Last Thursday, we spent a fab day Factor Humano in Madrid, which is organized by IFAES each year. We knew the event would be one of a kind even before walking through the doors. IFAES  didn’t choose an average hotel or conference building for its venue - instead it went big (really big) and rented Real Madrid’s home in the north of Madrid - Santiago Bernabéu football stadium. Not bad and not easy to top! So many of the conference discussions could be watched with a world-famous stadium in the background, where Zidane, Ramos, Ronaldo and the likes have trained. It was hard to tell whether delegates were more captivated by the conference topic or the endless green in the background. Needless to say, this event generated huge amounts of interest, and the attendees started swarming in at 8.45 am sharp. A total of 800 HR and L&D leaders from large organizations attended to speak to learning solution providers and listen to experts about current talent management trends and challenges. Spanish events are particularly attractive because they’re accompanied by a lot of free food - tapas, canapés and paella are carried around on trays during every break, and after 2 pm, the wine and champagne bottles start to pop! This year’s themes were extremely diverse and relevant to professionals from all kinds of HR and L&D functions. From leadership development over to employer branding engagement, motivation, outsourcing, e-learning and talent management systems - nothing went uncovered. Speakers from companies such as Google, Orange, Electrolux,  DHL, Adidas, ALSTOM and many others took the floor and got involved in thought-provoking talks on how HR and L&D can accelerate business growth. Oliver Albrecht, Vice President at Speexx hosted a session on "How to involve teams in an international project" together with representatives from BNP Paribas, Europ Assistance Spain, Nissan, BSH and Abengoa. The topic addressed organisations wishing to expand on a global level and aiming to train their staff in a standardised way. Back at the Speexx stand, we wantd to try something different to entertain our visitors and invited them to take snapshots of themselves with our toycards, designed by our very own Giulia in Italy. Here are some of the pictures we took.   By the way, Speexx and Speexx Espana were among the top Twitter users at the event - not too shabby! Thanks IFAES for a great day and we’re excited to see which location you’ll go for next year!

Wouldn’t it be fantastic to teach in many places at the same time? Or to have business meetings all over the globe without having to take a plane? Well - today that is possible! I had been teaching traditionally for many years when I discovered Skype. Skype is an excellent tool if you want to teach or coach a person who is located far away from you. I have had great results since the sessions have been interactive and I have been able to send the presentations with the same tool while speaking. But Skype has a limit. You can only invite a few people to each session. In this way you might find yourself having to do multiple sessions when you could have managed to invite more people to the same one. I find the webinar to be a much better tool. There are many ways to create a webinar.  You can have hundreds of participants to the same session or only a limited number. It is up to you. Furthermore, you can choose if you want the participants to talk or to chat during the lesson, and they can choose whether they want their chats to be visible only for you or for all the attendees. You can upload a presentation in the webinar session and also have a web cam on, which makes the whole moment more personal and interactive. As a presenter you can record the session and send the registration to all the participants afterwards. A great idea is also to use the recording to do marketing for yourself or your company. You can post the recording on your homepage or use it in newsletters to new prospects. Working in this way will save costs and time. You won’t have to travel as much as before but you will be able to reach a lot of people in the whole world! You can gather students from many different countries in the same live session.  But remember to consider the different time zones! Plan the time of the day accordingly if you want to reach countries in different parts of the globe. Personally, I have used webinars for different purposes; for presentations of my book, for coaching sessions and for meetings with clients. My book is in Swedish, but there are Swedes everywhere in the world and a lot of people have been able to attend my presentations. This has saved me travelling time. I have also been coaching people in the sales field with this tool and feel it is fantastic to reach so many people without having to move away from my chair. I have used webinars for work, showing reports in real time for customers located in different countries and discussing topics as in a real face-to-face meeting. It is possible to upload different documents to be used during the session and a good way to ensure that you improve each session is to make the attendees fill in a short survey afterwards. You can use the survey to check the comprehension, gather feedback of the webinar or both. Of course, the best way to teach is still face to face. Personal contact is fantastic! When being near a person you can see in their eyes if they have understood everything and an experienced teacher can easily feel if there are questions. But you could never reach as many students in one hour that you can do with a webinar. And you could definitely not be in many different places at the same time!   About Annika Widen Annika is a Marketing Professional within the IT field. She is Swedish and lives in Rome but works mostly in Swedish and English. She is also a writer and has written a book in Swedish and has 6 blogs in Swedish, English and Italian. Annika on LinkedIn Annika on Twitter www.annikawiden.com

