What is CLIP?

Companies are under ever greater pressure to manage their learning and people development processes strategically. Some of the critical objectives they face include:

• Attracting and retaining the best managers,
• Nurturing tomorrow's leaders
• Aligning strategy, competencies and behaviours,
• Disseminating knowledge and expertise throughout the organisation,
• Integrating the learning function into mainstream HR processes such as management development, talent management, succession planning, etc.,
• Shifting the emphasis from training to learning,
• Performance improvement.

To meet these challenges, the learning and training function in many firms has been enhanced to give it a central strategic role in the form of Corporate Universities, Corporate Business Schools, Academies, Management Institutes, among others.

Most of these bodies are still relatively young organisations in Europe. However, they are beginning to reach a stage of maturity in which there is a need for more sophisticated means of assessment in order to measure their effectiveness and justify the investments made. EFMD's Corporate Learning Improvement Process has been created to provide such a tool, as CLIP seeks to identify the key factors that determine quality in the design and functioning of corporate learning organisations.

The Value of CLIP

At its core, CLIP is a mechanism for quality benchmarking, mutual learning and sharing of good practice. Internal self-assessment against a comprehensive set of rigorous criteria, is combined with external review by experienced peers.

CLIP provides value externally and internally for those companies that go through the process. It is a quality certification and therefore has an external marketing value. For example, some companies highlight the award in their public sustainability reporting. Equally significant, though, it has internal value as it helps to position the learning organisation in a strategic way, giving it visibility and credibility within the company itself.

However, not all corporate learning organisations may be ready to go through the full process in the short term, but may still have an interest to have access to knowledge and experiences from the process. EFMD can provide services for these organisations in two directions: they either embark on an extended preparatory phase where they get support and coaching by EFMD and/or Chief Learning Officers from the CLIP Steering Committee and then chose the right moment to start the process or alternatively they chose to become part of the wider Corporate Learning Community participating in best practices sharing workshops and advisory seminars.

CLIP is a service for EFMD members. The CLIP scheme is monitored by a Steering Committee made up of leading professionals in the field, including Chief Learning Officers from major companies, with input from Executive Education specialists from major International Business Schools.

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