Performance Support …#2 of the top 5 articles of 2013

In the last performance support blog post I talked about the importance of providing the right information and the right amount of information at the right time to help increase productivity and reduce time off the job spent looking for answers. I also included the first of our top five articles of 2013 on performance support. So here's article #2: 

The Round-Up: #2

Now's the Time for Performance Support By: Conrad Gottfredson, April 26, 2013

Gottfredson, Chief Learning Strategist of Ontuitive, a world-leader in performance support, is an extremely credible voice in the performance support arena and has produced a wealth of very informative and insightful articles in 2013.

Gottfredson based this article on Gloria Gerry’s book “Electronic Performance Support Systems” that she wrote in 1991. The content in this book has become extremely relevant again and the desired approaches more achievable, due to the existing and emerging technologies available now.  Gottfredson devised six attributes or principles of an effective performance support solution from Gerry’s definition of the same term where performance support is an: “Orchestrated set of technology-enabled services that provide on-demand access to integrated information, guidance, advice, assistance, training and tools to enable high-level job performance with a minimum of support from other people”.  The Performance Support Pyramid methodology is intertwined throughout these attributes and provides a hierarchy for “anticipating the evolving information requirements of a performer”.

Gottfredson also includes a graphic that visualizes learning transfer after a training event. This subsequently shows how performance support steps in when that transfer does not occur due to lack of use or forgetting. Not implementing a performance support system is like sending someone into a forest without giving them a map. Overall, this is an excellent study on performance support that provides great insight and advice on how an effective strategy encourages self-supported, high-performing, independent and productive workers with minimum disruption to other people in the organization.

Do you have any favourite performance support articles or research? We’d love for you to share them with us.

 Stay tuned for more upcoming blog posts for the remaining top five performance support articles of 2013 … and be sure to check out the first article of five in this series:

Performance Support...The Low Down

Let me read you your rights: Performance support is about providing the right information, the right amount of information and at the right time.  It’s not a new concept; it is a relatively new and trend worthy approach to designing learning experiences. Performance support, or just in time learning, supports the 70:20:10 model (more about this model in a later blog post). This idea, researched at the Center for Creative Leadership, proposes that 70% of your learning happens on the job.

Think back over your career. Have you ever had to stop what you were doing to find an answer to a question, so that you could move forward with a task? Think about how it feels when you are in the zone and then it’s disrupted. Is it easy or hard to get back into your workflow? Have you ever attended a systems training course and subsequently forgot everything you learned because you didn’t use it right away?

An appropriately designed performance support strategy can help to increase productivity and reduce time off the job spent looking for answers. It should be seamless and obvious. You don’t stop and think about it. It could be a printed quick reference sheet, a help system embedded in a software program, an online product comparison, online sales tips, to name but a few.

As to be expected, there's a wealth of information about performance support on the web. We looked at existing credible sources and found what we think are some of the best 2013 articles that provide hands on tips and information to help  design and implement the best possible performance support strategy for your organization. We've included the first of our five top articles of 2013 on performance support below. Stay tuned for upcoming blog posts on the remaining top four performance support articles of 2013.

The Round-Up: #1

16 Performance Support Tips, Strategies, and Tactics By: Jennifer Neibert, March 27, 2013

 Learning Solutions Magazine published some of the best articles on performance support in 2013. This is a compiled list of tips and tricks from the presenters at the eLearning Guild’s Online Forum, “Learning at the Moment of Need: Connecting Learning to Performance," on April 11th and 12th, 2013.

It gives you a good sense of what performance support is all about and some expert bite-sized advice on how to approach your design strategy. The article questions the traditional approach to training and eLearning in today’s world where employees are expected to do more, with less time and less resources. Some of the advice includes focusing on the point of need, ensuring information is as easy to access as possible, making content short and concise and design for performance first, knowledge second.

If you attended the online forum in April, We'd love to hear what you liked, learned and remembered.

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.

Free T&D Webinars for November

With autumn off to a spooky start, and rainy days ahead, it’s a great time to stay indoors, fortify yourself with a cup of hot chocolate, and enjoy the warm glow of a fire. Or is that the warm glow of the Internet? There’s a wonderful selection of free webinars being offered this month. We hope they will inspire and motivate you.

Friday, November 1, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: ASTD Best Webcast Series: Migros Retail Academy: Success Formula for Results (Free for ASTD members)

2013 BEST winner, the Migros Retail Academy, had a mountain of challenges to overcome in developing its workforce. Chief among the challenges was the lack of a formalized education program in Turkey to prepare people for a career in retail. The company needed to start from square one—and make sure that the training delivered to employees aligned with business goals and the needs of multiple stakeholders. This session will share insights and tips about how Migros tackled this big challenge, including:

  •  How to establish a successful corporate academy
  • The importance of understanding business needs and being aligned across lines of business
  • Managing different generations in the workforce

Tuesday, November 5, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Are Your Trainers Great Facilitators? Creating the Dynamic Experience with Facilitative Training Skills

Even experienced trainers sometimes find themselves standing before groups whose dynamics are all over the board. Everyone has an opinion, varying learning styles must be taken into account, and you’ve got to delineate difficult questions being thrown at you at warp speed. How do trainers handle these challenges in an effective, enthusiastic manner? Wouldn’t it be great to have the tools to regain control of the room every time? Join Certified Master Facilitator Michael Wilkinson as he introduces a training approach you can use right away— the facilitative approach. Learn about cutting-edge tools designed to make sessions more engaging, and proven techniques to transform the way audiences receive and apply your training material.


Tuesday, November 5, 2013, 10PM – 11PM PST: Teaching People to Learn (Free for ASTD members) 

Teams are the way we get work done. They are critical to innovation, growth, and risk management in our organizations. But teams are vulnerable to dysfunction from poorly aligned priorities, interpersonal tensions, and unproductive conflict. So why do we throw people together and hope for the best? In this interactive session, you will hear about a revolutionary new approach to teaching employees to team. By starting teams off on the right foot, you can accelerate productivity and reduce the impact of inevitable challenges.


Wednesday, November 6, 2013, 7AM – 8AM PST: Intercultural Communication: Leaping over Boundaries (Free for ASTD members)

As organizations become more global, they come across more challenges in intercultural communication. Unfortunately, a lack of intercultural communication skills sometimes deters collaboration amongst individuals from different religious, social, ethnic, and educational backgrounds. In this webcast, you will hear how intercultural communication skills training can be applied to people from different countries and cultures. You will learn how to act, communicate, and change your paradigm for synergistic cooperation.


Wednesday, November 6, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Learn How to Avoid "Crisis of Emptiness" in eLearning

Part of eLearning’s challenge is to recapture the lost warmth and interpersonal relationships many of us experience in face-to-face interactions. The common complaint from eLearners is that intimacy, empathy, helpfulness, and support are absent. This creates a disconcerting experience that leads to delays and resistance from learners. In this session you will learn practical and useful best practices to ensure the elevation of your eLearning design and delivery from sheer loneliness and apathy to curiosity, engagement, and better learning.

 

Thursday, November 7, 2013, 8AM – 1PM PST: Shifting the Performance Curve: A Human Capital Community Virtual Summit (Free for ASTD members) 

In these challenging economic times, no one can afford to let profit slip away. And yet, many organizational leaders do not realize that they can find the secrets to high profit (and higher performance) by looking inside their own organizations. But how can leaders ensure that they know how to tap into the talent and secrets of their star performers, and then implement these insights throughout the entire organization? During this half-day event, Paul Elliott and Al Folsom of Exemplary Performance will provide their innovative and cost-effective path to helping organizations translate employee performance improvement into measurable business results.


Thursday, November 7, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: De-Mystifying the LMS Selection Process

The LMS marketplace continues to shift and evolve as vendors consolidate and new technology features become available. Deciding to invest in a learning management system isn’t even half the battle. Once they walk through that door, companies are faced with a mind-numbing array of choices. Where do they start? Which system is right? How do you know? Attend this webinar and learn concrete steps and strategies to make the journey to LMS selection far simpler.


