Here Is the Job Description That I Applied For

Journal One

I started working at Volvo Powertrain, North America on September 7th, 2010. I was extremely excited and had to pinch myself as the job description was exactly what I had pictured myself doing with this degree! Not only that, but the facility is only 20 minutes from my home.

______

Here is the job description that I applied for:

As a Training and Development Intern, you will have the opportunity to make an impact in our business as an executive in training and/or project leader.

In this role, you will support the Training and Development team in creating, supporting and implementing training programs to optimize our day-to-day operations.You will acquire a significant knowledge base of manufacturing through an understanding and assisting both bargaining and non-bargaining unit employees.Upon completion of this internship, you will gain effective leadership and/or project management skills, as well as valuable insight into becoming a leader in the field of Training and Development.Manufacturing’s fast paced culture requires dedicated individuals who get immense satisfaction from motivating themselves and others every day.

Core responsibilities include:

· Gaining exposure to our manufacturing network and leadership team.

· Receiving technical training and leadership mentoring to help you become a strong Human Resources Leader.

· Working with the team to evaluate existing operating methods and championing continuous improvement.

· Establishing and maintaining an open path of communication between you and other manufacturing partners.

______

This description is not very specific about what I was to do; but I knew it was for a large manufacturing organization and my dream job would be to improve excellence and efficiency in organizations through training and developing others.

It took a couple weeks to achieve some kind of understanding of the company culture and the outcome my manager was looking for. At the same time that I started the organization was undergoing a huge structural change to report by function, globally. It became somewhat confusing to understand who was reporting to whom. There are many dotted lines in this matrix organization and many blurred roles which creates a feeling of being pulled in many directions. I especially had a lot to learn as I had not been in the professional workforce for quite some time. I had to adjust to Volvo’s culture, balancing work and family, understanding all of the technology used in the workplace.

As it turned out, my manager is responsible for creating a “school” for the project managers and leaders at Volvo Powertrain North America, Hagerstown (to be referred to from now on as VPTNA). When I arrived, he had already determined courses for the Project Managers and is starting to create a Leadership Pipeline. My tasks are to develop a newsletter-like handout describing People Development and the Academy we are creating, to manage all of the training on the Learn Gate Management System, and to help develop and launch the Leadership Program.

Journal Two

I have been finding it rather frustrating – creating the newsletter. I have learned the Adobe InDesign publishing program basically through trial and error. I did sit in an office with the head of our communications department while we connected with a woman in Sweden and went through a PowerPoint in order to learn the program. It still took a lot of practice to understand all of the tools.

As I have been working on the newsletter, I also was able to take the photos we would use of people in training. I also interviewed two people for the newsletter and because of this met the Chief of Projects and a Project Manager who has worked in various countries in the world and is very excited about our Academy. It is always good to network with other people. Once I put everything together, I brought it to my manager to approve of the content. He would change a few things, and then be satisfied. Then, I would bring it to the Communications Manager who would change a few things to the way they are used to wording here, and then she would be satisfied. Then I would bring it to my manager who would change his mind about something and either change it or want to add to it. Then I would bring it back to the Communications Manager who would do something again. In between all of the going back and forth there is a lot of waiting in order for the very busy Communications Manager to get a chance to look it over. It is getting ridiculous! At somepoint you just have to publish it. Now I am waiting because my manager has gone to our facility in Brazil and he wants to get a photo of their training center to add to the newsletter.

In the meantime I had a full day of training on the Learn Gate Management System (LMS) which was developed by the Volvo Group. As I began to learn the system, I started with the training “records” I had been given of some of the project management courses. I was also tasked with creating a Training Path in the LMS system for the project managers. By developing a training path, employees in the “school” will be able to see the track of courses that they are expected to complete, laid out for them for the next three years. The challenge here was that I was given a list of names of employees in the project management group and short course titles squeezed into an excel spreadsheet of courses they have had or need to take. The “records” were non-existent. I had a list of those invited to the training, but not a list of those who were actually there.

Aside: The Volvo organization is decentralized with product related business areas supported by business units. The Volvo Group is made up of nine business areas that use the products sold by seven different business units. Therefore, the customers of Volvo Powertrain (a business unit) are owned by Volvo Group. VPTNA sells its products to Volvo Trucks, Renault, UD, and Mack trucks as well as Volvo Construction, Volvo Buses, and Volvo Penta. These are all owned by Volvo Group.

