Go beyond measuring engagement and move towards creating a culture of engagement. In this video, Mary Ann Masarech discusses trends in employee engagement, including the three following areas: engagement as a shared responsibility, action v. action planning and how to gather information for useful measurement of engagement.

Every new learning and development technology is frequently hyped as the next big solution. Tin Can API, also known as Experience API or simply xAPI, is a promising addition to this collection. I recently attended a workshop about Tin Can led by Mike Hruska and Neil Lasher, both deeply involved in shaping its development. Despite all the reading I had done about Tin Can to prepare for the workshop, I still wasn’t able to fathom exactly what it did, but I was excited to learn the details from the experts. Opening the can Mike and Neil began the workshop with a critical question: What do high performers do differently to be successful? They asked us to consider the following: How can we trace the path these employees take to becoming really good at what they do, track these learning experiences from all available sources, and then attempt to recreate similar experiences for others? Their proposition—Tin Can is just the tool being developed to manage these processes. Tin Can API technology, they explained, was developed to make it possible to track all learning experiences, both inside and outside of a formal LMS or training environment and convert the information into useable data via a Learning Record Store (LRS), a specialized database. It would be up to each organization to figure out what data to track. It’s an exciting idea since those of us in learning and development seem to be scrambling for ways to measure and record learning activities we all know are happening "outside the firewall" such as interactions with a variety of social media, including, wikis, blogs, online videos, and discussion groups, etc. Tin Can might also hold the key to enhanced, personalized learning by giving only what is needed by learners to mirror successful behaviors; however, our presenters warned us that although it’s tempting to measure every single activity because it can be done, it’s not a very good idea to make measurement overly comprehensive. They recommended concentrating only on those we deem as meaningful to our organizational objectives. Inside the can The abilities of Tin Can and the vast range of learning experiences Mike and Neil illustrated for us sounded amazing but still left me pondering what the end product would actually become when programmers got done tweaking it. I did, however, discover some useful ideas during the session. The pros View clearer learning paths: Often we can identify high performers but little else that’s meaningful. Tin Can technology creates the opportunity to analyze actual learning paths vs. predetermined learning paths, including real-time analytics rather than static metrics. It accounts for informal learning: One of the biggest features of this technology is tracking myriad experiences that have previously gone unknown and undocumented. Learning personalization: As learners goes through a process, the system can offer suggestions based on learning patterns of other successful learners. It can also bring a learner back on track if going in the "wrong" direction. Since the experience is personalized, it could be more engaging. The cons Garbage in = garbage out: If we collect and aggregate meaningless information, we won’t find value in the data. Big brother is watching everything: There are concerns about tracking every action we take. Are there instances when actions should not be tracked or measured? What are they? Too much data: What actions and activities are meaningful to measure? If we give too many actions importance, the data will be overwhelming. After learning more details about Tin Can, I have no doubt in one form or another, it could be a tremendously useful learning technology. We already have a massive need to find ways to personalize learning experiences and integrate non-traditional, outside-the-LMS activities into an employee’s learning and development cycle. The question is, will Tin Can turn out to be that next great solution or will we just keep kicking that (Tin) can down the road? Resources for further exploration A Behavioral Scientist’s Initial Thoughts on the Tin Can API, Big Data, and Learning Analytics: http://ericfox.com/tincan Tin Can API - Adopters, Google Group: https://groups.google.com/a/adlnet.gov/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/TinCanAPI-adopters The Experience API Origins and Capabilities Webinar recording: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8EDnoasTAg&feature=youtu.be How Tin Can Can Help: Vehicle Fleet: http://blog.saltbox.com/blog/2013/02/18/how-tin-can-can-help-vehicle-fleet/

Billy Biggs explains three reasons why transitions to the cloud are often unsuccessful.

