If you have a company fleet and company drivers then you know how serious the driver shortage is today. Drivers have many employment options that include signing bonuses, inflated pay rates, and many other incentives. Other employers are actively recruiting drivers, your drivers, and you should have a plan to keep them happily employed with you. Professional drivers are on the road most or all of their day and generally feel excluded and removed from activities and information that other employees receive. Additionally DOT regulations seem to change quickly and drivers know they must stay current but often feel unable to keep up. Keeping them engaged, interested and current on DOT is an important part of retaining your drivers. Some of the more progressive employers are keeping their drivers engaged using online tools and web-based training available anywhere at any time which is important for drivers on the road. Online programs have been used successfully for years to train and engage office and operations personnel, to provide professional and compliance training, safety training, educational credits, industry information and many other topics. So how can online training help you retain your drivers and make them feel valued? Here are just a few possibilities…. ☞ Send monthly, or weekly, company updates on policies, procedures, announcements, organizational changes, HR updates and other company specific information so they don’t feel forgotten or "the last to know". ☞ DOT is always publishing new information and a number of driver specific newsletters exist that can be electronically forwarded to them and archived for recall if needed. ☞ DOT physicals are a requirement for all drivers and unfortunately, some miss their deadlines. An online program can automatically send them reminders 60 then 30 days in advance of their due date. If anyone gets within 7 days of their due date a notice can be automatically sent to the company alerting them to this problem. ☞ Deadlines as basic as license expiration can be loaded into the online portal so drivers are reminded well in advance to renew. ☞ Safety bulletins are common in transportation but how many drivers actually read them? An interesting approach is to put these bulletins online, then send a reminder that a new edition is waiting for them. Now add 3 short quiz questions at the end of the bulletin that they answer online to confirm they read and understood the safety topic. If they have not read the bulletin after a predetermined time then reminders are sent and eventually a notice to the home office alerting them. ☞ Real life examples are helpful for learning what to do or what to avoid to remain safe and productive. An online forum available only to your drivers to share stories, successes, opportunities and challenges, and occasionally humor, will give them access to information from their peers which is often viewed as more "real" than other sources. ☞ Keeping up with time off and vacations is often a problem for employers when drivers are seldom in the office. Use online tools for drivers to schedule their time off and give visibility to a master calendar. ☞ Often employers have required training and coordinating these sessions is a challenge especially if conducted as classroom training. Put the training sessions online for drivers to take at their convenience. Online training has been used for years for other professions and many tools exist to ensure they are engaged, paying attention and understand the material. Allowing them to do this on their terms, at their convenience shows you value their time. ☞ Online programs can be used to provide ancillary or voluntary learning to enhance their knowledge on non-work topics like financial investing, software skills, English language skills, e-mail training and more. Progressive employers know these inexpensive offerings set a positive tone with your drivers that you care about them as a person. These are just a few of the ways an integrated online program can help engage your drivers. Most importantly it is portable and available 24/7 so they access it when convenient for them via smartphones, tablets, laptops or desktops at home. If your drivers return to the shop each night then an inexpensive kiosk can be set up to allow access to this information. Drivers are an important part of your business; turnover is expensive and finding experienced drivers is very difficult. So avoid costly turnover by spending a little to retain the quality drivers you have and offer them something other employers cannot; access to information on their terms and a way to engage with the company so they feel like part of the team. Online training is surprisingly affordable and easy to get started with little or no involvement from your IT group. To see how online learning can benefit your company contact KMI Learning for a free demo. The post Retaining Your Drivers - It’s the Smartest Thing You Can Do appeared first on KMI Learning.

