Download this interview with memory expert Ida Shessel to gain a deeper understand of how our memories work and how your can help yourself and others use your memory more effectively to improve how well you learn.

You’ve heard of employee engagement, but how do you take it from an idea to an actionable plan? Training is pleased to partner with Bob Kelleher for the virtual book launch of his latest work, Employee Engagement for Dummies! From the author of Louder Than Words and Creativeship comes this all-inclusive, step-by-step guide to all things employee engagement.

CSO Insights’ 2017 Sales Manager Enablement Report compared the win rates on forecasted sales opportunities between companies with a formalized approach to coaching—meaning there is a standard approach used by all sales managers—to those companies where coaching strategies were entirely left up to the manager or done informally. Their findings provide proof as to why a sales coaching initiative at your company is so important: companies who had adopted a formal approach to sales coaching achieved a win-rate on forecasted deals that was 19% higher. In short, developing a strong sales coaching culture offers a great ROI. And great leverage: Each sales manager trained is then empowered to improve the win rates of every sales rep on their team. Here are seven keys that will move you in that direction.

Chance are, you didn’t dream of becoming a designer of elearning when you grew up, did you? Most of the working instructional designers in the elearning business got here by accident. So now that you’re here and doing this work, how can you become a more intentional practitioner? We’ll take a look at four key areas to focus on in order to become a well-rounded elearning designer, talk about ways that you can take your practice to the next level, and share some quick tips for better elearning design.

There are dozens of studies and surveys each year reporting on the "state of the training industry." With some modest differences, these reports are consistently reporting very similar data. Among the data points routinely reported are the following: annual per employee spending on training, how many hours of training are available to employees, what training areas organizations are emphasizing, the ratio of training budget to overall expenses or payroll, etc. In other words, you can find a myriad of fascinating metrics all telling about the training industry from the organization’s perspective. What about the employees’ perspective? Aren’t we all supposed to be training employees?

The complaints are familiar: Traditional means of managing organizational knowledge - in reports, status meetings, and standard operating procedures - just don’t work very well. We amass piles of documentation yet can’t find what we need when we need it, we find out too late that a task was already accomplished, better, by someone in another organizational silo, we spend hours never finding the information we’re looking for.

No matter how fun your game-based solution is supposed to be, you will still need a plan for launching it, promoting it, and measuring it. How will you communicate about the game? Will you require players to play? How will you incentivize play... or do you need to incentivize?

If implemented correctly, e-learning can positively impact any organization. But so much of the e-learning created and invested in today relies on technology, and focuses on content instead of the learner and improving performance - the result - boring e-learning and wasted budgets!

Goal management is among the most powerful methods companies have to execute business strategies. Thousands of studies have examined the impact of goal management on workforce productivity.  The common finding from this research is: Effective use of goals often increases employee productivity levels by 25% or more.  The financial value of goal management is staggering given the relatively low cost associated with implementing goal management methods. Because the value of goals is tied to fundamental psychological principles of employee behavior, the benefits of goal management do not depend on being in a certain industry or market.  If a company employees people then it will benefit from better goal management.

As elearning developers we often get caught up in designing only what we know from experience. Same holds true with elearning developers using Articulate Storyline. The more you know, the more options and ideas become evident to solving instructional design challenges. The more you know about variable programming in Storyline, the world opens up to unlimited design possibilities.

NeuroTracker evolved out of a pure science approach through years of research at Prof. Faubert’s Visual Psychophysics & Perception Laboratory. Designed to uniquely measure and enhance high-level cognitive function, it has become established as a valuable research tool for understanding human performance. The not-for-profit CogniSens Applied Research Center (ARC) supports an increasing number of NeuroTracker research projects across a variety of science disciplines. To date, published studies discovered important neuroscience findings in the following areas. Measurement NeuroTracker provides objective cognitive metrics on brain functions fundamental to human performance, and also relevant in cognitive conditions. High-level mental processing is required to perform NeuroTracker at increasing speed threshold, as such, measures have been found to differentiate elite performers from amateur, reveal characteristic of brain development with age, identify impairment with healthy aging or learning related disorders, and possibly to help to detect function-related brain damage, such as with concussions, and reveal non-contact sports injury risk.  

The digital skills gap is hardly news to American workers. Of the more than 200 million adults in the US digital workforce, only one in ten consider themselves very proficient with the digital tools they use every day. As companies move quickly to adopt new cloud-based platforms, such as Microsoft Office 365, Google Apps, and Adobe Creative Cloud, as well as new types of tools for marketing, analytics, communications, and more, employees and managers are hard-pressed to fit digital skills training into jam-packed schedules and tight budgets.

Executing talent management activities before they’re needed is an earmark of a successful business. With aging workforces and a shortage of critical talent being among the biggest challenges facing today’s businesses, strategic workforce planning - the discipline of forecasting future gaps between demand and supply of critical talent, to ensure that you have the appropriate workforce mix three, five or ten years from now - has become one of HR’s most important responsibilities.

What are your employees learning today? Or maybe a better question might be, are your employees learning today? If you aren't certain of the answer to either question, or the answer to either question is negative, you might have a problem. And the problem might not be your employees, either.

