Every year there are new themes that emerge in learning and development. Shortly after the 2008/9 crisis hit, everyone wanted ‘Finance for Non-Financial Managers’ type courses. Strategic Thinking also became a big topic there for a while. You couldn’t walk 15 feet through an office at that time without hearing someone use the word ‘strategic’. So many companies clearly felt it was probably a good idea for their people to know what it meant. Although it’s still clear that not everyone got the invite to that particular course. One topic that has stayed in ‘Need’ list for the last number of years is Leadership Development. It’s tricky developing leaders. It can be expensive, too. Go and get a quote from one of the big institutions and you’ll see what I mean. Plus it’s hard to get the high potential into the classroom, they often have other pressures and commitments. There are ways to start the process more cheaply and in a way that the company can manage easily, but it takes commitment. Once a week a senior, experienced leader in the organization gives up 30 minutes of their time. He or she is there to facilitate the session with the high potentials in the room. One of the potentials chooses an identified leadership competency or challege and researches the topic in the week prior to the session. Perhaps finding a short video with a leadership luminary like Marshall Goldsmith, Jack Welch, Tom Peters or Jeffery Immelt, addressing said topic or concern. He or she should then look to provide a 5-minute summary of some of the concerns around the topic, before throwing the discussion out to the floor, facilitated and guided by the senior figure. 30 minutes a week. That’s all it takes, but it has to be something that is bought into at the top. They need to understand that part of their role is not just to lead but to coach and guide. Call them what you will, ‘Breakfast and Learn’ ‘Toolbox Talks’, but they can make a difference in helping your high potentials understand the nuances between management and leadership. William Spindloe is the Director of Business Development Asia at International Human Resources Development Corporation (IHRDC). IHRDC provides world-class training, e-Learning, and competency management to oil and gas companies around the globe.

HR, L&OD reclaim the initiative across the Asia Pacific Workplace according to new research from Cegos Asia Pacific As a Learning company, we at Cegos are passionate about organisational learning - right across the globe. Recently, however, on the back of the GFC and slow return to confidence, Learning and Development has been pared back to save budget and sits alongside some of the other "first to go’s" - Some marketing spend, recruitment, training etc. Even in the APAC region our recent surveys into the workplace learning trends have shown challenges since 2010. In our third, 2015 survey, all that is changing. Learning is getting front and centre attention, a key battleground for Talent is being realised. Learning Professionals and Learners appear to be closing their previous rift and are more collaborative. In short, organisational leadership is understanding that a skilled workforce = better competitiveness and growth (organisationally and personally), better attraction and retention of Talent and is a value adding benefit to their employees. Download now   Some key headlines to whet your appetite. In 2015 we polled over 2,500 personnel across 6 main APAC territories (Australia/New Zealand, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore). Of those surveyed 440 represented Learning Professions (ie HR leaders, L&OD); the rest were all Learners at employee and management level. Our survey findings for the Asia Pacific region highlight, among other areas, Who is receiving training / Reasons for training Where training is being sourced / Employee satisfaction with training Learning methods and role of technology in organisational learning solutions The role of HRD / L&D management, employees themselves and their Line Managers concerning the sourcing, participation in and follow up of training interventions And much more…… > Of the 2200+ APAC Learners polled it is clear there is a great buy in to learning and personal development. Alongside this, there is an eagerness to embrace all the learning methods available from face to face to technology enabled solutions. LEARNERS ARE SERIOUS ABOUT THEIR DEVELOPMENT. THEY OWN IT. > The gap between learning professionals and learners themselves had started to widen between 2012 & 2014.  2015 - HR, L&OD have retaken the initiative and engaged the Learner population in more collaborative discussion and have challenged the Leaders of the business to release learning budget. HR, L&OD WITH TEETH! CHAMPIONING LEARNING. > Technology enabled learning, like eLearning, Blended training solutions and mobile (tablet led) learning are growing in popularity. In 2015 there will be more eLearners and Blended learners in Asia than anywhere else in the world. APAC LEADING THE WAY IN TECHNOLOGY ENABLED LEARNING

