Content about Social Issues

February 19, 2013
2013 Training Top 125: CHG Healthcare’s Rx for Success

Expanded new hire orientation and onboarding programs highlight a year of training advances at CHG Healthcare Services, No. 5 on the 2013 Training Top 125.

By Margery Weinstein

February 14, 2013
Baylor Health Care Gauges Engagement

Baylor Health Care System has implemented an employee engagement survey every two years since 2004. After each survey, Baylor holds focus groups to determine clarity about the needs and best practices, and then implements a variety of training offerings.

By Margery Weinstein

March 30, 2012
6 Management Practices for Affecting Workplace Climate

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 27, 2012
Bridging Generational Workplace Chasms

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 20, 2012
7 Rules for Total Transparency

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 19, 2012
2012 Top Young Trainer Award Winners

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
How OD and CoPs Influence Performance

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 15, 2012
Inspiring Brilliance in Customer Experience

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
Social Learning Starts with Online CoPs

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 8, 2012
Small Business Dynamics
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
The Drum Cafe Experience
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
Leading the Facebook Generation

Our younger colleagues keep us on top of our game, and we can learn a lot from them. Doing so requires that we take a fresh look at how we manage work and lead people. We should be looking for ways to give them opportunities to make the leaps forward based upon their mental models.

By Ty Kiisel, Manager, Social Outreach, AtTask, Inc

I work with a team of mostly young people. Except for the fact that I’m a 50-something guy who rides a Harley rather than a 20-something guy who rides a bullet bike, there’s no real generation gap among my colleagues. Of course, there are some age-related differences, but, for the most part, they are minor things less associated with work and more related to fashion and other personal preferences.

February 23, 2012
Good Employee Health Leads to Improved Company Performance

Historically, businesses have viewed employee wellness as a way to lower health-care costs. But the rewards of wellness go far beyond reducing the price of employee benefits. If people feel good, they perform better. And if they perform at a higher level, so will your company. Here’s the evidence that shows the direct links between good health and improved company performance.

By Dr. Jack Groppel, Ph.D., Co-Founder, Human Performance Institute, and Vice President, Applied Science and Performance Training, Wellness & Prevention, Inc.

February 21, 2012
Best Practices and Outstanding Initiatives

Trainingeditors recognize innovative and successful learning and development programs and practices submitted in the 2012 Training Top 125 application.

BEST PRACTICES

Edward Jones: Practice Makes Perfect (Sales Training)

Each month, Edward Jones hires more than 150 new recruits with little financial background, then trains them to serve clients well. This organic growth is achieved through extensive training, including coaching by veterans, online study, virtual classes, weeklong stints of classroom training, and recorded role-play.

February 21, 2012
Training Top 10 Hall of Fame

Microsoft Corporation and SCC Soft Computer are the newest inductees into the Training Top 10 Hall of Fame, joining the ranks of the 11 companies named to the hall since its inception in 2008.

February 20, 2012
Field Tips

Many employees claim they learn best while doing, so they prefer to dive right in and learn as they go when they get a new job or take on new responsibilities. But the most successful and quickest learning on the job takes place when there is a formal on-the-job training (OJT) program—a fact many organizations and managers fail to take into account.

By Lorri Freifeld

Many employees claim they learn best while doing, so they prefer to dive right in and learn as they go when they get a new job or take on new responsibilities. But the most successful and quickest learning on the job takes place when there is a formal on-the-job training (OJT) program—a fact many organizations and managers fail to take into account.

February 20, 2012
Miami Children’s Hospital Puts People First

Miami Children’s Hospital (MCH) faced a steep challenge: a doubling of the demand for talented people in health care coupled with a labor supply that continues to dwindle. The hospital answered that challenge with initiatives that attract, train, and retain the kind of talented people the organization needs to lead it into the future.

By Margery Weinstein

With the health-care industry currently the largest employer in the United States and its labor market expected to achieve a 49 percent growth in the next five years, Miami Children’s Hospital (MCH) faced a steep challenge: a doubling of the demand for talented people in health care coupled with a labor supply that continues to dwindle. The hospital answered that challenge with initiatives that attract, train, and retain the kind of talented people the organization needs to lead it into the future.