Analytics are at the heart of a modern data-driven business. When it came to content, we used to rely almost entirely on anecdotes and guesswork. That is no longer good enough - content is at the heart of the sales and marketing process and we must know how it is being used and how it is performing.   Marketing Automation tools made that a reality for marketing content. They let marketers analyze and optimize content marketing efforts during the first half of the sales cycle, providing analytics to show how effectively content moves customers through the funnel. But until recently, as soon as a deal was handed off to the sales team, it entered a content black hole.   There has been no way to answer very basic questions about sales content. Do reps have what they need? Do they use it? Do customers pay any attention to it? Does any of this actually generate real revenue? Even in our increasingly data-driven world, sales content has remained back in the days of guess and hope. But an emerging set of Sales Enablement platforms has changed that. They manage sales content throughout your sales engagements and use analytics to give you full visibility into how that content performs. This guide walks through eight reports that answer the key business questions about sales content and shows how to use them to optimize the way your company engages with customers.

In 1969, the Project Management Institute (PMI) was founded. Project Management specialists were building roads, buildings, the new 'computers' and lunar modules. The AT&T telephone operators still plugged wires into boards to transfer calls! Paper memos slowly communicated work to be done. Multitasking was unheard of. The PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) established a standardized and control-focused approach to doing projects, much like ADDIE brought to the new field of training.

Is your learning strategy firing on all cylinders? We're currently in the process of benchmarking learning techniques and technologies used across multiple Training Magazine's Top 125 winners. During this one-of-a-kind webinar event, we'll share some discoveries from preliminary data on innovative best practices in such areas as proactively establishing an informal learning strategy, using mobile at the right time and for the right reasons, engaging participants in social learning communities, extending learning to partners and customers, creating macro-level blends; and much more.

AN EXCERPT FROM FROST & SULLIVAN’S ‘ENHANCING OMNICHANNEL AGENT PRODUCTIVITY’ REPORT - NOVEMBER 2016 There is no substitute for the human touch provided by omnichannel contact center agents when connecting virtually with customers for complex service and sales support issues. Agents are the linchpin to successful and profitable Customer Experiences. But it’s costly to hire, train, manage, accommodate, and equip agents to perform these essential tasks. Wages and benefits comprise the lion’s share of operating expenses (65%-70%). Moreover, having contact center agents work on premise incurs significant real estate, facilities, and equipment outlays. In today’s competitive environment, organizations (businesses, non-profits, and government agencies) must delight customers and control costs in order to exceed their goals and spur growth. Ensuring that contact center agents are productive and engage with learning is essential. Recommendation: Click below to download

When asked to identify the weakness in most e-learning, designers and students alike often note the failure to engage the learner’s attention as a chief problem. E-Learning is labeled boring; learners take the path of least resistance instead of thinking through the questions; completion is something to be checked-off a list rather than an indicator of proficiency. The problem is, "How do you motivate the learner while still doing the serious work of instruction?"

Tracking and assessing workforce-diversity programs shouldn’t be hard work, but it should be a top priority. Because businesses benefit when they employ highly engaged workers with different backgrounds, HR leaders and hiring professionals contribute directly to a company’s success when diversity programs meet their goals. The opposite also is true: Workforce-development professionals who do not effectively measure the outcomes of their diversity programs are in danger of having the programs — and perhaps their jobs — deemed expendable. Ongoing competitive pressures are driving business leaders to demand that all investments return bottom- or top-line improvement, including workforce diversity programs.

Over the next decade, organizations will experience the largest wave of retirements in history. To further impact turnover rates, Gen X and Gen Y workers on the average are leaving after only 5 and 2 years of services respectively.

Most organizations agree that talent is their most important asset, but the results of a new survey show that most businesses are not in tune with employee perceptions around key talent imperatives, including engagement, training and career development. Reaching 1,800 HR leaders and employees across the U.S. and the UK, the recent 2017 State of Employee Engagement Survey conducted by Saba Software highlights the challenges many organizations face in capturing consistent employee feedback and accurately assessing engagement across the organization. The survey also warns of gaps between the perception and reality of talent management program effectiveness, and the impact on critical talent outcomes. This report delves deeper into the survey findings, providing insight organizations can use to close potential gaps that exist between business leaders and employees in critical areas, including feedback and engagement, training, performance management and career development.

During this session, you will discover tactics to create more meaningful communication with training requesters so that you can better understand the performance and results that the training is intended to support. You will learn the critical questions to ask that will allow you to move beyond the training talk and into conversation about organizational needs.

The BIG Question for 2017: Have companies built a workforce strategy where employees become a competitive advantage? More than ever, today’s CEOs recognize the tremendous competitive advantage in a workforce that’s highly motivated, excited and tightly connected to business goals. Building a powerful workforce strategy remains front and center for HR teams. The BIG Challenge: Technology For many companies, talent management technology was supposed to offer the answers. And it did in many ways: less paper, lower costs, saved time. You know the drill. However, traditional talent management technologies focus on automating HR functions, often ignoring business goals and the most important consumer, employees. Brandon Hall Group research indicates a high dissatisfaction with technology and a need to go beyond traditional approaches, engaging today’s savvy employees with more than an automated process to align with business goals. The BIG Shift: Moving Beyond Processes to Experiences As HR leaders look ahead to 2017, attention is shifting. Processes remain important, but a new emphasis emerged on moving beyond activities to creating an employee journey that attracts, motivates and connects to company results.