Employee Training for Smaller Organizations

Free Access to H1N1 Preparation Course

Has your organization made preparations for a possible pandemic flu? Small and mid-sized companies take the biggest hit when employees are out of the office due to illness. Business Training Library is offering a free online course on Pandemic Flu Awareness to help your organization get prepared! Access the free online course at http://www.bizlibrary.com/H1N1.

Course Overview
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimated that if pandemic flu was to hit the US, approximately 200,000 to 2 million people could possibly die. The government further estimates that up to 40% of the workforce could be absent from work at the height of a pandemic wave. The potential impact on the social and economic infrastructure is enormous. It is essential for all organizations to develop their own pandemic plan. It isn't too early to start planning how you and your organization will respond to the very real threat of a flu pandemic. This course is designed to increase awareness of the pandemic threat the flu poses and to provide information that can be used to form the basis of preparedness and prevention for your organization, including information concerning the H1N1 (swine) flu.

White Paper: Why Virtual Sales Training Makes Sense Today

Getting sales reps from across the country together for sales training is not only expensive, but inefficient. Today many of us are thinking, “Sales are down we don’t have time for training.” Didn’t you say the same thing when business was booming? On the contrary, we’ve actually been overwhelmed with calls recently asking for sales training. Fortunately, the economy WILL turn around and most of us are hoping that happens sooner than later. So what better time than NOW to increase the intellectual capital of your sales reps and position your organization for rapid recovery? Your clients will start to spend money and you want to make sure they’re spending it with your organization rather than your competitors. You can provide cost-effective sales and sales management training that will help your company drive revenue and make a difference today.

Download e-Learning LIVE and Business Training Library's latest complimentary white paper, "Why Virtual Sales Training Makes Sense Today."

Chicago-Area Small Businesses: 10/22 @8:30am - Breakfast Briefing on Affordable & Sustainable Employee Training Solutions and Best Practices

Business Training Library will host a complimentary breakfast session, “Building a World-Class Training Program, Without Breaking the Budget!”, on October 22, 2009 at the Hickory Ridge Marriott in Lisle, Illinois, at 8:30 a.m. Dean Pichee, President and CEO of Business Training Library will speak at the event.

Dean will be presenting proven strategies and best practices that hundreds of Business Training Library clients have implemented, in order to affordably develop their employees’ skills for maximum performance gains and ROI. To register for this complimentary session, at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, October 22, 2009 at the Hickory Ridge Marriott in Lisle, Illinois, go to http://www.bizlibrary.com/chicago.

Click here for more information.

Employee Training Wordle

During his keynote address at our Align Conference last week in St. Louis, John Ambrose, SkillSoft VP, used a "wordle" in one of his slides. http://www.wordle.net can help you to create word clouds that make meaningful visual aides, and are just plain fun!

Here is a wordle made from words used in this blog, by simply entering in the URL (http://employeetraining.typepad.com) when prompted under the "create" heading!

 

Happy wordle-ing!

Why Virtual Training Makes Sense in Today's Economy

Training budgets are oftentimes the first to go in difficult times. Recession-savvy companies are continuing to deliver the training their employees need by going virtual and reducing training and development budgets by as much as thirty to forty percent. Our clients are increasingly turning to online training, and the reasons are many: technology is improving and becoming more reliable, travel costs are typically eliminated, companies are de-centralizing, and training professionals are being asked to do more with same or less.

Check out our latest white paper, which explores some of the more compelling reasons that a growing number of small and mid-sized businesses are going virtual with their training and development activities in today’s economic environment. Download a complimentary copy of the latest white paper courtesy of e-Learning LIVE and Business Training Library, "Why Virtual Training Makes Sense in Today’s Economy."

Leveraging the Power of Informal Learning

Research shows that at least 80% of all workplace learning is informal in nature. Unfortunately, our experience indicates that the typical organization spends 80% or more of its learning and development budget on formal learning activities, which account for less than 20% of the learning that occurs in the workplace. In today’s economic climate, this disconnect is more apparent than ever before. As training and HR professionals, we need to step outside of our comfort zone to leverage the most strategic informal learning practices, providing training resources to our organizations at the point-of-need, when and where they’re needed most.

