Learning and development isn’t a once-in-a-while activity. It’s a business-critical priority for increasing performance, staying competitive and improving employee engagement. To deliver the personalized and continuous learning experience your employees expect, you need to make development planning more effective and enjoyable for your employees. But you also need to ensure learning and development drive individual, team and organizational performance. Use this handy template to identify appropriate learning activities based on your employees' needs and the learning outcomes you want them to achieve. Click below to download this job aid.

On July 30, author and keynote speaker Bob Kelleher will present a webinar for Training Mag Network members and our  guests based upon his research and findings on the topic of his new book, Employee Engagement. Bob has generously provided several chapters of the book for you to download as a preview.  Here is Chapter 10. Chapter 10 Brandy, You’re a Fine Girl: Driving Engagement through Branding In This Chapter: Looking at the relationship between branding and engagement Defining who you are through your employee value proposition Branding internally and externally Using tri-branding to your advantage  

On July 30, author and keynote speaker Bob Kelleher will present a webinar for Training Mag Network members and our guests based upon his research and findings on the topic of his new book, Employee Engagement. Bob has generously provided several chapters of the book for you to download as a preview. Here is Chapter 14.   Chapter 14 All Aboard! OnboardingTechniques to Foster Engagement   Recognizing the importance of onboarding Seeing things from the new hire’s point of view Knowing what to do before a new hire starts, on the first day,  and in the first week Establishing performance expectations

On July 30, author and keynote speaker Bob Kelleher will present a webinar for Training Mag Network members and our  guests based upon his research and findings on the topic of his new book, Employee Engagement. Bob has generously provided several chapters of the book for you to download as a preview.  We start with Chapter 7. Chapter 7 People Who Lead People: Engaging Employees through Leadership In This Chapter: Differentiating between management and leadership Identifying leadership‐based engagement drivers Knowing why top leaders must buy in Identifying behaviors and traits of engaged leaders Training engaged leaders Recognizing the importance of coaching Identifying leadership best practices  

New 75,000-Person Research Study Unveils Findings to Unlock Workforce Potential.   With almost universal awareness about the business benefits of employee motivation, why are employees checking out in droves? New research unveils findings about employee motivation that is stemming this trend in some organizations. Critical steps detailed that can help increase employee motivation in an organization, including how to use the groundbreaking Motivators Assessment. Take the assessment mentioned in the research paper visit: https://assessment.findmojo.com/ma/trainingmag

For talent leaders, critical skills are gaining momentum in the race to develop effective talent and business strategies. But the focus on employee skills isn't new. We still hear about talent shortages and skills gaps. More recently, the "soft skills" or behavioral skills that underpin long-term sustainability, leadership and agility are taking center stage. In this eBook, Saba gathered stories from progressive companies that have successfully embedded critical skills to deliver organizational capabilities at scale and ensure employees can perform, innovate and grow in areas that are strategic to organizational success. You'll gain insights into: Reskilling to compete in times of growth and transformation Tips for nurturing behavioral skills that support company values How social learning and collaboration can help build critical skills How to close skill gaps by linking performance, feedback and learning Ready to learn more? Download this eBook and get inspired to develop and enable critical skills in your organization!

It's time to face the hard, data-driven truth that your corporate learning programs are likely serving your men better than your women.    Many organizations unknowingly perpetuate the gender leadership gap by giving more time, energy, and resources to helping men rise. In doing so, intentionally or not, businesses deny women opportunities to gain the critical leadership skills necessary for advancement—opportunities to which many men have always had access. This eBook provides actions companies can take to remove barriers preventing women from advancing, and highlights five core areas where women need increased access to learning and skill-building opportunities.  Click below to download.

Engaging and managing teams and team members spread across the nation (or even globally) is sure to present some challenges. That’s why it’s important to understand those challenges and know how to tackle them. From communication to training, there needs to be a plan in place.  In this infographic, you’ll learn: How overcommunicating is beneficial, and the best ways to do so How to best use and lay out meeting times The best ways to deliver employee trainings

One of the top challenges that business leaders will face in the next year is leading the hybrid work strategy and managing a dispersed workforce. Leading remote teams can be a tricky balancing act - Gallup recently found that the top two challenges faced when managing dispersed workforces can be decreased communication and collaboration. They also found that many organizations are struggling to train their individual contributors and managers alike to make the most of hybrid and remote work.   As a remote-first team, BizLibrary uniquely understands the challenges faced by remote and hybrid teams. Download our infographic and resource guide to learn our strategies for managing dispersed workforces efficiently and effectively!

