Whose behavior are we modifying, exactly?
For professionals who are concerned with changing behavior, we found this tabletop sign on the deck at Pebble Beach amusing. The amusing part is not what the sign says (although that IS amusing) but really the fact that the sign is intended to train US, the humans. It gives a "mission" a "purpose" and a "rationale" and really makes us want to buy-in to helping the restaurant achieve its goals!
Carpenters, Welders and Plumbers - oh my!
The U.S. is not investing as much money and time in technical skills development as other nations, according to a recent book Closing America's Job Gap (W Business Books, January 2011). Shortages of skilled workers -- electricians, carpenters, plumbers and welders -- are acute in many of the world's biggest economies, including the United States and Canada, where employers ranked skilled trades as their No. 1 or No. 2 hiring challenge, according to the Manpower (MAN) 2010 Talent Shortage Survey.
Training will save the American economy!
According to a recent report by University of California (San Diego) faculty, training and re-training the American workforce will save America’s economy. Ok, they didn’t exactly say that – but it was close!
According to one of the authors of the report, Henry DeVries, “Federal support for training initiatives, and incentives for companies to offer them, is crucial. Unless we fully commit to retraining our country then our businesses do not have much of a future," he says. "People have to understand that this is not their grandfather's high school- or college-based economy. There is a growing disconnect between the types of jobs that employers need to fill and the number of Americans with the right education and training. The only thing constant is change. The economy is going to keep changing, and people are going to need to keep adapting."
He cites the welding industry as one example. Due to recent advancements in technology, which many older welders are not apprised of, there are currently 100,000 welding jobs going unfilled in America. One surprising finding of their study and report, is that the jobs that have gone away the last few years are NOT coming back.
The problem, as DeVries sees it, is that "there is a job gap, in that people who are thrown out of industries like construction and retail and finance, don't have the skills for where jobs are being created through innovation – such as green jobs or IT jobs. There are plenty of jobs available in America, there just aren't the properly skilled employees to fill them, he says.
Are you stuck in a rut?
Do you ever feel, as a trainer, you are doing things by rote? You understand and implement ADDIE in your sleep. You can make PowerPoint sing. You rattle off the 5 levels of training evaluation and know who actually created level 5….
Every once in awhile, it’s nice to think outside the box. When we are doing our day to day work it’s hard to take the time to think “Iis there a better way?” or “What’s next?” That’s why we like these “think-tank” blogs (think tank is our label) – because they make us say “Now THAT’s a new way to look at or think about training!” and they get our creative juices going again… check them out…
Big Dog Little Dog http://bdld.blogspot.com/
Currently there is a diagram of the “continua of learning” – pretty impressive
Will at Work http://www.willatworklearning.com/
Combines practice with theory and research and is presented in a really engaging way – in other words, you’ll “get” it
Bozarthzone http://bozarthzone.blogspot.com/
Jane Bozarth is the most acerbic wit you will ever find, combined with a solid understanding of what training can and cannot do.
The "value" of education?
We just came upon this in a blog called Education Watch International:
There were two brothers from a famous family. One did very well at school while the other was a duffer. Which one went on the be acclaimed as the "Greatest Briton"? It was the duffer: Winston Churchill.
Another true modern parable: I have twin stepdaughters who are both attractive and exceptionally good-natured young women. I adore both of them. One got a university degree and the other was an abject failure at high school. One now works as a routine government clerk and is rather struggling financially. The other is extraordinarily highly paid and has an impressive property portfolio. Guess which one went to university? It was the former.
Quite sobering in our opinion.
Couple of fun / insightful links
Too bad we didn't find this until after the new year. Here's a fabulously inspired look at how 'engagement' and 'interactivity' in e-Learning does not equate to learning in any way...http://www.learnnuggets.com/nuggethead/NH_christmasCard.html
If you are thinking about how to use Twitter in an educational way, check out this list of articles which address the idea in various ways: http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/socialmedia/twitterrl.html
The Benefits of Assigning Asynchronous Work
Here is an interesting opinion piece, published in e-Learning Magazine, by Dr. Michelle Everson, regarding what she sees as the rewards of teaching online. In reality, what she is espousing is the use of a blended teaching process to get to better learning outcomes than one can given one delivery modality.
It’s a 3 minute read – we highly recommend it.
Bravo Texas!
The state of Texas is being proactive about preparing its children for workplace success. Based on a 2005 survey of employers, the state has learned that 39% of high school graduates are unprepared for entry-level jobs and 49% are not academically prepared or skilled to go further than those entry level jobs. In addition, college enrollment is down, which the state recognizes translates directly to lower earnings and fewer skilled workers.
Four years ago the state instituted a Recommended High School Program, which will see its first wave of graduates this fall. The program requires all high schoolers to take 4 years of math and science - which is now a requirement at the state universities and colleges as well. Bravo TX!
ASTD State of the Industry Report
We just finished reading the 32-page ASTD 2010 State of the Industry Report (which is based on 2009 numbers, btw), issued in November, by ASTD. Here are some of the things we found interesting:
Although organizations made many changes in the past year to adapt to the economic environment, they continued to support learning and development for their employees at levels equal to or greater than in past years. <Hooray!>
The average annual expenditure on training, per employee, was $1,081 which is an increase from the year prior, but which is attributable to smaller workforces. Tuition reimbursement continues to be the smallest budget proportion of training budgets <why? it's the least labor intensive and it's reimbursable by the federal government! why don't more companies use tuition reimbursement? We don't get it>.
