MindLeaders: Fueling the Learning Revolution

What if Learning Was Free?

A few weeks ago Seth Godin blogged that if TV ads were free, people would have learned to do advertising by simply doing it. Without that barrier to entry, people would just do advertising instead of talking about it and obsessing about it because it’s expensive.

Harold Jarche picked up on the parallels that can be drawn with corporate learning.  Instructional design systems and curriculum development is expensive. It takes time and energy. And once created, no one wants to do it again, or make significant changes to it.

Technology is removing barriers to entry in every industry and discipline. Internet technologies make distributing information to lots of people cheap. Want to engage with a community and ask for their feedback? Consider a focused blog directed at that audience. Want to build a collaborative group? Enter social media platforms. Didn’t get the results you wanted? Try, try again. After all, in the brave new world of technology learning really can be free.

But here’s the trick. You’ll have to let go of some control. You’ll have to facilitate and be a conduit, rather than a director. This can be scary, but it can work. Need proof? Take the Work Literacy site which helps teach Web 2.0 technology to learning professionals. Cost to develop: Zero. Time to create: A week. Content updates: Courtesy of participants. So there’s the proof that it can work. (Check out the site, it’s got some great content.)

Oh and get out there and start experimenting! If it doesn’t work the way you’d hoped, try something else. But stop waiting. The time is now.

What do you think? How has technology removed the barriers to entry for learning? Are you experimenting enough?

Voting is open for the Best of Elearning Awards

The voting booths are open for the "Best of Elearning" 2009 awards from Elearning! Magazine (also a fine publication to sign up for if you're in the learning field). These award nominations are based completely on public voting.

[The magnanimous, community-building part:] This is a great chance for your voice to be heard and to nominate your favorite elearning products and companies.

[The self-serving horn-tooting part:] And if you're a MindLeaders client, I sure hope you'll remember us for the content and LMS categories!

Voting closes this Wednesday, September 30th. Visit the ballot to submit your thoughts. You can vote for as many or as few categories as you wish.

Using Talent Management and L&D to Meet Strategic Goals

In their September newsletter, Bersin and Associates featured a case study on one of our local companies – Nationwide Insurance. In 2007, Nationwide decided to migrate most of its applications from a COBOL/mainframe environment to a Java/web services model. Needless to say, this had huge implications for the organization and its IT staff. Nationwide had to decide whether to buy, build or rent the capabilities it needed. The case study is about their decisions and how things worked out. Here’s what I loved about it:

• Nationwide decided to build their talent pool’s skills to match their needs, rather than lay off most of the staff that had served it well to that point.
• Nationwide took the time to set clear goals for the program, including:
• Executive sponsorship from both IT and HR branches of the organization
• Incorporating both technical and business process training in their program
• Determining performance results, best practices and work environment
• Evaluating the appropriate mix of classroom training, coaching, practice, and informal learning
• Interested associates had to apply and be selected to participate in the training program.
• Communications about the program were frequent and in many forms such as e-mail, newsletters, meetings, etc. They emphasized the future direction of the company and the intensive nature of the training.
• They got great results! 70% of program grads were at expectations for their salary band within 3 months; 100% within 9 months. Better yet, all hiring managers would recommend the program based upon the quality of the results.

As Nationwide has demonstrated, properly managing your talent pool allows for the flexibility to meet the changing demands of the marketplace. This is certainly an instance where HR, L&D, and management goals were clearly aligned to meet a company’s strategic needs. The case study is available to anyone who wants to read it for a limited time. Go out and take a look!

Keep up with ADA, FMLA, and H1N1 news with our latest courses

MindLeaders has released 27 new elearning courses, with a special focus on the latest in human resources regulations and flu health.

We've updated the "Managing within the Law" series to include the latest regulations for ADA and the FMLA. And for those who subscribe to our Health and Safety package, new courses have been added about the Swine Flu and the H1N1 pandemic.

All of our newest courses are in the following series. These courses are automatically added to your course lists for everyone who has course package subscriptions.

• CompTIA Network+ 2009 (N10-004)
• Managing Within the Law: Complying with ADA Requirements as of 2009
• Managing Within the Law: Family and Medical Leave Act as of 2009
• Visio 2007
• Health and Safety
• Swine Flu
• Pandemic: H1N1 Flu
• Identity Theft: What is it?
• Respirators: Change Schedules
• The Ozone Standard
• Powered Industrial Trucks - Part 1
• Powered Industrial Trucks - Part 2
• Powered Industrial Trucks - Part 3
• Shift Workers
• Boilers

Enjoy the latest, and as always, please let us know any questions or requests!

Training Investment Predicts Future Stock Price

Banks are in the training news again. Last week I wrote about a WSJ article that said banks are losing top performers because they are failing to develop them. This week an article on Workforce.com discusses new research which shows a link between training budgets and future stock price.

The research was focused on banks, and their performance relative to their peers. Though the data set was relatively small, “it appears training expenditures were a very strong predictor of stock price even during last year’s market turbulence.” One of the examples cited was Wachovia. Wachovia cut training per employee by more than half from 2006 to 2007. In 2008, stock prices fell 95 percent prior to the merger with Wells Fargo.