Thursday, November 7, 2013, 1PM – 2PM PST Rescheduled for Friday, November 8, 2013, 10AM - 11AM: The Future of Learning

Is there anything that isn't changing? Industries, organizations, jobs, work, and even peoples' expectations are shifting. So it's only to be expected that learning will also adapt. This webinar will explore a broad range of topics such as:

  • Social learning and how it will continue to evolve to meet new social technologies
  • What the Kahn Academy could mean for corporate learning
  • The role of accreditation in providing "trophies" to the next generation of learning
  • Eight strategies for accelerating development of new employees as experienced employees leave the workplace
  • Augmented reality and the implication for just-in-time learning

And in the spirit of social learning, YOU are the content.  Bring your ideas to the table to collaborate on understanding the future of learning.


Friday, November  8, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Developing Global Talent at UPS (Free for ASTD members) 

Learn how a new type of executive training program was deployed in May 2012 to be delivered in conjunction with UPS’s logistics coordination role at the 2012 London Olympic Games. The program objectives were to drive profit and return-on-investment capital (ROIC) by building the knowledge, skills, abilities, and competencies of UPS’s international country managers.


Tuesday, November 12, 2013, 9AM – 10AM PST: From Functional Expert to Organizational Leader: Making a Successful Transition (Free for ASTD members) 

Making the shift from technical or functional expert to a broader organizational leader is often not easy. It is a road paved with pitfalls, stalls, and few guideposts. In today’s changing and competitive business environment, making this shift is ever more critical; companies and organizations need such capability, and individuals need to grow. By looking at what it takes to make the shift and where to focus, we can map out the path and accelerate the process.


Tuesday, November 12, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Creating Culture That Rocks

This interactive session is effectively designed to highlight best practices to create, maintain, enhance, or even revolutionize a company’s culture in all areas of the business. Jim Knight, former Hard Rock Training executive and more recently founder of Knight Speaker, will discuss key strategies to transform any organization’s culture. Key concepts will include: a Definition of Culture (finally!), Hiring "Rock Stars," Brand Differentiation, Employee Engagement, Virtuous versus Vicious Circles, and Retention Strategies. The time allotted is filled with visual slides, out-of-the-box thinking, quotes, industry statistics, and case studies…all told through the spirit of Rock ‘n’ Roll. If you’re a fan of unpredictability and thinking about things differently, come hear what all the noise is about.

 

Wednesday, November 13, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Best of DemoFest 2013: Award-winning eLearning in Action

Each year at DevLearn, dozens of conference participants show off their latest and greatest eLearning projects at eLearning DemoFest, offering their fellow attendees the opportunity to see a wide variety of solutions to common eLearning challenges, and sharing information about the tools, technologies, and processes used to build them. Meet several of this year’s winners in this complimentary Best of DemoFest. Join us and see their award-winning solutions in many of the following categories including Acedemic, Augmented Reality, Blended Learning, Business Processes, eBooks, Game-based, Immersive/Simulation, Mobile, Onboarding/Employee Orientation, Performance Support, Sales Training, Soft Skills, Software Systems, Social Media or Online Communities and Virtual Classroom.


Wednesday, November 13, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Enabling Healthcare Learning with Technology

Ninety percent of healthcare organizations are having difficulties finding skilled workers; 33 percent say the lack of skilled workers impacts their ability to comply with external quality standards and regulations. How can we address these issues through greater development opportunities and better talent practices? Attend this webinar to learn key findings from Brandon Hall Group’s new research on the skills gap in healthcare organizations. In addition we’ll have award-winning case studies and insights from healthcare industry experts.


Tuesday, November 14, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Build Greater Acceptance and Increase Adoption of Training through Coaching

The training industry ebbs and flows in terms of its acceptance. We use teaching aids, eLearning systems, etc.—but what if management supported our training by assisting in the coaching process? Training would be more accepted and employee development would escalate. This webinar will teach specific strategies for using coaching to gain greater acceptance and understanding of your training programs.


Tuesday, November 19, 2013, 8AM – 9AM PST: Talent as a Business Risk 

Organizations regularly assess their financials, information technology, and operation risks. However, concerns around talent—or human capital—tend to receive little attention. Join Brandon Hall Group and KPMG as they share research findings from 1,200 organizations across 54 countries on talent risk. This research comprehensively sets out the degree to which businesses are concerned about various types of talent risks, and the extent to which they are managing these concerns. Event topics include:

  •  A Global Talent Risk Profile
  • Top 10 Talent Risks
  • A Talent Risk Disconnect: Business Leaders versus HR
  • A case study from a global organization addressing its talent risks

Tuesday, November 19, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: “DUDE, WHAT’S MY JOB?” Developing and Training Millennials in Today’s Global Workforce 

Millennials are infiltrating the workforce, while managers and older generations are scrambling to understand and work with this fascinating group. The phrase “What’s up with the kids these days?” is not a new one, but with Millennials, there seems  to be an entirely new set of challenges and opportunities. By 2015, Millennials will outnumber Boomers in the workforce—are you ready?

In this engaging webinar, participants learn everything they need to know about Millennials around the world. What makes this generation tick? What are their assets, liabilities, communication preferences, and top motivators? Importantly, how do Millennials differ from country to country? How are Millennials from India impacted by their emerging middle class? How have Millennials in China been affected by family planning laws? Brad Karsh provides a plan of attack on how to manage, train, and motivate Millennials across the world.


Tuesday, November 19, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Putting Instructional Design in the Hands of End Users (Free for ASTD members)

User design provides an alternative to top-down expert-driven design processes. Grounded in systems theory, user design empowers frontline stakeholders to design and create their own innovations, which in turn may lead to greater adoption and diffusion of those innovations. During this webcast, we will discuss the role of instructional designers—specifically how they provide resources and facilitate the work of the design team rather than impose their expertise upon team members. We will discuss a range of user-design tools, including ethnography, cooperative design, design-based research, action research, and scenario-based design. Learn how the user-design process unfolded at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and the critical lessons learned as a result.


Wednesday, November 20, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Sustaining Development: How to Make It Stick! (Free for ASTD members) 

Have you ever been excited to launch a development program, only to see it fade away? Have you ever witnessed a leader go through a training program, resulting in no indication of newly developed skills? A "yes" to either question means you need to re-evaluate your sustainability measures. Sustainability can be looked at in two ways: the learner level and the program level. Join us to learn how you can maximize your efforts by implementing a strategic approach to sustainability at both levels.


Thursday, November 21, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Exploring the Learning Experience Canvas

This presentation introduces you to the Learning Experience Canvas, a tool for designing learning experiences. Join Peter C. Honebein, an expert in designing product and service innovations that enable customers to be co-creators of value. Explore the eight key elements of the canvas from the perspectives of design thinking, customer experience, instructional theory, and human performance.


Thursday, November 21, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Inspiring Millennials: The High-Impact Learning Culture (Free for ASTD members) 

On average, one Baby Boomer retires every eight seconds. By 2014, Millennials will represent almost 47 percent of the workforce, and 75 percent by 2025. The right skills are in short supply, and talent pipelines are shrinking. Younger people are getting bigger jobs faster; and they think, learn, and behave differently. To become the kind of employer that attracts and retains both today's and tomorrow's talent, organizations need to create a workplace that is agile and nurtures learning—a high-impact learning culture. Join us to learn:

  • The key elements of a high-impact learning culture
  • Common obstacles to creating that culture, and how you can overcome them
  • Steps you can take today to start creating the high-impact learning culture you will need for tomorrow

Thursday, November 21, 2013, 12PM – 1PM PST: Identifying and Nurturing Emerging Talent

A 2012 report by Deloitte identified eight trends in human capital that will have the most business impact over the next 18 to 24 months. One of the trends identified was the development of next-generation leaders. Identifying and nurturing emerging talent increases the availability of experienced, capable employees prepared to drive future growth. During this session, Alan Fine will explore the fundamentals of a high-performance environment, and the basic activities that create empowerment, accountability, and trust for managers and the emerging talent they lead. You will discover the three elements at the heart of high performance and will learn how to recognize and address obstacles that are getting in the way. Finally, you will explore a simple and reliable process that reduces interference, creates focus, and unblocks performance breakthroughs.

Free T&D webinars for August

There’s nothing like a month of sunshine to recharge our batteries. We all work so hard, we deserve some summer down-time, relaxing and soaking up the sun. Why not soak up some learning as well with a free webinar? We hope these August events will inspire and motivate you.