The ratio of "learning staff" to number of employees is 1:240
Employees enjoy an average of 31.9 hours of formal training per year and the cost of a learning hour is $63.00 (up from $52 the previous year)
The 3 topics in which people are most frequently trained: Professional / industry specific, knowledge / skills, Managerial / supervisory, IT and systems
27.7% of all formal learning hours are available via online delivery.
Training, as a percent of payroll, is 2.14% Training, as a percent of profit, is 10.88% Training budgets spent on external resources: 26.88%
Outsourcing increased to 26.9% of total training budgets (first increase in 4 years)
68% of training is still delivered via instructor (includes classroom, virtual classroom, moderated, etc)
Self-paced, online learning accounts for 22% of learning that is delivered"
Everybody" does Level 1 evaluations and "nobody" thinks they are very effective - 92% of respondents reported they conduct level 1 evaluations while 36% think they are effective.
In our opinion -Things sound rosy!
NOT training costs money too
According to the Chicago Tribune, a Nebraska plumbing company has been fined by OSHA for failing to conduct employee training after the deaths of two workers. Their fine is $94,500!!
Free and low cost training options
We just found this great website: http://www.bizlibrary.com which offers wonderful free and low cost training options. Check out their free Wednesday webinars, coming up:
Jan 12: Redefining eLearning Metrics
Jan 19: Building Bench Strength; Trends in Leadership Development
Why Your Training is Failing
One of the things The Training Doctor specializes in is Training Triage. In other words, we fix sick training. We figure out why it isn't working and then provide solutions to fix it. Over the years we've identified a number of typical reasons why "your" training isn't working. Often it's because it was designed by a subject matter expert - someone who is expert in the content, but who doesn't know how people best learn.
Here are the typical mistakes we see, in no particular order:
There's too much information - it becomes a fire hose of information for the learner who does not know how to apply importance to what is being presented to them.
Example: A software trainer explained the difference between a comma-delimited file and one that was not. This explained how the software worked, but now how the worker was to do his job. Someone could easily do the job without understanding what a comma-delimited file was.
A SME designed the training and it includes all sorts of information that is fascinating to the SME but not necessary to do the job.
Example: A project management course taught a way to manage projects that we had never heard of. Upon further research we found one example of this method in a Harvard Business Journal dated 1991. This was not a 'standard operating method' for project management but it was a nifty nuance that the SME/designer threw in because it fascinated him.
The person designing the training is a SME who doesn't remember what it was like to be new and needing "just the basics." When designing training ask yourself, is my audience in need of 'basic,' 'advanced,' or 'expert?' And design the content accordingly. If you give people too much information at the beginning, they haven't had the opportunity to master the basic skills yet so there is no way they can advance to more difficult work.
Tip: It's often a good idea to design your training and then have someone else review it. Preferably someone who doesn't know the topic at all. They will help you to see the gaps.
You have no idea how you do what you do. This is a constant challenge for subject matter experts. At some point one becomes so expert they can't even explain what they do - it's intrinsic to them and they can't imagine how to explain it, so large parts of "why" and "when" are left out of the training.
Example: An instructional designer was hired to teach a 3 day grad school course in instructional design but jumped from topic to topic without starting at 'step 1' because he really couldn't remember what step one would be for a newbie.
Trainers can't imagine why their audience "doesn't get it." Typically this is because the training doesn't include any practice and no repetition of the content (people rarely understand something simply because you've told it to them once) OR because there is an inadequate learning process applied to the content.
Example: A participant guide designed for a software training class was 70 pages long, single-spaced text. A helpful guide would have included facts, step-action-result tables, practice exercises, problems to solve, etc.
When is a cookbook training?
Rachel Ray has just released a new cookbook titled Look and Cook. The review says:
Packed with 200 never-before-published recipes and 600 four-color photographs. The first 170 recipes have step-by-step instructive color photographs, which makes cooking foolproof. The book also has recipes that are demo'd online in real time videos hosted on foodnetwork.com.
Huh. Sounds like a self-study training manual to us.
Training Magazine's Industry Report
According to Training Magazine’s recent Training Industry Report, 52.8 BILLION dollars were spent on workforce training last year. Yowsa!
Eight hundred and one respondents were polled on everything from the size of their training budget (in dollars) to what they spent their money on, to how much money was allotted to each individual learner.
The results:
Online learning tools and systems far surpassed any other training expenditures. On average, organizations spent slight over $500,000 on tools and technology. The next most popular expenditures were authoring tools and systems and learning management systems (all the same category as above, if you ask us – it appears that organizations are investing in technology to make themselves more efficient in the design and delivery of learning programs).
In terms of budgets, manufacturing organizations have the largest budgets followed closely by government and military organizations. Retail and wholesale organizations have the most paltry budgets.
The amount of money invested in an individual’s learning was determined to be $1,041 – up slightly from last year when it was $1,036. And, on average, workplace learners receive 40 hours of training per year. The topic that is expected to receive the most funding in 2011? Management and supervisory training.