Just a few days left before our joint expert webinar with Laura Overton of Towards Maturity! In "Modernising Learning - how to stay ahead of the game", we’ll show you some practical tips for improving your learning strategy and making a real impact on the bottom line. Over 150 learning professionals from around the world have already registered, so hurry up and save your seat before we book out! What do the top performing learning organisations do differently in their L&D strategy? Discover ideas, techniques and insights that will help you accelerate L&D for your workforce and stay on the cutting edge. Drawing on independent research with 3,500 L&D leaders from over 40 countries, the Towards Maturity Benchmark helps organisations looking to accelerate their performance through the application of learning innovation. Join this free webinar session to discover the secrets of top performing teams, find out how you can compare your progress with others, flag areas for ongoing improvement and access targeted resources to help you, and your stakeholders, take the next steps on your journey to success.   Laura Overton Laura Overton has over 2 decades of experience helping organisations to improve the business impact of learning technologies in the workplace. She is the Managing Director of Towards Maturity - a not for profit organisation that provides research and online resources to help organisations deliver effective learning intervention at work. Follow Laura on Twitter: @lauraoverton   Armin Hopp Armin Hopp is the Founder and President of Speexx. He is a regular speaker at international talent management conventions and contributes to leading L&D blogs and journals around the globe. He was recently voted the #5 most influential person in the European e-learning industry. Follow Armin on Twitter: @speexxtweets   Discover how you can transform learning to accelerate business performance as a whole.   Meet professionals from all over the world and let our speakers engage you in interesting conversations about current HR and L&D issues.   Use a proven framework and compare your organisation’s results with top performers About Towards Maturity Towards Maturity is an independent, not for profit organisation with a passion for helping others to improve the impact of learning technologies* at work. Businesses have to continually respond to fast changing economic environments and innovative thinking on behalf of learning and development professionals is essential if they are to meet demands to deliver improved results with less resources. The current economic climate is accelerating the demand for change. Learning technologies have a role to play but over the years organisations have had varied experience. Large investments have been made but often with very little return. However our research has shown that businesses who are mature in their use perceive a positive difference on both their staff and business productivity. Find out more.  

The rapid acceleration of technology has made learning possible anytime, anywhere and on just about any device. How and what we learn is up to us - we could be listening to a TED talk on the plane, joining a webinar hosted on the other side of the Atlantic while at work, or taking a quiz on an app before we go to sleep. The challenge for learning providers has become to make content relevant and adjustable according to an individual learner’s taste, as well as available as a browser-based solution, app, in a virtual classroom session and compatible with any operating system.  I’ve also found that you can learn something in any situation, even without being hooked up to your tablet, smart phone or laptop. Knowledge can be acquired in a simple face to face conversation or phone call with a friend, or while taking a walk somewhere by yourself - there’s always something to learn, you just need to keep an open frame of mind. For conversations in particular, it pays to be an active listener, but this requires practice. Instead of waiting for the next pause so that we can butt in and get our point across, active listening means focussing on the content at hand and paraphrasing it to confirm we’ve understood it correctly. 70:20:10 The 70:20:10 framework is gaining more and more significance, as organisations realise that a formal training session is not enough to keep up with the pace of tech innovation and the vast amount of information out there. This framework states that about 70% of learning happens on the job, e.g. through trial and error, 20% through our peers and just 10% in an actual classroom setting. This supports the theory that learning can take place in any given situation, either alone or in a group, be it formal or informal. For a company to effectively apply this framework, however, management needs to be on board from the start and communicate the benefits to everyone across all levels. Otherwise it will end up being another paper-based theory which nobody fully understands or is able to put into practice. Never too late There is no reason to think that our years of learning are over once we grow up. In fact, we probably don’t start connecting the dots and acquiring real wisdom until at a much later stage in life. At the same time, however, studies show that, the brain reduces in size and our memory becomes more difficult to access as we age. To some extent, we can work against this by keeping our brains active, acquiring new knowledge and skills outside of the workplace, taking up hobbies, reading and writing or even learning things off by heart. Simple cognitive tests can facilitate this and increase the amount of grey matter, which serves to process information in the brain. How to know you’re learning Teaching others is a great way to figure out if the knowledge or skill has actually stuck with us and whether we’re making progress. And while doing so, we’ll acquire another great skill - teaching! We should try to find out if we can we convey our skills by talking to others, writing up a report or manual or holding a formal presentation. Joseph Joubert once said: "To teach is to learn twice." In teaching others, we will often learn even more than our students. Not only does this require a good grasp of the material, but we’ll also be expected to respond to the queries of our students and extend our understanding of the subject, as well as see it from a different perspective. Finally, ongoing learning can have great advantages in the workplace. We should talk to our colleagues and bosses about our new skills and see if they can be applied in a different area of work to make things more interesting and diverse. Making learning and skills more fluid and accessible will ultimately benefit the company in terms of reduced recruitment costs and increased employee engagement and long-term retention.