When most people think of training they think of one or two-day courses in a face-to-face, typical classroom type environment, with a trainer, a Powerpoint screen and a few icebreaker exercises to kick the show off. But, in truth that is how it used to be, and while face-to-face classroom-based training is still very important today, thanks to the internet, training has been completely reinvented. It can now be delivered in a range of more economical, flexible and engaging way. It is certainly about time, as there seems to be a well-acknowledged skills gap leading to a surge in employer training. This recent study by CareerBuilder shows that 61% of employers have hired people who don’t meet their requirements and plan to help that person grow into the role. At the same time, 49% plan to train workers who don’t have the right experience and hire them, which is an increase of 10 percentage points from the previous year Thanks to how the web has reinvented training, employers have many more options to deliver web-based training to this wave of new, but underprepared recruits. There are 5 key ways in which the web has revolutionized training for the benefit of the modern employer. 1. Training can now be delivered on demand. You no longer have to wait until you have enough internal trainees for your course to make it worthwhile. Now you just have your trainer create one recorded course and this can be delivered to your new hires and employers at any point during the year. Web-based, recorded training modules are flexible and convenient as they can be viewed and played back by employees whenever they like. 2. No need for trainees to travel. Part of the huge inconvenience of face-to-face classroom training were travel expenses and considerable lost work time, especially if international travel is required. Thanks to web-based training, trainees can learn from their own home or in the office, eradicating travel expenses and minimising lost work time. 3. Can take a modular approach. Traditional training courses had to be done all in one go and many workers found it hard to find one or two days in their schedule to do a course. Web-based trainees can watch, pause and resume training, so they can train in bite-size chunks and fit it around work commitments. 4. No more scheduling conflicts. With traditional classroom training it was difficult to get everyone together at the same time. Web-based, recorded training can be watched at the trainees’ convenience and a place to suit them, meaning there are no more scheduling issues. 5. Know what has been learned.  Modern, web-based, training has in-built assessments and monitoring, making it easy to track trainer engagement, learning and course completion, in a very automated and inexpensive way compared to the manual, form filling approach of traditional class-room based training. These are 5 key ways in which the web has reinvented training. Have we missed any? How else do you think the web has changed training?   About SkyPrep The SkyPrep founders were approached by a colleague to find them an online testing and training software to sell their training courses to companies. They were amazed they couldn’t find an online training software platform that was easy to use, yet had all the functionality that they were looking for! So what did they do? They built one. Whether it’s a company with over 1000 employees to train, a small-sized business with just a few employees, a private tutor, a large school, or someone wanting to sell courses online, the feedback has been unanimous; SkyPrep is addictively easy to use.  

Purists despise it. Traditionalists sneer at it. Non-corporate types just roll their eyes. Yet, it adds that unique flourish without which internal corporate communication would seem as weary as chewed out chewing gum on the sole of a shoe: yes, it’s corporate speak. Why bother with the very prosaic ‘don’t waste time with that incredibly complex task,’ when you can tell someone ‘not to boil the ocean’? Why refer people to a standard company profile when you can send them off looking for a boilerplate? And why ask people to be creative when you can insist that they do a spot of ‘blue-sky thinking’? Business jargon, acronyms, buzzwords, neologisms, euphemisms, slang - whatever the title - all add a kind of sexy frill to the harsh realities of business talk. They stem from all areas of life - from the world of science to the world of sport. Companies routinely talk about their ‘ecosystem’ when referring to the network of organizations and people with which they interact. And instead of landing in a lengthy meeting, business people are increasingly finding themselves being dragged into a ‘huddle.’ (A ‘meeting’ is so ‘80s!) The word ‘huddle’ comes from the group meeting that takes place between players on the field during a game of American football. So, does this predilection for colourful language reveal another side to the corporate beast? Is it the poet inside that’s coming out? Or is this verbal anarchism a very conniving way to exclude those not in the club? After all, dealing with corporate speak cannot be a walk in the park for the layman - not to mention the problems it might pose to the uninitiated foreigner. And that’s just trying to decipher it. Think about those clingy inhibitions which have to be shed in order to actually speak it - fluently. And even those who have mastered the tongue perfectly are often the subject of ridicule. Games like ‘buzzword bingo’ are routinely played in corporate stadiums, where a pre-determined list of buzzwords is circulated before a meeting or conference event. As the speaker uses the words, the participating members mentally tick them off during the talk. The truly brave will shout out ‘Bingo’ when all the words have been said, though a less job-threatening version involving a silent mouthing of the word does also exist. In a day and age when good communication is the key to success, how is this ‘corporate speak’ epidemic to be rationalized? In many ways, it is not! Nothing hinders the transfer of information more than opaque language. Nothing turns people’s attention off more than a thick façade of buzzwords, acronyms and slang. Yet, the alternative is so dull, so lacking in sexy frilliness, that it practically lullspeople to sleep. The moral of the story? Choose your words carefully - it’s all part of the fun. Want to hear some real corporate speak? Check out our Business Podcasts.