Journal Three

The newsletter is published! Hard color copies were made available throughout the building, and a copy was placed on the Volvo intranet. We have now begun a momentum of interest for the Academy. It feels good to have that completed.

As I became more familiar with the organization, I discovered that training record keeping was very inconsistent. I am inputting all training records, yet not everyone keeps them. If they do, the format they use is different per person. Because of this, I created an Attendance Form that encompasses all of the information needed for the LMS, and ensures employees were in attendance via their signature. I asked that this form be published on the intranet asking that everyone in the organization use it from now on. In addition, I attached form-holding pockets to walls throughout the building in possible training rooms. I also request that anytime there was training the completed forms would come back to me.

As simple as an attendance sheet may seem, it introduced me to a lot of people who are stakeholders in training and taught me to be more confident in my decision making at VPTNA as I knew what I was doing was best for the company, even when several people questioned parts of the form because it wasn’t “the old way”.

My manager is a “big picture” thinker and does not consider the details very much. I too like to think of the big picture, but for now I am trying to capture the details of the program we are building. I have been a little confused lately and it turns out that the titles my manager has given courses are not the actual titles, so I find myself re-doing work. As well, he is adding and subtracting and forgetting to tell me. I work through it though – I know that this is all new here and there is change involved with developing. I need him to keep me more in the loop.

Journal Four

I have “built” the training paths for the Project Management program and assigned them to the designated employees. I am becoming much more proficient in the LMS system and have more people referring to me with questions.

Finally, my manager and others involved have decided which vendors they are going to use for the Leadership program. My manager was hoping to use Penn State University and we received a nice proposal from them. They have a good reputation. However, Volvo already has a relationship with the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) and CCL can duplicate what they do for us here all over the world. That is the goal eventually – to build a leadership program here and then spread it into all nine Powertrains around the world.

I have begun to create paths for the four levels of Leadership in our Powertrain Academy (as we are calling it). My manager and I sat together and created an order of when we would offer certain courses. His goal is to offer one instructor-led course per quarter per leadership level over the next three years. There are also 17 eLearning modules that we hope to add to the LMS system for employees to view at their own pace but we built them in an order in the timeline too. I have now been working on adding all of the courses (titles, descriptions, etc.) into the LMS system. There are about 75 courses in the Academy. There are four levels (training paths) in the Leadership program – Emerging Leader, Leading People, Leading Leaders, and Leading Business. Each level has courses listed out in three sections, or years.

Not only are we building a leadership pipeline, but also project management (as mentioned earlier), and eventually technical pipelines for all functional areas of the organization. For example, we have identified Corning University to provide training for our HR group. Again, functional areas are divided into four levels. We have labeled them basic, intermediate, advanced, and expert. This way, employees can grow in their field and not feel they have to be in leadership in order to advance their paycheck. Product Development, Quality & Customer Satisfaction, Finance, and Purchasing are other areas where technical pipelines are being developed. I will need to enter all of these paths into the LMS system.

Journal Five

As part of the Leadership Academy we are requesting that employees read leadership books. I have had to come up with a good list of leadership books and order them for the bookshelves we have in the HR area. I have also scouted out a space to duplicate this library in the Product Development area upstairs. When the new training center is finished being built in the Operations area we will duplicate the books there as well.

All of the employees have been identified for the Leadership Pipeline. Anyone who is at the director level is in the Leading Leaders path, anyone who currently has a direct report is in the Leading People path, and Emerging Leaders were identified by their position in a nine-box rating. These employee names have all been entered into the LMS system.

Also, we have begun to launch the Academy out into the organization. In order to do so, I had to develop a welcome letter on behalf of the organization’s leadership council. My manager and I worked together to revise the letter, then I printed it out on special stationery and asked the managers of the recipients to hand-deliver this letter to them. The letter included an invite to a luncheon meeting. The first meeting was for the Leading Leaders. My manager presented the Academy background and structure. I presented the LMS system. It was quite nerve-racking to have my first presentation to the organization be one in front of the VPs and Directors! It all worked out though, and it is important for these people to get to know who I am.