Engagement, the employee’s commitment to their organization and their willingness to perform beyond expectations, has become a focus area for management. Engagement is more than mere job satisfaction; fully engaged employees are motivated and dedicated to making the organization a success. At the most simplistic level engaged employees lead to happy, loyal customers and repeat business. Importantly engagement also leads to improvement in retention levels. In short, it impacts the bottom line. Dale Carnegie Training asked MSW Research to undertake a benchmark nationwide, cross industry study of 1500 employees to explore engagement in the workplace. The study discovered that although there are multiple factors affecting engagement, the personal relationships between a manager and his or her direct reports is the most influential. 

Competency-based online training focuses on demonstrating specific, measurable skills. Organizations should seriously consider this approach to training, as it benefits all employees and leads to better performance and business success. Learning technologies such as learning management systems are taking competency-based online training to a whole new level, creating a more personalized learning environment where L&D professionals can help trainees develop the right skills and acquire the right competencies.  What you will learn from this brochure: What is a competency-based training How to develop it How a business LMS supports competency-based training

Does Your Team Have the Skills They Need? The Association for Talent Development investigated what TD professionals need to know and do to be successful now and in the future. More than 3,000 professionals participated in research that identified the 23 capabilities needed, which are part of the Talent Development Capability Model. These include expected capabilities such as instructional design and training delivery as well as newer capabilities such as data analytics and emotional intelligence & decision making. Download our white paper to learn all 23 capabilities needed for success and how to make sure your team is equipped for what may come.

A New Look at Sales Onboarding Sales organizations onboard new employees differently now than they did just five years ago. This transition to modern learning practices reflects exciting new opportunities for today’s professionals in Sales Enablement and Training as well as Learning and Development to transform onboarding into an organizational capability that drives growth. We’ve helped over a hundred organizations build out successful modern onboarding programs and gained perspective on themes that consistently emerge among top performers. We’ll illustrate these throughout this guide while giving you tactical recommendations for driving better and faster onboarding today Click below to download this White paper.

How You Can Evaluate the Impact of Soft Skills Training? When you think about an ideal employee, what thoughts come to mind? You might initially think about the technical skills needed to do their jobs. For example, you'd want an English teacher to have a strong understanding of grammar and sentence structure. But hard skills aren't the only important skills employees should have. Someone who has excellent soft skills would be adept at critical thinking, communication skills, and teamwork. Soft skills aren't as easy to identify as hard skills, which makes it more difficult to evaluate their worth. They're often thought of as "extras" and are put on the back burner. Believe it or not, soft skills training affects more than just your workplace culture. It can give you a competitive edge and contribute to your bottom line. This ebook will help you understand how these skills can make the difference between high- and low-performing organizations. In this ebook, you'll learn: What soft skills look like in real life situations How improving soft skills can impact your business What metrics to look at when measuring the impact of soft skills training How to calculate the ROI of soft skills training Download now!

Becoming a great communicator, leader, and manager, is heavily reliant on soft skills like emotional intelligence, time management, listening, adaptability - and more. Soft skills can be trained in the same way that hard skills can - and soft skills are applicable in any position. Learn everything you need to know about soft skills training in our new infographic!

Introduction When Peter McLaughlin and I first began talking about the topics of communication and feedback specifically, we quickly realized we had several things in common. We both felt that we were not particularly effective in giving feedback. In fact, we felt that we were pretty bad. We enjoyed the challenge and the positive results that come with a successful feedback conversation. We wondered why we had not naturally learned to give feedback. We agreed that if we were provided with a roadmap or model for giving feedback, we would have performed much more effectively in such situations. Looking back at particular examples, we both had a sense of delight from the positive encounters, and a sense of dread over the sessions that left us feeling discouraged, beaten down and lackluster. So why did we begin a project filled with such negative emotion? The answer—both to improve our own feedback skills and to examine what it would take to teach a new perspective and help "turn the opinion tide" that has made feedback a dreaded negative topic. Who doesn’t want to get better? Have you ever known anyone who said, "Nah, I’ll just stay mediocre and by the way, I don’t want a raise, promotion or exciting project…" Probably not. Our internal drive propels us to strive, learn and improve.

