MindLeaders: Fueling the Learning Revolution

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.)

Inspiration sites: Visualizing information

Today I'm just posting a couple of "cool site" links to check out. A well-designed graphic can pack tons more information than a dense paragraph of text, and a lot more people will take in that information when it's presented visually than wading through pure text.

The course designers at MindLeaders spend a lot of time building powerful graphics for our courses, and all of us could use inspiration when it's time to build a presentation or teach a topic. These are two of my favorite sites for that inspiration:

FlowingData compiles information graphics; the only theme to the information they're teaching is that it's being presented in spiffy charts, graphs, or infographics.

Columbus native Jessica Hagy of Indexed also produced a daily graphic o'info (usually snarky funny) and proves that we don't have to have a graphic design degree to teach with graphics.

Got any other favorite sites of neat ways to teach using visuals?

How the economic crisis is a call to action for trainers and human resources

It's a sign of how bad the economy has gotten that this weekend, when I saw friends I haven't seen in a month or two, their first question wasn't "How are you doing" or "How's the family," it was "How's your work? Is your job safe?"

The Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Speaker of the House just published this chart comparing job losses in the past three recessions. Numbers like these aren't going to make anyone feel any better.

As trainers, we're charged with not just worrying about ourselves, but with providing information that other people need, too. We're the ones who will be teaching new skills to workers who are being asked to do more duties with fewer resources. Eventually, this recession will be over and we should be ready for the next onslaught of onboarding/orientation training, too.

MindLeaders is doing some things to try to help in this economy. We have a new white paper coming that we'll be announcing later this week (stay tuned). And we've put together a new Career Shift package of courses to help people who are looking for a new job. The package includes courses on building resumes, interviewing and negotiating, managing time and selves, and building up skills in the latest Office products.

We're offering this new package to companies that have had to lay off workers to use in their severance packages, and to state agencies and resellers who can reach job-seekers directly.

What are some of the other biggest needs in today's economy that we trainers can meet? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

[Update 2/11/09: Janet Clarey has posted a version of the above chart with even more recessions tracked, all the way back to 1948. Our troubles today look no better.]