Thursday, August 8, 2013, 10:00AM – 11:00AM PST: What Can MOOCs Mean for the Corporate World?

MOOCs are the talk of the town in the higher education space, but what can they mean for corporate training? In this session we’ll discuss emerging trends, platforms, proof of impact, statistics, and business models. What does MOOC mean to you? What is the essence behind the acronym? What could it mean for corporate training? What do we need to introduce a successful MOOC in corporations? Get ready for some golden advice gleaned from early MOOC adopters while designing our LeaderMOOC (coming in September).

Friday, August 9, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Ace the Interview: Behavioural Interviewing Tips (Free for ASTD members)

Employers conduct behavioural interviews to find out if candidates have the skills they need and how candidates might act in specific work situations. This webinar will explore strategies and provide tips to help you prepare and present yourself at your best. You will “look behind the curtain” and learn how and why employers develop behavioural questions. You’ll also learn about a model for answering behavioural questions that ensures interviewers will get the information they need from you during your interview. By understanding the rationale and process from the interviewer’s side of the table, you’ll be better positioned for success in your next behavioural interview!

Monday, August 12, 2013, 3:30AM – 4:30AM PST: Learning and Development Trends in India 2012 (Free for ASTD members)

Christina Mandzuk, Research Analyst for ASTD Research Services, will discuss benchmarking data from 41 Indian organizations for 2012. ASTD estimates that Indian organizations spent $331 per learner on employee learning and development in 2011. One-half was spent on internal learning functions such as staff salaries and internal development costs. The remainder was split between tuition reimbursement (6.1 percent) and external services (43.7 percent). The content from this webinar is drawn from ASTD’s Learning and Development Trends in India 2012 report (which utilized research tools based on the annual ASTD State of the Industry).

Tuesday, August 13, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Managing Remote Employees (Free for ASTD members)

In today’s mobile age, work is no longer confined to your office. But while technology has helped leaders connect to their workforce faster and more efficiently than ever, it also has eroded away all the old rules that used to work in face-to-face settings. In this live webinar you’ll learn:

  • Which personality types (e.g., introverts, extroverts, etc.) make the best, most engaged, most productive remote employees (HINT: It’s not what you think)
  • Sure-fire ways to assess and measure remote employees’ job performance without using invasive and expensive techniques to spy on their every move
  • Why you should NEVER ask “How’s it going?” to remote employees
  • Three attitude adjustments that leaders must make to successfully manage remote employees
  • Two keys to keeping remote employees disciplined and productive
  • How to avoid the five emotional “trigger words” in e-mails that cause misunderstandings, spark conflict, and get you in trouble
  • The 10-minute conversation that keeps remote employees feeling connected and engaged
  • How to end every email with a “call to action” that elicits immediate productivity

Wednesday, August 14, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: New Rep on the Block – RSA’s Onboarding Success Story (Free for ASTD members)

So you have a new sales rep starting in your organization—how do you ramp them up? Do you have an effective plan in place, or are you struggling to create an effective sales onboarding process? This is the challenge RSA’s sales training team faced with enabling its inside sales team. This session will highlight the overall approach they took in gaining executive commitment, and how they built a world-class curriculum with limited resources.

RSA went from minimal training to full onboarding programs for two different inside sales roles. The result was the fastest ramp-up time for reps that RSA has ever seen. Kristen Gleason & David O’Connell talk about the key approaches that led to the success of this effort, including: incorporating an “it takes a village” methodology, making their internal customers a success, and building trust with their constituents.

Thursday, August 15, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: DECLARE: Online Instruction for Everyone

The DECLARE methodology of instructional design was developed with both the program and course in mind. DECLARE is a set of practical recommendations and content reminders used when creating training programs and courses. Register and learn to:

  • Prioritize content and learner needs
  • Balance the creation of engaging interactions and content
  • Create relevant conceptual models that aid with student retention
  • Develop SME and designer relationships.
  • Develop a cohesive, consistent, and repeatable instructional design methodology and style

Thursday, August 15, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Leveraging Technology for Social Learning

Social media has become a fixture in many of our lives, whether Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other of the growing list of platforms. Organizations are recognizing the power of this type of technology, especially for learning. Using technology to facilitate the natural connections and interactions between learners, instructors, and content is becoming the norm. The key is recognizing the difference between social media and social learning. 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

Thursday, August 15, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Business-Relevant Ways to Convey Learning Impact to Executives (Free for ASTD members)

Regularly producing learning impact data that tells a story to executive stakeholders requires creativity. In this webinar we’ll discuss a next-generation movement in executive reporting and talent development reporting principles, created by a group of senior CLOs. The webinar will:

  • Briefly describe practical approaches to measuring learning impact
  • Explain how to convey impact in credible ways to executives
  • Provide additional examples that articulate impact in common-sense ways
  • Identify common metric errors that should be avoided when talking to executives
  • Provide an overview of the talent development reporting principles movement

Monday, August 19, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Managing Incompetence (Free for ASTD members)

"You probably chose to read this because you think you are surrounded by incompetent people. It’s true. But you must know from the start—this is my twofold approach in this story—that if you deem more than a quarter of the people around you as incompetent, then you are the most incompetent of them all."

Join Managing Incompetence author Gabriel Ginebra as he explains how everybody is to some degree incompetent. “The great deeds of mankind were not accomplished by a handful of geniuses, but by a bunch of incompetent people.” Including ourselves in this category, and learning to work with what we have, makes all the difference in how people are managed.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Mobile Learning in Real Life: mLearning Case Studies

Mobile learning is exciting to talk about, and the potential seems unlimited, but ambitious vision-casting can take you only so far. Are there examples out there of mLearning being used successfully in real life? This webinar will take a look at several mobile learning case studies and evaluate the initiatives on all levels from concept to completion. The presentation will cover best practices such as the importance of a process, how to build an mLearning team, and the power of prototypes and options for analytics. Attendees of this webinar will gain a strong understanding of the many skill sets needed and steps required to deliver a successful mobile learning application. They will be better equipped to tackle the multitude of challenges that are inevitable in any mLearning strategy and development effort.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: The Leadership Assessment Process (Free for ASTD members)

Leadership assessment is a popular topic, and there are many assessment options available to practitioners. Successfully navigating the world of leadership assessment is important to ensuring that your assessment strategy will enable you to achieve your goals. This webinar will show how OPM’s Human Resources Solutions Division uses the Leadership Assessment Framework to facilitate discussions about leadership assessment needs. The framework also provides a foundation for building an assessment strategy to meet the needs of federal agencies. Objectives:

  • Learn how a framework can guide your assessment strategy
  • Identify factors that affect the selection of leadership assessments
  • Learn how a framework can be applied to any agency

Wednesday, August 21, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: T+D: Global Evaluation Trends—What’s Happened since the Recession? (Free for ASTD members)

Much has changed since the global recession. Budgets are tight, business results are routinely expected, and accountability is everywhere. The learning and development community is responding to these challenges by changing its approach to evaluation. This presentation traces the shifts in measurement and evaluation (M&E) budgets; the roles of finance, accounting, and the CFO; the responsibilities of M&E; the use and impact of ROI evaluation; the proactive approach of learning leaders; and the barriers to successful M&E. Webcast attendees will learn to identify the issues for successful M&E, identify the barriers for M&E, take a proactive approach to M&E, and plan next steps.

Thursday, August 22, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: “Help Me Obi-Social Kenobi. Social Is My Only Hope.” Using the Force of Enterprise Social Networks to Keep Training Alive

You slave away at designing your training programs. You struggle to get people excited, enrolled, and in the “seats.” The program commences and everyone gives you awesome feedback. You feel successful. Then the momentum dies. How do you keep training excitement alive? How can you boost pre-training anticipation and post-training involvement? Enterprise Social Networks, in combination with your training efforts, can provide the solution you need. Instituting an ESN can not only help you be more successful as a trainer, but can make your trainees more successful at their given jobs.