This past week, GP Strategies was a Gold-level sponsor for ISPI’s annual THE Performance Improvement conference in Reno, NV. The focus of this year’s conference was discovering the interventions and strategies that work to create proven, measureable results. As usual, a highlight of this year’s conference was the annual Human Performance Technology (HPT) case competition. This is the fifth year I have facilitated the case competition, and it was one of the best. For those unfamiliar with the case competition, it provides graduate students with hands-on consulting experience in exploring HPT interventions and strategies for a simulated company. During the competition, the students select a methodology, conduct a performance analysis, and ultimately provide recommendations and a preliminary ROI estimate. The Challenge Each year, my challenge is the same: How can I provide a rich, authentic learning experience that provides the students with a strong return on the time they invest—in some cases up to 200 hours per student. To achieve this, I blend a constructivist approach with a failure-driven learning strategy and an adaptive case. By design, this allows the students to explore a rich-enough simulation that does not limit them while providing a safe-enough environment to fail. The Teams, Conference Sessions, and Judges This year’s competition included two teams: one from the University of New Mexico (team TILO) and one from Concordia University in Montreal (team Catalyst). The students submitted a proposal of written recommendations in advance of the conference and presented their proposed solutions to a panel of judges during the first of two sessions during the conference. During the second session, I facilitated a debrief of the experience with the students. In this dialogue, the students were able to ask our panel of judges all the questions they struggled with over the prior 12 weeks. Our judges provided excellent insight, drawing upon their collective 120 years of experience in the industry. The panel of expert judges for this year’s competition included: Roger Addison, CPT, EdD, Addison Consulting Anne Apking, CPT, High Impact Learning Solutions Ray Svenson, CPT, Ray Svenson Consulting, Inc. Eileen Banchoff, CPT, PhD, Banchoff Associates, Inc. Why Is This So Important? Many stakeholders benefit from this experience. The students benefit from a once-in-a-lifetime learning experience. ISPI strengthens the bond between its deep base of performance improvement practitioners and emerging professionals. The universities have the opportunity to showcase their students, the faculty, and their curriculum. And finally, GP Strategies gains access to the best and brightest emerging training and performance improvement professionals. To underscore the value of the experience, the students shared the following quotes:  "…this has been one of the richest learning experiences I have participated in…"  "…this challenge pushed us to think critically and apply what we have been learning in our graduate programs."  "…this case and client is authentic, but what is even more important is that I have been able to apply what I have learned back to my current job." Based on the feedback from this year’s and past teams, the failure-driven learning approach is a powerful tool in providing an authentic, experiential, and engaging learning experience. How do you or your organization help to make the learning experience more authentic for your learners? What are some examples of where your organization has utilized failure driven learning to develop rich expertise?

Leadership development is essential to the health of any organization. We wanted to know what qualities make a good leader, so we grabbed a video camera and asked! It was fascinating to see the commonalities in responses, especially from people working in different industries, services and business levels. Going beyond identifying what makes a good leader, how can organizations further develop the skills of their leaders? Special thanks to those who took the time to talk with us: Matt Poovan; Mary Schools; Johnathan Lightfoot; Butler Newman; Karen Hoye; Doug Sharp; Manoli Salpeas; Billy Biggs; Jennifer Jacobsen; Neil Baksh and Greg Long

A strategy cannot be successful until the people on the front line have changed the way they do their work. Greg Long, VP Organizational Excellence at GP Strategies, discusses how CLOs can partner with thier business to execute strategies and overcome organizational drag.

Employee engagement matters. Don’t take our word, however. Think of how you felt as a customer the last time you interacted with someone who went above and beyond for you - demonstrating enthusiasm and know-how. Think of the impact that you had on your organization’s bottom line during your last "great day at work." We can achieve extraordinary accomplishments for ourselves and employers when we are fully engaged. But for too long, employee engagement has been a numbers game — a score out of context with mission-critical business priorities. Moreover, many organizations are stuck in a rut of measurement, analysis, communication, and well-intentioned action planning that goes nowhere. It’s time to make engagement a daily priority. It’s time to make engagement a shared responsibility - where every member of your workforce understands and fulfills his or her role in creating a workplace where individuals thrive and your organization makes its mark. It’s time to equip people with the insights and tools they need to ensure that engagement is not a separate goal from the work that needs to get done but instead is a seamless part of how the work gets done. We hope this newsletter provides new ideas for doing just that. Read the latest issue of Performance Matters.

The SharePoint Learning Portal is an innovative solution around learning needs. In this video, Manoli Salpeas, Director of Emerging Technologies & Partner Alliances, talks about key features of the SharePoint Learning Portal and the benefits it can provide for organizations and its users.

One of the challenges organizations face with formal learning (instructor led training) is that the learner takes in the necessary knowledge, but by the time they need to implement that training into real-world situations, a majority of this knowledge has been lost. In this video, Manoli Salpeas and Johnathan Lightfoot discuss problems that the SharePoint Learning Portal can address with respect to formal learning today.

