MindLeaders: Fueling the Learning Revolution

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?

Want more job satisfaction in the office? Get interesting!

Time Magazine, along with the Conference Board research group, has completed their annual survey of American job satisfaction, and the results are pretty sad. Only 45% of us are satisfied with our work, the lowest ever recorded in 22 years of surveying and part of an overall downward trend.

The part of the article that really caught my attention was what got cited as one of the top reasons for this trend: only 51% of those surveyed found their job interesting. That's a nice, juicy target for trainers and HR to hit.

We can really move that needle. We can do it directly with strong (and interesting!) training programs that get people invested in their current job and in their career path. And we can move it indirectly, too: we should be involved in the kind of stuff that makes our workplaces "interesting," that builds up teamwork and our organization's culture and helps the company communicate across all levels and silos.

"Interesting" should equal fun. It should equal confidence. It should mean that each person in the company can recite the organization's mission or vision by heart and tell you, eagerly, how the things they're doing are making that mission or vision happen.

What can we do today to help employees see the office as more "interesting"?

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!!

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?

Are Your Talent Management Practices Rooted in the Past?

The Shriver Report was released a few weeks ago. The report is extensive and examines a single question. What are the implications for men, women and families now that women make up 50 percent of all workers? And make no mistake about it. The implications are huge and we as a society, including government and business have yet to effectively deal with most of them.

Let’s start off with a few facts. I am a woman who has worked all of my adult life and some of these surprised even me.

• Women receive 57 percent of bachelor degrees and 50 percent of doctoral and professional degrees
• Women are primary breadwinners in 4 out of 10 families
• Less than 25 percent of married couples have only one spouse working to support the family

The role of women in society is shifting rapidly. Only 30 years ago women were less than a third of the workforce. Only 30 years ago approximately half of American families were traditional nuclear families with a primary breadwinner (usually the man) and a primary caregiver (usually the woman). Yet most businesses behave as though it is 30 years ago and ignore the vast changes that their workforce, both male and female, are dealing with.

Now that women are half of the workforce, the dynamics of families have changed. Both men and women are in a constant state of negotiation about who will assume childcare responsibilities, household responsibilities, and elder care responsibilities. Equal pay, flexible schedules, paid medical and family leave, comprehensive childcare policies are not “women’s issues” they are family issues that affect all workers. But don’t take my word for it. Listen to the workers who participated in the Shriver Report.

• “Men and women agree that government and business are out of touch with the realities of how most families live and work today.”
• “Over 80 percent of men and women agree that businesses that fail to adapt to the needs of modern families or risk losing good workers.”

So I ask you again. Are your talent management practices rooted in the past? Before you answer no, take a look around and examine the reality of what is happening in your workplace.

• Do you really practice equal pay for equal work?
• Do you and your managers act as though there is only one place where work happens?
• Do you and your managers believe (and behave as though) there is only one way to structure a workday?
• When is the last time you updated your family and medical leave policy?
• What kind of childcare policies do you have? When is the last time you updated them?

The answers to these questions and others like them will determine whether your company will be able to capture and capitalize on the talent that your workers bring to your organization. Those companies who can identify and truly address the shifting needs of their workers have a golden opportunity to differentiate themselves to the talent pool and steal (and hang on to) the cream of the crop.

Sales Training Drives HIgher Performance Levels

Have you trained your sales staff this year? Not product training. Not training in how to fill out their expense reports. Training in prospecting skills. Training in closing skills. If you haven’t, you are missing on an opportunity to increase your company’s performance according to a recent report released by Aberdeen Group. How much of an opportunity? Best in class companies experience:

• Over 80 percent of sales reps meeting their annual quota (compared to 65% for average companies)
• Average deal size/contract value increasing by 7% year over year (compared to average companies which had a flat deal size year to year)
• Average annual revenue increasing 11% year over year (compared to 2% decrease for average companies)

Best in class companies deploy training that focuses on what sales reps say and do to create perceived customer value to create these results. (Not just how to calculate quota or track number of sales appointments.) These companies have processes for:

• Sharing collective knowledge
• Training their internal trainers
• Reinforcing training on a regular basis
• Capturing organizational best practices
• Defining competencies (and training needs) for each sales role

Best in class companies also train often and train consistently, regardless of economic conditions. In fact, they are increasing spending on sales training over the next 12 months. This makes sense. As the economy recovers, these companies want to be positioned to capitalize on the positive changes.

One of the key takeaways of is that training and reinforcement should happen frequently. This doesn’t necessarily mean continuous onsite training. Consider what content you can license, how you can train internal trainers, and how access to training content can continue to reinforce new skills.

For more information, you can read the entire report, Sales Training: Translating Tribal Selling Knowledge into Bottom-Line Productivity.