Thursday, August 22, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Keeping Your Brand Promise: Ensuring a Unified Brand Experience at Every Touch Point

Brand is everything today—and delivering a consistently rewarding experience to everyone who comes in contact with your brand is no longer simply the realm of the marketing department. Are you confident that your organization keeps its brand promise at every interaction? Are you a learning, communications, talent, or HR professional responsible for embedding critical brand messaging within your organization and delivering it to external audiences? Are you struggling to help new hires and clients experience the brand they’ve been promised? Register to learn what companies are doing to engage employees and customers alike—and ensuring their messages are authentic both inside and outside the company. Find out how HR, Learning, Marketing, and other departments can collaborate effectively and with real impact on employee behaviours, audience responses, and business outcomes.

Thursday, August 22, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Leading with Wisdom: Sage Advice from 100 Experts (Free for ASTD members)

Through the research Jann Frann did for her upcoming book, Leading with Wisdom: Sage Advice from 100 Experts, Jann shows us how great leaders connect with empathy and compassion. This includes learning how to cope with death, loss, and grief. It also includes understanding life's transitions, learning to "let go," and "leaning into fear." But how do leaders learn these skills and practices? In this webcast, participants will engage in several exercises designed to learn these skills. You’ll learn:

  • What it feels like to be laid off or to be a survivor of a layoff.
  • How to write your own eulogy and talk about how this brings compassion and empathy into clear focus
  • How to script your last moments on Earth to remind you that now is the only time you really have.

By doing these and other activities, you’ll learn how to be a better, more effective leader!

Tuesday, August 27, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: PowerPoint as a Graphics Editor: Simplified Visual Design for eLearning

As instructional designers we want our designs to be visually appealing and relevant, and the term “less is more” is key. How much time do you spend hunting for images or that just-right graphic? What if a few strokes of a pen or the arrangement of a few simple shapes could convey the same message more effectively? In this webinar you’ll learn about the visual cortex and how you use it every day to communicate. You'll look at examples of perceived affordances, and see how making subtle changes to your eLearning graphics can be a powerful companion to instruction. You'll also look at techniques for creating on-demand graphics following basic visual communication principles.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Social Media for Government Learning (Free for ASTD members)

New social media technologies and strategies provide quick, easy solutions to many of the challenges faced by workplace learning and development practitioners in the government. Social media vehicles such as Twitter and Facebook, for example, can help L&D build learning communities, facilitate quick assignments, offer updates or follow-up tips, and otherwise extend the reach of the formal training event. But government training practitioners face additional challenges in that they must separate myth from fact as pertains to the ability of government to adopt and adequately respond to social media. This webcast will address how to:

  • Separate myth from fact in approaching the use of social media tools for learning
  • Replicate parts of existing L&D practice using social tools
  • Extend current practice through the use of social tools

Wednesday, August 28, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Live! Connecting People from Jungle to Mountain Top (Free for ASTD members)

In this session, Fluor Corporation will share how to engage, connect, and inspire while reducing travel, connecting employees, and delivering consistent training through live video technology. This discussion will focus on implementing cost-effective delivery of traditional training to non-traditional locations.

Thursday, August 29, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Creating a Modern Mentoring Culture (Free for ASTD members)

Mentoring has proven again and again to be a powerful and effective workforce development tool, and the need for mentoring, knowledge sharing, and skill building continues to grow. However, traditional mentoring, where an older mentor meets with a younger mentee in person to help facilitate development and groom them for career progression, is no longer adequate in today's hyper-connected and fast-paced world. Based on the September 2013 Infoline, "Creating a Modern Mentoring Culture," this webcast will describe how companies today must embrace a new form of mentoring and knowledge sharing that allows workers to find and connect with their colleagues so they can learn while on the job, share best practices throughout all areas of the business, and collaborate with people no matter where they may be located.

Thursday, August 29, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Talent Optimization: Where Learning and Talent Meet

Up to this point, most organizations have expended their talent management energy on measurement and control. Unsurprisingly, the results are less than compelling. Organizations need to focus instead on effective performance—on impact where it is needed, in both the short and longer term. In other words: talent optimization. This approach uses data on competencies, personnel issues, recruitment, and other parts of corporate HR to optimize the development and deployment of talent. Instead of looking at talent as an isolated HR initiative, organizations need to work across business departments and integrate with them in order to truly be effective. Key takeaways:

  • New frameworks for talent management
  • Linking talent processes to learning
  • Leveraging integration for reporting and analytics
  • Social’s role in integration

Free T&D webinars for July

Summer’s been teasing us with little bursts of warmth—let’s hope the sun gets down to business with some good weather! In the meantime, you can get down to business by signing up for one of the free webinars being offered this month. We hope they will inspire and motivate you.

Monday, July 1, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Leaders Open Doors: A Radically Simple Leadership Approach to Lift People, Profits, and Performance (Free for ASTD members)

The study of leadership development has grown very complicated. We often get stuck thinking about leadership in terms of matrices, competencies, and modules. The simple truth is that to be a leader is to open doors of opportunity for others. To be most effective, leaders need to be opportunity creators. Drawing on the concepts introduced in the new book Leaders Open Doors, leadership expert Bill Treasurer shows how leaders help people and organizations grow by creating meaningful learning opportunities.

Tuesday, July 2, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Conquering Online Presentations with Confidence and Charisma (Free for ASTD members)

Confidence and charisma are key when delivering live online presentations. We all possess these attributes, but knowing how to tap into them and share them with your virtual audience will make your online presentation much more effective. Join best-selling author Jim Cathcart as he reveals how to tune up your presentation skills to connect more powerfully with your audiences. In this webinar you’ll learn how to:

  • Put yourself at ease to be your best in online presentations
  • Treat virtual presentations like in-person events
  • Naturally engage your audience so you’re not alone as you present

Tuesday, July 9, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: How to Earn a Top Spot on the Training 125

Don’t miss this opportunity to get the inside scoop from three Training Top 125 judges who will pinpoint what they look for in Training Top 125 applications during the scoring process. Whether you are a veteran Training Top 125 winner or filling out the application for the first time, this special complimentary webinar can be the key to increasing your score and ranking.

Tuesday, July 9, 2013, 10:30AM – 11:30AM PST: Three-minute Activities That Teach

Enliven your training in less than three minutes with a jolt that gives learners an emotional impact resulting in surprise and discovery. Your learners will sit up, listen, learn, and gain instant insights into your training topics. Join us in this discussion of why and how to use these three-minute training “jolts” to provide practical insights before, during, and after training events. Listen as interviewer Karen Hyder challenges and probes Sivasailam “Thiagi” Thiagarajan to validate the return on investment of this approach to training the next generation, and learn about the importance of debriefing.

Tuesday, July 9, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Managing a Technology Change Initiative (Free for ASTD members)

Technology is a breathtaking investment. Implementation often requires significant revenue and a heck of a lot of work, devouring profitability, time, focus, and energy. And we know that change efforts often fail. If you’re in charge of leading a technology change, how do you make sure you deliver? What does success look like? How do you communicate effectively to stakeholders? Tricia Emerson, author of the recent Technology Change Book, will show you how to be successful with one of the toughest assignments out there.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Best Practices in Diversity and Inclusion: A Panel Discussion (Free for ASTD members)

Diversity and inclusion (D&I) practices are important in today's workplace in light of changing demographics, globalization, the war for talent, and consumer requirements. Panelists—several chief diversity officers—will share their insight and experience on how D&I has evolved in their organizations. These chief diversity officers will discuss challenges encountered along the way, established best practices, and the future of D&I.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Is Sheryl Sandberg Right? Are Women Liked Less when Promoted?

Sheryl Sandberg, author of Lean In, tells a story about a businesswoman who explains to her daughter that when women are promoted and succeed in business, they are liked less by their co-workers. The daughter says, “Then I wouldn’t want to be promoted, because I want to be liked.” We’d like to see women “lean in further” and not assume that being promoted to a senior position causes them to be disliked. Interestingly, our data show just the opposite. Join us as we discuss whether the male “success-likeability bonus” is fact or fallacy, whether likeability is linked to leadership effectiveness and business outcomes, and much more. Register now to take our Likeability Assessment and see how you compare to other leaders!

