Doug Sharp, President at GP Strategies Corporation (GPX), discusses the company’s impact in training.

In February and March 2012, 146 organizations participated in a research study designed to better understand how companies adopt, implement and manage user-generated content in their training or performance improvement programs. All of the companies surveyed both have employees who create user-generated content and either currently leverage or plan to leverage user-generated content. However, only 60%-65% of respondents reported that they support their employees in creating their own content in any way or were at least somewhat effective at leveraging user-generated content. Thus, a key question among companies and learning professionals is, "How should learning professionals or companies best support and leverage user-generated content?" The key findings have been made into the following easy to read infographic:

Debbie Ung, Senior Vice President of GP Strategies Corporation’s Performance Readiness Group, talks about the group’s service offerings.

I am sure many of the readers of this blog have enjoyed world-class gourmet dining at a fine restaurant somewhere in the world. If it was a five star Michelin-rated restaurant, the experience was probably flawless, with no indication of what it took behind the scenes to deliver that level of excellence. Maître Ds, hostesses, sommeliers, servers, bus boys, coat check, etc.—all front-office, customer-facing interfaces integrated seamlessly. But if you were to peek into the kitchen or back-office activities, you might be shocked; you might even get up and leave. USA Today had a recent article that stated: "Buzzwords don’t come any bigger than ‘Big Data,’ which promises to reveal the secrets hidden within big blocks of data held by companies, governments, and musty old archives." Bersin and Associates recently released a research report, "Big Data in HR." In this Bersin Report, "Big Data" refers to the use of advanced analytics tools and programs to look at vast amounts of employee, customer, and transaction data. In the case of L&D, this equates to huge amounts of people-related and learning program and initiatives-related data that can be used to better understand the organization’s current composition, performance levels, and risk. The Promise of Big Data for L&D reminds me sometimes of being in the messy kitchen; lots and lots of information chaos, all scattered, out of context, waiting to be selected/extracted, cooked to perfection by experts, and arranged and presented in a manner that drives high customer satisfaction. But most L&D organizations are not looking to unlock the meaning of life; they want information that is actionable to improve business results that are impacted by learning and knowledge transfer. Our kitchens are typically not that cluttered, so let’s not make it more complicated than it needs to be. Companies like Amazon, Netflix, Wal-Mart, Facebook, and Google, have been analyzing consumer behavior for years. They have evolved and matured from data analysis to data science. The skill sets and disciplines needed for these new analytic "kitchen chefs" include statistics, database design, math, industrial psychology, and technologies. In the learning field, these combined skills sets are neither abundant, nor typically found in the L&D organization. Large technology companies, like Microsoft and Oracle, have successfully sourced some of these skill sets into their learning functions because of the nature of their businesses. But L&D groups, as a whole, are struggling to execute on basic scorecard metrics and reporting, let alone sophisticated learning analytics culled from Big Data. Bersin typically presents in their research the concept of a Maturity Model to help organizations evolve within environments fraught with complexity and risk, but where the potential for high reward in world-class execution is evident. Such is the case for Talent Analytics. The following table presents the Bersin & Associates Talent Analytics Maturity Model developed after more than seven years of research working with hundreds of HR and L&D organizations. Source: Bersin and Associates, 2012. Used with Permission. Their research shows that, in order to build a scalable, reliable analytics strategy, you must evolve through these four levels. Most organizations I am involved with today are hovering between Levels 1 and 2, dipping their toe in the water at level 3 and fantasizing about reaching level 4. To go from reactive to predictive is not easy, especially in light of the constant churn most organizations have in their personnel. It’s tough to execute on a five-year analytics strategy that needs to be scalable, actionable, and reliable. So like running restaurants, its best to start small. Think of the lemonade stand you set up as a kid with your siblings or friends as a starting point, not Thomas Keller’s world class, superb art of precise culinary execution found at "Per Se" in NYC. As stated in the research, it’s an area you need to invest in directly. Not rely only on external expertise. Most importantly, it takes time, maybe up to five years before you are good at it. So get in the kitchen, start washing dishes, and prepping the food. If you are disciplined and focused, you might be promoted to Sous Chef. But realize that it takes years to become a Master Chef, and you definitely want to keep the customers out of the kitchen in the process—could be messy and scary! I’ll be conducting an in-depth video interview with Bob Danna, COO of Bersin and Associates, on the Bersin Talent Analytics Maturity Model for my next posting.