In the previous blog Holding on to Your Corporate Knowledge When Shift Happens, we looked at the shift that is taking place at the workplace. And we looked at the loss of an irreplaceable resource: knowledge. We also looked at how eLearning is empowering organizations in Shift Happens! 3 Techniques for Companies to Preserve the Knowledge of Retiring Employees to capture the experience and knowledge as experts within our organizations are retiring. And we talked about how to transfer that knowledge from those who are retiring to those who are coming into our workforce: the millennials. In this blog series, "eLearning in Leadership Training and Development," we’re looking at another challenge facing the workforce of the future: leadership… or rather, the lack of it. This potential shortage of leaders is listed in the Outlook on the Global Agenda 2015 as the 3rd most troubling trend, right up there with deepening income inequality and persistent jobless growth. If you look at the facts, however, it appears that our apparent shortage of future leaders is based more on a difference in points of view, rather than an actual shortage. Okay, it’s true that there are 10,000 people retiring from the workforce every day. It’s also true that currently, 1 in every 3 people in the workforce fall between the ages of 18 and 34. This makes the Millennial generation the largest group of people in the US labor force. So it’s not about the numbers, folks. There’s not a scarcity in the population per se. The Internet Generation, Millennials, Generation Y — however you refer to the youngest members of our workforce — are… well, they’re different, aren’t they? Different, that is, from Gen X. They’re certainly possessed of a different mindset than the Baby Boomers. And leadership itself has also changed with time. Gone are the days when leaders said "jump" and the people’s response was "how high." Today, the most effective leaders are influencers, listeners, creators of consensus, communicators, and delegators. Effective leaders are masters of empowering others; they identify and create leaders around them. Increasingly among younger members of the workforce, leadership occurs as a team effort, rather than as an individual phenomenon. And this differs — sometimes fundamentally — from the mindset of previous generations. "The best leaders are … the most insatiable learners," said John Gardner in 1990. Today, 25 years later, eLearning serves up learning to match any and all of the largest appetites for knowledge. The trick is to create ways to present that knowledge in a way that meets your learners where they are. And that includes the knowledge that is carried by members of your workforce: the same ones who are potentially retiring in vast numbers. But can eLearning impact an apparent shortage of leaders for the future? Here’s the simple answer: yes — if we address that future with the creative and innovative use of technology — and knowledge — that is already available today. And since eLearning is one of the most rapidly growing areas of the training industry, it is perfectly poised to deliver leadership training and development to a world that is potentially starving for effective leadership. While some people show a greater tendency toward embracing leadership, there really is no such thing as a born leader. Leadership is a skillset, available to anyone. In other words, it can be learned. And eLearning can be used to provide the leadership training and development tools to nurture the leaders that are already around you. In the following posts of this series, we invite you to consider some questions openly and honestly. The questions are intended to help you evaluate and assess the effectiveness of the training and development programs that are already in place. Be forewarned: these questions may require a very honest look at how things are already going in our organizations. We’ll also outline some of the features of eLearning relevant to the question that we’re asking you to consider. Ultimately, we hope you will look at eLearning newly: as an effective way to discover and develop your future leadership. Even if you are already effectively utilizing eLearning, you may discover new ways to apply this incredibly flexible technology. The post Introducing eLearning in Leadership Training and Development against the Leader Shortage appeared first on KMI Learning.

"There is strength in numbers." "Many hands make light work." "No man is an island." We’ve all heard these sayings so often that they’ve become clichés. Yet, we traditionally tend to think of leaders as rather heroic individuals: singular, exceptional people who step up, or step forward and take the helm…or the fall, depending on the circumstance. The model of heroic leadership is fast becoming a relic of the past. As our workforce gets younger, a new paradigm of leadership is emerging: leading as a team or a collective. And eLearning is perfectly poised to train and develop the leadership teams of the future. Why? Because eLearning incorporates social media like webinars and social networks as part of their training structures. Think about it: we human beings are social creatures. We share. It’s part of our wiring. The human race has been sharing information socially ever since there’s been a human race. In more modern terms, we text, email, post, and tweet our best and worst experiences. We tell each other about our favorite show on cable. Or we talk about the terrible service at this bank or that restaurant. Or we rave about the best place to get organic avocados, bananas, tomatoes, etc. And we subscribe to - and use - technologies that increase our ability to share with an ever-expanding network of social connections. If something (or someone) has impacted you in any way, you’re probably talking about it. And you’re talking about it with a lot of people. So for this blog on leadership training, we invite you to consider this question: Does your leadership training and development program allow for team interaction, and learning in a social media network? Social media/social networking is now a fact of life in developed- and developing countries. The connectivity of the internet provides us with opportunities to share our experiences with unprecedented speed. And so far, social media is an underutilized tool for leadership eLearning. And there is still some resistance to using social media in training programs, particularly among the baby-boomer generation of leaders. As a counter to that resistance, we offer this rather simple recipe. Take the emerging paradigm of collective/team leadership. Add the tendency of human beings to share. Blend in the social aspect of eLearning. Roll the mixture out liberally on various mobile or internet-capable devices. And voilá! You get a leadership training and development program that (potentially, at least) serves up leadership success. Well, the theory is nice. But let’s take a closer look at the practical aspects of social media in leadership eLearning. Connections in the classroom and beyond. eLearning is web-based, and learners can access the information individually. But then, learners can use social media to share what they have learned with each other. Peers can now connect with each other, and discuss their ideas, thoughts and insights. Each person experiences information individually and uniquely. And if they can share that unique experience, they can learn as a community. Learning in a community boosts the effectiveness of training. What one learner may struggle with, another may grasp quickly, then pass on the knowledge to his/her cohorts. When learners work together toward mastering common subject matter, the resulting synergy boosts the learning potential. It also boosts the effectiveness of the leadership team. From independence to integration, to innovation. Another plus to eLearning’s social media aspect is the exploration and innovation that comes with community learning. New ideas emerge as solutions for challenges (both existing and potential), without "reinventing the wheel." Social media can be built into the eLearning experience. And when there is a built-in structure for the social aspect of eLearning, information is shared more freely. New ideas and solutions emerge. While leaders-in-training receive instruction on the organization’s best practices and policies, they’re also free to explore and discover, leading to innovation. This community approach to leadership development allows for flexibility, which means the organization can evolve and shift as time goes by while also maintaining its competitive edge. Developing your leaders in a team environment also supports them in relationship and consensus building. As leadership models shift from a single heroic individual to a team or community of leaders, the ability to build relationships becomes even more important. An effective team of leaders will potentially strengthen relationships in the workforce, leading to greater employee empowerment and morale. Team leadership training empowers discovery of future leaders Team leadership development can further create an environment where leaders are willing to listen to, and acknowledge, the ideas and thinking that emerges from the people whom they lead. And this allows leaders to create and discover other leaders. Furthermore, the community is better able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the learning group as a whole, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the individual member. Strengths can then be refined, and weaknesses can become areas of development. So, why not view social media as an investment in the future of your leaders? Especially when you consider that our workforce is shifting toward a generation for whom using social media is as normal as using a phone? To resist that shift is to lock your organization in the past. Far better, then, to incorporate the use of social networking as part of leadership development. In our next blog, we’re looking at eLearning that takes leadership training and development to a whole new level. As eLearning becomes more and more engaging, blurring the lines between education and entertainment seems to be inevitable. Look for our next article, where we start looking outside the xBox for leadership training and development! This article was first published on eLearningIndustry.com   The post eLearning In Leadership Training And Development: Strength And Synergy appeared first on KMI Learning.

