企業大學 員工培訓終極管道

聯合新聞網　2010/11/05

大型企業在內部成立企業大學，不但能提供員工進修管道達到人才培訓效果，還能從中尋找管理人才、強化內部溝通管道，甚至為企業永續經營舖路。雖然投入企業大學必需耗費比一般員工訓練課程更高的資源與人力成本，成果卻是一舉數得。

實務與研究兼具

在「全家企業大學」畢業典禮上，全家董事長潘進丁非常專心地聆聽畢業生的成果發表，最後還為這群穿上學士服的員工獻上畢業證書與鮮花。他開心地說：「我們的畢業論文結合了實務與研究，完全不輸給研究所的碩士論文！」

透過企業大學的方式培育人才，這種作法能這麼受到潘進丁肯定，主要是全家企業大學的畢業生，必須經過二到三年的假日進修課程，同時還得將課程所學運用在實務工作上，這種扎實訓練為員工的知識與學識加分，更能運用在實務工作上，對企業與員工都是雙贏。

全家便利商店七年多前開辦「全家企業大學」，提供包括轉投資在內的員工，專業學習與成長機會，六屆企業大學辦下來，總共有200多人取得畢業證書。這些畢業生除了成為企業培育中高階幹部的重點培訓目標外，這張畢業證書在全家內部也被認定為有效學歷，解決員工升遷或薪資異動的標準。

七年下來的200多位畢業生中，不乏碩士學歷同仁主動報名，員工主動及終生學習，更是企業不可多得的資產。

強化管理與溝通

潘進丁表示，企業內部125位課長中，已有97位從全家企業大學畢業，八成儲備幹部也成為畢業校友或學生，企業內部進行企業大學教育活動，顯性意義在於培養或尋找中高階主管、強化員工素質，而隱性價值更高，如養成員工邏輯思考能力、強化同仁互動溝通效益、學習分析問題與解決對策，甚至成為讓員工與企業共同成長的重要管道。

他回憶，全家便利商店最早期員工訓練在台北延吉店的後方倉庫進行，店長會議也是在店頭地下室的小空間，但為了確實達到培訓效果，並解決部分員工因為沒有大學學歷而造成升遷障礙等問題，於是興起企業大學的想法。直到現在，就連便利商店加盟主都自掏腰包參與學習，這也是讓潘進丁最為感動之處，同時更肯定企業大學存在的價值。

「在快速成長與追求永續經營的企業，人才是最重要的資產，大型企業自行舉辦內部大學課程，是最有效強化人才實力的方法之一。」潘進丁說。

全家企業大學多數課程都以管理類型為主，也有與專業技能有關的選修課程。不過身為全家企業大學校長的全家便利商店副總經理葉榮廷卻表示，企業內部設立大學，對於傳授課程並不需要太過精確，並不一定要與員工工作的專業技能有關。

課程多元成果豐

葉榮廷說：「無論是什麼課程，只要對員工有幫助的就好，因為我們不是只要員工學習其中的專業技術，重點應該在於『攻擊與防守』的技術。」也就是課程內容雖然有助員工強化專業，但強化心理素質與人格成長，更是企業大學的重要價值。

他補充，有些課程內容雖與工作無關，但在充滿變數的未來，誰都無法保證這些與現行工作無關的課程，未來在全家永遠用不到！

雖然全家企業大學的課程並非全都是專業訓練課程，但畢業成果的簡報，都可以看見該企業員工都將三至二年的所學，運用在工作管理的改善或強化上。

以全家轉投資公司全台物流的員工為例，他們的畢業成果就以「型男運轉手」（內容為物流從業人員素質與流程管理解決方案）、「即刻救援」（解決物流作業異常時的解決管理方案）等為主題，可看出員工不但找出工作上面臨的問題，還以科學方法做為解決工具，甚至花時間證實方法有效，是一套相當精細的報告。

葉榮廷表示，學習加上實戰才是成功之路，企業無論培訓何種人才，都可以透過這樣的指標方向，確保教育課程效度，而企業大學的深層意義，也能透過這種模式，在企業提升經營效能及人才素質上達到多贏效果。

【經濟日報/吳嵩浩/20101105】

7-Eleven’s New and Improved Sourcing Strategy: Will Social Media Replace Job Boards?