Scott Greenberg, Chief Executive Officer at GP Strategies Corporation (GPX), discusses his career and personal interests.

Doug Sharp, President at GP Strategies Corporation, reflects on his career with the company.

Sharon Esposito-Mayer, Chief Financial Officer at GP Strategies Corporation, reflects on the companies growth during her 17 year tenure.

Over the past 18 months, the Cloud has done a number of things to the talent management marketplace. It has gained significant interest among CLOs and the like; it has reduced operating costs in some ways and increased them in others; and quite frankly, the Cloud has confused most talent management system consumers more than Web 2.0 did 10 years ago. Up until now, the decision to go to Cloud (SaaS) was considered an option for organizations looking to leverage the latest emerging technology in the marketplace. Simply put, if you didn’t want to make the transition, you didn’t have to. You could continue using your current Talent Management System (TMS) behind the firewall and paying for upgrades and additional integrations as you needed them. Unfortunately, those days are coming to an end. Software development is expensive. Enterprise software development is even more expensive. And it should be no surprise that maintaining and supporting two separate platforms (on premise and SaaS) begins to eat into operating margins. As a result, TMS vendors must make a decision to support both or one versus the other. As Cloud has gained transaction in the marketplace and consumer buy-in has increased, it only makes sense (for these TMS vendors) to go "all-in" behind the SaaS approach. The SaaS business model is fairly straightforward: Support one major code base with quarterly releases of new functionality and bug fixes. Instead of upgrading major versions every 12-24 months, SaaS vendors deploy updates to the product every 3-6 months. While consumers have the ability to "turn off" these updates, this topic is still widely debated as it affects testing strategies and governance models. So, what are your options if you cannot (or refuse to) transition to SaaS? Option 1 - Continue to operate your non-SaaS system as long at it meets your business and training requirements. At some point, you will be required to pay for additional support should you need it from the TMS vendor (or integrator). Don’t be afraid to ask your vendor what those support costs may look like in the future. Chances are it may be less than the transition cost to SaaS if you’re not using all functionality within your system. Option 2 - Transition to the SaaS model of your current TMS. Your TMS vendor will be more than happy to provide you pricing for the transition. However, it’s important to have a transition plan to ensure you have all Cloud aspects covered. This is step is often left out during the contract negotiations and shouldn’t be ignored. Also, ensure you’ve completed your due diligence and spoken to other consumers that have migrated from on premise to SaaS. Option 3 - Migrate to another enterprise TMS that plans on supporting on-premise deployments for the foreseeable future. This is likely a last resort and should only be considered if you had another vendor highly ranked when you procured your current system. I have spoken to many customers who also considered open source as an alternative under this option. Option 4 - Go back to using Microsoft Excel to track and deliver training. I joke when I use this as an alternative, but I have actually had potential clients consider it—believe it or not. If you’re currently looking at migrating to a new TMS, make sure to address this issue in the procurement process and get the vendor’s commitment to an on-premise system in writing before you sign the contract. What obstacles have you faced as you consider on premise no longer a viable technology option for your organization?

Don Duquette, Executive Vice President at GP Strategies Corporation (GPX) discusses the competitive advantages of GP’s Learning Solutions.

Scott Greenberg, Chief Executive Officer at GP Strategies Corporation (GPX), and Sharon Esposito-Mayer, Chief Financial Officer, discuss the history of the company including strategic acquisitions and financial performance.

The notion of learning styles is interesting: that we can identify different ways that people learn and, through this understanding, design materials and experiences that best suit each of these styles. It’s appealing: an engineering approach that tells us we can fine tune performance, engagement and retention by better understanding the learning process. It recognises the difference of the individual and celebrates that. But it’s contentious. Evidence both for and against the existence of actual ‘styles’ is varied and, even should they exist, there is no clear consensus of what we should do with this knowledge. It’s an area that I venture into with caution as feelings run high on all sides, so in this case I simply posted the question on my learning forum: ‘does an understanding of learning styles make you better able to design learning’. Having lit the blue touch paper, I retreated and watched as the results and opinions flooded in. The results to the survey were reasonably close run: the vote for ‘no’ led for a long time, but eventually the ‘yes’ contingent drew out a lead. The final result was this: 60% of people agreed with the statement that an understanding of learning styles makes you better able to design learning, whilst 40% disagreed. So a victory, but a surprising amount of dissent and, for the record, I voted ‘no’. Many people were kind enough to leave long and very well evidenced supporting comments, a selection of which and commentary on are covered in the full post. I started the debate by admitting that, whilst the academic study of learning styles is interesting, I really struggle to find a practical application. For me, much of the discussion is overly complex or a story badly told. I wanted to know how people translated this knowledge themselves to design better learning. This post was originally published on Julian Stodd’s Learning Blog.