This week we had a very dynamic and exciting webinar with Laura Overton and Armin Hopp about how to modernise our L&D strategies in 2015. Check out the recording here Are you ready to benchmark your L&D strategy and be among the top performing teams? If you have benchmarked before, take just 20 minutes to update and reflect on your progress. If you haven’t, then check out our 61 reasons to Benchmark, grab a coffee and give it a go. Keep up to date on Twitter and follow progress at #BeTheBest15. Benchmark now   Over 60 attendees from England, Germany, France, Italy, Brazil, the US and many more joined to ask specific questions and engage with each other. How can I improve my L&D strategy? What do my learners really want? How do I align learning with my company’s business strategy? Here are some of the discussions that were thrown into the room: Learning is not learner-centred enough, but technology-driven  Permissions to do what is required to be done. Stuck in control and command cultures.  We have more, yet we have too much…  Not transferring learning into doing (70/20/10)  Include learners more into design of learning solutions  Changing goals on the run  Learners are not aware of the resources that are available  Disconnect between "traditional L&D culture" vs "learner-driven" culture  Learners are been distracted  ‘Build it and they will come’ mentality within L&D  Move learning budget from line managers to learners  Don’t over complicate but provide integrated solutions  L&D having a place at the top table. Influencing.  appreciation for learning at higher levels in mgmt  Learners are also stopping us as they don’t see learning as everyday, they expect and want a course or its not ‘real’ training. We need to change the conversation.  Do learners see a need?  in fast-pace context, raise awareness to how important it is to invest now to get results (and save money) later  Do learners have time for learning?  Learning is a process, not a one-off  Agree with Michelle and Mike about needing to move to a model where learning happens everyday, everywhere  They do if we change the conversation - ask them how they last booked a holiday, or planned their wedding or learnt to drive a cara. They are expert modern social learners drawing on network, tech, knowledge experts, books, etc in their private lives. We need to harness that in the workplace.  Love that!  It’s getting that built into our conversations.  L&D skill of the future is to be great at networking and relationship building!  The study is based on top corporations from all around the world with a focus on Europe.  Consultancy, influencing  Pattern-sensing relative to "big learning data"  Fast responses  Consulting skills  Understanding the business, be a challenger for the business  Coaching skills, testing skills  The ability to be consultative, embrace technology as tools for the new agile crowdsourced learning  Learning professionals can not do or know it all - they need improve procurement and outsourcing skills  Ability to identify and analyse corporate level data to illustrate business impact  Develop line managers so that they can act as developer to their staff  Mentoring and coaching  More technology awareness and the skills to use them, away from face-to-face  Influencing skills - change the way leadership approaches learning  Collaboration - use your experts to get the right learning  But L&D may still bear the brunt of the blame when things get "sticky" The challenges of tech. Good job there are so many great opinons and ideas in this chat room.  This slide which is up is interesting. Does it reflect other people’s learning programmes? Or wildly off the mark?  please record it and share it later on  Apologies for joining the meeting late I’ve been having local issues while you were all trying to get sorted.  Recording would be great - thank you.  It is interesting that delviery via virtual classrooms are low skilled for L&D people! Somewhat ironic today.  We’ve been having discussions for some months and in fact years now about L&D being the Curators of L&D - hence us needing to deveolp these skills.  Right, need to say goodbye for today, looking forward to the recording!  for us its about convincing the workers councils around the globe  love this quote - there’s so much power in awareness  I agree Elena.  Good point, still a way to go…  Surely worker’s councils cannot argue with eveidence, as Laura is suggesting.  Laura, is there an example for the report. I would like to talk so some people in my organization  Yeah, I agree, I would love to see an example of the benchmark report to see what it looks like  Q what is the smallest size of organisation who should fill in the benchmark survey?  We were pleased with our report in Warwickshire UK  Great to hear that the benchmark covers SMEs as well as globals.  Exciting to hear  Yes. We are considering a small number of people undertaking the benchmarking      

