Free T&D Webinars for August 2014

Lazy summer days? Not likely in today’s high-performing organizations! The great thing is that by tapping into the right mentorship, and by working smart, we can hit our performance targets—and enjoy a few beach days too. Why not get some new ideas from one of the free webinars being offered this August? We hope they will inspire and motivate you.

Wednesday, July 30, August 13, and August 27, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Summer School for the Virtual Trainer

Register for this three-part webinar series with Jennifer Hofmann, president of InSync Training, to discover how to design and deliver an effective training program that will help you finish the year strong.

Join us for this series to learn:

• A blend of delivery methods designed to maximize learning.

• What training content is best delivered in a live, virtual format.

• How to overcome common hurdles on the road to blended learning.

• Key strategies for performing and facilitating online training.

Tuesday, August 5, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: e-Learning:  Are You Serious?

If implemented correctly, e-Learning can positively impact any organization. But so much of the e-Learning created and invested in today relies on technology, and focuses on content instead of the learner and improving performance. The result: boring e-Learning and wasted budgets! 

Join Dr. Michael Allen as he explains how the 22 principles of the Serious e-Learning Manifesto can help combat today’s e-Learning failures by creating learning solutions that generate business impact. In this webinar, attendees will:

• Gain valuable knowledge of the e-Learning Manifesto Principles.

• See examples of e-Learning created with the Principles of the Manifesto in mind.

• Understand the ROI of using the Principles of the Manifesto to create your e-Learning.

• Understand the performance impact of using e-Learning that takes into consideration the Principles of the Manifesto.

Tuesday, August 5, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Thinking of Replacing Your LMS

This session will help you reduce your fear and create a strategy for success during the process! Your business needs are changing fast, and so are the demands placed on your current learning technology. Learning leaders must stay a step ahead of their business, but that can be difficult when dealing with antiquated technology and limited delivery options. Do you have that nagging awareness that it is time to switch your learning technology, but haven't wanted to face the reality of doing so? Over 30 percent of organizations in a recent Brandon Hall survey had plans to replace their existing LMS solution. Most of them look forward to the transition with dread and concern. Can they make a solid business case for the change? Will the transition impact business processes or mission-critical learning needs?

Wednesday, August 6, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Death By Mismanagement: The Devastating Impact of Micromanagement (Free for ASTD/ATD members)

Employees today are often promoted through the ranks without always receiving the necessary training on how to be a rock-star manager. Through their ineffective behaviour, their teams’ production levels begin a steady downward cycle, ultimately ending in terminations, resignations, or demotions. Many productive employees leave an organization because of something their supervisor is doing—or not doing. Whether leaders find themselves too overwhelmed with responsibilities to take an active interest in employee development, or haven't received the proper leadership training to inspire creativity, take risks, and cultivate project ownership, the results are the same.

One of the biggest trouble spots arises in finding the balance between micromanaging and delegating. New, overzealous managers feel they need to know everything at all times. From their employees’ perspectives, this may be interpreted as a lack of trust and autonomy.

Help your supervisors learn how to walk the fine line between micromanaging and delegating, and enable them to motivate, lead, and inspire in even the most challenging times.

Wednesday, August 6, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: HCM Technology Trends and Excellence Awards

Are you a solution provider that offers phenomenal, innovative technologies to Learning and Development, Talent Management, Human Resources, Talent Acquisition, and Sales Enablement functions?

Or are you an organization that has created or implemented technologies to help streamline, save costs, and improve productivity within your organization?

Then we want to hear from you and invite you to apply for Excellence in Technology Awards Program.  The program offers you an opportunity to showcase your products, which will be reviewed by Brandon Hall Group’s elite analyst team and industry experts.

Now entering its 20th year, the Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards Program is the most prestigious awards program in the industry. Often times called the “Academy Awards” by Learning, Talent and Business Executives, the program was one of the first of its kind in the learning industry, which was pioneered in 1994.

Thursday, August 7, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Breaking Training Development Project Rules

In 1969, the Project Management Institute (PMI) was founded. Project Management specialists were  building roads, buildings, the new “computers,” and lunar modules. The AT&T telephone operators still plugged wires into boards to transfer calls! Paper memos slowly communicated work to be done. Multi-tasking was unheard of. The PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) established a standardized and control-focused approach to doing projects, much like ADDIE brought to the new field of training.  

Now, 45 years later, our work looks more like a flashmob: interruptions, unending work, dysfunctional multi-tasking, and highly matrixed organizations. Everyone needs everyone to do their pile of projects. We have to embrace the structure of the PMBOK while looking at our project artifacts and tools in a new way. Join Lou Russell to learn about shortcuts that help “accidental” project managers organize and adapt to chaos.