Thursday, July 11, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: How to Get Your CEO and the C Suite to Engage the Workforce

Chances are your CEOs are left-brain types who get the numbers— things like EBITDA, ROI, net and gross revenue, income statements, balance sheets, and related “hard” data. But perhaps they don't put the same focus on “soft” business needs such as employee engagement. Many of us learning, communications, OD, and HR folks are right-brain types—more reliant on soft skills, feelings, visuals, and intuition—and thus have difficulty convincing executives to make employee engagement part of the company's strategic plan. Invite your C Suite to join you for an entertaining and fast-paced hour discussing how employee engagement DRIVES business results.

Thursday, July 11, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Role of Learning in Global Talent Management

Most often the term “talent management” refers to the life cycle of the employee, beginning with recruitment and selection, continuing through to exit interviews and retiree support, and covering everything in between. To one degree or another, the processes and programs that manage each phase of the talent cycle depend on one another. One aspect of this cycle is connected more strongly to all the others and in more ways—learning. Join Brandon Hall Group Senior Analyst David Wentworth and Alex Poulos, Chief Marketing Officer at NetDimensions, as they take a look at specific examples of how learning is inherently integrated with various aspects of talent management and how technology can leverage these connections, especially in global organizations.

Thursday, July 11, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: From Complex to Simple: How to Make Hard Subjects Easy through Story-based Learning

Have you caught the facts fever? If you’re comfortable with a subject matter, it’s quite likely you’re infected with the curse of knowledge. In other words, knowing too much gets in the way of communicating clearly to those who know less. Fortunately, you don’t have to be a master storyteller or presentation designer to learn how to choose, prepare, and present the right content for the right class—whether in person or online. Join Roger Courville, virtual presentation expert, for a fast-paced and practical session on how to tell a clear, compelling story that both educates and motivates. Learn:

  • Three steps for transforming facts into messages
  • How to design a flow that keeps the audience engaged
  • Four tips for creating visuals that stand out
  • A killer idea for making infographics work in online presentations

Tuesday, July 16, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Tin Can: Why Your Systems Need to Talk and How the Tin Can API Can Help

We know the majority of learning that happens in the workplace (and everywhere else) is informal. People learn constantly at their jobs, solve problems, and get better at the things they care about. In order to support people we need to figure out where they’re at, what they need to do, what they want to do, and how we can remove the barriers stopping them. Without a common language, this is very hard to do. The Tin Can API (aka Experience API) is a common language for many different systems to communicate what people are doing. Learn what the Tin Can API is, how it works, and see some examples of what it can do.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Teaching Effective Online Dialogues for Federal Agencies (Free for ASTD members)

Easter Seals has been recognized as a best-in-class example of collaborating with government agencies and creating effective forums for online dialogues. Federal agencies are often faced with a deluge of information from the public, and are often challenged by how best to organize, capture, coordinate, and follow up on those interactions. This gap in capabilities can effectively be addressed by the training and development community. This webcast will focus on how training and development professionals can educate their agencies on effective large-scale online participation.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: How to Make Technical & Compliance Training and eLearning Fun and Engaging

“Boring.” “Tedious.” “Painful.” “Do I have to?” These are the moans and complaints of learners as receivers of the data-dump type of very technical and compliance forms of eLearning. But when we shift the design by focusing less on the technical view and instead considering the learner’s perspective, technical and compliance eLearning can be fun and helpful. This webinar will present ideas on how to make this shift possible.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Get Ready for the Virtual Classroom (Free for ASTD members)

One of the biggest obstacles to moving organizations to virtual instructor-led training is the approach of the trainers themselves. Why do learning professionals resist using these tools? The answers to that question will help individuals overcome their objections and help organizations make the move to VILT smoother and more effective. Join us for this candid and entertaining webinar event.

Thursday, July 18, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Mobile Learning: 5 Ways to Improve Learning Results

Are your employees increasingly mobile, but your learning programs aren’t? If so, you’re missing out on an effective way to support your programs, make an impact on learning results, and be relevant to your employees’ day-to-day jobs. Mobile learning used to be the next big thing—now it is the big thing. Join senior product marketing director Mark Brandau to find out the top five ways mobile learning can boost your learning programs. Get an overview of using mobile technologies, and learn how to:

  • Provide learning on the spot, right when it’s needed
  • Use mobile learning to increase learning adoption and business results
  • Jumpstart your own mobile learning initiative

Thursday, July 18, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Increasing Training Success: Best Practices for Implementation & Sustainment (Free for ASTD members)

Interested in a better approach to making learning initiatives work? Considering today's hectic work environment, don't you want leaders to be more engaged in learning initiatives? Register for this one-hour webinar to join experts from the award-winning employee development firm AchieveGlobal. You'll learn about a new research-based model for sustaining learning to get optimal gains on training investments. Wendy Mack and Seleste Lunsford will tap into AchieveGlobal's 50+ years of experience in delivering learning solutions, revealing best practices that are proven to boost training transfer and sustainment.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Building a Pipeline of Culturally Agile Professionals

While our world is becoming increasingly more interconnected through cyberspace and international airports, success in global business requires more than a passport and a plane ticket. Success in global business is a function of people—those with an ability to operate effectively in intercultural and multicultural situations—people with cultural agility. This webinar will describe what cultural agility is (and isn’t) and offer various ways HR leaders can help develop a pipeline of culturally agile professionals within their organizations.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Thinking of Replacing Your LMS

Learning leaders must stay a step ahead of their business, but that can be difficult when dealing with antiquated technology and limited delivery options. Over 30% 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. Register today for this critical session to learn how hundreds of organizations have made successful transitions—and the tools and tricks your organization can use to upgrade successfully too.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Unleashing More Team Power in Your Organization (Free for ASTD members)

Have you noticed how everyone in the workplace talks about teamwork? For facilitators who specialize in teamwork, it can be frustrating to encounter old mental models and biases about team training. In this webinar, you will explore some of the common systemic barriers to effective teambuilding—from cynicism, to time and budget pressures, and more. You will also encounter some tools and strategies that you can put to work in your organization right away.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Is L&D an Expense or Investment?

The continually accelerating speed of change over the last several years has made employers and learners (employees) more impatient. In today's climate, investments need to provide returns in a relatively shorter period of time than they did a few years ago. This webinar will provide insight on the important factors business leaders need to consider to create the required velocity in realizing ROI, and the controls possible over direct and indirect resources. You will learn how to improve ROI on training and development by understanding the underlying factors, gaining control of them, assessing competencies and their impact on business performance, and strategizing for competence development.

Thursday, July 25, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Profiling Management Success – Leveraging Performance and Analysis in Management Development (Free for ASTD members)

This session will focus on the development and research methods involved in the creation and enhancement of training and leadership development initiatives at U.S. Security Associates. The discussion will specifically highlight the Success Profile Initiative (SPI) and how the research supporting this initiative was utilized to leverage transformation in a variety of learning, training, and development components within the organization, including selection practices, targeted organizational objective accomplishment, succession strategies, and management success.

Tuesday, July 30, 2013, 5AM – 6AM PST: Learning for Transformation: Co-create & Co-achieve (Free for ASTD members)

Join this exclusive webcast presented by Ms Rajkamal Vempati, Head of Human Resources at ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Limited, the largest private-sector general insurance company in India. Critical learning components:

  • Build ownership: co-create & co-achieve; strategic agenda
  • Leverage learning to transform: create a brand, sponsorship, contextualization, and business impact
  • Integrate with people process: performance and talent management, leadership development, competency-based development, and organizational structure

Tuesday, July 30, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Show Me the Numbers – Five Case Studies Illustrating the Effectiveness of Games and Gamification for Learning

Are learning games effective? Does gamification work? What are some practical examples of successful implementations of games and gamification in practical work environments? This webinar examines five case studies of organizations that have successfully implemented game-based learning and gamification to help increase sales and participation in leadership programs, and to reduce safety incidents and inventory loss through shrinkage. Webinar topics:

  • What type of business results can be expected from games and gamification?
  • What elements of games and gamification lead to success?
  • What tools are used to create games and gamification results?
  • Participants receive a list of “Lessons Learned” from the five case studies.