Doug Sharp, President, and Debbie Ung, Senior Vice President at GP Strategies Corporation discuss the competitive advantage that companies are beginning to realize regarding workforce development and training.

As an instructional designer, most of my work consists of summarizing, condensing, and rephrasing existing data and materials. I do my best to make training projects more clear, memorable, and understandable for learners, so I am always seeking tools and technologies to assist me in the process. I recently came across infographics. At first glance, infographics seemed to meet many of my instructional design objectives, so my curiosity led me to do some deeper research. I found, surprisingly, what I thought was something new and innovative, was actually quite old and time-tested. What’s old is new What are infographics? Simply, they are visual representations of facts and figures, the union of information plus graphics. Around 1858, Florence Nightingale used what is sometimes known as the Nightingale’s Rose, or a Coxcomb chart, to convince Queen Victoria to improve conditions in military hospitals during the Crimean War by highlighting the death toll from diseases and wounds in blue, red, and black. Interestingly, an infographic-style cover was seen on a Scientific American volume in September 1914; the graphic depicted the number of trained troops by nationality in Europe, each represented by a picture sized to represent the relative number of troops of each nationality. In both of these cases, infographics made statistics clear and understandable. They told the story. Nurse Nightingale’s research received its funding. An instructional design tool From a learning and development perspective, infographics hold a lot of promise for rapid training development and can also lend new energy to instructor-led training presentations because a majority of people prefer to learn visually. Simply put, most people learn more when they can see what they are learning. As instructional designers, we could tap into this tendency by incorporating infographics into our materials to give learners a better understanding of what we are trying to teach them. My research uncovered some reasons infographics have had such staying power and how they can be applied to learning design. Infographics make big data accessible. Although an organization needs data, often in large amounts, to make informed business decisions, a spreadsheet full of numbers is not the most user-friendly format for most. Infographics make it easier to understand the context of the numbers. The visual data they contain has more impact. The human brain takes in the majority of information, some estimate up to 90% of it, visually. The Visual Teaching Alliance estimates our brains may process visual information up to 60,000 faster than text. Infographics have what it takes to stimulate us to learn. They help focus attention. When learners focus, they are more likely to remember and absorb the information. Infographics cut through the noise and learners pay more attention to the information. They are more likely to be shared. Infographics are more interesting and much more likely to be shared on social networks. This spreads information much further than a wordy document that takes longer and more energy to comprehend. Infographics are easy to create. A quick Google search turns up a wealth of existing, free PowerPoint templates to plug data into with just a few clicks. The learning curve for creating infographics is relatively small compared to many other technologies. If the longevity and proliferation of infographics are any indication of their usefulness and popularity, it seems as instructional designers, we should consider opportunities for adding them to our learning and development arsenal. More resources: Data Visualized: More on Teaching With Infographics, New York Times online: Education section Reaching the Visual Learner: Teaching Property Through Art by William C. Bradford PowerPoint Infographic Creation Basics by Desmond Wong

Organizations are increasingly dependent on the passion, creativity, energy and engagement of the workforce. Competitive advantage is no longer secured purely through the access to capital or information, but by having employees come up with creative and novel ways of solving clients’ problems. In order to achieve this, organizations are increasingly dependent on technical professionals - those expert employees in areas like finance, R&D, technology or engineering. In a recent TrainingIndustry.com webinar "Leading Technical Professionals", Fraser Marlow, head of research at GP Strategies’ BlessingWhite division, discussed the specific needs of technical professionals in terms of how they are led and how they learn. During the webinar Fraser discussed: Research findings and insights into the challenges of leading technical professionals from a joint study from GP Strategies and TrainingIndustry. Required skills and learning preferences of technical professionals and those who aspire to lead them. How to design learning initiatives for technical employees. Click here to listen to the the full webinar. As a follow up to the webinar, Fraser addressed questions in the following Q&A document: trainingindustry_gpstrategies_webcast_qanda.pdf

Billy Biggs, Director - Public Sector at GP Strategies, explains how to effectively implement a Millennial talent management program to attract and retain talent.