February 20, 2012
Mohawk Maximizes Learning

For flooring manufacturer Mohawk Industries, it is not enough to teach employees how to be great. The long-time Training Top 125 contender focused last year on helping employees to blaze their own learning paths while meeting organization imperatives. That meant improving the technology that supports employee performance, as well as creating new social networking platforms to enable learners to challenge and teach one another.

By Margery Weinstein

February 20, 2012
Soapbox: ROE: Demonstration of Training Value

Return on expectations (ROE) is a foolproof way to show the value of training in the terms desired by key stakeholders. ROE demonstrates the degree to which training initiatives satisfy the expectations of key business stakeholders.

Return on expectations (ROE) is a foolproof way to show the value of training in the terms desired by key stakeholders. ROE demonstrates the degree to which training initiatives satisfy the expectations of key business stakeholders. Assumptions that may assist training professionals include:

  • Key stakeholders are high-level managers or executives.
  • Stakeholder expectations primarily include the accomplishment of the organization’s highest-level goals and mission.

Figure 1: The Kirkpatrick Model

February 20, 2012
The Main Drivers of Employee Engagement

There are two types of employee engagement—emotional commitment and rational commitment —with emotional commitment being four times more powerful than rational commitment in driving employee effort. Employees stay with their organizations when they believe it is in their self-interest (rational commitment). But they exert discretionary effort when they believe in the value of their job, their team, and their organization (emotional commitment).

By Dr. Mee-Yan Cheung-Judge, Founder of Quality & Equality Ltd., and Linda Holbeche, former Research and Policy Director, CIPD

February 20, 2012
Training Today: Take This Job and…

According to a recent survey published by TimeMagazine, fewer than half of American workers—45 percent—are satisfied with their jobs. The solution, says author Melissa Evans, is that workers need get in tune with potential careers and job choices that plug into their passions as a person.

The late Comedian George Carlin once said, “Do you hate your job? Sorry to hear that. There’s a support group for that. It’s called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar!”

As a consultant on employee engagement to major health-care companies, Melissa Evans understands that feeling well. Her solution to it, however, is a little “uncorporate.”

February 20, 2012
Verizon’s New Number is 1

One may be the loneliest number, but Verizon isn’t complaining. After appearing five times in the Top 10 over the last six years, the telecommunications company captured the No. 1 spot on the Training Top 125 for the first time in 2012.

By Lorri Freifeld

One may be the loneliest number, but Verizon isn’t complaining. After appearing five times in the Top 10 over the last six years, the telecommunications company captured the No. 1 spot on the Training Top 125 for the first time in 2012.

Despite a relatively flat training budget and a work stoppage that resulted from the expiration of union collective bargaining agreements, Verizon remained steadfast in its commitment to effective training tied to corporate strategic goals—and had the results to show for it.

February 17, 2012
New Article: What’s an LMS? Part 2

Lessons learned about Learning Management System implementation, software training, internal marketing, and user adoption from the Training & Organizational Development manager at Multi-Chem.

 

By Glenn Drysdale, Training & Organizational Development Manager, Multi-Chem

February 17, 2012
What’s an LMS? Part 2

Lessons learned about Learning Management System implementation, software training, internal marketing, and user adoption from the Training & Organizational Development manager at Multi-Chem.

By Glenn Drysdale, Training & Organizational Development Manager, Multi-Chem

Recently, I embarked upon an adventure: implementing the first Learning Management System (LMS) in our company. The first article (http://trainingmag.com/article/what%E2%80%99s-lms-part-1) looked at identifying needs, making the business case, choosing a vendor, and obtaining senior leadership buy-in. Here in Part 2, we look at implementation, software training, internal marketing, and user adoption.

February 14, 2012
Training magazine Ranks 2012 Top 125 Organizations

Trainingmagazine recognized the 2012 Training Top 125 winners with crystal awards and revealed their rankings during a black-tie gala held last night during the Training 2012 Conference &Expo at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta. Training also inducted two more companies into its Top 10 Hall of Fame.

Excelsior, MN (February 14, 2012)—Telecommunications company Verizon rang in the New Year by capturing the No. 1 spot on the Training Top 125 for the first time in 2012. Farmers Insurance claimed the No. 2 spot, while Top 5 newcomers Miami Children’s Hospital, Mohawk Industries, and McDonald’s nabbed Nos. 3, 4, and 5, respectively.