MindLeaders: Fueling the Learning Revolution

ASTD BEST Awards now accepting applications

Got a great learning culture at your company? Want to show off your learning programs and get some independent recognition to show what a great job you and your team are doing? ASTD has opened up submissions for their BEST Awards of 2010.

The BEST Awards "recognize organizations that demonstrate enterprise-wide success as a result of employee learning and development." The application form covers information that, if you don't already know it, is excellent data to gather about your organization and how your learning programs contribute to the whole.

If you're a MindLeaders client, we are happy to help provide information about how your elearning usage is contributing to your overall program. Contact your Account Executive or your Professional Services Associate to get all the data you'll need about your MindLeaders metrics.

Do you plan to apply for a BEST Award? What do you think should be some of the most important measurements of learning success? Let us know in your comments!

When is simulation/game training appropriate?

Many learning professionals are still allergic to the word "game." They'll call them "serious games" if they must, but they tend to avoid the word. And virtual "Second Life"-like environments get even more scorn heaped upon them. Too new, too flashy, too untested.

All learning has its place. No learning method works everywhere. The real trick to quality training is to identify which training method (and you should be considering ALL of them) is really the best for what is being taught - and usually, the answer is multiple-choice, because the best training is going to be delivered in multiple vehicles.

This soapbox came to me last week as I was watching an old episode of Cops. It spent a few minutes following a policeman as he was trained in how to best react when a situation suddenly turns violent and the officer must respond with deadly force. The way the officer was being trained in this? He was in a basement-looking shooting range with an older officer, who was holding a buzzer to signal when the policeman should draw his weapon and fire at paper bulls-eyes (and not miss).

Granted, when this episode was shot, training games and simulations were still in their infancy. But as I watched, I couldn't help thinking what a poor job that training program was doing to prepare that policeman for the situations he would be facing. If there was ever a training need that screamed for a really good game, the more immersive the better, that was it.

Make the training fit the crime. What will best prepare the student for the situation they're being trained for? Consider everything. And don't forget that games, like every type of training, aren't all-or-nothing. You don't have to get Second Life licenses for the whole company. There's a whole spectrum of games to consider for reinforcing learning. When we develop courses at MindLeaders, we most frequently use in-depth simulations for technical training and for learning how to use software programs. We build role-playing exercises into business skills courses and include flash card and concentration-matching games in just about any topic that requires learning terms, jargon, or statistics.

Games don't have to be high-tech and expensive, they can be as simple as challenging students to a scavenger hunt in a product or place they need to learn about, or building a crossword puzzle out of facts and terms they need to know. There are lots of free or nearly-free crossword puzzle-building programs out there; I've used Crossword Compiler for $50 to produce some great puzzles for training projects.

I also have a challenge to companies that specialize in in-depth, virtual-reality-level simulations and games: make your local and state emergency services crews your pro bono testers. Judging by that episode of Cops that I watched, they could use some serious technology infusion into their training programs!

Comparing learning industry reports

'Tis the season for industry reports on how the learning field has done for the year. I'm an industry report addict; to me, they're the grandaddy of data collections and I eat up the results like candy.

I spend the most time with the ASTD State of the Industry Report and the Bersin & Associates Corporate Learning Factbook, and some of the most valuable insights I find come from comparing what these two different sources conclude.

I'm going to show a sampling of what I've found this year, but have to include one big caveat. Bersin's report was just released and covers 2009. ASTD's report, released in November, is for the year 2008. (What's up with that, ASTD?) So the difference in years could be impacting results, especially in economic volatility like we're seeing.

With that said, time for some fun with numbers. It starts out a little grim, but stick with me:

Learning hours used per employee

• ASTD: 36
• Bersin: 12

This is the biggest discrepancy between the two reports, and it's a doozy. I can make my own educated guess about a number, which I'll go into below, but I sure wish these two sources could come a little closer to a consensus.

Expenditure on training per employee

• ASTD: $1,068
• Bersin: $714

Another big gap between these two numbers (and once again, with ASTD coming to a much higher conclusion than Bersin & Associates). Part of it can be accounted for by the difference in years: Bersin found an 11% drop in spending between 2008 and 2009. But that only makes up about a third of the difference.

Cost per learning hour used

• ASTD: $52
• Bersin: $52

Ahh, now that's more like it! A result that both agencies agree upon.