 

Madeline Laurano, Bersin & Associates, June 22, 2009

Over the past two years, the Director of Talent Acquisition at 7-Eleven has been working on something that might scare the Monsters and CareerBuilders of the world…actively measuring the effectiveness of job boards. With 128 open positions at their corporate office and plans to expand the number of stores this year, 7-Eleven began to look at the exorbitant $500,000 yearly spend on job boards and ask…”Is this worth it?”  

What Results Did He Uncover?

1. Cost per Hire– As cost per hire of the “Big 3” (Monster, CareerBuilder, Yahoo Hotjobs) has continued to skyrocket over the years, 7-Eleven noticed they were paying more with fewer quality results.

2. Quality of Hire- While many high-performing employees are now out of work, 7-Eleven is not receiving quality candidates from job boards. To prove this point, the Director of Talent Acquisition conducted an experiment. He decided to post one job on LinkedIn and the 7-Eleven career site rather than the job boards. In a short period of time, he received 86 quality resumes.

3. Ease of Use– 7-Eleven’s 10 recruiters were suffering from resume overload. On average, they hire 1 new hire for every 147 applicants they receive from job boards. The job boards were creating busy work for recruiters…they needed to cut down on their time to fill.

What is 7-Eleven Planning to Do?

1. Social Media– 7-Eleven is committed to engaging and connecting with candidates through a social media strategy including LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

2. Search Engine Optimization– 7-Eleven has already started conversations with their talent acquisition system provider (Peopleclick) about a partnership with Jobs2Web and a search engine optimization strategy. Jobs2Web will also help 7-Eleven to enhance their career site with Web 2.0 functionality such as videos, recruiter pages, and chat.

3. Reduce Number of Job Boards– Social media will not replace the job boards.  What it will do is help 7-Eleven decide what job boards to use. CareerBuilder has performed as a true partner with 7-Eleven and creates a more positive candidate experience through Peopleclick RMS’ “Shared Applied” service.

7-Eleven’s question about job boards stirs up a greater debate. Not too long ago, job boards were the latest and greatest recruiting tool around. What happened? Two realities have emerged in today’s talent acquisition environment. To start, companies are placing heavy emphasis on “quality” candidates and the job boards simply are not producing results. Secondly, social media has afforded companies options to expand their reach and improve their brand. Using these strategies, candidates will seek out the employer versus the employer hunting for candidates. We will publish a more in-depth case study on 7-Eleven’s results next month.

Biography

Madeline Laurano is a well-known analyst in the sourcing, recruiting, talent planning areas. She is extremely knowledgeable about the exciting and ever-changing world of talent acquisition. She is particularly interested in helping organizations take advantage of internet-based sourcing and recruiting and create innovative solutions tailored to unique talent needs.

---

Evaluating e-Learning: Introduction to the Kirkpatrick Model

by Kevin Kruse

The final step in the ADDIE model is a summative evaluation in which you measure how effectively the training program accomplished its stated goals. This step in the training process is usually ignored because of the added time and cost required. Training departments with limited budgets often assume new programs are effective and put dollars that should go into evaluation into the next program. However, as senior executives demand more accountability from training efforts, interest is certain to increase in measuring and reporting results.

The Kirkpatrick Model for Summative Evaluation

In 1975, Donald Kirkpatrick first presented a four-level model of evaluation that has become a classic in the industry:

• Level One: Reaction

• Level Two: Learning

• Level Three: Behavior

• Level Four: Results

These levels can be applied to technology-based training as well as to more traditional forms of delivery. Modified labels and descriptions of these steps of summative evaluation follow.

Level One: Students’ Reaction

In this first level or step, students are asked to evaluate the training after completing the program. These are sometimes called smile sheets or happy sheets because in their simplest form they measure how well students liked the training. However, this type of evaluation can reveal valuable data if the questions asked are more complex. For example, a survey similar to the one used in the formative evaluation also could be used with the full student population. This questionnaire moves beyond how well the students liked the training to questions about:

• The relevance of the objectives.

• The ability of the course to maintain interest.

• The amount and appropriateness of interactive exercises.

• The ease of navigation.

• The perceived value and transferability to the workplace.

With technology-based training, the survey can be delivered and completed online, and then printed or e-mailed to a training manager. Because this type of evaluation is so easy and cheap to administer, it usually is conducted in most organizations.