Tying training investment to future business performance has always been tricky. Why should training investment yield better stock price? Improved business performance is one reason. Another theory is that training investment is reflective of overall management focus and direction. Those that invest are interested in long-term performance; those that don’t are only interested in short-term gains. Hmmm. Food for thought.

Retain Your Top Performers

The WSJ ran an interesting article earlier this week about banks that are failing to train and develop their top performers quickly enough. The result? Those performers are jumping ship. This is bad news for the banks. After surviving such a severe crisis, they are going to need all their talent to make good decisions and start growing again.

My guess is banks made a classic mistake in slashing their training budgets. Crisis is when companies have to evolve rapidly, be flexible, and perform at their best. What helps them do that? Training and development programs. Beyond the performance benefits, training and development programs also help build employee loyalty and increase retention levels. Employees know and appreciate when a company takes time to invest in their skills and career path. And the employees who are likely to appreciate it the most are the ones you want to hang on to. Those top performers who out-perform average performers by 40-50%.

Now that the economy is showing more signs of life, top performers stuck in companies with poor talent management practices are starting to look around. They remember how their company behaved when the going got tough, and are prepared to act. Unfortunately for companies, they are also the group with the best chance to make a change, even in a tough labor market.

What do you think? Has your company slashed training budgets? Has it made a difference in your retention levels?

Do You Know Your Company's Values?

I’m sure you’ve heard the advice before. Know your company’s strategy and then tie goals for your learning and development program to that strategy. Part of the problem with this advice is that strategy sounds lofty. It seems hard to quantify. It can be intimidating to discuss. And let’s face it. A lot of companies can’t really articulate their strategy. At least not in an easily digestible format that can be tied to measurable goals.

Maybe a better way to look at this problem is to think about what your corporate values are. What’s the philosophy of daily operations? To be the low cost provider? To be the top rated customer service provider? To be the most efficient? To have the highest quality? Look around and see what values are acted out day after day in the organization. That’s the company’s philosophy…and the default strategy.

Different corporate philosophies create differing goals for learning and development…and talent management…and pretty much everything else. For example, if the goal is to be low cost, then training customer service staff to provide the highest quality (and most expensive) service is contrary to company philosophy. A better approach would be to teach techniques that keep customer service calls short and to the point.

Try to align to your learning and development goals to advance company values. And open conversations about schizophrenic behavior like saying the goal is to be tops in customer service and then putting in incentives to reward those who spend the least amount of time per customer service call. That’s one way for learning and development programs to add a lot of value and be part of company strategy.

What do you think? Do you know your company’s values?

The flu is coming! Trainers to the rescue!

Swine flu - pardon me, H1N1 - is coming around for an encore performance. Sadly, our hometown just saw its first fatality from it, and lots of dire predictions and warnings are being made for the next few months.

Gary Woodill at Brandon Hall wrote an article today about some of the best resources he's found about preventing and fighting H1N1. All of these provide plenty of good information and great tips. Within the CDC's site, there's a page of flu resources for businesses, including a PowerPoint presentation and a couple of posters.

But I don't see anything yet that provides a nice, easy-to-read-while-standing-in-front-of-the-coffee-machine summary of what to do if you're feeling sniffly this morning or you've noticed that your cubicle neighbor is coughing a lot today. There's a big need out there for learning professionals to step up to. How can we help? What can we do to quell fear and maybe to keep our offices healthier?

• Let's be the ones to demonstrate just-in-time learning (health job aids?) by putting hand sanitizer at critical spots: office kitchens, reception desks, coffee and water stations.
• Does your office have a policy for what to do if people are sick, how long people with an illness (H1N1 or unidentified sniffles) should stay home, how to notify the company if H1N1 does arrive? If not, start a conversation about preparing. If yes, how can we help make sure people know and remember those policies? As we know better than most, one email does not stick. Let's keep reinforcing the messages so that people don't forget it the minute someone sneezes and the whole office thinks it's the end of the world.
• The CDC has some posters that can be put up in strategic spots, like maybe bathrooms, or the opportunity is ripe to build your own Killer Training Aid. (Side note: does anyone else think the "employees must wash their hands" posters in public bathrooms do more to make customers worry than to remind employees?)

What else can we do? Trainers, teachers, and organizers, unite! How can we fight flu FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) with facts and... prevention? (I couldn't think of another word that started with F.)

Check out the new MindLeaders.com!

MindLeaders has an all-new web site! We've been working hard to rebuild the site's content, look, and navigation from the ground up. Our most important goals were:

• Making everything easier: All of our company's text has been rewritten and the site's design totally rebuilt. Our primary goal was making everything simple, clear, and clean.

• Easy access to our resources: We've dedicated a top menu choice to breaking out all the information we offer: this blog, podcasts, news & events, demos, white papers (including the competency roadmaps), and our new company brochures. We want to offer value to the entire learning community, whether you're one of our clients or not, and we've given it featured space on the site.

• Easy access to support: We're proud of the top-notch service we offer to our clients, so we've spotlighted in the top menu all the ways to access our technical support and professional services and learning platform integration staff.

• Better search: The search function in our new site has been juiced up with some help from Google. Look for any term you're interested in, and you'll get side-by-side results of the content you'll find in our web site and in our course catalog.

We hope the site looks great and functions like a dream for you. If you have any comments or ideas for improvement, please drop a comment or an email to let us know! We still have plans for lots more to come!