Thursday, August 7, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Moving from the Classroom to VILT with No Drama (ASTD/ATD subscriber content)

Virtual Instructor Led Training (VILT) is now a fact of life for most organizations. Yet a lot of training professionals still struggle to make the move from the classroom to the virtual environment.

This webinar is hosted by Wayne Turmel, writer, speaker, and president of GreatWebMeetings.com, which teaches companies and their people to sell, present, train and lead people using online and virtual presentation and meeting tools.

Thursday, August 7, 2014, 9AM – 10AM PST: Thursday, August 7, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Best Practices to Ensure Maximum ROI on Learning and Development

Employee development these days is a big deal and it is at the top of CEO priority lists. Billions of dollars are being spent on development, and this number is ever increasing. Research studies show that companies that develop their employees - and do it well - reap big rewards in terms of product innovation, market share, and greater efficiency.

This webinar will be an informative and engaging one hour session that will conclude with five best practices that need to be considered to ensure maximum ROI investment for all L&D activities. This webcast will be of particular interest to: Instructional Designers, Trainers, ELearning Trainers, LMS administrators, Employee and Management Development, and Organizational Development – and has been pre-approved for one hour of continuing education (HRCI) credits!

You will learn:

• The difference between training and development and how the difference effects your development communication plan

• The definition of “scrap learning”

• How people best develop new skills or capabilities

• What learners are expecting in their development programs

• How to ensure that development will lead to organization success

Monday, August 11, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Global Best Practices in Building Service Cultures (Free for ASTD/ATD members)

Organizations with a powerful service reputation and a superior service culture attract and retain the best talent, achieve market leadership, and enjoy sustainable success. Ron Kaufman will show you why some organizations succeed beautifully, while others fail miserably. Find out what works, what doesn’t, what your organization should do, and what you must avoid.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Mixing It Up and Flipping the Classroom

Organizations have adopted the virtual classroom as a way to maximize training opportunities while minimizing costs. After a decade of ineffective sessions, training organizations are looking for instructional design techniques that will create virtual programs that will meet, or even exceed, the results achieved in more traditional settings.

Trending in the virtual classroom design space are two concepts: how to “flip the classroom” to maximize valuable collaboration time, and how to apply the latest thinking with regards to Bloom's Taxonomy to determine how best to deliver content in this new environment. Another key consideration concerns how blended learning fits into the equation. Do we need to both FLIP and BLEND?

In this session, techniques will be shared that will help you to:

• Determine what content is best delivered in a live, virtual format.

• Map learning objectives to the appropriate virtual classroom tools using a modern application of Bloom'sTaxonomy of Learning.

• "Flip the classroom" to maximize the collaborative impact of "together time."

Tuesday, August 12, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Maximizing the Effectiveness of of Sales Training (Free for ASTD/ATD members)

Companies spend about $20 billion a year on various forms of sales training. Still, many sales leaders report low ROIs from their sales training initiatives. Join ATD for this webcast and learn how to maximize the effectiveness of your sales training initiative. Norman Behar and David Jacoby discuss five essential factors that can help you achieve sustainable success from your investment in sales training programs. Learning takeaways for attendees:

• Motivate your team for training success.

• Leverage the benefits of virtual sales training.

• Reinforce training to make new skills lasting habits.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Building Trust and Transparency in Your Organization (Free for ASTD/ATD members)

We have a faltering economy and most organizations need top performance from their workforce to survive. Yet some of the actions needed for a company to remain viable come at the cost of losing the hard-earned trust of their employees, which greatly reduces productivity. If this is a familiar scenario for you and your organization, you will profoundly benefit from this webinar.

Join Bob Whipple for an enlightening program that shows a clear pathway for enhancing trust and transparency in organizations. This session is interactive and will reveal some wonderful opportunities for turning a corner on the malaise of the economy and the resulting disconnect in communication between companies and their employees.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014, 10 AM – 11AM PST: Big Data: What It is and What It Means for You (Free for CSTD members)

The era of Big Data - the creation of massive amounts of data often too large to handle - is here and you are one of the sources. You shop, text, Like, tweet, check-in, watch movies on Netflix and Google everything. And just maybe, your smartphone or tablet has become an extension of your body that you can't sleep without. Big Data is the present and future, and it is affecting you whether you like it or not, and whether you are aware of it or not. But what does that mean? How do we bring this new reality down to our day-to-day lives and careers?

Join Jamie Good, Social Media Specialist at Global Knowledge Canada, as he explores with you the implications and effects of Big Data on your present and future. Learn how being a part of our data-driven society impacts so many facets of your daily life and how Big Data will change the face of Learning and Development forever.