Doug Sharp, President at GP Strategies Corporation (GPX), relates his personal life to his work at the company.

With 35% of the global workforce using mobile technologies on the job by 2013, they must adopt their new platforms and new ways of conducting business in order to be effective. In order to set the workforce free, we have to support them where they are and enable their performance when they need it. Press play below to listen to the full podcast.

As the economy continues to improve, manufacturing companies can expect to encounter another challenge in addition to those they already face. In addition to increased competition and customer demands for lower prices, higher quality, and greater value, many companies may find themselves faced with a need to hire additional employees. This need may be driven from attrition as existing employees move on to other opportunities or leave for other reasons such as retirement. Regardless of the reason, losing human capital makes more difficult to keep up with customer and market demands. During the time of economic downturn, many manufacturers turned to quick fixes and cost reductions in the form of plant consolidations and employee layoffs. Unfortunately, these companies are often hit by high levels of worker attrition as a result of the perception that the organization values its workers less than the bottom line. It doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, many highly successful companies consistently achieve superior business results by doing two simple things exceptionally well: They develop effective programs to select, develop, and retain talent. They also engage and invest in every employee, from executives to production workers on the floor, by providing them with the tools, knowledge, and processes they need to solve problems and leverage customer opportunities. In order to be successful in the face of today’s business challenges and uncertain economy, the organization must remember that their most valuable resource, their people, is key to driving reductions in cost and overall sustainable improvement in product quality and business improvement. Surprisingly, many manufactures forget about or deemphasize employee engagement in their strategic initiatives and improvement plans while they frantically scramble to obtain small gains in quality or cost reduction. To most, the need to track and benchmark performance by constantly evaluating how changing a process or equipment affects operations is obvious. But they consistently overlook measurements regarding workforce engagement and readiness, which can lead to a significant underutilization of employee participation that can provide major performance improvements. Following are some simple steps you can take to ensure you maximize the positive impact the workforce can have on achieving your organization’s business objectives and goals: Devote resources to long-term improvement. Concentrate on sustaining what you start. Employees tend to take repeated new program implementation lightly, thinking "It is just going to change direction anyway, so why bother?" Obtain executive-level management support and buy-in. Get managers and supervisors on board, informed, and trained. Survey employees to understand their current levels of engagement; identifying factors that are helping (or not) enables you to determine what needs to be done to clear the path for employee involvement. Involve everyone. Prepare and train your employees to perform their new roles. Encourage managers to become coaches rather than instructors or directors. Actively lead the change from the top by ensuring that senior management demonstrate their commitment by "walking the talk" and support the employees by listening, guiding, and supporting. Measure progress and adjust as needed. Track results. Communicate success and best practices. Take time to help your employees resolve issues and problems when they need you.

