Content about Law

March 30, 2012

Many employees put teamwork and recognition at the top of the list of keys to improving workplace climate, but each business climate depends on the goals of the business. Focus on analyzing the kind of climate you need, whether it’s about innovation, customers, or collaboration.

By Maggie Walsh, Ph.D., Vice President and Practice Lead, Leadership for Forum

March 30, 2012

Avoidance—and even outright denial—of the need to make corporate culture development a “Mission Critical Objective” lies in five common myths that destroy the impetus for any organized effort to create, build, and nurture a winning corporate culture.

By Joseph Gianni, President and CEO, 2logical

Few would deny the majestic power of a winning corporate culture. When the odds are stacked against the success of a mission critical corporate objective, a strong corporate culture can persevere through all kinds of challenges and setbacks—and make, well, even the impossible…possible.

Even in the most turbulent market conditions, a strong corporate culture can shorten the recovery time from minor or major setbacks by as much as tenfold, when compared to an organization lacking the “right stuff.”

March 27, 2012

The Department of Labor projects that by age 32, today’s young adults will have had approximately eight jobs, an average of about 1.5 years at each company. Here are best practices Ambius employs to attract and retain Gen Y/Millennial workers while honoring and empowering its Gen X and Boomer employees.

By Jeff Mariola, President, Ambius

 “All Baby Boomers who grew up during the period between 1946 and 1964, are afraid of technology.” “Gen Y/Millennials (born between 1982 and 2001) don’t want to work hard.” Have you heard these stereotypes? As a “Boomer” who oversees thousands of people in North America and Europe, I believe there are inherent challenges in managing divergent generations of colleagues, but the opportunities for growth and renewal are far greater.

March 27, 2012

Many people think William Shatner is the master negotiator based on his priceline.com commercials, but I believe my husband actually owns the title.

Many people think William Shatner is the master negotiator based on his priceline.com commercials, but I believe my husband actually owns the title. His dad was in auto sales, and he has continued the family tradition. In fact, he practices his wiles—I mean skills—on me on a regular basis.

March 26, 2012

Professionals who lived abroad for several years have learned to develop a global mindset the hard way, often experiencing painful failures, being forced to re-evaluate the way they approach foreign markets. Training employees and giving them the tools needed to develop the global mindset needed to succeed prior to engaging in international endeavors is by far the most effective way to conduct international business and retain employees.

By Valerie Berset-Price

March 23, 2012

Traditional big meetings are the ultimate lose-lose. The organization spends tons of money and yet has little to show for it. Why? Because the entire focus is on the content and not on the attendees. All that matters is what’s being shown versus what’s being learned.

By Dan Cooper, CEO, ej4.com

A special piece of the classroom experience is a standard ritual in organizations—the traditional “big meeting.”

A front-line Marketing specialist attended the annual two-day sales extravaganza. The meeting consisted of a steady stream of product manager presentations for full eight-hour days, with a 15-minute break in the morning and afternoon.

March 23, 2012

When it comes to customer service, tell learners about the bad things that happened to you—primarily to make them laugh about it, but also so they think about what notto do or say to a customer. Document every customer service interaction you have, or the experiences of others you hear about—especially the bad ones—so you can pass along the dos and don’ts to your learners.

By Gisele Canova

March 20, 2012

Companies today must do business at the speed of NOW. In the NOW organization, The Quarterly Target Review makes problems clearly visible to everyone, reveals gaps between targets and actual performance, and, thus, provides a pivotal tool for maintaining transparency.

By John M. Bernard, Founder and Chairman, Mass Ingenuity

Companies today must do business at the speed of NOW, and a business that cannot see its problems will sink. In the NOW organization, The Quarterly Target Review makes problems clearly visible to everyone and, thus, provides a pivotal tool for maintaining transparency. A formal review of work ON and IN the business, the Quarterly Target Review puts a microscope on the business, revealing any gaps between targets and actual performance.

March 20, 2012

What do corporate training and entertainment have in common? Both industries spend billions to produce content that will capture our undivided attention and influence our behavior. Combining the best of both industries may encourage organizational improvement.

March 19, 2012

Trainingmagazine named the winners of its 2012 Top Young Trainer awards, recognizing the top 40 training professionals age 40 and under. All Top Young Trainer candidates had to be nominated by co-workers or industry peers. All nominators had to submit a nomination form and a resumé for their candidate.

Training magazine named the winners of its 2012 Top Young Trainer awards, recognizing the top 40 training professionals age 40 and under. These executives will be profiled in the May/June 2012 issue of Trainingmagazine and online at www.trainingmag.com, and they will be honored at an awards ceremony in February 2013 at the Training 2013 Conference & Expo, World Disney World Resort, FL.

March 19, 2012

There is never one correct method to follow in prescribing training and/or performance interventions. A variety of solutions can be implemented based on knowledge sharing and a company’s organizational structure. Here’s a look at how Communities of Practice (CoPs) and Organizational Design (OD) influence employee performance.

By Alexandra Harocopos

There is never one correct method to follow in prescribing training and/or performance interventions. A variety of solutions can be implemented based on knowledge sharing and a company’s organizational structure. The best solution is figuring out what works well for your project and your organization. This article will examine how Organizational Design (OD) contributes to performance. It will focus specifically on the influence of knowledge sharing through Communities of Practice (CoPs).

What Is a CoP?

March 19, 2012

IMG College thinks of its new hire orientation as the first opportunity new employees, or “team members,” have to experience the organization’s culture. Orientation focuses on the company’s three tenets of the “Total Team Member—Personal, Character, and Professional Development.”

