MindLeaders: Fueling the Learning Revolution

Seven ways to celebrate employee learning

ASTD is declaring next week (December 3-7) to be Employee Learning Week. They have a page of suggestions about ways to get involved, but frankly, I think they're pretty generic. Using a week as a special spotlight on learning within your organization is an excellent idea - but what, specifically, can we do to recognize and promote the learning opportunities in our organizations?

Some ideas:

• ASTD mentions recognitions, and that sounds like the best place to start. If you're the head of a training department, recognize some of the trainers in your company. Give some awards to the people who have taken the most classes, or been the most involved in learning opportunities, or to the "unofficial" trainers in your organization who teach lots of other people without ever holding an actual class.
• Can you scrape together a budget of $50? Give a gift card (gas gift cards would be very popular these days!) to the winners of a contest or two - email out to everyone a trivia quiz or other puzzle about the training programs within the organization.
• Host a lunch hour or open house and encourage people to drop by to see the training areas and hear about the latest learning programs. (This one is especially good if you're in a huge company that may have hallways people never see.)
• Go wild with your printer: print some signs and papers about your learning resources or a training program or two you'd like to spotlight. Splash a "Happy Employee Learning Week!" at the top and put these signs all over the organization.
• Talk with your IT department: can you get a special page or information on your company intranet or blog about the week and the things your organization offers to employees?
• Do some year-end wrap-up statistics to share with the company: how many courses have you offered? How many people have been trained? How many hours of online or classroom training have employees taken? What's the impact been? (These are stats that are important to have on-hand at any time - this is just a good excuse to really trumpet them.) These could also be good fodder for some of the trivia questions that are in suggestion #2.
• Ask for some success stories, some examples of training that have helped make a difference. And shout them from the rooftops.

I know there are tons of other things we could do to promote a week that reminds the company of the impact and the great benefits that employee development gives them - and helps you to remind yourself, too. What other ways could you use Employee Learning Week to really make a splash?

Tips for Better Learning Solution Deployment

This week's eWeek magazine included an article titled "25 Tips for a Better Wiki Deployment." The tips were excellent, and many of them (with the exception of some IT-specific ones) apply equally well to just about any new learning solution that you're introducing to your organization. This applies equally well to wikis, blogs, e-learning, a new library, or a series of classes.

The tips for success boil down to a few general principles:

• Use champions. Find the early adopters, get them sold on the learning program, and let them go wild. They'll be the best convincers we could have.
• Start small. Let people participate at whatever level they're comfortable in, and let them learn as they go.
• Remind people constantly of the tool you want them to use. Give them widgets and desktop reminders that put the training right at their fingertips. Direct questions to the new tool or program that will answer it.
• Give participants a little bling to reinforce their participation. Even if it's just an office trinket or a star by their name on the intranet, make participation a point of pride.

What other strategies are your favorites for selling a new learning tool or program within your organization?

'Tis the Season for Industry Reports

In the past week or so, ASTD and Training Magazine have both published their 2007 industry reports. ASTD leads with the increasing use of technology they're seeing in training programs, and Training Magazine leads with a general increase in the amount of training spending their survey has found.

The amount spent on training per employee was very close in the two surveys: $1,202 according to Training Magazine, $1,040 according to ASTD. Both find 65-70% of that being spent on instructor-led training, about 20% on online training, and the rest on other methods.

Both surveys found that the top training expenses are on profession- or industry-specific programs. ASTD's second-highest spending was on business practices, the next in both surveys was for management and supervisory training.

Lots of great information in both surveys, and taken together, they help provide a very comprehensive look at training in the world around us today. Take a look - where does your company fall into the "average" ranges and where does it differ?

--ASTD's State of the Industry Report 2007
--Training Magazine's 2007 Industry Report