Percentage of formal hours used via elearning

• ASTD: 19%
• Bersin: 20%

Another stat that have beautifully similar results. And this gives me a tool to try to take a MindLeaders stab at the "Learning hours used per employee" statistic. When I combine all of our users, and if elearning is 20% of the total learning that employees take, that creates an average of 17.5 training hours used per employee. A bit bigger than Bersin's number (but our results consistently show that MindLeaders students take more elearning than the industry averages), but much closer to the Bersin number than the ASTD number.

Most popular training program topics

• ASTD: Profession/industry-specific, IT/systems, Management/supervisory
• Bersin: Profession/industry-specific, Management/supervisory, Mandatory/compliance

This tally takes the most numbers-fudging from me, since I'm comparing only the categories that both groups included in their surveys, but within that sub-group, the consistency between the two reports is interesting.

I highly recommend both reports for being chock-full of interesting information, way beyond these few tidbits I'm highlighting here. What do you think is the most interesting part of these kinds of industry-wide surveys? Is there one you find useful beyond these two?

What Will You Stop Doing Next Year?

It’s that time of year. 2009 is coming to a close and 2010 is just getting started. The holidays are coming to a close and the urge to make New Year’s resolutions is kicking in. What are yours? I’m not talking about personal resolutions here, but resolutions for your business and your learning program. What goals do you have for the coming year? How will you achieve them? What will you measure as proof of accomplishment? What are your deadlines?

Some common goals I’ve seen include:

• Increasing participation in learning program initiatives
• Reducing costs and increasing business value
• Identifying and developing leadership talent
• Building a corporate culture of learning
• Implementing talent management initiatives
• Starting or revamping pay for performance programs

All of these goals are good ones. And most of these goals are biggies; one-liners that are easy to say, but much more difficult to accomplish. Make sure your goals have clear, actionable steps tied to deadline dates. Know what you will measure to demonstrate achievement. Get agreement from management on the goal, deadline and measurement. It’s vital to demonstrating business value and ensuring that your learning program is regarded as successful.

In the midst of all that, don’t forget to stop doing those things that aren’t working at all or aren’t working as well as they should. To take on new tasks and goals, you have to give up what’s not working, even if it was a great idea that just didn’t work out as you’d hoped. We all have limited time and attention spans. Don’t waste those precious resources on things that don’t directly contribute to achieving your goals for 2010.

What are your goals for 2010? How will you accomplish them? And what will you stop doing next year? Tell us! We’d love to hear from you.

And Happy New Year!!

CompTIA A+ 2009, Oracle 11g, and computer introduction courses just released

MindLeaders has added 55 new courses to our catalog in the following topics:

• CompTIA A+ 2009 Essentials (220-701)
• CompTIA A+ 2009 Practical Application (220-702)
• Oracle Database 11g Administration I (1Z0-052)
• Oracle Database 11g SQL Fundamentals I (1Z0-051)
• PC Applications

CompTIA's new edition of their A+ certification, the industry-leading vendor-neutral certification for computer support technicians, replaces the previous four tests with these two required tests (220-701 and 220-702), and now covers technologies like Windows Vista, Bluetooth, and Blu-Ray.

Oracle Database 11g tests 1Z0-051 and 1Z0-052 are the two tests required to become an Oracle Database 11g Administrator Certified Associate, the core certification to prove competency in the latest Oracle database.

Both of these new sets of study guide courses are covered by our MindLeaders Certification Guarantee: Anyone who passes our study guide courses will pass their certification test or get their money back!

The new PC Applications series introduces new computer users to getting around on their computer and using the most common applications. The content is based on our International Computer Driving License content, but for people who aren't looking for a certification, just an introduction to their computer systems. The courses cover:

• Concepts of Information Technology (IT)
• Using the Computer and Managing Files
• Word Processing
• Spreadsheets
• Database
• Presentation
• Information and Communication

Everyone who has MindLeaders subscription should be seeing these courses in their course list now. Please let me know any questions you have or ideas for further courses you'd like to see!

Trends to Watch in 2010

Now that the year is winding down, it’s time to talk about the emerging trends in HR and L&D. Josh Bersin just finished a research member roundtable discussing the big issues that are emerging in 2010. I’ve listed the top five items he and his roundtable came up with, along with some commentary.