Thursday, August 14, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Next-Generation Learning Strategies for a Next-Generation World

What are your employees learning today? Or maybe a better question might be: are your employees learning today? If you aren't certain of the answer to either question, or the answer to either question is negative, you might have a problem. And the problem might not be your employees, either.

In March, we talked about a next generation of learning content strategies. Now we'll go deeper into that concept of a next generation of learning by exploring a new look at the very foundation of learning strategies more broadly. In this webinar, we'll explore what a next generation of learning strategies might include, how to develop such a strategy for your organization, and how you can begin taking action right away to build an effective employee learning program that will prepare employees to acquire the learning skills needed to learn how to perform effectively in jobs that might not exist today.

Thursday, August 14, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: On the Right Track: Designing Programs That Last (Free for ASTD/ATD members)

Using a one-size-fits-all approach when training can frustrate advanced learners and leave others behind. Training tracks address the spectrum of competency levels possessed by employees, and are more successful when teaching complex skill sets. In this 60-minute webinar, OpenSesame's Marketing Manager Katie Hurst will show you how to use backwards planning to build a series of lessons, ensuring your employees retain knowledge and more effectively apply skills in the workplace. You will learn to:

• Differentiate between the levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.

• Learn the value of varied practice and lesson spacing.

• Practice the Backwards Design process.

Participants will also receive a free copy of the accompanying e-book, which includes worksheets for use in designing your own training tracks.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: How Change Gets Stuck (Free for ASTD/ATD members)

The path to implementing change in an organization isn’t always smooth. On the way, you run into frequent speed bumps, wrong-way signs, and even concrete barriers. These road hazards on the way to change are obstacles that prevent you from moving forward. Despite your best intentions, you and your change initiative can get stuck.

In this webcast, you will learn the warning signs that your change initiative is stalled, and identify some of the root causes that may be preventing the organization from making progress. We will also discuss what you can do to get unstuck, and how to avoid getting stuck in the first place. Bring your challenges and your experience to this interactive session where we’ll uncover the common obstacles to organizational change.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: How the Digital Skills Gap Is Killing Your Team’s Productivity—and What You Can Do About It

A recent study by Deloitte found that the rapid pace of technological change in the workplace is leading to a skills half-life of just 2.5 years. Even the most adept employee can quickly fall behind—and workers, businesses, and the entire economy are paying the price. Every year, the digital skills gap drives a loss of nearly $1 trillion for the US economy. For a firm with 1,000 employees, this translates to a $10 million loss each year on a compensation basis alone.

But we need not stand idly by as our organizations bleed productivity. By laying out the eight core competencies of digital skills, this webinar provides an action plan for addressing the digital skills gap in your team.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Best of DevLearn: Design Models and Patterns for Creating Better e-Learning

More people within organizations find themselves in the role of e-Learning designer without having the experience needed to solve particular design problems. Participants will learn a core set of learning-design models or patterns that even inexperienced practitioners can quickly understand. These models combine some of the best principles and leading practices gained from years of research and experience, and are easily applicable to the vast majority of learning requirements that come your way.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Business Side of a Successful Performance Consulting Practice

This session is about the folklore and implications of different legal structures, including partnerships, sub S corporations, sole proprietorships, and non-profits as they apply to operating a successful consulting practice. You will understand the importance of asking the right questions when working with your lawyer, banker, and accountant. 

This series is for you if you are new to consulting or are thinking about starting your own consulting practice in the areas of training, e-Learning, process improvement, or performance improvement.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Four Roles and Secret Skills of Followership

According to research in The Harvard Business Review and from Lloyd’s of London, the ability to grow effective leaders is an international crisis for organizations: poor leaders are hurting the results of most companies around the globe.

Twenty years of leading in the military, academia, business, and politics has taught Cory Bouck that the best leaders act, paradoxically, as both a leader and a follower at the same time throughout their career. Everybody has a boss, and both of you can enhance your reputation for strong leadership through your "followership.”

During this interactive webinar, you will be introduced to four key roles and learn how to demonstrate the secret skills of followership. Followership is the first—and most career-enhancing—form of leadership.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Four Leadership Behaviours That Build or Destroy Trust (Free for ASTD/ATD members)

Trust continues to be identified as a missing ingredient in today's workplace. As surveys show, only a small percentage of today's workers strongly agree that they trust their leaders. To ensure high levels of organizational performance, leaders need to tackle trust head-on. The key is to demonstrate the behaviours people most associate with trust.