A friend of mine recently mentioned that his company produced a ‘Who We Are’ sort of brochure. Nothing odd in that you might say, but this one was not advertising products and services. This glossy tri-fold enumerated the ‘Ethics’ of the company, with subheadings like Commitment, Values, Standards, Compliance etc. The reason he thought this was a little odd is that he had been with the company for more than two years and had never known anything about the company’s ethics or these corporate maxims, and it would appear neither did anyone else who worked there. It was a marketing department production. To his co-workers, a cynical attempt to cash in on the ‘ We are Ethical’ type of marketing that seems to be churned out of many organizations today. Many of whom are very aware that big business has a poor perception among the many, and perhaps for good reason. The ethics brochure made claims of supporting the community, aware of its responsibilities to the environment, its legal obligations to the world at large, caring for its employees, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. The message that came loud and clear from the employees was that if the company wanted to extoll its ethics and virtues, then perhaps it should start by discussing them with the staff BEFORE living them. Ironically, the company in question was found to be trading illegally in at least one territory, had been threatened with legal action over denigration of staff in one foreign office and had lost a spate of constructive and wrongful dismissal cases the months following the distribution of the Ethical Tome. This is perhaps an extreme case. We do, however have an obligation of the kind that the brochure described. Balanced of course with pragmatism. Tempered with the knowledge that in today’s world of Facebook, Linkedin, Glassdoor and social media in general, light is not the fastest thing in the universe. Nothing travels faster than bad news. ‘Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either. - Albert Einstein

March 17 is a national holiday in Ireland, and known as Saint Patrick’s Day by millions of people throughout the world. Perhaps not surprisingly, you don’t have to be Irish to really make a day of it. St. Patrick’s Day is the feast day to commemorate Saint Patrick (386-493), the patron saint of Ireland. Although St. Patrick’s Day is a Christian festival celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church, it is most commonly observed as an honoring of Irish culture, in all its many facets, by people all around the world. Perhaps the most public display of Irish pride are the gigantic parades. In Ireland, these one-day parades date back to the late 19th century and stem from the heightened sense of nationalism typical of that period. Since 1996, Dublin has played host to the St. Patrick’s Festival, which is a four-day event incorporating spectacular fireworks, open-air music, street theater and of course the traditional parade. The traditional parades have both floats and marchers. These floats are manned by members of local organisations, everything from sport clubs to schools to local businesses. During the parades, children vie for an advantageous spot for catching sweets, which are thrown from the floats. Many people sport green garments and wear shamrock. Crazy costumes and painted faces are also de rigueur. In recent years, the four largest parades outside of Ireland have been held in New York City and Boston in the United States, Birmingham, England, and Montreal, Canada. New York’s parade is the world’s largest. It has taken place annually since 1762. It progresses along 5th Avenue in Manhattan and attracts an estimated two million onlookers. Chicago, which also holds an annual parade, even dyes the Chicago River green on St. Patrick’s Day. In Manchester, the festivities last for two weeks. And in Montreal, which claims to be second only to New York in North American St. Paddy’s Day enthusiasm, supporters are lobbying to make March 17 a national holiday, just as it is in Ireland.St. Patrick’s Day is the feast day to commemorate Saint Patrick (386-493), the patron saint of Ireland. Although St. Patrick’s Day is a Christian festival celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church, it is most commonly observed as an honoring of Irish culture, in all its many facets, by people all around the world. Perhaps the most public display of Irish pride are the gigantic parades. In Ireland, these one-day parades date back to the late 19th century and stem from the heightened sense of nationalism typical of that period. Since 1996, Dublin has played host to the St. Patrick’s Festival, which is a four-day eventincorporating spectacular fireworks, open-air music, street theater and of course the traditional parade. The traditional parades have both floats and marchers. These floats are manned by members of local organisations, everything from sport clubs to schools to local businesses. During the parades, children vie for an advantageous spot for catching sweets, which are thrown from the floats. Many people sport green garments and wear shamrock. Crazy costumes and painted faces are also de rigueur. In recent years, the four largest parades outside of Ireland have been held in New York City and Boston in the United States, Birmingham, England, and Montreal, Canada. New York’s parade is the world’s largest. It has taken place annually since 1762. It progresses along 5th Avenue in Manhattan and attracts an estimated two million onlookers. Chicago, which also holds an annual parade, even dyes the Chicago River green on St. Patrick’s Day. In Manchester, the festivities last for two weeks. And in Montreal, which claims to be second only to New York in North American St. Paddy’s Day enthusiasm, supporters are lobbying to make March 17 a national holiday, just as it is in Ireland.