Now the momentum has begun! I am putting more and more hours into work in order to keep the momentum up and the roll-out of the academy going.

Aside: there has been more re-structuring. My manager was reporting to the Director of HR here in Hagerstown. Throughout the Fall that director was not around much as he was travelling the world. Now, that director is reporting to the VP of Operations for all Volvo Powertrain (world). As we recognize the need for HR here and don’t have someone, the Director of Projects Office is now our HR acting Director; he has no HR background. My manager reports to him but is mentored by the HR guy who left. The HR manager of Labor Relations was fired last month too and there is no replacement. HR here is crazy.

Journal Six

Have I mentioned that my boss is a French ex-pat and spends a lot of time travelling? The goal will be to start this Academy in Europe as well so he has been spending a lot of time in Sweden and France and Brazil. I have been holding down the fort here and as he is a big-picture thinker I have been filling in all the details to the program.

We have managed, around his travelling schedule to provide the Leadership luncheon 6 times. I have had to struggle with finding training rooms to book courses and co-ordinate getting the people scheduled to attend and to get the 250 welcome letters out. The first course for the Leading Leaders is schedule in a couple weeks.

Finally the eLearnings are in place and working in the system. Yeah.

One of the HR employees worked with a trainer to develop our first course for the Leading People and Emerging Leaders path; called “What is Leadership?”. We have started scheduling dates for that course.

My manager and I met with the two main vendors we will use for the core training of our leadership program. Chris Gregg and Bob Barnes from the Institute of International Learning (IIL) and Amy Martinez, Sean, Diane Harmon, and Paul Zampelli from the Center of Creative Leadership (CCL). It was good to meet with them face-to-face. They now have a better understanding of our roles, what we are looking for, what the two vendors offer and how they can complement each other, and what we are looking for in our program. This is going to be great for the organization.

CCL will be finalizing the design of their first courses which really make up the “meat” of the program. I had to go back and forth between the Leading Leaders and the CCL group to come up with dates we could offer that everyone could be present. We are now preparing for July 12 and 13.

Aside: Another intern and I were given the responsibility to improve the orientation program here and make it more attractive and professional. Within a month of being given the assignment, the other intern’s manager gave her many other projects and she has now stepped away from orientation, leaving me with it solely. In addition, we are re-calling 110 union employees from lay-off. Much of my time has been trying to develop an orientation for these people, find rooms, and trainers.

Journal Seven

My manager is getting more and more involved in building a plan for Europe. He is asking me to be more proactive in decision-making and action-taking here at the local site. It’s great that he totally trusts my business acumen. He is also giving me the responsibility to be the contact person for the vendors and everyone here.

More and more people have questions for me concerning the LMS. Theyare also realizing the power of this tool where we can add classes into the system in advance and employees can go in and choose the date they can attend the course.

I have worked relentlessly with the two vendors to come up with a three-year calendar of all the courses. I had to co-ordinate the vendors to not overlap courses, to keep one course per quarter per path, to provide 4 dates per course in order to have class sizes of 25 max,and try to book training rooms (which are quite scarce here). I had to also spend a few days researching possible outside sources for training in area hotels. Once this three-year calendar of dates was worked out and displayed in an excel sheet, I had it published to the whole organization. All of these event dates also had to be entered into the LMS system. In addition, I had to come up with a way to avoid having people who are not part of the Leadership Academy sign up for courses.

There was a bit of a mix up to deal with a couple weeks ago. I had the dates schedule for the VPs and Directors months ago. Then suddenly, the head of Operations wanted to run an Operational Development (OD) program on the same day! This would remove seven Leading Leaders from the main introductory course. We did not have a back up date. I worked with the OD organizer to see if we could manage squeezing in both. We came up with a plan… only to be turned down a few days later. OD wins and those directors will have to come up with another date next month to attend the course.

Last week, while my manager was in Europe, we had the first Leading Leader course given by CCL. This was very exciting! I sat in the back nearly the whole time and listened while I did other work on my laptop. Great instructor and great information. It is as if all of the hard work to get this Academy off the ground has come to fruition. The development of 250 leaders in our organization has truly begun!