Magazine Articles

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.

 

By Melissa Fein, Ph.D.

 

By Kendra Lee Technology provides a cost-effective, fun way to stay in front of your participants with key content reminders after the training is over. We’ve added technology-based reinforcement to all our training programs, and our clients have reaped big rewards. For one organization’s sales prospecting program, we used a combination of e-mail and video follow-up. One year later, prospecting continues to be a habit for the whole sales force, driving new customers and revenue for the company.

An actor, a cell phone, and a solid storyline lead to an engaging onsite, in-person simulation to improve customer service.

By Tony O’Driscoll Relationships, Reach, and Robots. These three discrete words may have a particular meaning to each of us prior to attending Learning 3.0, but after the conference, I hope they mean a whole lot more to those of us who spend our days designing, developing, and delivering learning.