Mustering the courage to present confidently in front of others is hard enough, but when it comes to actually engaging an audience and managing their participation, nervous and novice presenters either usually freak out, forget to add interaction, or both. And there’s another, lesser-known but equally important issue: Audiences can struggle with interactions in presentations, too, feeling uncomfortable participating and not knowing what is expected of them. Why must engaging with your audience be so difficult?

The COVID-19 pandemic has had profound—and probably lasting—impacts throughout society, affecting how users consume learning and how learning and development (L&D) teams deliver it. The necessary shift to remote work has made digital and live online learning an invaluable tool for learners and L&D teams alike.  The 2021 survey of 1,276 L&D professionals by Adobe and Training Magazine Network, "What is the future of digital learning in 2021 and beyond?" found that 42 percent of respondents envision using more digital options this year, indicating that digital learning is here to stay as part of a dynamic, hybrid learning model. This will involve a blend of live online, digital self-paced and face-to-face learning aimed, most often, at internal employee upskilling. As blended delivery grows, companies are looking to modern platforms and features to increase personalization in ways that make learning more robust and more effective.  Click below to download the white paper.

The learning ecosystem is rapidly evolving, and the changing technologies and growing resources available to help individuals learn is likely a bit overwhelming for your Learning and Development team. With the only guarantee being that change is inevitable, how do you build a training solution that will meet your organization’s needs 6, 12, or 24 months down the road? Discover how open-source technology can help you create a flexible and future-proof training program for your organization.  In this White Paper, you'll learn: The evolving role and capabilities of the Learning Management System (LMS) within the larger learning ecosystem The leading open-source learning platforms and how to determine which is the right fit for your needs How to maximize the interoperability of open-source to extend and future-proof your learning program

A Letter from the Author Dear friends and colleagues: The gamification of corporate learning has become a hot topic of discussion over the past year in industry publications and blogs, and certainly among talent development professionals. Why is there so much interest? Of course, everyone will have their own point of view on that question. Mine is this: despite the allure of traditional elearning from a cost and ease-of-deployment perspective, numerous organizations’ workforces have not consumed that training with much gusto. There seems to be a lot of consensus in the industry that most traditional elearning provides only modest learner engagement. That’s a big problem for talent development professionals and the workforces we serve. We know engagement is a critical success factor in skill development, and without it very little performance improvement is likely to result from the training. Most of you who are currently thinking about game-based elearning are doing so to address the engagement issue. But what about the learning results? What about the comparative performance impact of game-based elearning versus the traditional elearning most organizations deploy today? In this white paper, we will explore those questions, and provide a rationale that I believe many of you can use to benchmark the impact of game-based learning in your organization. Bryan L. Austin Chief Game Changer

Get A Coach | Be A Coach the authors introduce a new framework for coaching that extends the benefits of this powerful tool to the masses. You will see how everyone, at every level of the organization, can get a coach anytime they need one, anywhere they are within the organization and for anything they are doing. Why? So that people can get better results in their job, more fulfillment in the workplace and more growth and development in their careers. For the organization there are also huge benefits: Facilitating knowledge transfer Fostering collaboration Closing the skills gap Establishing real time, on-demand learning

The Playbook to Driving Employee Engagement with Language Learning. In collaboration with HR Dive, this playbook covers everything you need to know about driving employee engagement and retention with a language learning program. Learn about how organizations are expanding their benefits packages to include language learning, the business outcomes that language learning leads to, and how to get started with implementing a program.

Career Acrobatics 101: Why Flexibility is the New Path to Success Traditional career paths have long been on the decline, and that predictable, linear climb is not likely making a comeback any time soon. After all, 85% of the jobs that will exist in 2030 haven't even been invented yet!¹ While career paths may not be as straightforward as they once were, a tremendous opportunity has also presented itself - for those with the right mindset about career development. So how can HR and L&D leaders cultivate career acrobatic skills to ensure their employees are more versatile, flexible, and adaptable to workplace change? This guide, featuring insights from Julie Winkle Giulioni - co-author of the bestselling book "Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go: Career Conversations Organizations Need and Employees Want" - includes a 3-minute quiz your people can take to help them determine their career agility quotient. Employees can then use the results and actionable best practices outlined in the guide to help future-proof their careers, keep up with evolving business dynamics and successfully navigate the changing world of work. Download this guide to find out why career agility is the new competitive advantage - and how your people can become career acrobats to propel their career to new heights!

