Magazine Articles

By Stacey Harris, Vice President, Research and Advisory Services, Brandon Hall Group As we discussed in the March/April 2013 edition, Brandon Hall Group has partnered with the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) and Training magazine to better understand how today’s organizations are individually addressing the skills gap. The research goal was to understand the solutions that are working today—particularly how organizations are hiring and developing their skilled workforce.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT By Jeff Orlando and Karen Eber, Senior Managers, Leadership Development, Deloitte Services LP

While the number of organizations offering virtual work arrangements has increased from 35 to 45 percent over the last few years, a few notable companies recently have gone against the trend and banned working from home policies. These moves may lead more employers to reevaluate their own flexible work arrangements, says Aon Hewitt, the global human resource solutions business of Aon plc.

By Jason W. Womack, MEd, MA Would you like to get even more done each day? With just a little bit of forethought, there are two ways to build a productive mindset into your daily routine:

More than 460 training and learning executives and practitioners gathered in Shanghai in April to attend Training magazine’s first-ever conference in China, organized by Training’s exclusive Chinese partner, ACT Group. The focus was “Taking E-Learning to the Next Level,” through the expanded use of mobile and social learning and gamification. Speakers included mobile learning expert A.J.

By Bruce Tulgan “Leadership development” may sound better, but our research shows that what’s missing in the repertoires of 9 out of 10 leaders is consistent practice of the old-fashioned basics of management. There is so much work to be done by training professionals:

>> Rosetta Stone acquired Seattle-based Livemocha, one of the world’s largest online language-learning communities, for $8.5 million in cash. Livemocha features a robust and extensible cloud-based learning platform and a community of more than 16 million members.

>> Third-party logistics provider LeanCor launched LeanCor Academy, an online professional training and education program. Facilitated in a virtual classroom, the first course, “Lean Leadership: Building the Lean Culture,” is broken down into 16 one-hour self-paced modules, each followed by a knowledge assessment and application work.

When Seattle-based work-force consulting company PeopleFirm was first recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in the state, all employees received iPads engraved with a personal thank you. The newest team members, some of whom had only been with the company for a month, were shocked. But this was all about rewarding the team for their outstanding efforts. Tenure, role, or level didn’t matter. Being part of the PeopleFirm team is what counted.

>> Panopto announced the latest version of its e-learning and video platform solution:Panopto 4.3. New features include failsafe recording, social enablement (including rich comments, community ratings, and video bookmarks), and a scalable platform (per-user analytics and an IT admin dashboard).