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IMG College is the nation’s leading marketing and multimedia provider. IMG partners with some of the top institutions and conferences in the country. With over 35 years in the business, IMG College offers a variety of different services including the production and distribution of radio and television programs, broadcast talent, coaches’ shows and endorsements, managing internet sites, specialized media, printing and publishing, game day events and hospitality, corporate partner programs, and brand management. Those services can be broken down into five categories: Internet, publishing, licensing, training, and academies. IMG College has been named to Training magazine’s 2011 list of the nation’s top 125 companies with the best employee training and development programs. Training magazine is a 43 -year-old professional development magazine that advocates training and workforce development as a business tool. The magazine explores management, which enhance bottom-line impact and development programs. The training top-125 ranking is based on myriad benchmarking statistics such as total training budget; percentage of payroll; number of training hours per employee program; goals, evaluation, measurement, and workplace surveys; hours of training per employee annually; and detailed formal programs. The ranking is determined by assessing a range of qualitative and quantitative factors, including financial investment in employee development, the scope development programs, and how closely such development efforts are linked to business goals and objectives. ("Training 2011 top 125," 2011) The comprehensive, year-round employee and team development program, which was initiated by ISP Sports in 2001, was among the numerous reasons IMG Worldwide acquired ISP Sports and merged the company into its IMG College division in the fall of 2010. The training program enabled the collegiate sports marketing company to earn a #53 ranking. It marks the second time in three years (ISP Sports) has earned a spot on Training magazine’s top-125 list. Kelli Hillard, Senior Vice president of People Officer of IMG College said in response to being acknowledged as one of the top-125 list “Our industry is in the midst of significant change and growth. Therefore, it is imperative that we continue to evaluate and refine out development programs to put our team members in the best position to meet the challenges of competitive sports marketplace. However, our goal does not end with business development, as we also focus on assisting our team members in achieving a healthy work-life balance.” ("Imgtraining," 2010) Hillard believes its employees are their biggest assets at IMG College. IMG’s competitive spirit and dedication to excellence are trademarks towards continually learning and staying on top of industry trends while maintaining its goal of having the most highly trained sales staff in the country. This dedication does not go unnoticed, IMG attracts and retains the best people by offering competitive pay and benefits in an entrepreneurial environment that promotes having fun. This highly trained workforce is in part responsible for IMG College becoming second largest sports licensing brand in the world. It’s trademark-licensing division; The Collegiate Licensing Company (CLC) is the oldest and largest collegiate licensing agency in the U.S. Founded in 1981, the CLC was the first organization to recognize the need for colleges and universities to protect their brands and develop licensing programs. As the leader in collegiate licensing for more than three decades, CLC now represents all NCAA Championships. The most recognized are College Football Bowl Games (including the Heisman Trophy presentation), both men and women’s NCAA Basketball Final Fours, and the College Baseball/Softball World Series. Events like these contribute to more than 80% of the $4.3 billion retail market for collegiate licensed merchandise. (NCAA, 2011) Since its integration into IMG College, CLC has utilized its considerable experience and knowledge of proper licensing practices to help colleges and universities manage their licensing programs. The directional strategy CLC pursues is best-in-class licensing by crossing a full spectrum of national, regional, and local retailers to help promote and ensure product quality and availability while maintaining brand integrity and fostering revenue growth for its collegiate partners. This strategy has created a necessary corporate culture comprised of numerous smaller businesses across sports, entertainment, and media in different regions. This external growth enables its employees to broaden their skill set, gain access to abundant career options across various specialties and discover new channels to further expand IMG’s brand. IMG is the leading publisher of college sports publications, delivering high-quality publishing and design services nationwide. This is ensured by utilizing IMG’s full-time, in-house editorial and graphic design divisions and publishing management teams. IMG’s publishing services include distribution of television programs, broadcast talent development, and coaches and endorsements. IMG College multimedia creates, produces, and distributes television programs both nationally