I recently had the pleasure of attending the ASTD International Conference and Exposition in Dallas, Texas. I wanted to take the time to share some of my personal insights. Several issues that I consider futuristic trends in Training and Development came up during the conference, including the following: Trends in global participation - the show had a significant presence of Asia and the poor presence of Africa and Latin America. Being that I am from Colombia, I hope to see more participation from Latin America in the future. Human evolution - the new communication and behavior formats in society that change exponentially through technology and different generations (from millennial to baby boomers) New learning technologies are helping to enable mobile and social learning and being applied to highly productive environments, as well as improving the ability to measure tangible and intangible results. Leadership Several sessions on Leadership were held that were well-received by the audience; this is an indication of the high demand for this important topic in personal and organizational development. The world perceives an imminent need of leaders with vision and sensitivity to handle generational changes, coaching, mentoring and reverse mentoring. A "Multiplier Leader" was one of the new and innovative terms from the conference. These leaders help their teams to develop their intelligence so they too can be successful leaders. Instructional Design The global need to increase productivity and competitiveness was prevalent throughout the event. Every company wants to have the best human capital, but the restrictions of time and money are becoming more stringent. For this reason, instructional design should be more effective in terms of customized content, using the minimum time required for learning. Innovation in the design of instructional materials marked a decisive trend. Neuroscience and cognitive processes of the human being are used as a starting point of learning and are now the basis of new developments. The trend to design fun games and simulators as part of training was reflected in the amount of sessions on creating cartoons, stories, games, music and performances of real cases. The art is involved in the further training. Training In a competitive economy, the challenge is to develop optimized and personalized learning programs. The programs will involve levels of knowledge and use technology, such as m-learning and blended learning, to train 24 hours a day. It was evident that to intensify virtual learning technologies, training should be combined with interactive technologies to improve performance and develop new processes for teaching in the workplace. Coaching and Mentoring Training across generations allows training in both directions. Traditional mentoring, where an experienced employee trains the new employee, is important, but reverse mentoring allows the new professional to train the experienced staff person in advanced technological issues. Reverse mentoring is on the rise based in the accelerated growth of today’s younger workforce and their dominance over the digital world. Customized Content This type of development requires more customer contact; assessments of the current situation of companies will allow the optimization of their investment in training and identify their essential gaps to be closed with a prioritized and optimal training plan. There comes a skill challenge for training professionals in the areas of consulting and support in these processes. ROI Global economic conditions, open markets and high competitiveness determine the need to show results in business performance from training provided to employees. New models of ROI were presented at the conference and set the direction of connecting the investment in training with the business KPIs. These results are managed with training scorecards. Mobile and Blended Learning The trend is to use these technologies for fundamental learning, self-learning and knowledge retention. Training materials are being developed for mobile technology where employees can access information relevant to their work, 24 hours, 7 days per week. Additionally, interactive technology allows for enhancing hands-on training. I have a subjacent question, and I leave it on the table for your reflection: What topics were missing from the conference? I think this question opens the door to innovation!

This whiteboard animation helps explain a new learning paradigm that is focused on blending role-based learning and collaborative learning to give employees the information and skills they need, when they want them and where they want them.

Joe Nasal, Senior Vice President of GP Strategies’ Energy Services Division, talks about the future of Performance & Condition Monitoring and how new technologies will deliver accurate data for real-time decision making.

Businesses are transforming. People across the enterprise need to change their behavior. Execution needs to happen in the trenches. Wasteful spending needs to stop. Learning leaders see how these maxims play out in their organizations, and as a result, they have to adapt to the internal forces at play within their organization and engage their team to adapt and rally to drive the business forward. Since the economy reset itself five years ago, many roles within the organization have changed. For example, salespeople have to sell higher. Marketers need to become more relevant to buyers. IT leaders need to provide higher levels of service to the business leaders they support, and finance is looking for more visibility into day-to-day activities. The question is, how has the role of learning leader changed? I have a lot of discussions with learning leaders at the director level and above. Across a variety of different industries, these learning leaders are working hard to turn information into actionable knowledge. While some are focused on driving efficiency and costs out of the learning function, others are focused on providing more valuable services to the front line. A handful of leaders are building truly adaptive learning functions that help their CEOs bridge the gap between strategy and execution. For the most part, learning leaders are falling into two camps as they cope with complexity and respond to changes in their market and organization. They’re either evolving into firelighters or they are becoming firefighters (see the table below). The question is, which are you?

Billy Biggs, Director - Public Sector at GP Strategies, discusses the challenges CEO’s face in attracting and maintaining the Millennial, as well as the Generation Y workforce.