We’ve just won the LT-Innovate Award, Europe’s award for innovation in language learning technology. The ceremony took place last Thursday in Brussels as part of the 2-day LT-Innovate Summit. This event brings together industry experts, investors and language training providers from all over Europe. A total 18 start-ups were shortlisted to present theirs solutions and solution and Speexx was selected as the overall winner. The judging panel rated presentations based on innovation & technology excellence as well as business potential & investment readiness. We’re really chuffed to be able to add yet another amazing award to our awards list. "The LT-Innovate Summit is a brilliant and highly dynamic event", says Armin Hopp, our Founder and President. "As providers of corporate online language training, we’re constantly innovating our solutions to make our customers’ lives easier. Winning the LT-Innovate Award for leading language technology shows we’re on the right track. I’d like to thank the jury for honuring Speexx with this fantastic industry prize and look forward to collaborating with LT-Innovate in the future." To read the full press release, click here. About LT-Innovate Summit The LT-Innovate Summit is the annual point of convergence for the Language Technology Industry to network, discuss strategies and explore innovation and business opportunities. It consists of a number of workshops, networking forums and product showcases displaying the latest innovations in the language technology industry.

Vodafone and Speexx started their partnership in 2011 to improve Business English communication skills at the multinational telecommunications company. To date, over 1250 courses have been launched. At Vodafone, learners boost their English skills with the award-winning Speexx online solution, live communication skills training and ongoing coaching. Here’s what Manuela Mancine, Learning Design Training Specialist at Vodafone, has to say: "Good morning everyone, I’m Manuela Mancino, I work in the HR department in Vodafone. I deal with the learning design for managerial training. Our partnership with Speexx started many years ago. It has certainly been a great example of valuable and efficient collaboration from a learning point of view. Our language training offer is broad: we provide our students with several types of courses, mainly in English, because our headquarters are in the UK. But we also offer a number of other languages, such as Italian. What really distinguishes our partnership with Speexx is the level of modularity and customization. Modularity because the language training offer ranges from online courses to face to face solution, as well as many other tools which allow us to have a proper customized blended learning strategy. The coaching, virtual classrooms and phone training are tools which give our students the possibility to be always connected, having a highly diverse learning process, in all phases. Another great aspect of our collaboration is the project manager, a crucial figure for our students’ learning process. Why? Because the project manager allows us to combine technology with the human factor, giving our students the opportunity to approach the learning process in a softer way. Our training offer has changed over the years: we’ve moved from giving one course to all our employees to a more specific training solution for each person, depending on their needs for developing knowledge. Speexx has accompanied Vodafone throughout this digital transformation process, so we would like to thank them for this efficient partnership and wish you all a good day." To see what our other customers think of our online language training solutions, click here.

It’s back! Speexx Exchange, our annual talent management forum, kicks off in Berlin on 2nd December and registration is now open. Now in its 5th year, Speexx Exchange is one of the most successful and groundbreaking talent management forums of its kind. Join your HR and L&D peers from around the globe for an exclusive industry Reality Check. _ Wednesday, 2nd December 2015 | On the eve of Online Educa Berlin _ Meet HR Managers, L&D Experts and Talent Management Professionals _ Networking | Latest industry research | Innovative solutions | Great food Speexx Exchange in a nutshell First launched in 2011, Speexx Exchange is an internationally-renowned event for learning innovation where thought leaders, friends and customers converge to explore today’s hottest trends and define the future of learning-driven organizations. Save your seat   Each year just before Christmas we bring together HR and L&D experts from all over the world to take an in-depth reality check of e-learning and talent management. No future talk, just real hard facts. Save your seat now and meet industry leaders, talk about best practice for global e-learning strategies and get the latest results from Europe’s leading talent management research. You will return to work with brand-new insights and practical HR and L&D solutions for delivering real results.