and regionally. In order to achieve this, IMG works with both large and small television partners to produce and distribute telecasts of live and/ or delayed games, pay-per-view television broadcasts, and many more. Much of the video produced is also utilized on other viewing sources such as video-on-demand or streamed over the Internet. IMG College’s Internet division provides live play-by-play audio broadcasts for over 40 university partners for worldwide streaming. The Internet division is also responsible for negotiating advertising, e-commerce, and live streaming contracts with website providers and other digital vendors in accordance with university partners. Through these two services, IMG College has a unique ability to reduce operating costs by completing these tasks in-house with its highly trained publishing management, graphic design and multimedia teams. One way IMG College helps sustain its company goal of having the most highly trained staff in the country is through their formal education program at The University of Kentucky Sports Marketing Academy (UKSMA). The UKSMA has been providing its attendees with cutting edge experiences since it was first presented in 1998. A program specialized for The UKSMA is offered through a joint effort of the University of Kentucky Gatton College of Business & Economics, IMG College, and the University of Kentucky Athletics Department. The unique partnership between these three organizations results in a first-rate certification program with instruction provided by leading sports marketing academicians and practitioners. The UKSMA continues to build on the foundation that was laid for its Professional Certification Program. The first program of its kind, the Sports Marketing Professional Certification Program combines the academic experience taught in a university classroom setting with instruction from leading marketing practitioners. The Sports Marketing Professional Certification Program’s curriculum consists of intensive on-campus instruction towards strategic training and continuously updated curriculum reflecting current changes in the sports marketing industry. Using enhanced competitiveness, the Sport Marketing Professional Certification Program assures the workforce will be able to adapt to a dynamic work environment, thus, providing a competitive advantage for sport marketing practitioners. The world-renowned IMG Professional Development Program Academy’s are ranked among the best in the nation. Since its inception, IMG Academies’ students and trainees have produced 131 All-Stars, 63 MVP awards, 22 world championships, 5 national titles, 2 Heisman Trophies, and 11 Olympic gold medals. Having the world’s largest, most advanced multi-sport training complex, it’s training and coaching programs are dedicated to developing the complete athlete/ more knowledgeable coach. Today the campus attracts more than 20,000 athletes from 100 countries annually. Former professional athletes are now fulltime coaches, passing on their athletic and lifelong experiences as teaching tools to the next generation. The academies consist of the IMG Bollettieri Tennis Academy, IMG Leadbetter Gold Academy, IMG Madden Football Academy, IMG Baseball, Basketball, Lacrosse, and Soccer Academies-all supported by the IMG Pendleton School and IMG Performance Institute’s multi-faceted eight training disciplines. The first discipline is physical conditioning, which focuses on developing sport-specific strength, power, movement, speed, agility, flexibility, and conditioning. The second discipline is mental conditioning which builds skills including confidence, focus and determination to help athletes reach their goals and compete at there best on any given day. The third discipline is nutrition which optimizes personal nutrition to meet high-level lifestyle and sport demands, with topics including optimal everyday nutrition, eating plans to meet specific sport demands, body composition, energy balance and body weight issues, dietary supplements and hydration strategies. The fourth discipline is life skills, which educate athletes on the skills, and characteristics that develop high-performance habits in both life and sports. The fifth discipline is communication by came on. This discipline focuses on improving awareness, social interaction and overall communication through improvisation and role-playing exercises. The sixth discipline is athletic body management. This discipline focuses on rejuvenating the body through the use of massage and physical therapy while reducing the potential of injury through corrective exercises, allowing for optimal training. The seventh discipline is college planning and placement. This discipline is an academic coaching program designed around a systematic approach to meet requirements of the ever-changing competitive world of college bound student-athletes. The eighth and final discipline is vision training. This discipline focuses on developing an athlete’s eye muscles and visual system to enhance hand-eye coordination, peripheral vision, reaction time and depth perception. These disciplines directly reflect the core values of the entire IMG Corporation, not only focusing on athlete development, but overall quality of life. Each academy specializes in its specific sport for portions