The high-profile resignations at the top of two of the world’s largest banks in recent days—and reports of more to come—raise major questions about the effectiveness of how companies identify and promote talent. Although the CEOs may not have been complicit in the illegal behaviours that caused their resignations, they have presided over a system that has allowed and unwittingly encouraged ethically flawed people to rise to leadership positions, where they can do a great deal of damage to the organization. In some cases, deeply flawed leaders have seized complete control with minimal resistance from HR and to the near-ruin of their companies. Yet HR has a wide portfolio of processes aimed at ensuring that future leaders are competent, ethical, and connected. So what’s gone wrong? The answer it seems—and which I explore in my new book, The Talent Wave—is that all of these processes and procedures have provided a veneer of control, without any genuine substance or any credible evidence that they are effective in identifying and managing talent. There is little evidence that succession charts, nine-box grids and leadership competences, what I now collectively call "HR bling," have any greater effect than random selection. And there is damning evidence that they create a tick box system that gives free rein to sociopaths and "fakely authentic" managers to progress their careers. So how did this happen? There seem to be several main reasons. The first is that HR is under constant pressure to demonstrate that it is in control of talent and succession. So most of the bling is there because top teams expect to have the same kind of process assurance that comes with IT and manufacturing processes. The second reason is that HR views the relationship between employees and the company as a simple, linear system and therefore adopts processes that fit with that perspective. Unfortunately, the relationship between employees and employer organizations forms a complex adaptive system. When you apply linear thinking to complex systems you may exert control over one part of the system, but you create chaos elsewhere. (Think, for example, of the environmental effect of building a dam; while you prevent floods and generate electricity, it may be at the expense of the downstream ecology.) People and organizations are constantly changing. Take the concept of key roles. One organisation has found that it needs to redefine the key roles every year and that about one-third of them are dropped and replaced. The third reason is that few organizations have honest conversations with their people. Who in their right mind would tell their boss or HR that they only intended to stay for a couple of years to get experience, and then they will move on? They can kiss goodbye to advancement if they do! How often do HR and leadership teams have the courage to tell employees that certain job roles are going to be less important, maybe even obsolete, in the future? Conversations between employees and employers are typically polite fictions, based on myths about long-term relationships that both sides know to be untrue. Honest conversations, however, hold half the key to a much healthier regime. In my research, I have found four types of conversation that allow employees and employers to align career aspirations with organisational aspirations and talent development with organizational development. They are: • The conversation in the head of the employee about who they are and what they want from life and work • The conversation between the employee and their working environment: boss, colleagues, and others • The conversation between employees in general and the organization about how roles and opportunities will develop • The conversation between the social networks of employees and those of the organization Constant, honest conversations, informed by sharing of information, make it possible for HR to let go of control. Instead of trying to identify talent, HR needs in future to create environments and opportunities, where talented people can seize the initiative and show what they can. One of the many pluses of such an approach is that it will also have a positive impact on diversity at higher levels because the homogenizing effect of HR bling is one of the main barriers to the rise of diverse talent. © David Clutterbuck, 2012  

There is a lot of discussion these days around making learning interactive and using interactivity to engage learners. The tactics to accomplish that vary depending on how "engage" is defined and, even more importantly, on the performance-based objectives. Press play below to listen to the full podcast Engaging Your Learners.  

Schneider National gets it.  They recognize the value of leveraging their tuition assistance program to attract and retain talent. In a recent press release, the company highlighted its creative approach for using their tuition program to recruit drivers into their organization, funding driving school for graduates hired by the company.  Companies are only limited by their creativity when it comes to leveraging their tuition assistance programs to gain competitive advantage.  All they need to do is align their tuition policy to the objectives they want to accomplish.  Way to go Schneider National! For more insights, please read my latest white paper titled "10 Tips to Education Assistance Program Excellence". If you have any tips of your own, please share! I’d love to hear them.

With the upcoming Safety and Environmental Management Systems (SEMS) audits in 2013, offshore oil and gas operators may need assistance to be ready. With the rush to implement the required SEMS management systems by November, 2011, program documentation may not reflect the current practices or may require further efforts to ensure proper implementation. Considering the penalties that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) will enforce for failure to comply to these regulations, it seems it would be wise for operators to be diligent to meet the desired requirements. SEMS is to be applicable across the board in all offshore oil and gas operations; however, the operators themselves are going to be held accountable for everything and everyone involved. That raises big questions from an operating company’s standpoint because contractors are used so frequently for on-site tasks. So what are the contractors responsible for? What can the operating companies do to ensure they are in compliance with SEMS when they are not in complete control of the contractors on-site? With SEMS, contractors include everything from Mobile Offshore Drilling Units (MODUs), contractors used for painting and cleaning, contract operating companies, and any individual working directly under company rules. While they are not required to develop their own SEMS, the operators must prove that their contractors are also in compliance of the regulations. Contractors are responsible for the following: Have policies and practices in place that are consistent with the operator’s SEMS. Provide employee work hours, and injury and illness information to the operators for the annual report to BOEMRE. Document agreement between operator and contractor on the contractor’s practices before any work-related tasks can begin. Have readily available information to document the operator’s selection criteria, which would include an evaluation of the contractor’s safety and environmental performance as well as ensure the contractor has their own written safe work practices. Provide the operator with verification of knowledge and expertise. The responsibility does not fall entirely on the contractors. After all, the operating companies will be accountable if something is in line. With that being said, the operators have responsibilities as well: Maintain contractors’ illness/injury log for two years for the work in operation areas. Report the illness/injury information to BOEMRE annually. Conduct periodic performance evaluations. Control the presence, entrance, and exit of contractors in the operation areas by implementing safe work practices. Supply information of the known hazards at the specific sites the contractors will be working to the contractors before commencing work. Document their contractor selection criteria, which would include an evaluation of the contractor’s safety and environmental performance as well as ensure the contractor has their own written safe work practices. Implement procedures to verify the contractor’s knowledge, performance, and expertise. With all of these responsibilities split between both parties, when dealing with contractors, it is easy to see the importance of organization. If you’re an operating company, are you and your contractors prepared for an audit in the coming year? If you’re a contractor, are your practices and procedures in line with SEMS? If the answers to those questions are no, do you know where to get help? The time to act is now because the clock is ticking…