In the course of my work across the human capital enablement landscape, I talk with a lot of learning leaders about their challenges in building a bridge to the lines of business. Some have become partners with the business units, but most feel they don’t have the influence they need to drive strategic learning initiatives. Take, for example, the chasm that exists between Learning Executives and VPs of Sales. As someone who has a foot in both worlds, I continue to see the gap widening between these two groups. From my perspective, both groups have a lot of value to their executive team. But, for some reason, that value isn’t being realized—especially within the context of cross-functional teaming to pursue sales objectives. So, how do I illuminate the gap they I’m seeing? Well, I will spare you the details of what needs to happen and instead offer you two fictional letters that illustrate what I am seeing. One letter is from the desk of the VP of Sales and the other is from the desk of the Learning Executive. These letters summarize what is occurring across our client base—and give a peek into what I’m seeing. After you read the letters, take a look at the suggestions for breaking down these barriers and moving forward in a more collaborative manner. 1) An open letter to Learning Executive from VP of Sales Dear Learning Leader: I need to talk with you. I have a challenge with my team. I haven’t been able to drive the sales results I need to, and I’m afraid I’m going to get fired because of it. The CEO shared that he counts on you to help improve the human capital of our organization, but so far, we haven’t been able to work together on something specific. Don’t get me wrong; I like you and your team, but it’s hard for me to make major investments in my time if I’m not sure what the outcome is going to be. Our CEO said you were able to get results with that technology we’ve been deploying across the organization. He shared some examples about how you were able to help people get outside their comfort zone to drive our business strategy. I am not sure what to ask for, but I need your help. We both believe people are a critical asset…so how do we get started? - Signed, VP of Sales 2) An open letter to VPs of Sales from Learning Executive Dear VP of Sales: I would like to talk to you. I have a challenge that I would like to address and get your input on. I haven’t been able to find a way to engage you and your team in an ongoing, continuously improving manner. While I believe you’re my internal customer and I want to make sure you are happy, you’re treating me a lot like an order taker. On one hand, you tell me what you want, and my team delivers. On the other hand, you want me to be more strategic and help you and your teams evolve, but you won’t help me engage with the field. As a case in point, I have been trying to get on your calendar to talk about some of the projects we could partner in, but you’ll only give me 30-minute chunks. I have talked to my peers in other companies, and some of them have been able to develop a partnership with their VP of Sales. I would like to do that with you; so how can we get started? - Signed, Learning Executive I know there are some outliers to these two open letters; however, for most of our clients, these letters are reflective of the disconnect I see. So what’s going on? In a nutshell, Sales VPs want to talk about driving sales results and achieving sales objectives, while Learning Executives want to talk about projects and deliverables. - If you’re a Learning Executive, what approach do you have in your bag of tricks to pursue business outcomes? - If you’re a Sales VP, how clear have you been on the outcome you want your Learning Executive to achieve with you? Since the disconnect largely boils down to a communication challenge, and as the self-appointed "marriage counselor" between the two groups, let me offer some advice: To Sales VPs: Find a small project (like a small team in a region) to give to the Learning Executive and her team to work on with you. Clarify the outcomes you want her to achieve with that small sales group. Empower her to drive to the outcome, and then stay engaged by reinforcing her work and helping her report progress on pursuing the outcome. Spend more time telling her sales stories. What wins have there been? What are you hearing from sales managers? What are you seeing on the road? If you feel progress isn’t being made, say so. If progress continues to be an issue, then go ahead and let her know you’re moving on and looking for help elsewhere. To Learning Executives: Stop thinking about helping the whole sales force, and focus on one group of people to make successful first, so you can get traction. Make sure you understand the outcome to achieve, and get your Sales VP’s point of view on what needs to happen to achieve that outcome. Be a leader by gaining more empathy for the salespeople and sales managers who ultimately benefit from your work. If you don’t know their reality and the challenge they have in talking with their buyers, you won’t have credibility. Spend more time architecting an approach to solving the problem before "jumping to the answer." To Sales VPs, leadership isn’t about random activity—it’s about purposeful problem solving. If you feel like you have to persuade or educate anyone on why you’re doing what you’re doing, stop.

Joe Nasal, Senior Vice President of GP Strategies’ Energy Services Division, discusses how Performance and Condition Monitoring Technologies have changed over the years and where we are headed.