In this webinar, participants will learn how to:

• Recognize the warning signs that people lack trust in you and your leadership.

• Purposefully engage in the four trust-building behaviours.

• Create strong, long-lasting, trust-based relationships.

Don't miss this opportunity to learn how to raise the level of trust in your organization by increasing the “trust-ability” of your leaders.

Monday, August 25, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Aha Moments in Talent Management (Free for ASTD/ATD members)

This webcast addresses the biggest issues in talent management. We will discuss some best practices to emulate and some worst practices to avoid. Anyone who manages people is a talent manager, so what are the essentials that everyone should know? By attending this presentation, you will learn answers to the following:

• What is talent management?

• What are the functions of talent management?

• What do we mean by the word “talent?" (Spoiler alert: The word is not synonymous with “people.”)

• What is the true nature of the job of anyone who manages people?

• How do you create accountabilities for talent management?

• How can you avoid the single biggest mistake in talent management—one that most organizations are guilty of committing regularly?

Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Variables: 10 Things Every Storyline Developer Wants to Know

As e-Learning developers we often get caught up in designing only what we know from experience. The same holds true with e-Learning developers using Articulate Storyline. The more you know, the more options and ideas become evident to solving instructional design challenges. The more you know about variable programming in Storyline, the more the world opens up to unlimited design possibilities.  

Those who attend will learn... 

• Variable types and their differences.

• The various uses of variable types.

• The best time to use a variable.

• Tips for how to best manage multiple variables.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Thinking Beyond ROI: A New Way of Looking at Learning Metrics (Free for ASTD/ATD members)

Learning professionals often mistake learning metrics for business metrics. Attendance rates and ROI are great indicators of a training program’s internal impacts, but often are irrelevant to an organization’s competitive goals. Koreen Pagano, director of enterprise product management at lynda.com, explains how to compile and share metrics that expose greater value. After this session, you will be able to:

• Think beyond ROI.

• Translate training benefits into the language of business.

• Frame learning as a competitive advantage.

Thursday, August 28, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Closing Skill Gaps at Caterpillar Starts with Content Strategy

High Impact Learning Organizations (HILO) facilitate continuous learning. One where the development of new and increased skills ensure their employees can adapt quickly to a changing environment and help the business compete effectively. HILOs like Caterpillar strive to build long-term organizational capability through personalized learning paths and development plans. 

According to Bersin by Deloitte, one of the top three factors separating HILOs from the others is Content Capability. Join David Mallon, Head of Research at Bersin by Deloitte, as he interviews Michael Miller, Process and Standards Supervisor at Caterpillar, Inc.  to learn how Content Strategy is driving Caterpillar’s drive to personalized learning and transforming how their dealer technicians will learn and demonstrate competency and skills in the future.

In this session you will learn:

• Caterpiller's approach to creating bite-sized learning that can be tailored to individua learning needs.

• Unique methods for delivering learning content at the right time in the right place.

• Measuring results at the content, personal and organizational level.

• Personalized learning as the most effective approach to closing organizational skill gaps.

Free T&D webinars for December

How quickly we forget what cold weather is like! Jack Frost has made a sudden appearance and we’re digging out our winter woollies. Why not cuddle up with a hot chocolate and a free webinar or two? We hope these December events will inspire and motivate you.

Tuesday, December 3, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Getting Unstuck: Using Leadership Paradox to Execute with Confidence

Most of the issues that keep us up at night or prevent organizations from being successful are not problems that can be solved. Rather they are paradoxes that need to be managed. Unfortunately, most of us never learned to distinguish the two…or the methods to address the paradoxes.

This program helps people learn the three questions that make the distinction and provides trainers with opportunities to learn a new set of tools, language, and skills that can become part of their toolkit to help individuals and organizations address longstanding obstacles to success—so they can become more resilient and successful over time.

Tuesday, December 3, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: 5 Tips for Turning Gamification Theory into Practice (Free for ASTD members)

You’ve heard all about gamification for learning, but how do you take the elements of gamification and make them a reality within your organization? This webinar, based on Karl Kapp’s newest book, The Gamification of Learning and Instruction Fieldbook: Theory into Practice, provides answers for turning your ideas into reality. The webinar will cover five practical elements for gamification and a step-by-step approach for implementing gamification concepts. This discussion will include several examples, lots of tips, a couple of tricks, and a worksheet or two to help learning professionals put the ideas into practice and gamify their content.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Managing a Virtual Workforce (Free for ASTD members)

Do you or your employees work outside of a traditional office? This might mean working from home on occasional mornings or being completely based at your local coffee shop. Perhaps you supervise sales staff in a large geographic area or are responsible for a team of global technology professionals. Mobile workforces are a growing and permanent trend, and management strategies need to keep pace.