Wednesday, July 31, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Global E-Learning for Today’s Multinational Work Models (Free for ASTD members)

As your organization expands its operations in the global marketplace, effective and timely eLearning becomes crucial to the success of your company and your multicultural workforce. There is a wide range of tools for developing training content, and an assortment of media for communicating that content. How can you ensure your eLearning curriculum makes the best first impression with global audiences? And how can you facilitate simultaneous release in multiple markets? Join representatives from Lionbridge, dedicated global eLearning experts, as they describe how to:

  • Address the challenges of developing content for global consumption
  • Utilize industry best practices for developing eLearning for a global audience
  • Implement design, development, and multimedia tools that facilitate delivery to multiple markets

Free T&D webinars for June

With summer around the corner and school out soon, many of us are getting ready to switch gears. It’s a great time to brush up on learning before the hot weather hits. Why not wrap up spring with a free webinar or two? We hope these June events will inspire and motivate you.

Thursday, June 6, 2013, 10:30AM – 11:30AM PST: Let’s Get Real about Training Evaluation – Part I

In today’s resource-strapped business world, there exists greater pressure than ever to demonstrate the value of training to the organization. In this two-part webinar, Jim and Wendy Kirkpatrick will share practical ideas for maximizing the value of training while minimizing investment. In Part 1, Jim Kirkpatrick will discuss the fact that training evaluation is not as complicated or expensive as some make it seem. He will explain how to integrate a sound evaluation plan into the instructional design process and implement it with minimal resources. Participants will come away with ideas they can implement quickly and inexpensively in their own organizations.

Thursday, June 6, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: How Leaders Can Minimize Deception and Build Trust (Free for ASTD members)

Wouldn't it be great to know when you're being lied to? Wouldn't it be a savvy career strategy to know how to handle liars? And wouldn't it be a great leadership skill to know exactly what minimizes deception and builds trust? Join Carol Kinsey Goman, author of "The Truth About Lies in the Workplace," and learn:

  • Why people tell lies at work
  • How our biases, motives, vanities, desires, self-deceptions, and  rationalizations allow us to be duped
  • 7 habits of highly successful liars
  • 12 verbal and nonverbal cues for spotting liars
  • Strategies for dealing with liars once you've spotted them
  • How to make sure that you don't look like a liar
  • Leadership strategies for minimizing lies and building trust

 Thursday, June 6, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: The New Reality of Virtual Training

The way we learn has changed. With just a few taps, we can now find and share information with anyone, anywhere. Today’s training professionals must embrace the new technology and create an environment where people can gain knowledge the way they want to. Join Cammy Bean, Vice President of learning design for Kineo, as she explores the resources and performance tools that are supporting this revolution in learning. Attend this live webinar to learn:

  • What continuous, collaborative learning means and why it matters
  • How to implement the newest learning technologies
  • How other organizations have transformed their learning programs
  • And more…

Tuesday, June 11, 2013, 10:30AM – 11:30AM PST: Designing Learning for Behavior Change

Frequently, learning design is about showing people how to do the right things, but actually getting them to change behavior can be a challenge. This means that, as design professionals, we need to know all we can about designing for real behavior change, including using techniques from the fields of neuroscience, behavioral economics, behavioral psychology, persuasive technology, user experience, and even game design. Join us as we discuss learning design for behavior change with Julie Dirksen, consultant, instructional designer, and author of the 2011 book, Design for How People Learn.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Show Your Work (Free for ASTD members)

When you ask, “What does learning look like?” the answer is rarely, “Someone talking in front of a room.” We learn by doing, and by telling what we’re doing, and by watching others do things, and by showing others how we did something. Narrating work can solve so many problems for organizations, from capturing tacit knowledge, to easing transitions when workers depart, to further enabling informal and social learning. How can Training & Development (T&D) help this happen?

Wednesday, June 12, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Informal Learning – Implications and New Opportunities and What They Mean to Your CEO

Experts state that 80% of learning in today’s organizations is informal. Learning leaders try to manage it; CEOs want the increase in human capital it creates. Bright prospects eager to get hired try to get it in order to have a shot. All have somewhat different objectives. Organizations that understand how to leverage their informal learning initiatives will create competitive advantage. Join this webinar to learn:

  • Why informal learning is not merely a different form of formal learning
  • How important members of your management team view informal learning
  • The language of the important constituents impacted by informal learning
  • The asset challenges the exiting baby boomers present to every organization over the next decade
  • Innovative ways to increase the assets of informal learning in your organization

Wednesday, June 12, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Happiness and Productivity at Work (Free for ASTD members)

Learn how to use the power of positivity to help people achieve greater success and well-being. Research in positive psychology shows that people who experience more positive emotions achieve higher levels of success. This webcast teaches participants how to apply positive strategies in order to enhance employee performance and engagement.

Thursday, June 13, 2013, 10:30AM – 11:30AM PST: Let’s Get Real about Training Evaluation – Part II

In today’s resource-strapped business world, there exists greater pressure than ever to demonstrate the value of training to the organization. In this two-part webinar, Jim and Wendy Kirkpatrick will share practical ideas for maximizing the value of training while minimizing investment. In Part 2, Wendy Kirkpatrick will share four practical ways to implement a “real” training evaluation strategy, even with limited resources. Beginning with the concept that “the end is the beginning,” she then will provide tactics to utilize before, during, and after training that will both increase and document the value delivered to the organization. Participants will come away with ideas they can implement quickly and inexpensively in their own organizations.

Thursday, June 13, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: T+D: Building the Business Case for Employee Recognition (Free for ASTD members)

We all understand that employee engagement is critical to business success. Sometimes, however, organizations think of it as a soft and non-urgent business imperative. But engaged employees help you maintain an advantage over your competitors and help grow your business. The challenge is to excite your workers and continually maintain their engagement. Join us as we define the key drivers of employee engagement and prescribe a formula for success. Learn all the factors that motivate engagement from case studies, and learn how performance-based metrics can help you track your progress. Develop a road map for effective measurements, metrics, and processes to enhance your organization’s commitment to engagement.

Friday, June 14, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Ensuring Learning Transfer: An Introduction to the 6Ds (Free for ASTD members)

Training improves performance and provides a competitive edge if it is transferred and applied on the job. But for many training programs, transfer is the weak link. In this fast-paced and interactive webinar, the leaders of ASTD’s Learning Transfer Certificate Program will explain how training professionals can increase learning transfer. They will share the two key questions that must be answered for transfer to occur, and will introduce the six disciplines required to ensure a positive response. A handout with notes and job aids will be provided.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Imbedded Learning: How a Sales Portal Became a Competitive Advantage

Join Brandon Hall Group’s David Wentworth, Sr., and Bob Sullivan of PinPoint Global Communications, along with Barbara Brooks and Karen Stockla of Prudential Annuities as they share research on the need to make learning a business tool and the story of how Prudential accomplished this and forever changed how learning was viewed in that organization. Our presenters will discuss the critical path Prudential took to integrating multiple business tools into a single sales portal that focused on providing product training, development tools, marketing materials, business intelligence, sales metrics, and prospect data in a single location that supported business outcomes.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Re-thinking Change and Implementation: Myths/Truths/New Ideas

In this session, Lance Dublin shares the myths/truths distilled from 30 years of successes and failures, covering the change lifecycle from awareness to adoption to adaption to full integration. The key objective of this webinar is to challenge all of us to re-think what we know and have done, and to generate new ideas. So, please come prepared to share as well as listen. This is an opportunity to evolve an approach together for organizational change and program implementation based on our collective experience and learning.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Best Practices for Citizen Engagement Initiatives (Free for ASTD members)

Focusing on novel ways for the public to engage and impact the local and federal government process, this webinar will feature a joint presentation by the founders and officers of Citizinvestor and POPVox respectively, regarding transforming government through citizen engagement. These founders will talk about their process for capturing and stimulating engagement with an eye toward how aspects of their processes might be applicable across other areas of government.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Leading Virtual Teams

Virtual teams often face difficulties solving problems, making decisions, generating innovative ideas, and reconciling differences. When team members don't meet with each other face-to-face, it can be harder to build rapport, develop trust, and establish meaningful collegiality. Team members multi-task, leaders fall back to presenting endlessly, and the work goes sideways. Join us as we help you tackle the common challenges that go along with leading virtual teams. Our speakers will describe and demonstrate several practical skills and methods you can use right away to help team members and leaders improve the way they collaborate and perform.

