Magazine Articles

By Tony O’Driscoll, Executive Director, Duke Corporate Education As we set our sights on the Training 2013 conference in Orlando, we wondered what guidance Walt Disney himself might have for us. What insights could Walt provide to help guide our unending quest to help organizations and the individuals working within them become the very best? Time and time again we kept coming back to a single quote of his: “It’s fun to do the impossible.”

By Bob Pike CSP, CPAE USA Today recently celebrated its 30th birthday. That edition of the newspaper contained both a backward view for 30 years and a forward view. I read with a great deal of interest the forward view—especially when it started talking about education. In a nutshell, the predictions are:

By Lexi Rifaat, Global Marketing Coordinator, Aperian Global The history of what is now Nigeria goes back thousands of years, with evidence indicating that people have lived in this area of Africa since at least 9,000 B.C. Since gaining its independence from Great Britain in 1960, Nigeria has been ruled by a series of military coups interrupted by brief periods of democratic rule. Now a young democracy with a very recent constitution, Nigerians are still dealing with many years of political and social confusion.

By Sirin Köprücü, Senior Associate,and Neal Goodman, Ph.D., President, Global Dynamics, Inc.

By Roy Saunderson, President, Recognition Management Institute When dealing with mistakes at work, I always think of a classic IBM story that demonstrates the attitude I hope all leaders will have whenever we make those painful errors in our jobs. Imagine being a mid-level executive at IBM and making a multimillion-dollar mistake. Apparently, the executive immediately approached then-CEO Thomas J. Watson, Jr., and tendered his resignation. Watson refused to fire him, saying he had just spent millions of dollars educating him, so why would he let him go now?

By Margery Weinstein Like many companies, your organization likely is expanding to international markets with overseas employees or affiliated workers who need training. Before you worry about developing learning plans and content for each market from scratch, consider what three 2012 Training Top 125 winners do to make their training materials ready for overseas learners. With the right plan and enough flexibility and cultural understanding, your core training messages can cross oceans and continents. Consistent Lessons, Culturally Relevant Delivery

By Gail Dutton “If it’s not adding value, eliminate it,” says Juan Amador, director of LEAN Six Sigma at Underwriters Laboratories (UL). That’s the idea behind LEAN Six Sigma, but although leadership often “gets it,” selling the idea to employees can be challenging.

Training magazine taps 2012 Training Top 125 winners and Top 10 Hall of Famers to provide their learning and development best practices in each issue. Here, we look at strategies for communication/customer service, employee retention, and sales training. COMMUNICATION/CUSTOMER SERVICE By Jon Kaplan, Director, Training Center of Excellence, Discover Financial Services

The wild ride continues: After rising slightly in 2010-2011, average training salaries nose-dived nearly $8,000 to an average of $75,657 in 2011-2012, according to Training magazine’s Annual Salary Survey of 1,281 readers. The average increase in salary in the last 12 months (not including a promotion or change of employer) rose slightly to 2.81 percent in 2011-2012, up from 2.57 percent in 2010-2011. Some 43 percent of respondents said their salary was low relative to their responsibilities, while another 49 percent said it was equitable.

After rebounding last year, the training industry hit a bump in the road in 2012 as it followed the downward economic trend that dogged the U.S.: Total 2012 U.S. training expenditures—including payroll and spending on external products and services—fell 6.5 percent to $55.8 billion, according to Training magazine's 2012 Training Industry Report. Some 65 percent of organizations either saw their training budget remain the same or decrease in 2012.