When a recent storm left me without electricity for almost a full day, I was amazed at how quiet the house was without all the usual sounds that accompany modern, electrified life. The quiet also was an opportunity; it made it so much easier for me to focus during a face-to-face conversation. This incident reminded me how distractions and poorly executed communication skills can take away from effective workplace interactions. I know from my own experiences as an instructional designer that being practiced in the art of listening is crucial for working with subject matter experts as well as when consulting with business leaders. The ability to truly listen and understand the message by employing active listening techniques makes for good working relationships and often keeps mistakes, misunderstandings, or missteps on a project to a minimum. According to the International Board of Standards for Training, Performance and Instruction (IBSTPI), listening skills are recognized as critical for learning and development professionals. In IBSTPI’s 2012 report Instructional Design Competencies, active listening was identified one of the top essential communication competencies for instructional design. The report reinforces what experience and research has taught me—good listening equals good instructional design in a number of ways, including: It helps to give a better understanding of assignments. Active listening requires you restate and clarify what you have just heard. This provides the opportunity for clearing up any possible understanding right at the source and leaves less open to interpretation. It shows care and attention. When you really pay attention and listen, it lets clients know you are focusing on their needs, including the content and context of the message. It encourages open-ended questions. Another tenet of active listening is asking well-timed questions that help to define and refine processes. Yes or no answers can’t yield this crucial information. In her blogpost, Instructional Design Lessons from the World of Theatre, Andrea May sums it up like this, "Employing active listening…is one of the best ways to ensure that your design takes into account the needs, attitudes, and special challenges of each client." Ultimately, we should always strive to give our clients exactly what they need by listening more effectively. So, what do listening skills have to with good instructional design? It seems, quite a lot. More Resources Podcast, The Big 6: An Active Listening Skill Set, Center for Creative Leadership Management: Self-Assessment, Communication and Negotiation, Active Listening Skills, McGraw Hill

Organizations struggle to find sustainable competitive product advantages. The pace of change in today’s business environment has resulted in significantly shorter product cycles. In her new book The End of Competitive Advantage, Ruth Gunther McGrath says that strategies built upon differentiators are becoming irrelevant. Her view is that organizations must forge new paths to winning: capture opportunities fast, exploit them decisively, and move on even before they are exhausted. CEOs who recognize the shortcomings in trying to leverage product advantages are likely to turn to new strategies to achieve business plans. Potential problems can arise when senior executives create sound strategies that assume employees have the requisite competencies to execute them. Skill and knowledge gaps can undermine what are otherwise brilliant strategies. For example, recent earnings calls are loaded with references to creating more streamlined corporate systems that free up employees to become even more productive without adding anymore head count. Companies that out-learn their competitors can out-earn them. Consider the challenges so many companies have faced in trying to move from products to services. Progressive companies are starting to realize corporate learning that provides the knowledge and skills to provide employees with the abilities needed to execute tasks should be an integral part of their business plans. These companies will: Be proactive in uncovering learning issues within LOBs and addressing them. Align training to enable execution of business plans. Tie business outcomes to learning initiatives. Break down silos that cause internal friction. The advantages of taking a proactive approach to learning initiatives include: Defining business outcomes first and then designing initiatives to achieve them. Scheduling rollout dates based upon the scope of effort vs. ASAP rollouts. Being able to vie for funding for learning initiatives based upon projected ROI. Establishing the value contribution to lines of business leaders in the organization. Prioritizing initiatives based upon the potential value or impact to the business strategy. In traditional organizations, the learning function is largely reactive. It’s operationally efficient and the goal is to keep costs down. In these rearview-looking companies, learning leaders are called in to put out fires. Budgets for training/learning are created without regard for the magnitude of changes in roles, responsibilities, skills, and knowledge that will be required to execute business plans. Learning is viewed as a noun rather than a verb and a cost rather than an investment. A proactive approach would leverage learning to ensure that employees being asked to change have the skill and knowledge to effect behavioral changes that will be required to perform their jobs in a different manner. This amounts to lighting fires rather than fighting fires. A proactive assessment of the business strategy would enable companies to: Proactively assess the scope and magnitude of training needed for the business plan. Assess the skill sets and knowledge of employees that must change behavior. Create initiatives that fill skill/knowledge/behavioral gaps. Measure results to find return on learning investment (ROLI). For example, the trend toward shorter product cycles is a reality and gaining momentum. Work has changed significantly in the last 100 years as we moved from an industrial to an information economy. Business models continually change to adapt to shifting markets and customers. In the same way our schools are challenged to graduate students with the requisite skills for our new economy, so it is that learning organizations must find ways to provide skills sets and knowledge, and develop ways to evolve workers to be productive as their roles change or as requirements for new roles emerge. When learning leaders feel boxed in, or underperform, there are two potential underlying reasons: Won’t is an attitude problem. Someone is unwilling to try and it is someone else’s responsibility to explain why the task must be done and provide motivation (a carrot or a stick) to do it. Can’t is a skill set issue. If CEOs are asking people in their organization to do things they are unable to do, they shouldn’t be surprised when results don’t meet expectations. Nearly all new initiatives ask some or all employees to do things they’ve not done before. Sounds like a gaping chasm that proactive learning leaders can step into - no? Preparation facilitates successful execution. Companies that out execute competitors will likely win—with the help of their proactive and adaptive learning function.