This webcast will provide the basics of managing your mobile workforce—from supervisory tools to leadership techniques. You will be presented with the bedrock of a successful virtual work arrangement, including the four questions to ask yourself before deciding if a virtual work arrangement is right for your job position. Discover how to better engage employees working offsite and how to reinforce your corporate culture. Finally, learn how to optimize technology to coach and counsel employees working in the virtual cloud.

Thursday, December 5, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Leaving ADDIE Behind – A Conversation with Michael Allen

Analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation (ADDIE) are all important steps in the design of effective eLearning applications or any learning program. While there have been many adaptations of ADDIE, many of them were made before we had today's tools, challenges, and opportunities. Join Dr. Michael Allen for a candid conversation with Richard Sites as they casually discuss what’s needed and possible today leveraging Agile to improve development efficiencies and effectiveness—resulting in the best learning experiences possible.

Thursday, December 5, 2013, 10AM – 11PM PST: 5 Reasons Why You Can't Ignore Gamification (Free for ASTD members)

Gamification is more than newfangled training. It is touted as the next form of work-based social media, in which people interact and socialize around a common bond of knowledge, competitive strategy, and fun. Elements of game play engage employees with just about any topic: improving operations, cutting logistics costs, and challenging employees to understand how their roles contribute to enterprise success. Many of the world’s largest brands are deploying gamification, including Coke, AOL, Nissan, Nike, and Viacom, and as more studies become available, the advantages to gaming in the workplace will become widespread. One primary lever promoting gamification is that employee satisfaction, which is closely related to employee retention, can no longer be achieved through financial compensation alone. The challenge now is to understand why gamification is so effective and how to introduce it seamlessly into an organization.

Thursday, December 5, 2013, 10:00AM – 11:00AM PST: Mobile Learning in Practice

Organizations taking their first steps into mobile learning can easily become overwhelmed by the multitude of considerations that exist: multi-device learning, responsive design, delivery platforms, tablets, smart phones, app stores, and much more. Without the benefit of practical examples and proven experience, it can be difficult to see how different approaches will work in practice, or to decide what will work best for your organization or sector. This webinar looks at the following:

•  Just-in-time learning
• Games-based learning
• Multi-device eLearning courses
• On-the-job support and training

Tuesday, December 10, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Virtual Presentations That Work: Breakthrough to Engage Clients and Staff

It’s one thing to be clear, concise, and in control of your message when you’re speaking to a group of people in a live conference room setting. It’s an entirely different thing to keep audience members attentive and engaged when presenting virtually. It’s not just learning how to run the meeting software. That’s the easy part. The real issues are getting people to want to participate and communicating well using the technology so that what you say is actually heard and understood. In this practical session, delivered virtually, you’ll explore the skills and techniques it takes to communicate effectively in virtual settings no matter whether you’re conducting meetings, presentations, product demos, or video conferences.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013, 12PM – 1PM PST: Capitalize on the Power of Employee Engagement in Government/Leveraging the Power of Employee Engagement (Free for ASTD members)

This is not an easy time to be working in the public sector. Heated budget battles and rhetoric about the size, function, scope, and effectiveness of government have generated criticism not just of government but also of the public servants who deliver government services. Across the country, government agencies and their employees are being denigrated and stigmatized. One proven response to maintaining effectiveness in this difficult environment is to improve the level of employee engagement. Research has clearly and convincingly shown that improving employee engagement will drive higher levels of organizational performance, reduce turnover, and yield other important workforce benefits. This session will focus on empirically proven approaches to improve employee engagement in government agencies.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013, 10:00AM – 11:00AM PST: Leveraging Technology for Social Learning

Social media has become a fixture in many of our lives, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other of the growing list of social technology platforms. Using technology to facilitate the natural connections and interactions between learners, instructors, and content is becoming the norm. The key is to recognize the difference between social media and social learning, and to know what social media is and isn’t. Webinar topics include:

• The evolution of learning
• The difference between social learning and social media
• Current trends in social learning technology
• The possibilities of social and mobile
• Examples of social learning environments

Wednesday, December 11, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: 3 Ways to Increase the Enrollment, Engagement, and Effectiveness of Your Training through the Power of Story

As trainers, we focus extensively on the design and development of our training content. Yet sometimes, even if we follow instructional design principles to the letter, our content doesn't engage, wow, or connect with the audience. What’s the missing ingredient? Join this webinar with author and training expert Pam Slim to discover how powerful, relevant, and engaging stories can humanize and accelerate the learning experience. Learn:

• How to create compelling copy that boosts class sign-ups
• Three story frameworks for simplifying your work and electrifying your audience
• How to weave a story thread through your entire training experience

Wednesday, December 11, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Leveraging Mobile Learning for Sales Enablement (Free for ASTD members)

Join us for an exploration of how mobile devices can be leveraged to augment and support sales professionals, since they are often the most mobile team members who require training and performance support. New instructional design patterns for creating superior sales tools, job aids, and learning experiences for tablets, smartphones, and SMS-enabled feature phones will be explored in this how-to-focused webinar featuring content from the upcoming ASTD Infoline of the same title.

