Our organizations are living through change and are learning organisms that need to adapt to and leverage the dynamics of change. The continually accelerating speed of change over the last several years has made employers and learners (employees) more impatient. Improvement or growth is sought in today's climate for any investment to provide its return in a relatively shorter period of time than a few years ago.

2013 Integrated Talent Management Survey Results   Two different divisions trip over each other, recruiting the same candidate. A consulting firm is unable to meet staffing needs for a new, tightly scheduled project. An organization doesn’t have a clear picture of up-and-coming leadership for succession planning. A business merging with another company can’t easily identify overlap of staff skills. Sound familiar? All of these scenarios point to poor integration of HR solutions. At SilkRoad, we feel this topic is so important that we surveyed 380 HR professionals on their integrated talent management systems and processes. We've compiled those results into a comprehensive (and complimentary!) report. This report highlights the survey results and explores the most pressing questions confronting talent management professionals, including: How truly integrated are talent management functions in organizations? What are the most common talent management functions that companies integrate? What are the biggest pain points organizations experience due to lack of integration? What kind of data do professionals want, but can’t access? Big Data: What is it and are talent management professionals planning to use it? How important is "social" talent management to professionals, and what do they see as its greatest application? Are companies enabling mobile access to their HR data?

Are learning games effective? Does gamification work? What are some practical examples of successful implementations of games and gamification in practical work environments?

It is hard to fault the idea that appraisal reveals an employee’s abilities and a development plan should follow naturally from that. The smooth link looks good on paper. The reality is a good deal messier. It is not that HR is doing something wrong, just that the process is harder than it looks. Understanding why it is hard will lead to better results. Download this complimentary ebook and gain a full understanding of the link between appraisal and development, and what you can do to smooth this tricky process.

Are your employees increasingly mobile, but your learning programs aren’t? If so, you’re missing out on an effective way to support your programs, make an impact on learning results, and be relevant to your employees’ day-to-day jobs.

The reality of business today means that organizations will have to grow the talent they need when they can’t find it. Developing talent internally over the long term will be most of the solution. You’ll want some recommendations in your back pocket when your CEO turns to you for answers. Learning managers will be seen as the go-to resources when it comes to compensating for major skill gaps in talent. By socializing learning, mobilizing the technology, creating strategic stretch assignments, partnering with institutions, and speaking to the bottom line, HR can make learning an integral solution to filling skill gaps in the organization.

"Boring". "Tedious". "Painful". "Do I have to?" These are the moans and complaints of learners as receivers of the data-dump type of very technical and compliance forms of eLearning.

Social business tools are not entirely new. Enterprises have been using virtual tools such as chat and message board tools for years. Yet today, Gartner predicts that by 2016 half of all large organizations will have internal Facebook-like social networks, and that 30% of those will be considered as essential as email and phone.   Why are we seeing such a rapidly accelerating interest and business investment in social business implementations, especially as Gartner notes in Enterprise Social Networks (ESN)? How do you understand how ESNs can help you and how do you get started? Don't get overwhelmed. Download this free eBook from Bloomfire to learn how.

We know the majority of learning that happens in the workplace (and everywhere else) is informal and not in any one tool or system. People are constantly learning to do their jobs, solve problems, and to get better at the things they care about. In order to support people we need to strive for more personalized approaches. We need to focus on figuring out where a person is at, what they need to do, what they want to do, and help to remove the barriers stopping them. This is very, very hard to do when every person in a company uses multiple systems that don’t communicate with one another. We would spend more time than it’s worth to login each place, hunt for information, and make notes about each disparate collection of activities.

I spent this summer writing the second edition of my book Web-Based Training. One of the topics that required updating was blended learning. In the four years since the book was published, the term has taken on several new means. In my research I found the term blended learning referred to four different concepts.

Chances are, your CEO's get the numbers - things like EBITDA, ROI, net and gross revenue, income statements, balance sheets, and related 'hard' data. But perhaps they don't put the same focus on your firm's 'soft' business needs like Employee Engagement.