We discuss the trends and issues we observed during the weeks of April 6-19, 2015 as we flipped resources into our Flipboard magazine (http://bit.ly/trendsandissues). In this episode of our podcast, we discuss 2 trends and 1 smorgasbord. The first trend dealt with online learning and specifically MOOCs. There were a number of articles dealing with policy, research, and reviews about online […] Tags:   Del.icio.us Facebook TweetThis Digg StumbleUpon Comments:  1 (One) on this itemCopyright © Trends & Issues [Episode 37 Trends for the Weeks of April 6 - 19 Online Learning Policies & Research and Opposition to Standardized Common Core Testing], All Right Reserved. 2015.

We discuss the trends and issues we observed during the weeks of August 17-27, 2015 as we flipped resources into our Flipboard magazine (http://bit.ly/trendsandissues). In this episode of our podcast, we discuss 5 trends. The first trend was a return of MOOCs in the news. The second trend is campus security and networks news. The third […] Tags:   Del.icio.us Facebook TweetThis Digg StumbleUpon Comments:  2 comments on this itemCopyright © Trends & Issues [Episode 45 Trends for Weeks of August 17-27 Cheating MOOCs, Campus Network Security, Apple Watch, and VR Campus Tours], All Right Reserved. 2015.

We discuss the trends and issues we observed during the weeks of September 1-13 as we flipped resources into our Flipboard magazine (http://bit.ly/trendsandissues). In this episode of our podcast, we discuss 3 trends. The first trend was consumer VR products. We observed a number of new VR products being discussed. New products and uses of […] Tags:   Del.icio.us Facebook TweetThis Digg StumbleUpon Comments:  1 (One) on this itemCopyright © Trends & Issues [Episode 46 Trends for the Weeks of September 1-13 Consumer VR, Tech & Young Children, and the iPad Pro], All Right Reserved. 2015.

We discuss the trends and issues we observed during the weeks of September 12-27 as we flipped resources into our Flipboard magazine (http://bit.ly/trendsandissues). In this episode of our podcast, we discuss 2 trends. The first trend was VR, VR, and more VR. News and articles about virtual reality dominated the resources we flipped into the […] Tags:   Del.icio.us Facebook TweetThis Digg StumbleUpon Comments:  1 (One) on this itemCopyright © Trends & Issues [Episode 47 Trends and Issues for the Weeks of September 12-27 VR and More VR & Equity Issues], All Right Reserved. 2015.

We discuss the trends and issues we observed during the weeks of September 28-October 11 as we flipped resources into our Flipboard magazine (http://bit.ly/trendsandissues). In this episode of our podcast, we discuss 4 trends. The first trend is one that continues to remain a trend-Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality.  News and articles about virtual reality […] Tags:   Del.icio.us Facebook TweetThis Digg StumbleUpon Comments:  1 (One) on this itemCopyright © Trends & Issues [Episode 48 Trends for the Weeks of September 28-October 11More VR/AR, Tablets & Smartphones, Network Security & Privacy, and Wearables], All Right Reserved. 2015.

We discuss the trends and issues we observed during the weeks of October 12-25 as we flipped resources into our Flipboard magazine (http://bit.ly/trendsandissues). In this episode of our podcast, we discuss 5 trends: two major and three minor trends. The first trend is MOOCs. There were a wide-range of resources discussing the current state of […] Tags:   Del.icio.us Facebook TweetThis Digg StumbleUpon Comments:  1 (One) on this itemCopyright © Trends & Issues [Episode 49 Trends for October 11-25 MOOCs, AR/VR, Wearables, Cybersecurity Issues, and iOS Emojis], All Right Reserved. 2015.

Our 50th episode is a compilation of six interviews we conducted with individuals attending the annual conference of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology that was held in Indianapolis, Indiana from November 3-7. We asked these individuals to discuss the major trend or trends they believe are impacting instructional design, educational technology, and learning […] Tags:   Del.icio.us Facebook TweetThis Digg StumbleUpon Comments:  0 (Zero), Be the first to leave a reply!Copyright © Trends & Issues [Episode 50 From the AECT Conference November 3-7], All Right Reserved. 2015.