly wouldn't rely on this as your only source of information), but it is one tool that can help get you there.

By the way, starting a corporate university can be a HUGE undertaking. We just launched ours late last year, and it took us roughly a year (with 40 people) to get it up and running. Most companies spend two years or longer in setting up their Corp U's.

I'd recommend looking up the Corporate University Exchange for starters, plus get yourself one or two of the better books that discuss all of the ins and outs associated with Corp U's.

JeffUSU wrote:
"... get yourself one or two of the better books that discuss all of the ins and outs associated with Corp U's."

Hi Jeff, can you recommend what these books are in your opinion?

Regards, Mike Collins.