Industry research shows that effective sales coaching can dramatically improve the performance of a sales team - in some cases driving up revenues by 20% or more.   The reason for such potential improvements is the significant "multiplier effect" sales organizations can achieve through sales coaching: one trained manager can coach multiple sales professionals and improve their overall performance. With such potential benefits it is no wonder that many sales organizations recommend that their frontline sales managers spend 25% - 45% of their time sales coaching. The High Impact Sales Coaching Guide provides expert advice on essential sales coaching skills to help sales managers effectively empower their teams to reach their highest potential.

In the modern era, learners have access to knowledge like never before. But as learning professionals, we need to ensure they’re developing the skills and knowledge they need to perform their jobs at a high level. That leaves a critical question: how can we design programs that help learners achieve true mastery? Newer, more robust approaches, including continuous delivery of learning, richer content, and skill-based certifications, are delivering the outcomes that enterprises are looking for. This report discusses the need to shift from legacy learning approaches to a modern outcome and skill-based approach that we call mastery-based learning.  In this analyst report you will learn: The key trends driving the shift to mastery-based learning The best technologies to enable a mastery-based approach to training Best practices for deploying mastery-based learning programs

Career development appears at the top of many list. Unfortunately, the lists tend to be focused on what employees desperately want but are not getting from their managers. As for managers, most appreciate the value of career development and really which they could do it more frequently and more effectively than they currently do. But let's face it: a manager's day-to-day reality are kaleidoscopic blur of meetings, responsibilities, and shifting priorities. Helping employees develop and grow is one of many activities perpetually pushed out in time to the elusive someday that too rarely comes. How could managers get past this conundrum? How can they make career development happen within the pressure-cooker reality that is business today? The answer is definitely not new systems, checklists, processes, or forms. Those have actually contributed to the problem.

Employees spend the equivalent of one work day per week searching for information they need to perform their roles and the majority of training they receive is forgotten within one hour. Improved Access, Assessment, and Analytics can substantially improve employees' mastery of the skills and knowledge that drive the performance of your business. The following best practices can help you translate training to performance and financial impacts.

Action-based learning allows learners to implement what they have learned in real-world scenarios. Although content-based learning has been dominating the training industry for the past few decades, action-based learning is the only way to really get employees to practice, apply, and improve their skills. This infographic shows how active learning affects the brain and encourages knowledge retention, engagement, and team work. Click below to download.

In this fast-paced world, speed to market is paramount, and having employees with strong communication skills has emerged as a fundamental requirement for an organization's success. With the rise of AI combined with coaching, organizations are achieving better results in record time. Proven use cases, including sales enablement, compliance training, customer service, and more, demonstrate that organizations quickly hit their KPIs by relying on AI-based video and audio learning platforms. This highly scalable strategy surmounts common training challenges and surpasses traditional learning methods. Download this eBook to learn how training with AI features upskills workers faster and more affordably. See how employees get the most out of solo practice with AI and a more personalized learning experience. 

Few realize it, but most people interact with Synaptics "human interface" technologies every day. The company’s touch- and voice-enabling technologies are a key part of today’s smartphones, tablets, notebooks, automobiles, wearables, smart homes, and other applications. Synaptics helps users get the most out of their devices through an extensive portfolio of human-interface solutions that enable elegant, intuitive user experiences. The PC, smartphone, tablet and automotive-electronics markets that Synaptics serves are all constantly evolving and highly competitive. New or upgraded products are released at an incredibly fast pace, both by a wide range of competitors and by Synaptics itself. To support and improve upon its market-leading technologies, Synaptics relies on its employees to fully understand both the company’s own suite of products as well as those they compete with. This expertise enables Synaptics employees to think beyond obvious solutions, adapt and apply answers from other functions or processes, and iterate on new ideas. And when that expertise can be shared, it serves as the foundation for the culture of innovation upon which Synaptics’ products are built.

Compliance is not just something extra we have to do to manage risk and follow the law. It touches on almost every aspect about how we work. Getting compliance right should never be an end goal; it should always be something wedo on the way to the larger organizational/business and culture strategy. Download this white paper to learn more about how compliance can be part of a culture strategy. 

Microlearning is a treatment for instruction. Microlearning can be used to deliver a wide variety of subject matter, and the primary decision guiding the implementation is the scope of content to be covered. Microlearning is meant to be easily consumable in short periods of time (e.g. less than 10 minutes). The microlearning solution should address one learning objective ONLY.