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard people utter the phrase, "I hate my LMS." Industry research indicates that about 15% of companies switch their LMS each year, a number that has held steady for the past several years. Press play below to listen to the full podcast I Hate My LMS.

The world has become a complex place. The old divide between the formal workplace and the informal social space is largely gone. Social learning lies mid-way between the two, providing new and exciting ways for us to interact with learners. In the recently published book Exploring the World of Social Learning, author Julian Stodd shows readers how to create dynamic social learning spaces and how to become involved in the conversation as it unfolds. The book is built upon nearly fifty articles from Stodd’s Learning Blog and includes a full commentary on each to draw them together as well as many practical tips on how to create social learning spaces in your own organization today. The book is available now through the iBookstore for Apple as well as Amazon (for Kindle), Smashwords, Barnes & Noble and many more. We are offering a special discount for our readers: Exploring the World of Social Learning is currently available at a reduced price of $4.99 when downloaded from Smashwords (regular price $6.99). This offer will expire on 25 September 2012. To redeem, follow this link and submit the voucher code TR54J at the checkout. What types of social learning spaces does your organization support to encourage knowledge sharing and engagement? Has it been successful or unsuccessful? If you haven’t implemented social into your learning strategy, what have the barriers been? Share your thoughts in the comment section below. The first twenty people to respond to the questions will receive a free copy of Julian Stodd’s new eBook! Click here for official rules.

Your backup costs are probably eating you alive. Factually, backups are likely the most expensive portion of the blanket term "disaster recovery." Even if you are still hosting on physical hardware instead of on a cloud service like Amazon Web Sevices (AWS), Google, Azure, or Rackspace Cloud, the fact that commodity hardware is exactly that means that the actual ones and zeros of your data are the most valuable (and expensive) portion of your enterprise to restore. While the traditional method was backing up to local disk or tape in your data center, online and cloud-based backups have become significant market forces in the recent years. Sized for everything from home use to enterprise grade, offloading your backup storage to the cloud has become part of the mainstream when it comes to options. Even nontraditional backup services like Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3) offer a pay-as-you-go approach to backups. Pushing the envelope even further, on August 20, 2012, Amazon announced its new "Glacier" offering "designed for data archiving and backup." The service caters to data that needs to be saved for a long time but accessed infrequently once an archive has been made. This seems to be analogous to backup tapes, while their S3 service is more in line with backing up to an appliance or disk in your data center. Both are fully encrypted at rest and in transit, and while S3 is available in the GovCloud region (the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) certified portion of Amazon’s AWS cloud), Glacier is not yet there. The primary differentiator seems to be recovery time, as a request for retrieval to the Glacier service can take 2-5 hours to fulfill.  The tradeoff for this is pricing. While S3, designed for ready access to your stored data (in "buckets" to use their jargon), is fairly inexpensive, Glacier offers an incredibly attractive price point. $0.01 per gigabyte per month. Yes, that is one penny per gig per month. There are additional fees for bandwidth used, requests generated, and (notably) for deleting an archive before it is 90 days old. However, for data retention for things like older backups (You may be required to keep 6 months of backups, but how often will you go past your last full backup when needing to restore?), the price point is undeniably attractive. Add this in with the Amazon commitment to eventually offer a way to seamlessly move data from S3 to Glacier, offering an aging process to control costs with little to no administrative overhead, and this becomes something that organizations simply must address as an option. Of course, remember to do your own homework for your security needs (I recommend starting with the Glacier page itself at http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/) to be sure all your reglations can be met there. However, you would be remiss not to consider this as an option, or at least, keep an eye on its developments.