Level Two: Learning Results

Level Two in the Kirkpatrick model measures learning results. In other words, did the students actually learn the knowledge, skills, and attitudes the program was supposed to teach? To show achievement, have students complete a pre-test and post-test, making sure that test items or questions are truly written to the learning objectives. By summarizing the scores of all students, trainers can accurately see the impact that the training intervention had. This type of evaluation is not as widely conducted as Level One, but is still very common.

Level Three: Behavior in the Workplace

Students typically score well on post-tests, but the real question is whether or not any of the new knowledge and skills are retained and transferred back on the job. Level Three evaluations attempt to answer whether or not students’ behaviors actually change as a result of new learning.

Ideally, this measurement is conducted three to six months after the training program. By allowing some time to pass, students have the opportunity to implement new skills and retention rates can be checked. Observation surveys are used, sometimes called behavioral scorecards. Surveys can be completed by the student, the student’s supervisor, individuals who report directly to the student, and even the student’s customers. For example, survey questions evaluating a sales training program might include:

• Did the representative open each customer dialogue with a product benefit statement, followed by a request to proceed?

• Was the representative able to analyze and describe to you the category of customers’ objections as either valid, misinformation, or smokescreen?

• Did the representative use the appropriate model answer in response to each objection?

• Did the representative close each sales call with a request for purchase?

• If the prospect did not buy anything, did the representative end the call with specific future action steps?

• Did the representative complete call history records that include summaries of who, what, where, when, and why?

Level Four: Business Results

The fourth level in this model is to evaluate the business impact of the training program. The only scientific way to isolate training as a variable would be to isolate a representative control group within the larger student population, and then rollout the training program, complete the evaluation, and compare against a business evaluation of the non-trained group. Unfortunately, this is rarely done because of the difficulty of gathering the business data and the complexity of isolating the training intervention as a unique variable. However, even anecdotal data is worth capturing. Below are sample training programs and the type of business impact data that can be measured.

• Sales training. Measure change in sales volume, customer retention, length of sales cycle, profitability on each sale after the training program has been implemented.

• Technical training. Measure reduction in calls to the help desk; reduced time to complete reports, forms, or tasks; or improved use of software or systems.

• Quality training. Measure a reduction in number of defects.

• Safety training. Measure reduction in number or severity of accidents.

• Management training. Measure increase in engagement levels of direct-reports

Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Evaluation

ASSESSING TRAINING EFFECTIVENESS often entails using the four-level model developed by Donald Kirkpatrick (1994). According to this model, evaluation should always begin with level one, and then, as time and budget allows, should move sequentially through levels two, three, and four. Information from each prior level serves as a base for the next level’s evaluation. Thus, each successive level represents a more precise measure of the effectiveness of the training program, but at the same time requires a more rigorous and time-consuming analysis.

Level 1 Evaluation – Reactions
Just as the word implies, evaluation at this level measures how participants in a training program react to it. It attempts to answer questions regarding the participants’ perceptions – Did they like it? Was the material relevant to their work? This type of evaluation is often called a “smilesheet.” According to Kirkpatrick, every program should at least be evaluated at this level to provide for the improvement of a training program. In addition, the participants’ reactions have important consequences for learning (level two). Although a positive reaction does not guarantee learning, a negative reaction almost certainly reduces its possibility.

Level 2 Evaluation – Learning
Assessing at this level moves the evaluation beyond learner satisfaction and attempts to assess the extent students have advanced in skills, knowledge, or attitude. Measurement at this level is more difficult and laborious than level one. Methods range from formal to informal testing to team assessment and self-assessment. If possible, participants take the test or assessment before the training (pretest) and after training (post test) to determine the amount of learning that has occurred.

Level 3 Evaluation – Transfer
This level measures the transfer that has occurred in learners’ behavior due to the training program. Evaluating at this level attempts to answer the question – Are the newly acquired skills, knowledge, or attitude being used in the everyday environment of the learner? For many trainers this level represents the truest assessment of a program’s effectiveness. However, measuring at this level is difficult as it is often impossible to predict when the change in behavior will occur, and thus requires important decisions in terms of when to evaluate, how often to evaluate, and how to evaluate.

Level 4 Evaluation- Results
Frequently thought of as the bottom line, this level measures the success of the program in terms that managers and executives can understand -increased production, improved quality, decreased costs, reduced frequency of accidents, increased sales, and even higher profits or return on investment. From a business and organizational perspective, this is the overall reason for a training program, yet level four results are not typically addressed. Determining results in financial terms is difficult to measure, and is hard to link directly with training.

