Magazine Articles

By Lorri Freifeld It’s not surprising an insurance company would have an insurance policy for the future. But Farmers Insurance takes that strategy one step further, setting its sights on 2020 with a far-reaching plan to foster growth, productivity, and leadership development through intensive training.

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.

By Margery Weinstein

By Margery Weinstein

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.

By Michael Rosenthal Q: With the economy slowly improving, my organization finally has reignited our development initiatives. However, since our current budget pales compared to the pre-recession years, I have been asked to focus our training efforts on leadership, management, and sales. I’d like to consolidate as much as possible to realize economies of scale. I can see some intersection between leadership and management, but I am having trouble identifying common threads with sales. What are some best practices that apply to all three?

>> Novero introduced the Solana Tablet/PC. With a simple twist, this slim laptop screen rotates to create a mobile 10-inch tablet for reading, games, or hundreds of applications. It contains two USB ports, audio and microphone jacks, video output, built-in card reader and SIM card slot, Windows 7, and Android 2.3.

By Roy Saunderson Has the demand for candor, openness, and personal responsibility in society—a.k.a., “transparency”—effectively affected the field of learning and development?

As London taxi drivers in training are learning how to navigate the city’s thousands of streets, the experience actually changes the structure of their brains, according to a report published online in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. The findings add to evidence that learning changes the adult brain and should come as encouraging news for life-long learning, says Eleanor Maguire of University College London.

By Bob Pike I worked in Australia, Japan, and China for most of November last year. In seminars in each of those countries I asked participants to create a list of what I call “magic phrases” during the training. These are short phrases that capture the essence or “magic” of a key training concept.