Thursday, June 20, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Business Benefits of Effective Teams

We all know that the majority of work in an organization is conducted in some type of team environment. Individuals cannot be productive by operating independently. They must be able to communicate, persuade, and rely on each other in order to successfully achieve both minor and major initiatives that drive business results.

Research shows that the impact of a dysfunctional team can negatively affect organizational productivity and quality by more than 44%. With globalization and dispersed workforces, there is more need than ever to find effective ways to collaborate and communicate. Join Brandon Hall Group’s Rachel Cooke and Claude Werder as they share recent research on team effectiveness and show how social learning technologies can provide teams with effective communication strategies.

Thursday, June 20, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: BEST Webcast Series: Jiffy Lube University – A Success Story (Free for ASTD members)

Learn the simple strategies used by Jiffy Lube to transform an outdated training program into the #1 ASTD 2011 BEST Award winner in just seven years. This interactive presentation is filled with practical ideas and proven methods designed to help enhance any corporate university.

Thursday, June 20, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Enlightened Onboarding: Your Path to Accelerating New Sales Rep Productivity

The skills and knowledge required to be successful in sales are greater than ever. Yet while selling is getting harder, the amount of time and resources dedicated to onboarding efforts is declining. Join us for a webinar featuring Jim Ninivaggi of Sirius Decisions as he shares sales onboarding best practices that drive productivity in new sales hires. You’ll learn:

  • The importance of establishing a sales onboarding system
  • How to leverage emerging technologies (mobile, social, video) to create a virtual onboarding program for new sales hires
  • Ways to measure new rep time to productivity

Friday, June 21, 2013, 9AM – 10AM PST: Going Mobile: Creating Practices That Transform Learning (Free for ASTD members)

Presented by Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) CEO Kevin Oakes and John Polaschek, Senior Manager of Learning Technology at Qualcomm, this webcast examines how organizations are implementing mobile learning and developing their mobile strategy in the current technology-based landscape.

Monday, June 24, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Strategic Acceleration: Succeed at the Speed of Life! (Free for ASTD members)

In today’s ultra-competitive world, getting superior results faster is absolutely critical to success! However, the hectic speed of life makes it easy to become sidetracked by things that steal priority and make us less effective. People are hungry for ways to get ahead, to win, and to accelerate results both personally and professionally.

The Strategic Acceleration approach is based on three pivotal concepts: Clarity, Focus, and Execution. Once understood and deployed, Strategic Acceleration will have a powerful, long-term positive influence on the results and success that so many people want.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Building a Workforce Strategy with Skills-Gap Analytics

More than 83% of organizations with a skilled labour workforce state that it’s difficult to find employees capable of addressing their growing hiring needs today. Major workforce shortages in critical skilled roles are predicted at a global level by 2020 in healthcare, high-tech, and manufacturing. Businesses and governments alike are quickly realizing that long term-strategies for growth, innovation, and market share must include a workforce strategy based on data and analytics. Join Stacey Harris, VP of Research for Brandon Hall Group, as she shares recent research on developing workforce strategies to address growing skills-gap issues.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Fixing Leadership Development Programs & Developing Effective New L&D Initiatives

As a Human Resources executive, trainer, and consultant, Ralph Jacobson used many of the conventional approaches to leadership and change management training. He found most did little to help the organization achieve its strategic objectives. Despite billions of dollars spent on leadership training, employee engagement surveys suggest low morale and followership. Authors such as Pfau/Kay, Gary Hamel, Barbara Kellerman confirm the assessment.

Learn and explore a counter-intuitive yet powerful approach that results in leadership and change management training that is less costly, easier to implement, and more impactful than traditional approaches.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Creating a Mentoring Culture: What You Need to Know and Do (Free for ASTD members)

Mentoring requires a culture to support its implementation and fully integrate it within your organization. It is more than simply a self-sustaining program. This webcast is designed for those who are responsible for some or all aspects of designing, developing, or implementing mentoring programs. Dr. Lois Zachary will walk you through how to create a vibrant mentoring culture by creating a shared vision of organizational mentoring, assessing organizational readiness, and then designing appropriate mentoring opportunities. You will learn about the eight hallmarks of a mentoring culture and the specific processes you need to apply to support all of the mentoring that occurs in your organization.

Thursday, June 27, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Is the Unit of Learning Still a Lesson? Can the Lesson Survive Social and Mobile?

A shift is taking place in today’s learning environments that requires us to change our approach to learning – creating smaller, shorter, more targeted and relevant learning experiences. In today’s mobile and social learning environments, can and should the “lesson” still stand as the centre of our learning models? Takeaways of this event include:

  • The business case for creating a learning environment, over a learning course or program
  • Approaches to downsizing your lessons
  • Practical tools for creating a learning environment
  • Award-winning case studies of organizations that have created contextually relevant intelligence

Thursday, June 27, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Many Faces of ROI: Analyzing Training’s True Value

In our evolving global economic landscape, ROI is more important than ever in demonstrating the accountability of learning systems. But even powerful metrics have their faults. ROI calculations can seriously misrepresent and overstate the business contribution of a learning solution, and should therefore never be allowed to stand alone when communicating results. Enter the new view of ROI – the ROI Quality Analysis reveals the truth and communicates the real business contribution. Join this webinar and take away powerful tools that you can quickly and inexpensively apply to business strategies, HR software, and learning solutions to improve and communicate value.

Thursday, June 27, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Demystifying the Open-Source LMS (Free for ASTD members)

Considering an open-source learning management system? Will an open-source solution give your organization the reliability, robustness, ROI, and flexibility that it really needs in a learning management system (LMS)? Join us as Lambda Solutions and Elearning Experts, two organizations with decades of experience using and supporting open-source initiatives, explore the truths and myths surrounding open-source LMSs.

 

Free webinars for May

The warm weather has finally found us—it may finally be safe to put away those winter woollies and dig out the sandals. Keep that springtime optimism high by signing up for one of the free webinars being offered this month. We hope they will inspire and motivate you.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Using Technology to Drive Just-in-Time Learning (Free for ASTD members)

In today's fast-paced business environment, the ability to quickly attain and apply new knowledge is the hallmark of top performance. But with employees geographically dispersed and constantly on the go, how can you ensure that your people are empowered with the information they need to excel? This webinar will show how you can use technology to put learning at the centre of integrated, people-centric talent processes and deliver contextual learning that addresses on-the-job challenges.

Thursday, May 2, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Creativeship: Leadership Is SO Yesterday

Creating a sustainable company in a world of unprecedented technological advances, globalization, and shifting economic drivers is one of the greatest challenges facing decision makers today. Fostering this environment requires that companies invest their time in a series of interrelated priorities. Join Creativeship author Bob Kelleher as he challenges you to:

  • Learn how to crystallize your "Purpose" to build your EVP (Employer Value Proposition)
  • Make the business case that employee engagement is key to corporate success
  • Build a high-performing culture
  •  Introduce innovation throughout the workplace
  • Leverage social media as a key tri-branding tool

Thursday, May 2, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Creating a High-Performance Team (Free for ASTD members)

Is your team achieving exceptional results, or just doing okay? Is your team operating ethically? Is your team operating sustainably, or burning people out and pulling rabbits out of hats to make its numbers? The old leadership models are no longer viable when it comes to creating high-performing teams. It’s time for fresh approaches that challenge long-held leadership assumptions and practices. In this webcast you'll take a step back to learn best practices from 61 organizations in 11 countries, including Google, Zappos, Infosys, Cisco, eBay, GE, Toyota, Xerox, successful start-ups, and non-profits such as Mayo Clinic and KIPP.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Engaging Millennials: New Training Strategies for a Connected Generation

Is your organization evolving its learning technology and learning environment to deliver continuous, just-in-time training, and enabling informal and social learning for a workforce increasingly comprised of Millennials? Training has to go beyond the classroom and beyond basic online delivery if you want to engage—and get the best from—a generation that is used to a different way of interacting with people.

Join Claude Werder, VP Corporate and Product Development of Brandon Hall Group, and training and coaching expert Jan Slater as they share ideas for maximizing training effectiveness for the emerging workforce.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: How to Turn Your Organization’s Leaders into Powerful Presenters

In surveys, employers consistently say that verbal communication is the most important skill they want in their employees. For internal meetings and sales, presentation skills are essential. But how do you train employees to improve these skills? In this webinar, Ellen Finkelstein provides a syllabus for teaching presentation skills to the presenters in your company. You’ll learn why Death by PowerPoint is no longer acceptable and how you can lead the presenters in your organization to greater levels of accomplishment. What you learn may even increase sales in your company!