This is the third installment of the five-part blog series about the The All-New TrainingMagNetwork.com Open Learning Environment. At Training Magazine Network, we capture the crumbs of insights as they happen. This level of self-awareness enables our members to keep track of their train of thought. While in webinars, reading white papers, watching videos, etc., members can quickly record the ripple of their insights. They also encourage real-time noting, sharing and tracking of other members' insights.   Savor the moment. As members go through all types of content that they find interesting through the help of a powerful search engine, they are constantly encouraged to record their insights as it happens. The key idea is to allow them to document what piqued their interest at the moment. Their learning preferences and interest areas are captured by the system. This provides them a unique perspective of their pursuit of expertise. Why Evaluate Insight? The idea behind evaluating one's insight is established by a huge quantum of studies. Organizations discover that giving appropriate feedback enhances personnel's ability to grow. As a matter of fact, neglecting a good evaluation or feedback mechanism is a recipe for disaster. According to Jane Bozarth "We often treat evaluation as an afterthought, focus on measures that offer little real information, or, when the effort looks difficult, just don't do evaluation at all. In looking at evaluation strategies, choose those that will get you what you need. Are you trying to prove results, or drive improvement? And above all, remember: some evaluation is better than none."  A founder of Triad Consulting Group and a lecturer at Harvard Law School, Sheila Heen delivers a talk on the importance of feedback. Giving the right kind of feedback takes center stage in sharing and tracking of other people's insights. Technology-Enhanced Feedback Mechanism  There are a lot of advantages in using technology as a feedback mechanism. First of all, the time and distance constraint is easily overcome. A good LMS (Learning Management System) can easily incorporate feedback mechanisms like forums where learners can discuss the ripples of insight.   Through this mechanism, peer learners can easily assess and give feedback on each other's ideas. This can be personalized even in a large group. On top of that, real-time tracking of feedback is easy with fast data transfer.    Insights Leading to Path to Expertise (Path2X)   The Training Magazine Network just released the first-of-its-kind member service we call Path to Expertise or Path2X. It incorporates a technology-enhanced feedback mechanism.

As the business world continues to change, so do organizations and their learning functions. Whether you’re developing classroom instruction, an e-learning course, or an on-demand performance support solution, following sound instructional design processes will help you be more successful.  When an organization needs training solutions, the instructional designer must understand the business and individual needs that underlie the training initiative. Download ATD’s Foundations of Instructional Design: Methodologies and Learning Theories guide to explore through the basics of this process, the pros and cons of different approaches, and more.

While organizations around the world are spending billions of dollars on training, most of that investment is being wasted. Here’s what you can do to make sure your sales training initiatives add up to long-term results. Have you ever observed a sales representative during a call and thought, "How can this be the same person who did so well during training? Why aren’t they doing what they were taught?" They’ve been through the training and learned the skills—intellectually they know what they should do—but now that they’re back on the job, they’ve fallen into old habits and behaviors. The fact is, this situation is more often the rule than the exception. Data collected by the consulting firm ES Research has shown that 85 to 90 percent of sales training fails to translate into a lasting improvement in productivity. So what’s keeping the training from moving sales professionals from knowing to doing? Here are 4 of the most common reasons most sales training fails.

Training and safety professionals have long been trained to respond to workplace accidents. However, the field has evolved to become more about prevention and hazard identification before an accident can ever occur.   Conducting a job hazard analysis helps both employers and employees identify potential dangers in the workplace, making it easier to prepare against occupational hazards, from the most common to the most severe.   Download this white paper to learn about the four questions to ask during any job hazard analysis and see how SafetySkills can help you take this important step toward protecting your employees.