1. Diversity as a talent management strategy – Bersin has a client who studied the relationship between diversity and engagement and proved there is a direct link between a more diverse workforce and a more engaged and high-performing team.
2. Leadership assessment as a core component of leadership strategy – Leadership development is a pressing issue at most organizations. Do you know who in your organization has the highest leadership potential?  (Hint: It’s not just the people fulfilling a current leadership role.) HR has to find a way to effectively identify high potential future leaders so they can be developed and retained.
3. Career development isn’t synonymous with promotion – Career development means working with teams and managers to improve performance. And promotion isn’t the only way to move. Lateral moves, special projects, and development all present opportunities to build skills and develop a career.
4. Build skills in HR and L&D – In focusing on the rest of the organization, it’s easy to lose sight of the need to build skills and capabilities within L&D and HR. Both organizations are going through major transformations and team members need to be fully trained and engaged.
5. First line management is the weakest link – Even after leadership development there are still going to be supervisors that do not “honor or understand their role as manager.” Identify and support these folks in better management habits. (Remember they probably learned their bad habits from managers they worked for.) If you cannot reform, consider removing them from the role. These are the troopers that make your organization do well, and it’s kinder (and better for the organization) to remove them now rather than later.

You can read thefull text of Josh Bersin’s article for more information. Other trends I see coming next year are:

• Continued integration of L&D and Talent Management – This is a big challenge for HR and L&D teams to merge their operations, technology, and processes. Done well it can yield big business results.
• Budgets won’t be as tight in 2010 – After the squeeze of the great recession organizations will begin to loosen the purse strings, even if it’s just a little bit. However, L&D organizations will have to do better providing metrics and business cases for their services. Usage metrics alone aren’t going to cut it much longer.

What other trends do you see emerging? How do you think 2010 will go? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.

Front-line Leadership Development Drives Business Performance

Think leadership development has the most impact when it’s focused at the executive level? Think again. A new study from Aberdeen Group highlights the importance of front-line and mid-level leadership development to overall business performance. The study surveyed executives from over 525 organizations, including 189 that already have formal L&D programs in place specifically for front-line and mid-level managers.

Front line managers are being squeezed. They must deliver business results, which is itself a big task. And now, as the need for retaining key talent increases, they are increasingly being held accountable for key talent management metrics. This shift is reflected in the areas they note of most concern, including the need to capture organizational knowledge before leaders leave the organization, high potential leaders leaving the organization to advance more quickly, and the lack of enough experienced leaders in the market forcing the organization to grow leaders internally.

Many front-line and mid-level managers struggle to achieve all of their goals. However, when L&D can intervene to help managers achieve both business and people results the impact to the overall organization can be huge.

·     Best in class companies generate 35% year over year improvement in manager ratings, 27% year over year improvement in key employee turnover, and 69% of employees rating themselves as “highly engaged.”

·     By contrast laggard companies generate only 2% year over year improvement in manager ratings, key employee turnover worsened by 6% year over year, and only 22% of employees rate themselves as “highly engaged.”

To achieve these results, L&D must align their development efforts with organizational strategy, and define the skills needed to execute that strategy. Key skills for managers include people development skills, how to give and receive feedback, and how to give performance reviews. In addition, executives must be involved in developing future leaders within the organization. Best in class companies integrate their learning programs with both performance management and succession management. And finally, clear performance metrics have to be use to evaluate both managers and the learning program.

What kind of metrics? Well, as I’ve discussed in some past blog posts usage metrics are not sufficient to prove L&D benefits. Some of the most important metrics best in class companies are using include management business objectives achieved, retention of key management talent, customer satisfaction and employee engagement. Obviously in addition to measuring performance, the L&D program must be promoted to managers, have a well-defined process to identify and address specific knowledge gaps, have established competencies for each level of management, and have a process to identify and develop high potential leadership talent early in their career.

For more information you can read the entire report from Aberdeen Group called Learning and Development: Arming Front-line and Mid-level Managers to Deliver People and Performance Results.

What do you think? Are front-line and mid-level managers given enough L&D support to perform the tasks vital to the organization?

Pressure to Reduce Costs Revealed in Survey

Expertus and TrainingIndustry.com surveyed training leaders about their learning and development program. Questions included plans to reduce costs, efficiency gains from their LMS, plans for customer training, metrics used to measure learning, and how marketing is used to improve learning and development program utilization.