Methods for Long-Term Evaluation
* Send post-training surveys
* Offer ongoing, sequenced training and coaching over a period of time
* Conduct follow-up needs assessment
* Check metrics (e.g., scrap, re-work, errors, etc.) to measure if participants achieved training objectives
* Interview trainees and their managers, or their customer groups (e.g., patients, other departmental staff)
————————————————————
Article ritten by Elaine C. Winfrey

Study Points to a Need for Better Diversity Training

 

Lindsay Edmonds Wickman
Executive Briefings
Published April 2008
Chief Learning Officer magazine

Because of many factors such as globalization and immigration, the workplace of today, in which employees of different nationalities, ethnicities and backgrounds interact on a daily basis, is entirely different than that of 20 years ago. With this increase in heterogeneity comes the need for better diversity and inclusion (D&I) training.

Unfortunately, the benefits of these initiatives often are diminished by faulty delivery, according to a recent study by Novations Group, a global consulting firm.

Of the 2,500 human resources and training and development executives surveyed, 29 percent felt their organization did not provide the tools to reinforce D&I training, and 24 percent felt their organization did not offer the metrics to evaluate the training’s effectiveness.

“The findings should serve as a warning to both organizations and D&I program providers,” said Fred Smith, regional vice president of sales at Novations. “It’s the mistakes and shortcomings identified in the study that create ‘diversity fatigue.’ The best diversity training has moved far beyond the one-dimensional, feel-good event and today needs to be held to the same rigorous standards as other corporate training.”

To ensure D&I initiatives are successful, there first must be agreement in the C-suite as to why the organization is launching the program.

“Many times in working with organizations, I’ll ask: ‘Why have you decided that you want to do this?’” Smith said. “You will hear everything from the politically correct answers to, ‘The board told us to do it.’ [It’s] a mixed message.”

If there is not a clear mandate from the C-suite, D&I initiatives are more likely to fail because no one will buy into them, especially not middle managers.

“The middle-management group sees it as an add-on, something else that they have to do,” Smith said. “They’re typically not the ones who decide that it’s time for an organization to do diversity training. They’re caught in the middle, so the work has to be done with [them] because they have the greatest influence over the masses in most organizations.”

To get buy-in from employees at all levels, executives must illustrate how diversity training affects the bottom line and then implement the program with the same rigor as any other business initiative that’s imperative to the short and long term success of an organization.

“If it does not positively impact the bottom line, then there’s no point in doing it because it will not have sustainability,” Smith said.

Here’s one business case, according to Smith, for providing D&I initiatives: With the exodus of baby boomers, companies will have to widen their talent nets, hence hiring a more diverse population.

“[If] you attract persons who are different, but you don’t have systemic policies, practices and procedures [in place], those persons are not going to stay,” he explained. “It then becomes a turnover issue.”

The companies that are getting D&I training right are those that monitor changes in their customer bases.

“The further you’re removed from the demographic shifts that are taking place in the world, the less need you see for engaging in a D&I initiative,” Smith said. “Those that are closest to the consumer are forced to get it. They quickly recognize that if they are a globally based organization, their potential for growth may very well be coming from countries outside of the United States.”

About Author:
Lindsay Edmonds Wickman is an associate editor for Chief Learning Officer magazine. She can be reached at editor@clomedia.com.

Chinese’ Pay Now, Worry Later?Mentality May Be Retention Killer

Kellye Whitney
Talent Management Perspectives, Published April 2008
Talent Management Magazine

China is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, and the talent supply is not sufficient to meet the demand. As a result, qualified candidates with relatively minimal management experience are able to hop from job to job and reap substantial pay increases.

"Rewarding China: Talent Management in the World’s Most Competitive Economy," a new study from global management consultancy the Hay Group, said if an employee moves to a position two steps above his or her current role in what’s called a champagne promotion, often the person’s base salary jumps some 91 percent, which is substantial when compared to a 48 percent increase in Singapore.

"On the pay side of the talent management equation, where supply and demand are not aligned, we’re seeing pay levels, base salary and incentive levels really spiral upward at unprecedented rates," said Tom McMullen, U.S. reward practice leader at Hay Group. "For even relatively junior talent, if someone shows great promise, the salary increases in China are pretty substantial."