Tuesday, May 7, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Fostering Career Growth of Young Professionals in the Government Community through Collaboration (Free for ASTD members)

It’s a long climb to the top in any organization, especially in government, as new entrants must understand protocols and culture to excel in their careers. The ability to collaborate, network, and develop as a professional is critical to rising professionals entering government agencies and information technology companies. Join the webcast to learn how the American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council's Associates Program is helping compress the learning curve for new employees coming into the government and corporate world.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Creating a Mobile Learning Environment for a Connected World (Free for ASTD members)

With today’s on-the-go, mobile workforce, companies must train their employees wherever they are. The rapid adoption of smartphones and tablets has enabled people to work from the office, at home, or on the road. This is forcing training leaders to rapidly design and adopt mobile learning strategies. This webinar explores how mobile learning environments are helping companies deliver engaging, interactive training to today’s mobile workforce

Thursday, May 9, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Delivering Content in an Increasingly Mobile World

More than half of the phones sold in the U.S. are smartphones, and Gartner predicts that tablet sales will outpace PC sales by 2017. This reality has many organizations rethinking how they approach learning content and environments. What does a mobile-ready environment look like? What content is appropriate for mobile delivery? Join David Wentworth, Senior Analyst with Brandon Hall Group, and Dan Medakovic, VP Learning Solutions at Blatant Media, as they explore how mobile delivery can be leveraged for learning.

Thursday, May 9, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Maximizing the Effectiveness of Sales Training (Free for ASTD members)

Companies spend about $20 billion a year on various forms of sales training. Yet many sales leaders report low ROIs from sales training initiatives. In this webinar, Norman Behar and David Jacoby of the Sales Readiness Group discuss five essential factors that can help you achieve sustainable success from your investment in sales training programs.

Friday, May 10, 2013, 9AM–10AM PST: Leadership Development for Millennials: Why It Matters (Free for ASTD members)

This webinar is based on the ASTD/i4cp research report Leadership Development for Millennials: Why it Matters. Join us as Jay Jamrog, Vice President of Research for i4cp, and Tammy Erickson of Tammy Erickson Associates discuss the report’s examination of how organizations are preparing the Millennial generation to manage and lead effectively, now and in the future.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013, 10:30AM – 11:30AM PST: Learning on Demand: How the Evolution of the Web Is Shaping the Future of Learning

The evolution of the Web has fundamentally changed the business models for creating value. More than simply designing instruction, we as instructional designers need to ensure our content is valuable to our audience. This means our role in designing content must play into the larger ecosystem of the business. Looking at five principles that have fueled and sustained the Web’s growth and evolution, we can extract key insights into creating valuable content consistent with the Web’s own evolution.

Thursday, May 16, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: People Development – Engaging, Building, and Expanding Your Talent

Our world is changing dramatically—how we live, how we work, and how we perform. In order to keep up, learning must also change and evolve—sometimes dramatically. Brandon Hall's latest research on relationship-centered learning traces the evolution of learning models over the years and reveals some interesting findings. Key topics include:

  • Practical approaches to making development the centre of your engagement and performance programs
  • The impact of effective people-development strategies
  • What technologies best support the relationship-centered learning model
  • Real people development stories connected to real business outcomes

Thursday, May 16, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Virtual Learning Environments: Redefining the Training Experience

As organizations continue to expand globally and training budgets continue to decrease, developing effective learning programs has become a significant challenge. Learning management systems and basic online learning tools have fallen short in providing an engaging learning experience, resulting in a need for more effective training programs. In this webinar, Tom Masotto will demonstrate how virtual training enhances learning retention and improves learning outcomes. Learn how to re-engage your employees by providing easy access to interactive training programs.

Thursday, May 16, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Attention! How to Get It and Keep It (Free for ASTD members)

Have you ever watched a movie that kept your eyes riveted on the screen? Your online presentation may not have car chases, but you can use Hollywood's attention-grabbing techniques to keep your virtual audience on the edge of their seats. Join Roger Courville, author of The Virtual Presenter's Handbook, as he reveals how to design engaging slides and interactions for attendees—wherever in the world they happen to be. Attendees will learn:

  • Three movie techniques that work in virtual presentations
  • How to polish your presentation—no design skills needed
  • Tips for increasing the "aha!" factor of your presentation
  • Two voice skills anybody can use to stimulate thinking

Friday, May 17, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: How to Build Micro-Scenarios: Snappy, Fast, Engaging

The demand for fast, on-the-go learning plagues eLearning designers, developers, and leaders. Many of us are still stuck with the very old and antiquated “data dump” and “learners must learn” paradigms. How do we develop eLearning content that teaches content yet is also short, concise, snappy, fast, and instant? In this webinar, Ray Jimenez addresses the following questions:

  • Where is the juncture between good learning content and snappy, fast, engaging micro-scenarios?
  • What are the characteristics of a good micro-scenario?
  • How do you “fit” big content into micro-scenarios?
  • What is the step-by-step process of building snappy, fast, and engaging micro-scenarios?

Tuesday, May 21, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Tin Can API: What Do the New Standards Mean for You?

There isn’t a learning professional today who would tell you learning takes place only in the classroom. It happens every day, everywhere. Anything from reading a book, having a conversation, watching a video—even playing a game—can be a learning experience. The challenge is to figure out an efficient way to capture those experiences as data that can be measured, reported, and analyzed. Rustici Software has developed a set of standards for tracking these learning experiences. Please join our panel of experts as they discuss Tin Can API, and what it can do for you.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Three Aspects of Performance Improvement

In this webinar, Hale Associates President Judith Hale introduces three interdependent aspects of performance improvement : (1) the systematic process, ( 2) the consulting process, and (3) the brand-building process. All three aspects contribute to improving the performance of people, work teams, and organizations as a whole. You will gain insights about performance improvement, political prowess, and personal branding—as well as three tools for explaining performance improvement to others and guiding their own professional development.

Thursday, May 23, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: 7 Creative Ways to Combine Training & Coaching into Powerful Performance

The world of training is changing. The days of all-day workshops and seminars are well behind us. Employees need to be developed, but little time is allowed for the old traditional ways. In this webinar, seasoned Coaching Strategist Tim Hagen discusses specific ways of combining training and coaching to deliver powerful performance results and explores:

  • Seven easy-to-use training and coaching combinations
  • The top five reasons training and coaching must be combined
  • A unique coaching method guaranteed to raise any trainer or training department’s value
  • Why trainers must be trained in a coaching methodology
  • How to get managers to coach their employees

Thursday, May 23, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Sales Onboarding at DHL – A Gold Medal Case Study

The Goal: Grow DHL Express’s market share and increase its EBIT (Earnings before Interest and Taxes) by 20 percent from 2011 to 2013 and ensure that DHL Express becomes recognized as the best sales force in the logistics industry.

The Plan: Increase the effectiveness of DHL Express’s 6,000-person global sales force, reduce the time to productivity for new hires, and attract the best salespeople. In this case-study webinar, DHL executives will tell the story of how STR designed and implemented a game-changing sales-performance program for DHL that engaged the entire global sales force in 14 languages so that it attracted top salespeople, reduced staff turnover, increased customer loyalty, and became known as the best sales team in the industry.

Tuesday, May 30, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Beyond the Mobile Hype: Making Learning Fit in a Mobile World

Over 50 percent of organizations that participated in Brandon Hall Group’s annual Business Focus survey stated that mobile technology was going to be an important topic for their organization this year. We’ve shifted how we live our lives, make money, and even communicate to fit the new mobile world—we also have to change how we think about learning. Join Learning Analyst David Wentworth Sr. and CERTPOINT Systems CEO Ara Ohanian as they share recent research, exploring practical and effective ways to ensure that learning is effective and relevant in today’s mobile environment. Takeaways include:

  • Key practices in streamlining mobile performance support  and knowledge sharing with mobile learning
  • Practical approaches to meeting learning goals with a broad mobile learning strategy
  • Award-winning case studies of effective mobile learning strategies