Thursday, December 12, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Crowdsourcing: The End of Administrative Onboarding

The days of administrative onboarding are numbered. Hiring priorities continue to evolve, and it’s become increasingly apparent that traditional onboarding—wherein new hire orientation is often limited to a list of HR to-dos—isn’t meeting today’s talent needs. Leaders of high-performing organizations are actively looking for ways to combat new hire turnover and foster new levels of employee engagement—and they’re overhauling onboarding to do it. But success in onboarding is not guaranteed. In order to achieve real and lasting results, there are important questions that need answers—not the least of which is, “Where to begin?” This webinar discusses:

• Understanding the talent trends driving the end of administrative onboarding
• Case studies on the real business impact of improved onboarding processes
• Tips for leveraging crowdsourcing techniques to breathe new life into traditional onboarding practices

Thursday, December 12, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Push Learners to the Edge with Story-Driven Games

How do you get the learner involved in the discovery of ideas? How do you ensure the learner is paying attention? PUSH THE LEARNERS TO THE EDGE. It may sound unorthodox, but this is how people learn best—being on edge, rushing to get things done, stretching their capacity to overcome an obstacle. These are traits of an active learner. The challenge is how to structure a learning environment so that it constantly pushes learners to the edge. In this session, you’ll see demos of story-driven games, and learn:

• The basic rules that guide the design of high-pressure and high-discovery learning games
• How to use stories to super-charge the tension and escalation of the learner’s discovery experience
• How to pitch the learner into a game so that content is learned while playing it
• How to add surprises, intrigue, tension, twists, curiosity, and passion in the learner to play the game      

Thursday, December 12, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: You Can't Lead If You Can't Communicate: Simple Techniques to Get Your Message Across (Free for ASTD members)

Mike Figliuolo is a recognized presenter and author on developing leadership and communication skills in the workplace. He is an Honor Graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and he served as an armor officer in the U.S. Army. Mike has held positions as a consultant with McKinsey & Company and as an executive at Capital One Financial and Scotts Miracle-Gro. He is the founder and managing director of thoughtLEADERS, LLC—a leadership development training firm that focuses on real, practical, and applicable knowledge. His book One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership is designed to help leaders define who they are and what their personal leadership philosophy is. Mike is specifically known for his programs that take participants beyond theory to hands-on application for immediate results.

Friday, December 13, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: State of the Industry, 2013 (Free for ASTD members)

Laurie Miller, Director of Research Services at ASTD, and David Frankel, Research Specialist, will discuss benchmarking data from ASTD BEST Awards Winners, Fortune magazine's list of Global 500 (G500) companies, and other organizations from 2004 to the present. ASTD estimates that US organizations spent $1,195 per employee on learning and development in 2012. The content from this webcast is drawn from ASTD's 2013 State of the Industry report, which is sponsored by Skillsoft and CARA.

Monday, December 16, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: BEST Webcast Series: University Health System: How to Create and Sustain Buzz in Your Learning (Free for ASTD members)

Building a strong, compelling brand for the learning and development department is essential in today’s workplace. With competing and escalating demands on time and talent, L&D must craft and implement a strategy to demonstrate its value. Learn how University Health System uses executive support, marketing communication, ROI, awards and recognition, partnerships, and more to create and sustain learning. Three things participants will take away:

•  Examples of ways to create and sustain buzz
• Ten benefits to submitting awards applications
• The essence of a branding strategy for your learning development

Tuesday, December 17, 2013, 9AM – 10AM PST: Managing the Matrix: Hilton's Journey of Launching their School of Sales (Free for ASTD members)

When Joe Anzalone, director of the school of sales at Hilton Worldwide, was tasked with launching a common global sales learning function in the spring of 2012, he was greeted with a series of obstacles—decentralized decision making, nine different sales training programs already in use, competing leadership priorities and agendas, and a legacy of skepticism about previous US and corporate-based learning solutions. Join Joe as he walks you through his experiences dealing with these daunting challenges, how he has been able to overcome them, and what the future holds for Hilton’s global school of sales as the journey continues.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Research Spotlight: Learning Strategies and Mobile Learning

This installment of Brandon Hall Group Research Spotlight webinars walks through BHG’s latest research on mobile learning and shares some preliminary data from the recently closed Learning and Development benchmarking survey. This webinar will include:

• Statistics on the maturity of mobile learning
• Effectiveness ratings for various types of mobile learning
• Research into the development of learning strategies
• Research into learning and development budgets
• Highlights of award-winning case studies from the 2013 Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards

Wednesday, December 18, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: eLearning Authoring Tools: What’s Important?