Hooray! We’ve just won the Golden Globe Tigers Award in the category "Best Use of Technology for Training". Hosted at the Prince Hotel and Residence in Kuala Lumpur, the Golden Globe Tigers Summit celebrates initiatives across a variety of sectors including Sustainability, Banking, Training & Development, Retail, Healthcare, Fashion, Sports Management and many more. The award recognises organisations and individuals for outstanding achievements and initiatives which have made a difference in communities around the globe. The jury panel consist of representatives from the Academic Council, as well as a number of high level executives and vice presidents from the corporate sector. This year, Speexx received the Golden Globe Tigers Award in the Training & Development category "Best Use of Technology for Training" for its online language training solution. Speexx combines live communication skills training (via virtual classroom, telephone or face-to-face) with self-paced online courseware and ongoing personalised coaching for Business English, French, Spanish, German and Italian. With Speexx, organisations are able to offer their workforce an innovative and interactive language learning solution with measurable results, based on global standards. Armin Hopp, Founder and President of Speexx commented: "We’re thrilled to have won such a highly acclaimed prize. Receiving the Golden Globe Tigers Award is a testimony to the hard work and dedication of our employees and the great collaboration with our friends, partners and customers worldwide. On behalf of Speexx, I would like to thank the jury panel for this recognition." Check out the full press release here.  

This is going to be a big year in the world of corporate talent. According to Bersin by Deloitte, we are entering a talent world where people data is central to every decision, adding, "Organisations that are investing in analytics teams, analytics tools, and analytics expertise are going to far outperform their peers." Big data has already transformed retail and consumer facing businesses and is now set to revolutionise corporate learning, too. HR and L&D professionals will increasingly become ‘data-enabled’, with big learner data informing decisions about skills development alongside demand from line managers. Making the most of big learner data is not just about identifying what type of learning and development is needed and which topics need to be covered. It is also about getting better information about how learning is embraced and used, what works and what doesn’t, who is learning and who is not, and why. With the help of technology and analytics, it is now possible to adapt and improve training and learning delivery as it is happening, based on real-time data about learners. Big learner data can provide unparalleled insight into the learning process. HR managers who tap into learner data successfully will be able to offer the type of responsive and relevant learning that is most effective. Using big learner data to boost global workforce development Use learner data to standardise delivery: Analysis of learner data can reveal patterns that will inform the standardisation of learning modules and the standardisation of terminology as employees worldwide get up to speed with the language and communications skills they need to communicate effectively with each other, as well as with suppliers and customers. It is vital that multinationals bring a shared glossary to global production and data from language and communications learning can help build a shared lexicon. Blend data-enabled e-learning with face-to-face support for best results: In a large-scale survey of e-learners, 84 percent of corporate learners said they found a face-to-face introduction to the course useful and 83% said they appreciated feedback provided by a trainer in person. A combination of classroom and online training has proven to deliver the best results. Offer training through multiple devices to engage learners: The latest technical standards for e-learning system interoperability allow for the input of learner data from multiple sources, making it possible to collect data from a wide range of learning experiences. Technical standards for e-learning system interoperability such as SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) are evolving all the time. SCORM’s latest incarnation - Tin Can API - offers consistent collection of learner data from multiple devices. Read the full article via HR Review.