McMullen said salary increases are growing at about 9 percent a year, and Chinese managers are getting promoted at a much faster rate than other managers in Asia. Further, he said when talent is lured away from another Chinese company, they not only get a promotion, they typically get a 40 percent increase in base pay that compares to averages in the low to mid-20s in places such as Singapore and Hong Kong.

Organizations can mitigate some of their recruiting and retention woes without throwing money at talent. Implementing some basic building blocks of effective reward-program management into compensation considerations might be a good place to start.

"Going back to basics would be a good thing," McMullen said. "There’s still a lot of across the board pay increases going on in China. Irrespective of what your performance levels might be, a lot of Chinese organizations are providing the same level of pay increases to their employees regardless of performance. We would advise organizations to at least fold in a robust performance management process into your base salary or compensation program and better allocate the significant rewards for people who are more deserving."

Huge salaries and quick promotion opportunities are not aiding employee retention in China. Job hopping is extremely common, as is a general lessening in organizational loyalty.

"It’s kind of like professional sports in our country when the highest bidder is getting a lot of talent," McMullen explained. "Retention is a key issue. Organizations would be better-served to start trading on their intangible rewards, as well as the tangible ones, as strong retention drivers."

He said Chinese organizations could facilitate employee retention by playing up favorable work climate or environment, strong leadership and the availability of career development opportunities that will equip them for future roles.

"Going to another organization can be a risky move," he said. "You know how good it is here. You may not know if the pastures are as green on the other side.

"Organizations would do themselves a favor by constantly reinforcing the positive aspects of working at the organization they’re at now. Are you [as an organization] admired or considered a great place to work; have you received accolades on your work environment in the press? Trade on that brand equity. Money can only go so far. What else do you have to compete on? It’s these other intangible rewards like career development opportunities, strong leadership, strong work climates, that companies should trade on."

About Author:
Kellye Whitney is managing editor for Talent Management magazine

High Impact Talent Management®: Top 22 Best Practices

 

Bersin & Associates — Resource Details

Corporate Talent Management is one of the most important business initiatives in the coming decade. After more than 2 years of research including 750+ corporations and 1 million data elements, Bersin & Associates has discovered the top 22 talent management proecesses which drive the highest levels of business impact. By popular request, here they are!

©2008 Bersin & Associates, All Rights Reserved.About UsContact UsRSS FeedsHelpPrivacy PolicyTerms of Use

The Upside-Down Training Cake

Marty Rosenheck, Ph.D., CPT
Features
Chief Learning Officer Magazine
Published April 2008

I’ll bet you want your organization’s investment in training to pay off in better performance, more quickly. Well, there is a way to reduce the time to proficiency – let them eat upside-down cake!

Please indulge me for a minute by thinking of training as an upside-down cake. This kind of cake has delicious fruit on the bottom of the cake pan and then the rest of the cake is layered on top of it. When an upside-down cake is served, it is turned (you guessed it) upside down – so the fruit is on the top. That’s how training should be served – beginning with the job task (the fruit) and then getting the supporting content (the rest of the cake) as needed to complete the task.

The typical training program doesn’t turn the cake upside down. Trainees have to get through the rest of the cake (content) before they get to the delicious fruit (the job task). But what if your designers and developers turned the traditional learning model upside down? Instead of presenting a bunch of information sequentially, they start with a realistic job task or problem and then build in the relevant content as it’s needed, just in time, at the teachable moment. By turning training on its head, your training investment can result in faster attainment of proficiency on the job – especially with relatively complex tasks like sales, customer service, system usage and technical skills.

Hungry to find out why this is so? Read on…

Motivation to Learn
When training begins with a case, scenario or simulation (after a very brief overview), trainees are more motivated to learn than when they are presented with a lot of content up front. As they work through cases, trainees are faced with decision points, moments where the learner thinks “Hmm, what should I do?”

At those points – the “teachable moments” – trainees are motivated to learn, because they need the information to complete the task at hand. This “upside-down cake” approach is motivating because most trainees are goal-directed learners. If you give them a meaningful problem to solve that is relevant to their work, they’re going to be much more motivated to get the information they need to solve it than if they are given that information first, before they really understand how they will use it. It is harder to pay attention and make sense of content that is not taught in context.