of the program, but the name of the lead academy tells it all; Professional Development Program. These development programs are primarily based to develop athletic abilities but it’s also about developing to be a professional in life. Discipline’s four, five and seven prove this statement, The IMG Performance Institute attracts world-class coaches who bring with them modern cutting-edge practices. These programs are geared towards existing professionals who have the desire for greater knowledge and understanding in one or multiple performance disciplines. Coaching development has been broken down into two core themes, the science of coaching and the art of coaching. The science of coaching is coaching systems that are based on systematic methodologies and robust evidence based practices. By shadowing and working alongside IMG’s coaches, participants in its coaching programs have the opportunity to improve their technical insight and knowledge of leading edge practices in coaching. Coaches will learn about both IMG’s coaching methodology and philosophy to help athletes reach their potential and achieve outstanding results. In addition, coaches have the opportunity to shadow and learn how IMG works and coaches in the following areas: Total athlete training, (athletic, movement, character, career), measurement systems, creating a performance environment, integrating of support staff and specialists in the coaching process, high-performing teams, athlete assessment and profiling, and in-depth training in speed, power, agility, endurance, regeneration, injury prevention/rehabilitation, nutrition, vision, mental conditioning and communicating. The art of coaching is more than just knowing about best practice and the latest research. IMG’s experts give coaches deeper knowledge of providing insight into IMG’s experience of working with a broad spectrum of athletes, and the lessons IMG has learned in working with some of the world’s most talented athletes. IMG tailor’s each program to specific needs as a coach. Popular models for coaches include: The Self-aware coach, Coach-athlete communication, the human qualities of being a coach, the coaching mindset, mental toughness for coaches, creating the performance environment, developing a presence, managing one-to-one feedback. And using body language and non-verbal cues in coaching. (Academy-IMG, 2011) The reason why IMG is so successful is its dedication toward employee training and development programs. Whether it’s through a formal education programs or coaching symposiums, training can increase knowledge and help develop skills to becoming a more reliable and trustworthy employee. As Kelli Hillard said, employees are truly the most valuable assets a company can possess. Being that our economy is in a recession, the ‘unnecessary’ expenses to provide employee training seems illogical, whereas it’s the other way around. The American Society for Training and Development found that firms that spend more than a market average on training have a total stockholder return that is 45% higher than firms that spend the market average. In the ever-expanding technology revolution, not only is training necessary but also a college degree is necessary for the evolving jobs. By the year 2018, 62% of jobs will require a college education and more than half of those will require at least a bachelor’s degree. The potential benefits for employee development could include increased job satisfaction and moral among employees. Training can build comradery and trusting relationships amongst employees, leading to an increase in efficiency in processes, which results into financial gain. Another issue to keep in mind is the capacity for employees to adopt new technologies and methods without proper training. I can nearly guarantee this, it will be more cost efficient to implement training on new technology immediately as opposed to having production and efficiency decrease along with morale. Training in itself can also enhance a company’s image, such as conducting business ethics training or environmental awareness training. Risk management and/or sexual harassment training can potentially save a company a great deal of time and recourses by outlying what is appropriate and what is not in the workplace. This category of training can prevent a potential workplace disaster through strict clarification on what is sexual harassment and what’s not. Whether its training to create better knowledge for a certain service or training on what not to do, it is still impertinent in all workplaces. Bibliography 1. (2010). Img.services>training and academies. Retrieved from www.imgworld.com/services/training-and-academies.aspxNCAA. 2. (2011). Ncaa-img basketball. Retrieved from http://www.ncaa.com/sports/m-baskbl/champpage/m-baskbl-div1-index.html 3. Why IMG. (2011). Why img college. Retrieved from http://www.imgcollege.com/ot/imgc-ot.html 4. UK. (2010). Uk sports mkt academy. Retrieved from http://www.sportsmarketing.org/ 5. Training 2011 top 125. (2011, Febuary 8). Retrieved from http://www.trainingmag.com/article/training-reveals-rankings-2011-top-125 6. Academy-IMG. (2011). Img academies. Retrieved from http://www.imgacademies.com 7. CLC. (2011). Clc pub.. Retrieved from http://www.clc.com/clcweb/publishing.nsf/Content/Home.html