I am proud to share that in a few weeks, Training Magazine Network will release a new first-of-its kind member service. Our research confirms this is brand-new. We call it Path to Expertise or Path2X. I am humbled by the experience and learning during the Path2X platform creation and making it available to our members. Thanks to everyone who has helped make this vision a reality. Path2X has these key elements.   1) Power of the Prompt Questions With over 90,000 TMN members asking questions in their search activities, we curate and share these questions with the whole community. These prompt questions get crowd-sourced. We refer to them as, "exploratory thinking," "thinking aloud" or "intense curiosity." As the saying goes, "the solution is possible if we ask the right questions."   It's challenging to formulate these questions and if we reuse and repurpose all of them including the search results, it would save time and add more context to the learning.   2) Freedom to Learn One's Interest Areas We allow members to follow their interests and passions openly through access to unbundled and unrestricted sources of content.   Training magazine is a 40-year-old company. It has developed the best-of-breed resource materials in the world of training. Yet, the breadth and depth of knowledge required by learners surpass our present capabilities to provide this to our members. So, we unshackled our thinking, pushed beyond our current boundaries and uncovered a path for learners to have far-reaching access to varied learning.   We published guest blogs - now 50,000 and growing each day. Our learners deserve to enjoy the abundance of open content from all other sources.   3) Ripple Effects of Insights Encourage real-time insights noting, sharing and tracking.   Savor the moment. As members go through all types of content that they find interesting through the help of a powerful search engine, they are constantly encouraged to record their insights as it happens. The key idea is to allow them to document what they find interesting at the moment. Their learning preferences and interest areas are captured by the system. This provides them a unique perspective of their pursuit of expertise.   In TMN, we capture the ripples of insights, those small and micro instances of learning - as they happen. While in webinars, reading white papers, watching videos, etc. members can quickly record the ripple of their insights. They also share and view other members' insights.   4) Trending and Patterns of Insights are Predictors of Expertise Areas Articulate your expertise/digital tracker.   I like the book Show Your Work by Jane Bozarth. It suggests a profound change of our outlook. When we share our work, we actually learn a lot better. I recall a story from a toxic waste company client about how they apply "Chalk Talk." After each training they ask participants to use chalk and blackboard (may be flipcharts, white boards and markers) to talk about what they have learned.   This is a powerful self-learning process that enables the learners to articulate what they know and correct themselves along the way. Let's call this the digital tracker.   At TMN, we allow members to capture trends and patterns. They discover, learn and track what they are good at and they show it off in the "Trending Report."   5) Celebrate and Stand Out as Experts and Specialists Feedback to self, peers and significant leaders.   Mobile apps and digital watches are so good at this. Their entry into the market is by providing people immediate/instant feedback - whether they are walking, running or consuming calories. The key is feedback for people to correct and achieve their goals. In the Path2X (Path to Expertise), our members achieve this through Path2X eShare.   TMN members can share with friends, peers, leaders and if they wish, in the world of social media like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. We encourage TMN members to announce and celebrate their accomplishments. What is the single most compelling Benefit to TMN Members? The new world of learning is open, limitless, abundant and exponential. It is our ardent hope that TMN members experience first-hand this new learning environment. As they discover possibilities, gain insights into their expertise and interest areas and showcase their achievements, we strongly sense that members will eagerly pass on this breakthrough in learning environments to their own learners - helping them to learn better and faster.  

How many minutes of your day do you spend worrying about making a mistake at work, stressing out about workplace politics, checking out of superficial meetings or over-planning and analyzing without taking action? If you are anything like the majority of people, chances are various stressful thoughts, fears and unhealthy judgments pop up in your head and take away from your energy and productivity. In our 17 years of working with businesses we have found that in order to keep these stressors at bay, we have to be intentional about where we focus our attention and what lens we use to process information. We like to think of that filter as our mindset, and we have dedicated our work to helping professionals of all levels, industries and personalities choose a mindset that helps them be more productive and happier at work. As psychologist and researcher, Carol Dweck brilliantly points out in her book "Mindsets are just beliefs. They are powerful beliefs, but they’re just something in your mind, and you can change your mind." (Dweck, Mindset: Psychology of Success, 2008). "

According to a study by Bersin by Deloitte, organizations with senior leaders who coach can effectively and frequently improve business results by 21% compared to those who never coach. This infographic will cover the seven skills needed to help managers and leaders improve their ability to coach their teams. Click below to download this Infographic.

With the changes happening in the working landscape, from remote work to skill gaps, companies are having to move away from the old command-driven leadership practices. Managers are shifting to more of a supportive model where they offer guidance, and their employees learn how to adapt to change more easily.  Developing effective coaching skills is critical to organizational success. Whether you’re developing your employees or working to improve your own skills and capabilities, effective coaching skills impact business results.  In this infographic, you’ll learn:  Why coaching skills are critical to the success of your organization  Seven skills to develop to help turn managers and leaders into coaches  When coaching is most effective