As instructional designers we are constantly being bombarded with new technologies and new trends. It’s difficult to distinguish which are fads, and which are worthy of our investments of time and resources. The safest, and often most expedient course of action is to continue to focus on the delivery technology we know is NOT a fad, the traditional classroom. After all we’ve been using the traditional classroom forever, how can we possibly go wrong teaching in a classroom in front of an audience? As new technologies, like the virtual classroom, eLearning, and social media, are introduced, we continue to play it safe by trying to make these technology experiences replicate the classroom.

Sheryl Sandberg, author of the new book, "Lean In", tells a story about a businesswoman’s conversation with her 5 year old daughter. She explained to her daughter that when women are promoted and succeed in business, they are liked less by their co-workers. The daughter said, "Then I wouldn’t want to be promoted, because I want to be liked."

Don’t miss this opportunity to get the inside scoop from three Training Top 125 judges who will pinpoint what they look for in Training Top 125 applications during the scoring process. Whether you are a veteran Training Top 125 winner or filling out the application for the first time, this special complimentary Webinar can be the key to increasing your score and ranking.

No organization can escape the damage and the rubble as the global economic and business landscape continues to evolve. In this environment, ROI as a metric is more important than ever. It is a powerful tool to demonstrate the accountability of learning solutions. But even powerful tools have their faults. ROI calculations can seriously misrepresent and overstate the business contribution of a learning solution. ROI is an important metric that should never be allowed to stand alone when communicating results. Enter the new view of ROI - the ROI Quality Analysis reveals the truth and communicates the real business contribution.

Virtual teams often face difficulties solving problems, making decisions, generating innovative ideas, and reconciling differences. When team members don't meet with each other face-to-face, it can be harder to build rapport, develop trust, and establish meaningful collegiality. Team members multi-task, leaders fall back to presenting endlessly, and the work goes sideways.

We know that change is a constant. There will be more of it in every organization, more often and impacting more people. We also know that new learning and e-learning programs as well as organizational initiatives are changes and they don't just implement themselves. To ensure their success we must recognize the often quoted mantra, 'the soft stuff is the hard stuff' is in fact, true. The 'soft stuff' are the people issues - creating awareness and understanding, developing involvement and engagement, and ensuring integration into the individual and organizational processes - that touch users, managers and executives and we must find ways to efficiently and effectively address them.

In Part 2, Wendy Kirkpatrick will share four practical ways to implement a "real" training evaluation strategy, even with limited resources. Beginning with the concept that "the end is the beginning," she then will provide tactics to utilize before, during and after training that will both increase and document the value delivered to the organization.

In Part 1, Jim Kirkpatrick will discuss the fact that training evaluation is not as complicated or expensive as some make it seem. He will explain how to integrate a sound evaluation plan into the instructional design process and implement it with minimal resources.

Experts state that today 80% of learning in organizations comes from informal learning. Learning leaders try to manage it; CEOs want the increase in human capital it creates. Bright prospects eager to get hired try to get it in order to have a shot. All have somewhat different objectives.

Microlearning is a new kind of training for the digital age. This playbook offers strategies for applying this methodology to your own curriculum - a positive step in gaining back lost productivity and finding affordable, effective training for a more digitally capable workforce.

For many years, costly coaching programs were reserved for senior executives and emerging leaders. However, in recent years, a new trend has surfaced as more organizations recognize the intangible and monetary benefit of coaching. Organizations now offer coaching beyond the executive suite. The difference is that these new coaching programs and services are provided by internal coaches: individuals who may not be certified in coaching, but are trained in a set of coaching skills to support a specific business need and produce monetary business impact.

Bringing a new product to market? One of the hidden success factors of a product launch is your sales force, and by extension your customers. Do they have the right skills and knowledge to make your launch successful? This white paper will show you how a curriculum of learning solutions can be used as part of a product launch to solve common business problems.

The world of training is changing. The days of all day workshops and seminars are quickly behind us. Employees need to be developed but there is little time allowed for the old traditional ways. This is where the world is changing and NOW has never been a BETTER time for TRAINERS to build their Value!