Assignment 01

Company i. Booz Allen Hamilton ii. IBM iii. Ernst and Young iv. Ritz-Carlton v. Lockheed Martin vi. Verizon Wireless vii. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals viii. Pfizer ix. KLA Tencor x. General Mills Choose one of the companies for research based on a. Describing why you believe the was ranked in the top 10 b. Explaining the relationship between training and the companys competitiveness, business goals and objectives.
Ans. a): We choose IBM from the ten companies mentioned. Following are the reasons we could find for which IBM was ranked in the top 10: Firstly: Unlike many other businesses IBM didnt really underestimate the necessity of Training & Development within the organization. The authority was always concerned and they realized the high cost of not training and consequently trained their employees whenever required. There is no saturation point in education. IBM Founder Thomas J. Watson, Sr. This is what he believes and that is why IBM knows the importance of training programs. Secondly: IBM allocates sufficient budget for these training programs. In 2008 we spent over $600M in training and development$1,700 per employeeto enable the company to shift thousands of people into new skill areas.---says IBM at their website. So when IBM shifted from one technology to another they retained most of their employees, trained them up and shifted thousands of them into new skill areas. Thirdly: Today IBM spends over US$674 million annually on its internal training and development program, considered one of the worlds largest. Each year, IBM employees log more than 28.6 million hours in training and education, including traditional and non-traditional learning. So, IBM takes training seriously unlike most other companies, they invest a lot in this sector and they use interactive training sessions. And all these things collectively place IBM among the top 10.

Ans. b): IBM is one of those few companies which diversified its business at regular intervals. As a technology company it shifted to different new technologies time to time. It started as a hardware manufacturer but now it is mostly a software company. The point we want to make here is: to accommodate such sort of changes there is no alternative of training and development. IBM has a large knowledge-based business, so we must constantly evolve employee skills based on market demand.--- That is what IBM says at their website. Continuous training and development programs kept IBM competitive in the IT business regardless of software or hardware. When the organization focused on software shifting from hardware the training programs supported them vastly. So, we can figure out that if a company can invest in training consistently then it may choose from a wider range of business areas. The bottom line is having well trained employees, supports the organization in achieving its objectives and at the same time it boosts up the employee morale and keeps the company competitive in the field which they are operating.