What asynchronous eLearning authoring tools do individuals and organizations use and want, and why? What are the most desired features in asynchronous eLearning authoring tools at the macro and micro levels? These are the two overarching questions addressed in The eLearning Guild’s new survey-based research report, eLearning Authoring Tools 2013: What We’re Using, What We Want. In this webinar, you will learn:

• About the most important and most desired eLearning authoring tools
• About the most important features of these authoring tools
• What our panel of experts thinks of the survey results

Leadership, Employee Collaboration and Grooming the Leaders of Tomorrow

An email came across my desk today titled..."Did you miss the best HR webinars of 2013?". Intrigued, I opened the email and read that SilkRoad is offering access to three past online events - free webinar recordings from top business writers as well as a free chapter of each author's latest book. The webinar titles look particularily interesting:

• Creativeship: Why Leadership is SO Yesterday! by Bob Kelleher
• The Role of HR in Employee Collaboration by Jacob Morgan
• Manager 3.0: Grooming Tomorrow's Millenial Leaders Today by Brad Karsh

If you're interested in checking any or all of them out, click here to register (for free) and access the recordings and chapters. 

I'd be really interested to know what you think of them so drop me a line and let me know.

Monitor and Evaluate

#9 of 9 in our weekly succession planning blog post series:

Our guest blogger, Paul Riley is life-long learner of Organizational Leadership and Change who applies systems thinking and community development principles to help people work more effectively together within the complex human systems we create.

This week’s blog post focuses on the last principle of the 7 principles of successful Succession Planning: #7: Monitor and Evaluate. Succession planning and leadership development programs should be continuously monitored and evaluated to help stakeholders understand what works, why it works, and what impact it’s having on the organization’s leadership pipeline. People often think of evaluation as an activity that’s done at the end of the program. However, it’s important that evaluation plays an integral role in the process from the beginning, during program planning and implementation, with a focus on long-term outcomes and continuous improvement.

Program evaluation starts with the end in mind. In other words, you must identify the goals and long-term outcomes of the program to understand what you’re evaluating. I like to start by establishing an explicit program theory to describe how and why a set of activities are expected to lead to anticipated outcomes and impacts. I often use a logic model with the organizations I work with to show the chain of reasoning by connecting the program’s parts using “if...then” statements to illustrate a sequence of causes and effects. The planning process begins with a discussion among stakeholders about strategies that will contribute to the program’s desired results. In essence, this conversation is about the program’s theory.

The logic model I mentioned above is an iterative tool that provides a simple framework which is revisited throughout the program planning, implementation, and evaluation phases. The terms ‘logic model’ and ‘program theory’ are often used interchangeably because the model describes how a program works and to what extent. The W.K. Kellogg foundation provides a very useful Logic Model Development Guide,  which was developed for the non-profit sector but is particularly useful for evaluating programs designed for organizational and behavioural change, regardless of sector.

Although a logic model provides a useful framework for establishing and presenting the program’s theory, the framework doesn’t provide much detail about how to select indicators. So for this, I recommend incorporating frameworks into the evaluation program that are designed for evaluating training, succession planning, and leadership development programs. For instance, Bennett’s Hierarchy describes seven successive levels to evaluate training and development programs. The hierarchy starts with inputs and activities at the bottom, which Bennett asserts are the simplest level of evaluation that provide the least value in determining whether a program is effective. At the top of the hierarchy are social, economic, and environmental outcomes, which Bennett believes represent the highest aim for educational programs and are often the most complex to measure. Kirkpatrick also provides a model to evaluate training programs, which includes four levels: (1) participant reaction, (2) learning, (3) behaviour change, and (4) organizational results. William Rothwell, author of Effective Succession Planning, proposes an adaptation of Kirkpatrick’s four-level model to evaluate succession planning programs, which includes: (1) customer satisfaction, (2) program progress, (3) effective placements, and (4) organizational outcomes.