American workers still fret about losing their jobs. The painful and recent memory of mass layoffs still lingers in our collective consciousness, and unemployment rates (while on a steady decline) remain historically high at 7.5% (April 2013 - see http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000). In a healthy economy—pre-2007 say—the balance of power in the employer-employee relationship was mostly in favor of the employee. Contrary to popular belief, people are much more likely to end their relationship with their employer voluntarily than by being terminated. In 2006 the "Quits" rate, or people voluntarily leaving their jobs (see BLS Data Series JTS00000000QUR), was almost double the "Layoffs" rate (BLS series JTS00000000LDR). But during the recession, the relationship flipped: Suddenly we experienced a rate of layoffs roughly twice that of quits as new career opportunities became scarce and employees were much less willing to take the risk of leaving a secure job, as the following graph indicates. Data courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (http://data.bls.gov). Shaded area denotes the US recession as determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). The state of affairs in the US labor market has not yet returned to pre-recession levels, but it is trending back in that direction: Since mid-2010 Quits outpace Layoffs, and in many industries where expertise is in high demand, we are seeing a return to aggressive retention efforts. In a 2013 study by BlessingWhite, a division of GP Strategies, focusing on employee engagement, it was determined that 45% of employees in North America reported considering a move from their current employer in the next 12 months. There is a strong correlation between this stated intent and actual turnover—and even if the employee does not leave, this does indicate a lower level of commitmement to their current employer. As the concerns about loss of talent grow in your industry, look to the value of training and development as a retention tool. When asked why they were considering leaving, the top response was, "I don’t have opportunities to grow or advance here." This holds true even for those employees who otherwise report being satisfied with their current job and contribute at a high level. "Development opportunities and training" is one of the top drivers of contribution—along with clarity and regular feedback. This makes sense: If you want an employee to contribute strongly to the success of your organization, you need to provide them with the resources and the knowledge and skills to get the job done. But what might be more surprising is that, across the board, "career development opportunities and training" is one of the top drivers of personal satisfaction at work. So if you want to drive higher levels of contribution, help employees find satisfaction at work and improve your retention scores—look to developing your people. This will demonstrate a commitment to their future and to the future of the enterprise. For more information on BlessingWhite’s ongoing research series on Employee Engagement, please visit http://www.blessingwhite.com/EE2013. Fraser Marlow can be reached at fmarlow@gpstrategies.com or on Twitter at @frasermarlow.

As the baby boomers prepare for their much-anticipated exodus from the workplace and Generation Xers become the establishment, all eyes are on Generation Y, aka the millennials. Our recent workship during the CLO Summer School session "Millennials Are Different. Sort Of. So What?" explored the much talked about generation gap, what millennials want from work and the strategies for ensuring a mutually satisfactory employer-employee relationship with them. Using the 2013 Employee Engagement Report, Billy Biggs (a Gen-Y colleague), and I (a baby boomer), debunked common misconceptions and provided unique perspectives on what you really need to know to manage, retain and develop the newest generation to enter the workforce: • The top engagement and retention drivers of millennials. • Tactics for effectively leading this group. • Implications for learning and development. • Mistakes to avoid in addressing generational issues. The bottom line? The generations are more alike than different and Gen Y employees are more different than alike. Every individual comes to work with unique values, talents, and aspirations. While summer school may be over, learning doesn’t stop! If you haven’t yet, be sure to listen to a recording of the Webinar. So how does your organization keep Millennials engaged? I would love to keep the conversation going!