The learning-while-doing approach also is motivating because trainees experience firsthand how the content is related to their jobs. This is more motivating than just being told the standard WIIFM (“What’s in it for me?”) – “Believe me, you’ll find that this content I’m presenting will eventually be useful to you, later, when we do an application exercise. Really, I mean it. It’s in your interest to stay awake.”

Retention and Transfer
Even more importantly, serving your training feast upside-down improves retention and transfer to the job. Trainees retain the information they get at the teachable moment because they use it immediately in the scenario. (If you use it, you don’t lose it.)

Most importantly, they are able to transfer what they have learned to the job because by getting information at the teachable moment, trainees create a mental link between the information and how it is used on the job. This means the information will be “indexed” in trainees’ minds, so it is easier to retrieve when needed in real life. Just start trainees out with the fruit (scenario) on top and then they can take a forkful of the cake (content) as they go. This is true learning while doing.

Cognitive Roots
While it is tempting to think that this approach was developed by Emeril and his colleagues on the Food Channel, it is actually based on research by cognitive scientists over the past 30 years on how people develop expertise. People develop expertise through experience. They learn by working through real problems getting feedback on what they do, and reflecting on it. For any moderately to very complex job, whether it is sales, customer service, using computer systems, or technical decision-making, people learn best by doing – but “doing” in a specific way.

Start with the problem: First, give a brief overview (the operative word here is “brief”), then set up a series of case studies, simulations or OJT tasks. Begin with a simple case, then build to more and more complex cases as the learners gain competence and confidence. By the time they’re done working through a very systematic set of cases, they’ve already started having experiences in a simulated or training environment. When they’re actually on the job, they’ve already had the basic experiences that moved them well along the continuum toward expertise. The upside-down cake training gives them a jump start, reducing the time it takes to become proficient on the job.

Costs
But what about the costs? Aren’t upside-down cakes more expensive and time-consuming to make than regular cakes? Development of this type of training might be a little bit more time-consuming (working with SMEs to create meaningful cases). But, it doesn’t have to be expensive. To make upside-down cake training, you can simply take the training that you’re doing now, which usually involves presenting information and then having some sort of application exercise afterwards, and turn it upside down. Just set up the case/situation first and then use that as a context for presenting the content information at teachable moments.

When looking at the investment in training, some may assume that the cost of training is the cost of developing and implementing the training program. However, the real cost, at an organizational level, is related to how quickly learners develop proficient job performance after training – how fast they come up to speed in complex jobs. These costs are substantial, but are rarely measured. We all know they exist, and they can be quite large. These costs show up as:

· Sub-par productivity.
· Mistakes.
· Dissatisfied customers.
· Time spent getting help from others.
· Manager’s time reviewing and correcting work.
· Attrition of people who feel overwhelmed by their jobs.

The return on investment in terms of reduction in the time to proficiency can be huge, making the training investment worthwhile. For example, in one large organization, it took one and a half to three years for their entry-level employees to become proficient. They are now implementing a case-based curriculum that has reduced time to proficiency in the pilot test. By getting people up to speed more quickly, there can be a huge savings in terms of productivity.

With that kind of savings, you can have your upside-down cake – and eat it too!

About Author：
Marty Rosenheck, Ph.D., CPT, is vice president of design and development at Cedar Interactive. He can be reached at editor@clomedia.com.

Leading in the Digital Age

Executive Briefings, Chief Learning Officer
Published March 2008

Communication is crucial to being an effective virtual leader in today’s globalized corporation, according to a recent survey of 247 executives from the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), a global nonprofit organization focused on leadership education and research.

As employees become increasingly dispersed across distance, time and culture, leaders have to cultivate skills they already have, such as communication, in new ways to be successful at managing and motivating employees from afar in this technological era.

“It’s almost a requirement for global organizations to have virtual leaders,” said Michael Kossler, lead senior enterprise associate. “While I may be very effective leading people who are all based and residing in the same office, leading in that environment is different than leading in the virtual environment. You do many of the same things in the virtual environment, but you have to do more of them with greater diligence. You have to reach out in different ways than you would if somebody was just across the room from you.”

In CCL’s survey, 70 percent of respondents said communication is central to virtual leadership, and with that comes determining how frequent correspondence should be and being able to communicate in a clear, concise manner. To ensure this happens, a communication strategy must be developed and include guidelines for when and how to communicate. In addition, a central database needs to be created for the team to document and store knowledge, and collaborative technologies should be used when possible, according to Kossler.