 

While integrating informal learning into our more traditional, formal learning environments seems daunting at first, there is no doubt that we recognize the rate at which the paradigm is shifting. In a 2008 ASTD/i4cp study titled, “Tapping the Potential of Informal Learning,” 41% of respondents said informal learning is occurring in their organizations to a high or very high extent. Another 34% of respondents said they believe informal learning is occurring to a moderate extent.

 

More than half of the ASTD/i4cp study’s respondents reported an increasing use of informal learning in their organization, citing that informal learning practices would increase in their organization over the next three years. The study also found a significant, positive correlation between the degree to which informal learning occurs in an organization, and their reported market performance. Now that is music to our senior managers’ ears! Informal learning, while cost-effective in nature, is also producing real bottom-line results for organizations that are leveraging its power in best practice.

 

Take a look at Business Training Library's latest white paper designed to help organization's define, utilize, and leverage informal learning, in order to enhance communication and workplace performance, and drive business results! Download a free copy of "Informal Learning - The 80/20 Rule" today.

Are You Creating Custom e-Learning Yet?

As authoring tool and rapid e-learning technologies continue to advance and become increasingly affordable for even the smallest organizations and their budgets, the question I'm posing is more relevant than ever before. Are you creating custom e-learning yet? You no longer need advanced programming training or an IT degree to repurpose your PowerPoint and Word documents into interactive, engaging e-learning content. What's better is that a web-based course can be easily tracked and reported on from your LMS or learning management software/system. Now a subject matter expert (SME) can quickly create multimedia training with a few mouse clicks. If you have employees spread out among multiple locations or working remotely, utilizing affordable authoring tools to generate a technology-based learning solution is incredibly meaningful in terms of delivering consistent training and development resources in a timely manner.

Interested in learning more about the benefits of creating custom e-learning content and what to look for in an authoring tool? Download our company's latest white paper, "Is Rapid e-Learning In Your Toolbox?"

Coaching is #1 Talent Management Strategy

Bersin & Associates recently identified the top 22 highest impact talent managment processes. Coaching is listed at the #1 process organizations should focus on in terms of talent management. "Organizations with strong coaching cultures, programs, and support structures develop much higher levels of engagement, leadership, flexibility, and performance."

Is your organiztion utilizing the power of coaching to best manage your valuable employee talent? What should a "coach" at your organization look like? A coach has many important responsibilities; one of the key strengths of a good coach is that he or she is able to adapt to each person's needs. Every situation is different, so a good coach must be flexible and open to new solutions. A good coach is able to clear obstacles out of the way of his or her employees. Objectivity is very important for a coach, so that personal feelings don't get in the way of using everyone's strengths to the best advantage. Any performance can be enhanced. A good coach is able to find a way to guide and encourage the desired improvement. Setting up goals that are achievable and keeping people focused on those goals is another important aspect of coaching.

Check out some of our world-class web-based coaching courses, in our Business & Professional Skills Catalog.

SkillSoft Survey Shows Companies Should Do More On-The-Job Training

SkillSoft is one of the world's leading e-learning content producers for business and soft skills development, and one of our valued producer partners. SkillSoft recently commissioned a comprehensive survey in which more than 200 employees working in entry-level to executive positions in IT, sales and marketing, customer service, finance, human resources and administration were interviewed. Their findings indicated that eight out of ten employees would have higher job satisfaction levels if they received more on-the-job training ... 80% of respondents! In an interesting twist, three of those same ten respondents don’t have this opportunity, because they don’t have access to any ongoing training in their workplace.

How do your employees compare to these survey respondents? Do they have adequate access to ongoing training in your organization? Chances are, they'd be more satisfied with their job if they did. 

Starbucks takes a Coffee Break - for Training!

Last Tuesday, Starbucks made a bold move showing their belief in the ROI of employee training. Starbucks closed 7,100 U.S. locations for three hours in a unique effort to provide re-education to all 135,000 U.S. employees, hoping to re-energize employees and boost sagging profits.

In a memo to the public, Starbucks’ Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz said the goal of the nationwide shutdown was to improve the ‘Starbucks experience.’ “We are passionate about our coffee. And we will revisit our standards of quality that are the foundation for the trust that our customers have in our coffee and in all of us … We believe that this is a bold demonstration of our commitment to our core and a reaffirmation of our coffee leadership," said Schultz. Starbucks’ website echoes Schultz’s statement with a press release touting their “unprecedented level of commitment to employee coffee education and training.”