Organisations depend on their workers to generate new knowledge and ideas that will lead to profitable innovations. But as the business environment grows ever-more complex and competitive, and as organisations and workplace demands change continuously, workers are under increasing pressure to perform at their best.

Leaders of well-established organisations are engaged in a market war to innovate faster and smarter than ever before. But even when companies are staffed with enthusiastic teams willing to generate ideas, "intrapreneurship" (entrepreneurship inside of companies) often disappoints. In fact, intrapreneurship projects in big companies fail between 70% and 90% of the time.

If you’ve written or created course materials in the past decade, you’ve probably heard of SMART objectives (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-framed). But are we really being SMART when it comes to creating objectives? Objectives are important in training content, and the objectives we create should fit the SMART plan. But do they need to be written in a way that’s more difficult to achieve? For example, consider the following objectives: "Recall the core function of the Agent Tool for Tier 1 support agents" "Save, edit, and delete a search in your article database"

Support agents rely on a number of tools during the support experience to deliver excellent service to their customers. These tools are constantly in development. In addition, new tools are often added to provide a better experience or combine the functionality of multiple tools into one robust tool. When new tools are developed, training is needed to help agents transition smoothly to the new experience. I recently had an opportunity to develop training

As I described in part 1 of this blog post, I was recently presented with the challenge of training agents in a new support tool that they wouldn’t have any access to until they began working in the production environment. This meant that the first time that they actually used the tool, they’d be taking customers. My goal was to prepare them thoroughly, so that the transition would be smooth.

A repost from July 14 and another great video interview by Jeff Tillett, where he chats with John Delano of Saltbox Services about Experience API. This is a fascinating look into the future of learning, learning technologies and analytics; and how businesses will benefit from the evolution of the L&D industry.

Learning on "the Curve" Applying the five moments of need to enhance your learning strategy Conrad Gottfredson and Bob Mosher identified the "five moments of need" for any learner who needs support while performing a task or activity: Inform Learn Apply Change Troubleshoot

Learning on "the Curve" Applying the five moments of need to enhance your learning strategy Problems and opportunities What problems is the Curve trying to solve? These problems can be stated as a series of comments from the perspective of both learners and management.

Learning on "the Curve" Applying the five moments of need to enhance your learning strategy The who, what, where, when, and how   Who - Learners, learning suppliers, and stakeholders Which constituents in your "ecosystem" are involved with and impacted by the Curve? We recommend dividing them into three categories: learners, learning suppliers, and learning stakeholders. Learners Learners include anyone in your ecosystem who needs to acquire, refresh, or apply knowledge or skills. Ultimately, the learner audience for the Curve will be all job roles you support (internal and external). However, you may want to approach your audience in phases. For example, one company we worked with divided its audiences as follows:

The role of a learning professional is continuously changing with the world around us. As learning development professionals, it’s part of our job to keep up with the opportunities that this changing world presents us and find ways to leverage them. Technology and the ways we interact with it are driving our behaviors. We don’t access information the same way we did only a short time ago. The Internet is a game changer: we have more access to information than we’ve ever had in the history of civilization. I remember having to spend hours in a library digging through multiple books in order to find one specific bit of information for a report. Today, this type of research could potentially be done in only a few minutes with one Internet search.

In this repost of one of our most popular videos, Entirenet sits down with Tom King, Former Chief Learning Technologist at Boeing Flight Services to discuss the concept of what elearning is all about.

As an adult, you have many opportunities to learn. In some cases, learning is prompted by a desire to further your education. In other cases, it is at the request of your employer. The first case is one that you choose, and although it may not be easy or a subject that you especially like, you have chosen to attend the learning opportunity. In the second case, you may not have the option to accept or deny the learning opportunity—you MUST attend.

We'll be displaying our best-in-industry safety training tools, including training for OSHA-based safety topics, MSHA-based safety topics, and our family of learning management systems (LMSs) at the Puget Sound Chapter & CWU ASSE Student Joint Professional Development Conference hosted by Central Washington University in Ellensburg, WA on Friday, March 14, 2014. Come visit us and see for

Spills, leaks, and explosions involving hazardous chemicals have been responsible for some of the world's worst industrial disasters. Because of the potentially massive human and environmental costs involved, companies that utilize hazardous chemicals in their manufacturing processes are subject to one of the most comprehensive (and complex) of OSHA's regulatory standards: Process Safety

We'll be displaying our best-in-industry training tools, including our tissue training courses, training courses on safety, HR, operations, and more, and our learning management systems (LMSs) at the Tissue World convention in Miami, FL, March 18-21, 2014. Come visit us at booth 690 and see for yourself why we make the best training materials for this industry--hands down. If you want to touch

We'll be displaying our best-in-industry training tools, including our safety training courses, our Enterprise Learning Management System (LMS), and our Contractor LMS at the NW Facilities Expo in Portland, OR on March 19 and March 20. Come visit us at booth 419 and see for yourself why we make the best training materials for facilities-hands down. If you want to touch base with us in advance,

<!-- image--> <!-- end of image--> Nearly everyone recognizes the value and benefits of workforce training. When done properly, training can make workers more efficient -- increasing production, revenue, and profits while decreasing costs, waste, and inefficiencies. Effective training can lead to increased compliance with regulations. It can even lead to a happier, more satisfied

We'll be displaying our best-in-industry training tools, including our mining safety training courses, training courses on OSHA-based safety topics, and our award-winning Surface Miner LMS at the South Central Joint Mine Health & Safety Conference in Oklahoma City, OK this coming March 25-27. Come visit us at booth 18 and see for yourself why we make the best training materials for the mining

<!-- image--> <!-- end of image--> Learning objectives are a key part of effective training materials. Create them and use them correctly, and you're well on your way to helping your employees learn the knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need. Neglect to use them, or misuse them, and you're setting yourself at a serious disadvantage right out of the gate. At the bottom of this

We've got two new courses available in our Pulp/Paper/Tissue/Corrugated training libraries! The first, Introduction to Paper and Board Machines, is a helpful, introductory overview of the machines used to make paper and board. And the second, Carrier Ropes--Procedures and Maintenance, covers proper use and maintenance procedures for carrier ropes, which are used to thread a narrow section

People who are new to learning management systems (LMSs) sometimes assume that an LMS can only be used to deliver, track, and report on online training. You know, things like computer-based training courses--or maybe you call them online courses or e-learning courses. But that's not true. At least it's not true with the family of Convergence Training LMSs. We believe that the best training

We've got a total of nine new courses available in the following training libraries: Equipment Safety Training Library Hazardous Materials Training Library Operations and Maintenance Training Library Let's take a look at the new courses in each of the libraries, shall we? You can view previews of each new course below. If you want more information or want to request a demo of the full courses

We just wrote a post about visuals for effective training that appears on the blog of our friends at OpenSesame. The post gives some great tips for using visuals to help your employees learn more during their trainings--and who doesn't want that? This time, we focus on the importance of reducing realism in training visuals. Plus, it includes some cool examples from the Convergence Training

By now, you've no doubt heart of the Heartbleed bug that has affected many sites on the Internet. And if you're a customer of Convergence Training, using one of our cloud-based LMSs, perhaps you've wondered if your training data was secure. The short answer is, everything's A-OK. We use a different solution that isn't vulnerable to Heartbleed. So rest assured that your secure data is still