In my last blog, I said that my next posting would be an interview with Bob Danna, COO of Bersin Research on HR big data. Due to the craziness of summer vacations in August, Bob and I had to reschedule our interview for September, but be on the lookout for it. August is one of my favorite months of the year: The weather is great; the kids are still out of school; and I also get to watch my favorite sporting event of the year, the US Tennis Open in Flushing Meadows, NYC. I have been there a dozen times. My visit this year to NYC is a post-presentation treat to myself, and I can’t even describe the electricity in the crowd. And as a native New Yorker, it’s even more special. While I’m lucky to actually be at the US Open, IBM is a huge sponsor of the event, and they have a fabulous app that brings fans all the information they need for the two weeks of the tournament. That’s the beauty of mobile technology; it’s flexible, convenient, and appeals to a broad audience. Much like with learning, we all want to receive information different ways. So with regard to analytics, you would think IBM is bringing cool technology to bear, and they are: http://youtu.be/9NElor8LN_U?hd=1. US Open SlamTracker, a real-time stats and analytics visualization platform, is leveraging IBM’s predictive analytics technology to pinpoint three "Keys to the Match" that each player needs to come out ahead. Advanced algorithms analyze more than 39 million data points from five years of Grand Slam tournaments. Served with this historical data, each competitor’s performance styles and patterns are then indexed across the pair’s head-to-head record to generate the top three "Keys" each competitor needs to win. The results are augmented visually with live game stats, giving you a deeper look into the state of play. Imagine the power of being able to generate the top three "Keys" to success for each of your employees based on their individual accomplishments over the last five years as compared to their peer group in similar situations. WOW! So, this week I’ll take a blended learning approach…from my seat in the stands and watching highlights and interpreting trends on my new app. 

Continuous improvement is mandatory to gain competitive advantage and cost savings. However, it is imperative for global companies to innovate in order to survive. So what’s the right mix with the right tools? Continuous Improvement Techniques (CITs) have gone mobile with apps. In manufacturing, such tools consist of one-point lessons, throughput reports, job aids, Gantt charts, process maps, standard operating procedures, clarity assessments, and work instructions. Mobile apps are the continuous improvement training tool of tomorrow’s global leaders. CIT apps can be specific to the thought at the moment or set to the tasks at hand. Yes, apps are a learning tool and mobile apps are the delivery system of the future. Here are seven tips in creating a uniquely identifiable impact with content for mobile apps that will keep your message remembered: Ensure that action images are accompanied with an embedded message. This is the proven methodology behind the spectacular growth in the website Pinterest. Offer a video link of the task being performed or the "best practices" captured from others’ experiences. Insert standard work instructions supplemented with image links in order to manage initial file size. Monitor the access of the information and obtain feedback for improvement ideas. Disseminate tools, tips, and reminders through mobile apps in a time-based frequency manner. Encourage the use of mobile devices as learning devices. Enable ease of cross-enterprise communications via mobile pings - handoff (cross-enterprise) forms with check-the-box and comment sections. For manufacturing, process tools can streamline shift-to-shift communications, especially if a breakdown occurred and a remedy was made or if a potential throughput challenge has been identified. CIT apps, when applied with the proper degree of implementation, can both stimulate continuous improvement methods and serve as an innovation pipeline. Each company needs to carefully balance an approach to the three prongs of innovation (efficiency, sustainability, and disruptive) with a systematic attack to the most crucial being first. Both continuous improvement and innovation go hand in hand, so let’s engage in both. Top-performing global teams engage themselves best based on their passion, knowledge, and expertise. The organizations that are quickest to realize the changing landscape are able to formulate a strategic plan, differentiating themselves through advancing workforce competitiveness, which may lie in their internal capacity to reconfigure, both person and machine, resources in real time.