By Margery Weinstein

March 16, 2012

Managers with a growth mindset are more committed to their employees’ development, and to their own, according to Carol S. Dweck, author of “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.” They give a great deal more developmental coaching, they notice improvement in employees’ performance, and they welcome critiques from their employees, she writes. “Most exciting, the growth mindset can be taught to managers.”

By Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D.

Millions of dollars and thousands of hours are spent each year trying to teach leaders and managers how to coach their employees and give them effective feedback. Yet much of this training is ineffective, and many leaders and mangers remain poor coaches. Is that because this can’t be trained? No, that’s not the reason. Research sheds light on why corporate training often fails.

March 15, 2012

Communications company Everything Everywhere initiated the “Brilliance Program,” which aimed to make it the best-loved communications brand in the industry. How would to achieve this goal? By narrowing the score variations on performance between agents, and ensuring that customers consistently walked away from every transaction feeling loved.

By Nick Lane, Director, Strategy and Planning, Everything Everywhere

March 14, 2012

Two key characteristics of online CoPs set them apart from all other traditional methods of group collaboration. Unlike apprenticeships, brown bag lunches, or other informal methods of collaboration where information can be lost unless individuals take it upon themselves to spread knowledge, online exchanges allow you to capture, tag, and categorize information to easily search for later use. Secondly, this information can be accessed from anywhere around the world at any time.

By Brandon Williams, Consultant, The Educe Group

If you build it, will they really come? Drive the adoption of enterprise-wide social learning technology by creating thriving online communities of practice.

What Is a Community of Practice?

March 13, 2012

Some organizations need specific scorecards that focus on the performance of an individual training program and the performance of learners as they make the transition from the classroom to the workplace. That’s the situation faced by the Training Center of Excellence at Discover Financial Services for the New Hire Program in its call centers. This case study describes that challenge and the solution the training team at Discover devised.

As balanced scorecards have become increasingly common tools used to manage entire businesses, many training and development professionals have tried to adapt them for use in our profession. For example, ASTD developed its Workplace Learning and Performance Scorecard in 2006, and Ajay Pangarkar and Teresa Kirkwood published their Trainer’s Balanced Scorecard in 2009.

March 12, 2012

Where there is a culture of leadership engagement—where leaders are seen as plugged in and responsive to their employees; where employees feel their leaders are concerned with their everyday activities, personal well-being, and overall security—those are the places where you see engaged employees on every level.

By Bill Whitmore, Chairman, President, and CEO, AlliedBarton Security Services

There’s a direct connection between engaged leadership, workplace security, and organizational success, regardless of your product or service. Psychologist Abraham Maslow identified safety and security as among the most basic human needs on the road to self-actualization—achieving one’s full potential. It, therefore, follows that if your employees don’t feel safe and secure, they’re not going to do the best job for you.

March 8, 2012
How can women and minority business owners be most successful? Use your diversity position as reason to conduct strategic planning...dealing honestly and forcefully with the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your business. Thus, you will initiate more partnerships and carve a market niche.

By Hank Moore, Corporate Strategist

How can women and minority business owners be most successful?

See yourself as a plus to the business world, not as a liability. We are all minorities operating in the whole, as do professional specialties within the company’s big picture. Through diversity, each element blends and supports others, as does the corporate visioning process. Major public sector contracts require qualified minority subcontractors. Select partners, and show good faith efforts to procure and execute contracts.

March 7, 2012
An empowering, unifying, and uplifting experience is what conference attendees were a part of when musical motivator Drum Cafe kicked off  the Training2012 Conference & Expo in Atlanta February 13-15.

An empowering, unifying, and uplifting experience is what conference attendees were a part of when musical motivator Drum Cafe kicked off  the Training2012 Conference & Expo in Atlanta February 13-15.

March 5, 2012

A Smart Trust culture is a culture of immense momentum, possibility, and power, according to Stephen M. R. Covey and Greg Link, authors of  “Smart Trust: Creating Prosperity, Energy, and Joy in a Low-Trust World.” Smart Trust is not built on the assumption that what we need is more rules, more regulations, and more referees; it’s built on the evidence that extending trust and creating a high-trust culture in which top performance is expected brings greater dividends for stakeholders on every level.

March 4, 2012

In September 2010, ESL Federal Credit Union added both Business Banking products and services to its financial services portfolio and small and mid-sized businesses to its membership mix. The new business processes, procedures, and offerings were foreign to front-line staff and support functions. So before launch, the company’s learning and development (L&D) team delivered a blended curriculum that included instructor-led training, a custom practice database, and a comprehensive CBT module.

By Margery Weinstein

March 1, 2012

Tapping the resources and expertise of California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly), The UPS Store created a hands-on training program to help its nationwide franchise network say, “We can print that.”

By Marianne Hamilton,Training and Development Manager, The UPS Store network

When the franchisor of The UPS Store decided to grow its business printing services, it knew it needed a training curriculum for its franchisees that was consistent, scalable… and convincing.

March 1, 2012

Tapping the resources and expertise of California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly), The UPS Store created a hands-on training program to help its nationwide franchise network say, “We can print that.”

 

By Marianne Hamilton,Training and Development Manager, The UPS Store network

When the franchisor of The UPS Store decided to grow its business printing services, it knew it needed a training curriculum for its franchisees that was consistent, scalable… and convincing.

February 29, 2012

Small to mid-sized companies, which employ 75 percent of Americans, implement drug-free workplace programs only 5 to 10 percent of the time. Here’s how to help convince management of the need for a drug-free workplace program and the steps to set up such a program.

By Michael Rich

Almost 70 percent of drug users are employed, 20 percent admit to using marijuana on the job, and more than 30 percent know of the sale of illegal drugs in the workplace. It is staggering numbers such as these pushing 90 percent of all large businesses to adopt drug-free workplace programs.