Keeping Up to Date

It¡¯s necessary for companies involved in highly technological industries to keep their employees up to date. With continuous advancements in technology, the needs and requirements of the company change, and so will the needs and requirements of employees.
Jim Malanson, vice president of technical development at Palo Alto, believes that any technology organization needs to ¡°keep pace with the speed at which new products are coming to market in their sector¡± (reference). The pharmaceutical company is in a fast paced industry, and it is important for them to better recognize and implement the effects of improving the up-to-datedness of employees. Areas that require the awareness of employees include: what competitors are producing, what new regulations and guidelines may come up concerning pharmacy, externalites, etc., will assist in helping the company establish a greater competitive edge. Employees thus need to be able to learn and adapt to a rapidly changing environment within their own product lines and the industry; but there is nothing the company is currently offering that alleviates the lacklustre system in place.
Within the company, employees have already raised the complaint that given their current work schedules they are unable to keep up-to-date with the latest news within their working hours. Though employees realize there is a need to stay ahead in the development of the pharmaceutical industry, they are unwilling to do the necessary research beyond their time at work. The responsibility of the company then is to set a proper HR solution into place that will allow the facilitation of the flow of news to reach employees more readily and easily.
Effort put towards improving up-to-datedness will invariably effect the communication between departments. When employees are more confident and knowledgeable of all aspects within the industry, they will better understand the difficulties facing other departments besides their own. Subsequently, the existing tension the company is currently facing between marketing and research and development would potentially ease down. Additionally, because they are a company that takes pride in its development of innovative products, providing the proper environment to facilitate all the aforementioned would also assist in ¡°inspiring employees¡± to spur more creative thoughts, as is the belief of Tamar Elkeles, vice president of learning and development at QUALCOMM (reference). Once employees have the time to become more knowledgeable, they will be able to provide new ideas and strategies that would better serve the company¡¯s goal in differentiating themselves in their products. It is in this way that the onus falls on the company to provide an appropriate environment where employees can accomplish: 1) staying up-to-date; 2) having good communication flow between marketing and R&D; and 3) generating innovative ideas.