Earlier this month was the 106th International Women’s Day, which celebrates the economic, political and social achievements of women in the past, present and future. This year, it sparked a lot of questions and opinions around the web. It’s 2015, but have things improved at all? And what can we do to support gender equality, both in the workplace and at home? A recent study stunned us all when it found that there are fewer women chairing FTSE 100 companies than there are men named John holding these positions. Here in Germany, meanwhile, the government has just passed a new law stating that by 2016, women need to make up at least 30 per cent of the board in multinational companies. While applauded by many, this new law also faced some criticism, such as the fact that it is gender-biased and, in an ideal world, should not be necessary at all. On top of that, it may be risky to just fill positions with people based on their gender instead of their skills and experience. Back to basics Let’s take a step back and look at higher education. According to the University of Oxford, among all the factors contributing to graduates’ careers, gender still has the highest impact, ahead of social background, ethnicity or degree subject. For example, male graduates were found to be more confident about their career prospects and more proactive when approaching recruiters. Upon leaving university, they are 9 per cent more likely to find a graduate-level job within six months (and earn a higher salary!) than their female counterparts. So without realising it, women may be one step behind on the career ladder before even entering the world of work. We could even take this right back to our early school days, where girls are frequently discouraged from taking "difficult" subjects like maths or physics. Boys on the other hand, are expected to excel at science and less encouraged to study foreign languages, where girls tend to shine. This, in turn, can be traced back of our parents’ and teachers’ perception of gender-based skills differences. So the obstacles might already be in place long before we reach university or work. But let’s say a woman does get a great job right upon graduating and receives the same pay as her male peers. There’s another potential barrier waiting for her out there and that is other people’s perception of male and female success in the workplace. Two professors demonstrate this in the Heidi & Howard experiment, where two groups of people read the same case study describing an individual’s successful career path. Only in one version the person is Heidi, a woman (actually the case study is based on the true story of a woman’s career path) and in the other, it’s a man - Howard. When the groups were asked to describe the person they read about, the Howard group found him likeable, while the Heidi group said she was selfish and not somebody they would like to work with. This is not very encouraging news, but something we must take into account if we want things to change. The communications gap Many supporters of gender equality like to highlight typical ‘female’ strengths, e.g. the fact that they are better listeners, negotiators or more compassionate. There is also a common belief that women outperform men in foreign language and communication skills. Working at a language training company, this is something we often hear from our customers who are aiming to train their workforce in a new language. They are worried that their male employees will be at a disadvantage in language training. But actually, our internal data of 72.000+ learners from around the world showed there was absolutely no difference in their performance. The only gender-related difference was that women were slightly more likely to attend live virtual classroom sessions than men. What affected their performance more was the amount of coaching and live training they received, how often they studied and how much their HR and L&D Managers backed their training. I’d like to make a bold statement here and say that intellectual skills are gender-blind, and that it is society’s stereotypes and expectations that often push people down certain career paths. A woman can become a brilliant scientist, just like a man can become a great communicator. If we only ever look at the situation through the lens of gender, we’re setting ourselves up for a fall. To challenge our perceptions, we need to change the way we talk to our friends, colleagues and our own children. So instead of accepting the status quo, let’s keep pushing forward.

I was waiting for a friend at a restaurant bar a couple of nights ago, and as I glanced around the room I was struck that there was not one person who did not have their face buried in a smartphone, even those clearly with other people. And can someone explain why there is a sudden desire to take pictures of our food? I could probably go on at some length about people who take pictures of their food or who feel the need to turn on their cell phones the very second a plane touches the ground or of course those who use ‘selfie sticks’. The ownership and usage of which should be accompanied by a long prison sentence, but I shall try and get to the point of this missive instead. We are bombarded by information these days. From home to the office, to the malls, airports etc we are under a constant information assault. Oddly enough it would appear that our appetite only seems to grow as a result. There are many who simply would not know how to function without their phone or phones. I’m not sure that this constant bombardment is doing us any good. I think we are losing the art of verbal communication. I think that as expedient as the internet can be, I think its important that we also look to still learn from our peers and the more experienced through conversation. So I am proposing this- A Digital Day Off, or Smart Phone Free Fridays. Basically a day at work every week, where we have to leave the phone(s) at home. Where we actually have to get up, and go and speak to people, rather than ‘Whatsapping’ them. Where if we need to know something we ask someone rather than Googling. I’m not against technology, I like it. But I do feel we are losing touch with one another in the workplace, and perhaps at home too, but those much brighter than I have been seeing this coming for a while… "I fear the day technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots." - Albert Einstein