Aside from clear communication, virtual leaders also must have collaboration and project management skills. Additionally, executives have to be comfortable with distance and must refrain from micromanaging across oceans and countries.

“There are some leaders who are so used to being able to reach out and physically touch their employees,” Kossler said. “When they have an employee or a team member who’s in a different location, there’s a tendency to feel like, ‘I’ve got to control them and be monitoring them more than I would an employee that’s based here because I can’t see that person. And how do I know they aren’t goofing off?’”

Letting go of the reins allows leaders — and their employees — to be more productive.

“[A virtual leader has to be] like a tightrope walker and be willing to step out there and let go,” Kossler said. “Unless [you’ve] got evidence that suggests the individual or individuals are not working and are not being productive, you have to assume through normal performance reviews that they will do the work. Until you have evidence to the contrary, the worst thing a virtual leader can do is try and micromanage from afar, especially if there are different cultures involved.”

To navigate this delta of distance, leaders should stay in touch with remote employees by scheduling regular phone meetings and also send e-mail updates with corporate office news to ensure these employees stay connected.

About Author:
Lindsay Edmonds Wickman is an associate editor for Chief Learning Officer magazine. She can be reached at editor@clomedia.com.

Beyond the Classroom: How to Use Informal Learning

Lindsay Edmonds Wickman
Published January 2008

With the advent of Web 2.0, the accessibility of the Internet and increasing globalization, informal learning is becoming more of the norm in the corporate environment. As a result, corporate educators need to embrace learning that’s happening beyond the classroom and incorporate it into their training initiatives.

In the 1990s, corporate learners were sitting in a classroom listening to an instructor lecture. Now these same learners are taking control of their own education.

“The Internet is obviously a big driver,” said Dennis Kilian, vice president and a learning specialist at Safari Books Online, an electronic reference library with expert content. “Fifteen years ago, you certainly went out and did [research], but you would have to go to the library, look something up, [or] talk to one of your associates. Today, anybody who has access to a terminal PC [or] to the Internet via a mobile device has immediate access.”

Another reason companies are resorting to informal learning programs is because their employees are scattered across the nation or even the globe, leading to the need for a more accessible, universal training initiative.

“You talk about forcing jobs overseas, for instance, and you have people then who are managing these diversified departments, not just from a competency perspective, but also from a geographic perspective,” Kilian said. “It’s becoming more and more difficult to put together a structured program, where you can just bring people together and run them through a curriculum. Instead, what you’re talking about is people who work across the world — different time zones, different cultures, different languages — and you have to provide more of a ubiquitous resource.”

Formal learning typically happens within a classroom and has a defined curriculum, whereas informal learning can happen anywhere at anytime in any location and is initiated by the learner.

“When you talk about adult learning, [or informal learning], you’re talking about internally motivated learning,” Kilian said. “I’m trying to either progress personally or professionally, and as a need arises, I will go find the information I need because I’m motivated to do that. I’m not going to wait for somebody to put a course or some form of instructor-led training in front of me.”

The caveat to informal learning is making sure employees are going to reliable sites on the Internet. The best way to ensure this is to subscribe to an online reference library or create a database on the company’s intranet, where employees can obtain pertinent information via trusted Web sources.

The advantages of informal learning include the timeliness of it, the productivity of it and the immediate career development that occurs. However, companies need to think creatively about assessment tools for informal learning. The answer may be aligning courseware or training materials with informal learning sources, so that employees can visit Web sites, read them and then take tests that capture their understanding. Another possibility is to have employees learn an idea informally, but then test that knowledge through a practical application such as a lab.

“The issue that you might have with informal learning is how you measure that,” Kilian said. “What’s the assessment at the end of the day? When you talk about corporate learning, typically what we want to know is, are people learning what we want them to learn in order to develop the competencies within the organization that we need to differentiate ourselves. Is there some sort of a certification process? Is there a test they take at the end? How do we capture that in our learning management system? There’s a gap there.”

As always, a varied and diversified learning strategy with both informal and formal learning is always best. It can’t be all informal learning, and it can’t be all formal learning.

“I think you’re always going to have that blended learning environment,” Kilian said. “The key there is how do they [different methodologies] work together and what’s optimal in any particular organization.”

 

Biography
Lindsay Edmonds Wickman is an associate editor for Chief Learning Officer magazine. She can be reached at editor@clomedia.com.