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Week Six Pitch

Sheena Beckham
CUR/528
January 29, 2015
Erinn Dougherty

The Gap and Why

1. With an average annual savings of $7,000-$9,000 per employee when they
telecommute, the University of Phoenix is constantly evaluating positions to
potentially work from home. To ensure their success as remote employees, we need to
set them up for success from the beginning. We currently have a My WorkPlace
department that provides logistical support for telecommuters but there is not a
training in place to ensure that telecommuters are prepared to make the transition to
work from home. Specifically, there is a need to offer a training to managers
transitioning from an in-person setting to a telecommute setting. Managing
telecommuters and/or managing in a remote setting requires a different skill set. The
lack of communication and accountability becomes more apparent amongst managers
as productivity drops among first time telecommuters, sometimes up to 30%. This is
for a variety of reasons, including too much freedom, not enough management
direction, not enough communication, and lack of follow-up from managers.
Employee morale has shown to improve by 35% amongst telecommuters but when
they have poor management, this improvement is non-existent. To close this gap and
increase productivity, this Manager Telecommute Training will provide managers with
the skills they need to successfully manage their telecommuters. Implementing a
training program that is required before approving telecommute status will help
minimize the learning curve and decrease productivity problems.
Training Program
2. Based on the mission of University of Phoenix to be an employer of choice, I want to
provide a proactive training that will fill in a gap of management efficiency and prevent

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the need of reactive training. Telecommute requests from managers will require a
completion of this training course. This will be over the course of eight total hours,
broken up over the course of four consecutive days in the MyWorkplace Department
area. Learning objectives will include advanced communication, management
accountability, best practice sessions, and technology facilitation. For example, case
studies and practice scenarios will be provided in the communication course that will
allow the manager to implement their learning and demonstrate how they would
communicate in the given scenarios. There will be no cost as we will utilize managers
already successfully telecommuting as well as the part-time assistance of a corporate
trainer.
Evaluation
3. Toassessthesuccessofthisprogram,wewillassessusingtheKirkpatrick
assessmentstyle.Wewillassess:
a. Thelearnersresponses(howtheyreactedtothetrainingasobservedbythe
facilitators).
b. Theincreasedknowledgeofthelearner(asobtainedbydirectsupervisorsand
followup30and90dayemployeesurveys).
c. Behavioral changes including demonstration of competences (communication,
interpersonal savvy, and time management).
d. Results including assessing productivity of each direct employee and the team as a
whole.
By assessing using the Kirkpatrick model, we can determine the overall effectiveness,
which will increase productivity rather than lose it and allow each manager to feel
prepared and ready to work as a telecommute manager.