The surveys were completed by training leaders from a wide variety of organizations and represent a number of different industries. The results were compiled into six reports titled the “Training Efficiency Masters Series.”

Key finding include:

• Over 90% of those surveyed felt some pressure to reduce costs, and more than half said that the pressure was “significant” or “intense.”
• One of the most popular technology investments is migrating from ILT to e-learning or blended delivery.
• Cost savings are most likely to being reinvested into improving content quality (65%), improving analytics (61%) and upgrading technology such as LMS or authoring systems (61%).
• Most efficiency gains from LMS have been from employees’ ability to find and register for training, tracking compliance training, and lowering administrative costs.
• The two biggest obstacles in using the LMS were lack of integration with other technology systems and inflexible reporting capabilities.
• Nearly one half of managers involved with customer training felt their budgets would increase. By contrast only one third though employee training budgets would increase.
• Most agreed that customer training is revenue producing, but that the number one expected benefit of customer training was improved customer satisfaction.
• Fewer than 25% of respondents are using business outcome or ROI metrics. Most are using usage metrics such as course completion, registration numbers, and participant’s reaction to the training.
• E-mail blasts are the most effective marketing activity followed by phone calls and management recommendations. Most respondents don’t track their marketing reach or effectiveness.
• Over 93% of respondent’s organizations have learning portals. Within the next two years 45% say they will upgrade their existing portal and 14% say they’ll launch a new one.
• Half of respondents said including informal learning technologies in their learning programs is “critically” important.

For more information, you can read the executive summary and see the detail of each report in the “Training Efficiency Master Series.”  

What do you think? Do these results match with your experiences?

U.S. E-Learning Market Predicted to Grow by 7.4%

Ambient Insight, LLC released their forecast and analysis of the U.S. market for self-paced e-Learning yesterday. And the news is good. E-learning was a $16.7 billion market in 2009 and is expected to grow at a five-year compound annual growth rate of 7.4 percent and reach $23.8 billion by 2014.

As most of us in the industry can attest, corporate expenditures in 2009 were down 5.8 percent from 2008. However with the recession starting to enter into a period of recovery, corporate buyers are expected to be the top consumers of e-learning from 2009-2014. The downside of the corporate market is that there is intense downward pressure on price and margins.

Other findings from the report include:

• Healthcare has the highest predicted rate of demand growth, followed by preK-12 and higher education.
• Non-IT content, hosted platforms and custom content development are expected to have strong demand. IT content by contrast has falling demand.
• The market is still highly fragmented and there are lots of suppliers catering to niche needs. Very few suppliers have been able to meet the needs of multiple buying segments.
• Corporate buyers are starting to purchase social learning platforms.
• Higher education buyers are purchasing lecture capture systems that record classroom events and generate Web-based and mobile content.
• Private investment in learning technology companies spiked in 2007-2008 and is expected to continue to be strong.

For more information, you can read the executive summary of The US Market for Self-paced eLearning Products and Services: 2009-2014 Forecast and Analysis.

What do you think? Is the e-Learning market bouncing back? Are you seeing signs of market recovery? 

LMS Market Still Strong, Despite Recession

Bersin and Associates is predicting that the $850 million LMS market will continue to grow at a rate of 10 to 15 percent. This is good news for learning and development organizations. The strength in the LMS market indicates that corporations view employee development as a business driver that they are willing to invest in. Training is moving out of “nice to have” into “must have.” Finally.

In addition, informal learning and the advent of social learning networks have changed the game. More and more corporations are trying to embrace information sharing, collaboration, and harness the power of informal learning that is happening within their organizations. In some cases the LMS is a major player in facilitating this. But certainly not in all cases.

The downside to the good news is that LMS systems are still difficult to manage. They are generally complex and in some instances cost millions of dollars and take a few years to fully implement. This issue is going to get worse over the next few years. Talent management and learning management are converging, and corporations are already wishing for more interoperability between LMS systems, talent management systems, and HRIS systems.

If your organization doesn’t have an LMS yet, chances are they will be looking at one in the future. If they do, ensure that there are clear goals for what functionality is important to the organization. Is it customizable reporting? Is it simply to serve up e-learning? Is it to provide an internal social network? Be clear about what is needed, and then assess vendors to determine if they have the potential to meet those needs.

What do you think? Is your company assessing or implementing an LMS system this year? What features are most important for your organization?