Speexx was founded in Germany, a country with one the of the strictest data protection regulation policies I know of, at least. We’re now based all over the world and the one of the greatest challenges we see is that HR teams from regions with lower data protection standards don’t yet understand the regulations from countries with more rigid laws. This is a major issue when it comes to big data. The right to be forgotten European citizens have the right to be forgotten - something that wouldn’t be understood by many companies based in the US, for example. So the interpretation of data privacy and the period of time over which that data may be stored is different. In most Western and European countries, we’re only allowed to store user data for six months and then we have to delete it. In other parts of the world, we’re encouraged to keep them for as long as possible.  This underlines the difference between technology itself and the way we interpret and use it. What HR really needs to do is to find a common denominator for the usage of technology, as well as for monitoring and reporting user results or any other kind of big data. Data privacy is about data protection and about workforce law, which varies strongly depending on where you go in the world. As a result, when implementing large-scale global IT systems within HR structures, you need to be very aware of the fact that there are different regulations out there which may hamper the system you wish to install. In addition, you will need to find the common denominator to manage the entire set of regulations within that system. For example, we have clients that don’t use cloud-based systems in some parts of the world, simply because they cannot cope with the regulations in those areas. The way out of the maze I strongly believe that cloud-based delivery / SaaS is a strong solution for both HR and users across large organizations. From an HR perspective, it allows us to disseminate a common standard in training throughout the entire organization, to monitor and gauge results from that delivery. On the other hand, it allows students to learn anytime, anywhere. They can use their mobile device, learn in the workplace, learn at home - so it’s learning anytime and anywhere. At the same time, results are available to HR throughout the entire organization. However, At Speexx, we’ve found lots of ways to work with these regulations and make them worthwhile for our customers… Read the full post via EDUKWEST.

A famous quote by John F. Kennedy goes "Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other." Even in this turbulent workplace where we’re expected to adapt to new situations without much time to acquire new knowledge, I couldn’t agree more with this quote. Simply being promoted or given a new title doesn’t turn us into leaders overnight. Rather, it is just the beginning of a long and crucial learning process. A call for change Leadership is one of HR’s greatest challenges, given the growing gap between what leaders want and what HR is able to offer with the resources at hand. Commonly known as an administrative function keeping track of time, compliance issues and risks, HR had little need to think about leadership strategies in the past. At the same time, many HR departments are yet to recover from the 2008/9 recession and have not received adequate investment compared to other functions. So it’s time for leadership training to catch up with the pace of change happening in other parts of the business. Traditional leadership training tends to make leaders focus on themselves (introspection), rather than looking at their direct actions within a group and experimentation with new approaches and ideas. Research suggests that people learn most when put into cross-functional and international assignments or strategic tasks. It helps if they redefine their daily tasks and relationships first, before rethinking themselves in a classroom situation. Taking into account the 70:20:10 framework, we will realise that most learning does not in fact happen in the classroom, but out there in the ‘real’ world and in the job situations we face with our peers every day. It’s all in the alignment For a company to thrive, learning and development need be aligned with overall business goals - this goes for leadership development, too. The Towards Maturity 2014-15 Benchmark Study showed that the top quartile organisations are five times more likely to put what they learn into practice than those in the bottom quartile. These highly aligned organisations are also 13 times more likely to respond to increased revenue and 50% more likely to witness positive changes in their staff’s behaviour. Some very encouraging results! So how do we get there? To start off, HR needs to know exactly what is going on across the organisation as a whole (what’s the business model, the marketing strategy, the financial situation?) and what leaders need to learn in order to perform. Moreover, putting HR managers themselves into leading positions will deepen their familiarity with building leaders. A recent Deloitte report showed that a staggering 40% of HR leaders come from other areas of the business, not from HR backgrounds.  So there is still a lot of potential when it comes to bringing HR and leadership closer together.   Speaking the language of leadership Finally, if HR is to become more agile and responsive to change, it needs to start speaking the language of business and leadership.  This way, HR managers will be in a much better position to collaborate with other departments and support the business strategy, as well as communicate well when it comes to developing leaders. A solid leadership development strategy needs to be communicated clearly across the whole organisation, and HR must encourage feedback, questions and even criticism - only this way will they know if leaders have really understood the idea behind their training. Without strong and clear communication, there is too much room for misunderstandings, assumptions and frustration. But with it, we will start to pave the way for transparency, collaboration and a true culture of leadership.