Corporate Academies

Corporate academies were established in the late 1980s in addition to traditional education departments. These new academies were designed to bring company stakeholders into line with the organizations' vision and strategy. The focus of an institutional academy is to provide competence on outsourcing and a powerful model that forces learners to evolve. This model has positive impact on a company's financial health and stability in the long run.

Today, organizations have adopted a corporate education model to meet their training needs. This corporate education model is an important factor for maintaining income balance, creating value for the brand, establishing a sustainable relationship between the brand and the customer, increasing employee productivity, reducing costs, and retaining talented employees. Learning in human education, gaining new skills are now parts of an important ongoing development process. Training talented employees in increasing market competition enables us to move forward. When training is given effectively and a learning culture is created, employees keep themselves up-to-date and become skilled. In this regard, it is observed that organizations make three times higher profit rates.

For the institutional academies to be designed as a profit center, it is necessary to focus on the education departments that are in high demand. Designing these academies as training and development centers will be the right target for both the participant and the institution. Examining these differences will benefit a company to strengthen its learning model and focus the academy on learning.

Accreditation is a system to ensure that services are provided at certain quality standards. It is the registration of the universality of an institution and its position in the world of education. In this context, ensuring the accreditation of institutional academies indicates that any program being implemented meets certain performance standards; establishes the trust of the participant in quality, efficiency and effectiveness. Accreditation of corporate academies emerges as a means of improving quality, transparency and accountability. It provides opportunities for performance tests and quality improvement for the educational institutions to self-supervise and work with authorized accreditation companies for external evaluation. Accreditation of institutional academies should be viewed not only as quality control but also as a certificate of substantial validity. Accreditation is not a one-time process; it does not only measure the quality of an institution with periodic evaluations, but internal and external analyses are made to ensure the improvement of quality. Accreditation is a voluntary process. The goal is not restriction based on a mechanism; on the contrary, it is not to fall below a standard or even to obtain evaluation and development processes that will see the deficiencies required to raise the targets. Accredited institutions are deemed to guarantee a certain quality and ensure the validity and control of certificates or diplomas by ensuring compliance with international standards.

It is necessary to consider some points in order to construct corporate academies as profit centers and even to transform them into executive training and development centers. In this process, it is important to form a marketing group and use this unit effectively for branding studies. Issues such as how to advertise programs and events, which language to manage public relations, what kind of research should be done, how to create success and leadership stories should be emphasized. Working with a business model with all units will be high efficiently.

An institution must include units such as finance, accounting, sales and marketing, education, management information technology, design and human resources, which constitutes the main application areas of the business world, within its structure full-time or via outsourcing. It is important that each employee is responsible for his / her own field and keeps his / her demands fresh in the process of achieving the goals for the efficient functioning of the whole structure as a single organism. These plans should be supported with strategic moves by creating continuous plans like traditional businesses. For example; individuals who are committed to learning and contribute to the development of others can be identified and their exemplary behavior can be appreciated in front of all stakeholders and their awareness can be raised.

Maintaining strong relations with technology, higher education institutions can make difference not only in public relations but also in learning mode. In order to offer distance education and virtual learning in an economical and effective way, it is important that the technological infrastructure is prepared. In this regard, both continuous and immediate training can be provided at less cost, and community classes that are difficult to be brought together can be formed. Having various groups of participants will also be an advantage for each participant. Building communities of practice is a great way to benefit the collective knowledge of a particular unit within a company. These groups can also be formed via digital and technological tools. Application communities offer more opportunities for inter-participant interaction and problem solving. This not keeps an institution innovative but also accelerates solution processes.

Learning should not be treated solely as an activity or educational program; it should be considered as an ongoing process. Institutional academies must have tools to help create success in the organization. How to evaluate the knowledge, skills and needs of the participants is important in this context. Evaluation and development processes should be well planned in order for academies to become executive training and development centers. Participants should be provided with many online learning asynchronous, online simultaneous learning opportunities and supporting tools; opportunities should be provided for individuals to verify what they have learned. Technology is not an information source that facilitates learning, but an important tool in understanding the learning mode of the participants who will be involved in the future learning process, following closely and meeting the changing needs. In this regard, the training professionals who know and use technology should be preferred in the process of forming the trainer and academician staff.

Considering the importance of evaluation and development, performance of learning initiatives should be measured periodically. Therefore, the following questions should be answered continuously:

• How did participants react to the training?
• How much did participants learn from the training?
• How have the behaviors changed as a result of the training?
• Has education achieved the necessary awareness success?

Success here can vary depending on whether you have achieved your goals before you started training, your corporate goals, customer and stakeholder expectations. If there is an inconsistency between the targeted results and obtained results, the strategy should be reviewed.

Training programs can be offered with a certificate or degree. Instead of considering corporate academies on the basis of lessons, designing them as long-term development plan for employees and participants is important for sustainability. In this regard, offering a professional certificate or a corporate academy degree, this certificate can be turned into a part of quality education by ensuring its validity in institutions and other companies. This program will increase the willingness of internal and external stakeholders to participate in training with their certificates and degrees, thereby creating a positive impact on corporate academies as a profit center.

It is observed that many factors come into play while building a strong corporate academy model in an institution. Once the organization of institutional academies as profit centers, their accreditation, evaluation and development processes, and their transformation into executive training and development centers are designed correctly, their  positive impact on to the company's goals, initiatives, purchasing process, continuous development, employees, customers and shareholders are obvious. You can benefit corporate academy consultancy service to get detailed information about your institution's compliance.