For product pitches and sales, speed to market is everything. When organizations combine video-based practice with AI, employees get real-time feedback in addition to mentor coaching. Reducing the time needed to upskill means reaching sales goals faster.   Find out how organizations implement these winning training techniques to improve communication skills - even when their mentors are busy! Highlights include: Use cases for using AI-based video coaching How learners get the most out of solo practice How AI evaluates non-verbal communication skills  And more!

Your organization’s approach to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion matters, and has for a long time. In recent months, contributing to an employee’s sense of Belonging is proving to be massively important. Belonging is one of the fastest growing influences on how your employees and prospective employees, customers, partners, and others view the organization. This plays an increasingly large role in their decision to pursue a role with the organization or to leave. This eBook provides guidance on how learning and development can and should play a role to influence how employees experience an organization’s DEI&B. This eBook makes a case for how and why learning and development can be an agent for shaping the culture of an organization. Learning can contribute to a sense of employee belonging by creating a culture of engagement, opportunity within the organization, and productivity. Ultimately, supporting employee belonging can make great strides toward employee retention. In this eBook, we focus on a few key issues around Belonging: Tying Belonging to Strategic Talent Outcomes A Belonging self-assessment guide Opportunity checklist for ways to improve Community building Creating space to respond to changes

"How long does eLearning take to develop?" is a question we are frequently asked. With heavy workloads, people who create eLearning want to have a simple method of predicting the time it will take to create a course. But is there a simple method we can use to answer the question? Please click below to download this eBook.

In 2022, the global pharmaceutical market was valued at 1.48 trillion U.S. dollars. Let’s just say this market has experienced significant growth (and change) over the years and will continue to do so. To keep up with this pace, changes must be implemented to create effective learning experiences that improve understanding, knowledge retention and proficiency, while mitigating risk and protecting investments. This will empower employees and supercharge performance in the high-stakes pharmaceutical industry. One of the most pressing challenges is to find and implement an efficient and effective way to constantly upskill and reskill the entire workforce. This paper will explore the role training teams play in preparing employees to support the growth and change within the pharmaceutical industry.

After new Small Business Market (SMB) sales rep turnover increased and revenue did not meet plan, it was time for Paychex to dramatically re-engineer their sales onboarding. In collaboration with Senior Leadership, the L&D team quickly began gathering data: exit interviews, sales KPIs, a very informative secret shopper report, manager/sales rep interviews, and social media data from clients and prospects - to better understand the problem and help leadership set targets. Download this case study to learn how Paycheck overhauled its new-hire training and realized.. 8% increase in retention 10% increase in business revenue 41% increase in speed to competency 68% reduction in travel expenses

Richardson, a global sales training company, had a problem: their eLearning modules, which were once considered state-of-the-art, had grown outdated. They needed to improve their sales training program fast to address their biggest challenges: Effectively engaging their learners with a new approach Delivering a unique, scalable training solution Administering a seamless go-to-market rollout of an overhauled training program How did Richardson quickly overcome these challenges and deliver a game-changing training solution? By using a modern, configurable online learning platform. In this case study you'll learn how to: Deliver a consistent, intuitive, and clean learner experience at a global scale Leverage blended learning and robust analytics to create a more impactful training program Transform existing training and education experiences for learners, resulting in new levels of efficiency, engagement, and success

Soft skills play a key role in your sales reps' ability to successfully turn a prospect into a client. This ebook discusses how if your sales team can put themselves in their prospects shoes emotionally, they can overcome any objection thrown at them and close the sale. Click below to download this eBook.

Large, global organizations typically operate disparate business systems around the world - increasing information technology costs and impacting service consistency for customers. To increase efficiency and performance, many enterprises choose to optimize their operations based on globally standardized ‘core’ systems. Implementing core software applications, such as SAP, PeopleSoft, SalesForce, Maximo, WorkDay, etc., takes a major investment not only in the technology infrastructure but also in preparing the end-users to operate within the system. Business cases are prepared to forecast the potential savings resulting from the installation of the new application. Assumptions are made on how quickly and thoroughly the users of the application will be able to use it efficiently and effectively. These expectations can be jeopardized if the technology roll-out is delayed or slowed because the users are not ready to meet these assumptions. If a company wants to achieve its business case goals, they need to ensure they get maximum end-user adoption with skilled, competent users.