MindLeaders: Fueling the Learning Revolution

How to work with IT departments on new technology training

The cover article in this week's issue of Computerworld is "IT's Top Five Training Mistakes."  (This link is currently returning an error on Computerworld's web site, but hopefully they'll have it fixed soon.) For those of us in the training field, it's mostly a "No kidding, Sherlock," return to the basics, but it's an interesting five-minute walk in IT's shoes, especially if your IT department handles some of their own training.

The article's top five mistakes are:

1. Training is an afterthought.
2. You're out of tune with your audience.
3. You didn't follow standard training models.
4. You're training out of business context.
5. You neglected to forge business partnerships.

The story gives lots of due credit to the training professionals that are hopefully in place in IT departments and their companies. If you're one of those pros, this article might give you a nice touchstone with the folks who are planning new software rollouts. The article advises the IT folks multiple times to come talk to their trainers, but the mountain can also go to Muhammad: maybe this will give you some ideas on the things your IT people need to hear and/or might respond to the most.

What lessons have you learned during new hardware or software rollouts in your organization? How did the coordination with IT/MIS go?

Is Boomer retirement as scary as it seems?

To go with my previous article about Baby Boomer retirement, here's the monkey wrench I'm going to toss at Conventional Wisdom: is the sky really falling? Is a massive Baby Boomer retirement really about to cause a huge gap in workers? According to the US Census Bureau, here are the 2006 percentages of population by age group:

Birth Years	%age of population
1991-1987	7.2%
1986-1982	7%
1981-1977	6.8%
1976-1972	7.1%
1966-1962	7.6%
1961-1957	7.6%
1956-1952	6.8%
1951-1947	6%
1946-1942	4.5%

Baby Boomers, from 1946-1964, account for about 28.7% of the population
Generation X, from 1965-1982, are 17.7% of the population
Generation Y, from 1980-1994, hold at least 14.2% of the population, with more yet to count

That does look panic-inducing-ly out of balance on the face of it. But this was the first time I really paid attention to the years. The exact years that define "generations" are constantly being debated, but taking these as approximates, boomers span 18 years, X covers 7 years, Ys 14 years. Boomers cover many more years, so it's almost expected that there's more of them.

Broken into five-year pieces like this chart, the rate of workers reaching retirement age twitches up 1.5% between the 64-year-olds (1946-1942) and the 59-year-olds (1951-1947), and then holds fairly steady. It's an increase, but is it really that much?

I'm not suggesting that many organizations won't see a lot of retirements in the next few years. But I am suggesting that boomers are going to retire gradually, over that same 18-year-span (and more!) that they entered the workforce, and that we have adequate incoming people to cover those retirements. What I'm suggesting is that we clarify the focus of the baby boomer retirement discussion: is the problem less in the number of workers that we have, and more about the change in mindsets and experiences of the workers? I think the departure of the Baby Boomers and the arrival of Generation Y don't require radical changes in our knowledge management and training programs, but it will put more focus on them than there used to be and make us all sharpen up our game.

Who will work after the Baby Boomers?

Much kerfuffle is going on these days about the baby boomer retirement, and how we will fill those positions. The LA Times put this on the front page today with a story about the upcoming needs for skilled workers.

Generation Y is usually mentioned hand-in-hand with the baby boomer retirement, the baby boomer echo that is bringing lots of new people into the workforce. This LA Times article focused on a point I hadn't considered before, that the influx of immigrants can also serve as a new pool of workers to fill in as the baby boomers retire.

In either case, the main point for the training community is the same: lots of new workers are coming, whether young or from other countries (or both!), that are looking to join the workforce and build careers. Their needs will be slightly different, but with the same focus on building up the business skills they'll need to hit the workforce running. Maybe instead of focusing on retirements, as trainers, we should be focused on the orientations and office skills we'll be teaching.

Doing some research for this blog post stirred up some interesting statistics - I'll share those in my next post.

How to Get Excellent Data on Learning Tool Usage

The eLearning Guild sent me a notice about a report that they've produced on the usage levels of various learning methods - instructor-led training, e-learning, mentoring, blogs, podcasts, you name it.

The report was really just a lot of screen shots of the tool that's constantly available on their web site, but it was the perfect reminder to me to do some diving into that tool. If, like me, you haven't visited in a while, or you've never been, check them out: http://www.elearningguild.com/360_reports/.

These reports give you real-time results on the surveys of all guild members about their learning tool usage. You can parse that data out by industry, company size, region, and more. It's an excellent way to take a look at how your company's training programs compare to the world at large or in your sector, to see how your blend of training compares with the recipes that others have come up with.

Strengthening Your Human Infrastructure

The 4-day GTC West 2008- The Conference on California's Future convenes May 12-16 at the Sacramento Convention Center. GTC West is the largest technology expo for government professionals in California. It exposes the government sector to the thousands of offerings of hundreds of vendors in key-concern areas including; health & human services, public safety, transportation, 'Green' California initiatives and education.

MindLeaders has served local and state governments for 27 years with e-Learning and organizational development programs that yield measurable savings and returns-on-investment. We help government clients administer and promote their learning and training agendas with the same centralized, turnkey administration platform, marketing support and up-to-date courseware library that our private sector clients enjoy.

We'll be in attendance in the exhibit hall along the 'Education Place' aisle, Booth #505. The theme of our booth presentation is, "Strengthening Your Human Infrastructure". Stop by and visit us! Conference details may be seen at www.cal-future.com or email Joe Moscato or Eben Beierle at MindLeaders.