Combining the frameworks proposed by Bennett, Kirkpatrick, Rothwell, and others, provides different lenses through which to look at the various aspects of the program’s theory. While the logic model provides a general framework to guide program planning, implementation, and evaluation, these other models offer a more targeted focus on establishing indicators to measure program outcomes and impacts. Incorporating multiple evaluation methods is likely to offset weaknesses and complement strengths of different models, and it allows evaluators to confirm results, which enhances the integrity of program evaluation by producing more accurate measurements. Mixed-method evaluation programs are also more likely to reflect the needs of program participants and stakeholders, by looking at things from a variety of perspectives, which is likely to produce better evaluation designs and more targeted recommendations.

One of the main challenges I encounter when establishing an evaluation program is that people in the organization often feel like they don’t have the time or the resources to devote to evaluation. They are too busy delivering succession planning and leadership development programs to reflect on whether what they’re doing is working. So, I recommend enlisting the help of participants of the program. Participative processes, such as empower evaluation, increase the likelihood that evaluation will happen, because users who are actively involved are more likely to understand the process and feel ownership. Furthermore, you can kill two birds with one stone by achieving program outcomes while facilitating data collection and analysis.

Creating flexibility in the evaluation process might also help to increase participation. For instance, I often work with organizations to develop a small “menu” from which users can select indicators for evaluation. This allows stakeholders to establish measurements that reflect their concerns, whereas an exhaustive list of indicators may be perceived as cumbersome and unrealistic in terms of data collection. An evaluation process that’s both flexible and participative will help to accommodate the many different contexts, goals and outcomes within the organization, and facilitate learning.

Stakeholders must be engaged in the monitoring and evaluation process from the beginning and throughout the life of the program to ensure indicators measure what is important to the organization, rather than focusing only on what is easily measured. Without clear, timely, accurate, and visible indicators, stakeholders will struggle to work toward the program’s goals, because they won’t have a clear understanding of what impact activities, outputs, and outcomes are having in building a leadership pipeline. Active participation ensures that assessment is rooted in the direct experiences of the organization and grounded in the organization’s vision, values, goals, and objectives.

Be sure to check out our other Succession Planning blog posts in this series:

What’s so important about Succession Planning? 

The 7 principles for successful Succession Planning

Aligning Succession Planning programs with the organization’s strategy

Combine Succession Planning and Leadership Development

Include all levels of the organization

Provide opportunities for practice, feedback, and reflection

Promote Openness and Transparency

Develop Simple, Flexible, and Decentralized Processes and Tools

What's so important about Succession Planning?

#1 of 9 in our weekly Succession Planning blog post series:

Our guest blogger, Paul Riley is life-long learner of Organizational Leadership and Change who applies systems thinking and community development principles to help people work more effectively together within the complex human systems we create.

Succession planning has become a hot topic lately as organizations are preparing for a mass exodus of baby boomers from the workforce. Their impending retirement is already having a major impact on workforce capacity. Vacancies in senior positions are on the rise, and demographics indicate that there are statistically fewer people available to replace them. But there are more reasons that succession planning should be a part of your organization’s strategy.

The most important reason is that we rely on staff to carry out our missions, provide services and products, and meet our organizations’ goals. What would happen to your mission and organizational goals if key staff were to leave? How would your ability to deliver services and products be impacted? Succession planning helps to ensure that your organization has the right people in the right positions at the right time.

Although employers often use words like “loyalty” and “stability” to recruit quality candidates, employees understand that nothing is carved in stone with regard to their future employment with any one particular employer. The company’s bottom line often takes priority over loyalty when it comes to employment decisions. For this reason, there’s no longer a stigma associated with “employer-hopping.” In fact, we’re now referring to hopping around as a “portfolio career,” which sounds much more intentional and strategic. Employees can take their skills and knowledge and match their portfolios to a particular employer’s needs at any given time. Because workers are more mobile, organizations are competing to recruit and keep talented employees. Succession planning helps employers identify, develop, and retain top performers.

Due to the growth of the global market and global competition, as well as the recent economic crisis, companies are restructuring more frequently and more rapidly than ever before. This creates gaps in leadership at all levels of organizations. Therefore, organizations need to move away from traditional “management succession planning” models that are designed to meet promotion needs and often neglect to address leadership gaps at the middle and lower levels of the organization. Instead, we should focus on “technical succession planning,” by creating processes and systems to transfer specialized knowledge and experience at all levels of the organization. Supporting knowledge transfer perpetuates the collective corporate culture, institutional memory, and tacit knowledge within the organization, which are key ingredients for a sustainable future.

To learn more about how you can implement an effective succession planning program in your organization stay tuned for # 2 in this series – The 7 principles of successful Succession Planning.