Elearning blog: Learning re-imagined

The USO, a Training and Development Maven, and Hundreds of Hungry Learners

By Katherine Doe, Marketing Manager, SMB & Compliance

When the USO, a nonprofit organization supporting US military personnel and their families, needed help in building a global learning program for employees, we at Skillsoft were up for the challenge.  However, our partner at the USO, Dr. Angela Kegler, was quite the training and development maven when we met!  Already a seasoned professional in the learning world, Dr. Kegler just needed the right solution to fit the unique needs of the USO.   She explains, “We wanted to provide consistent training covering our core values, diversity awareness and information security across the board and eliminate consistency issues in training with a single learning hub.” 

And so, Skillsoft helped her build USO University.  Now, Dr. Kegler has an easy-to-scale on-boarding program, specific courses to support the USO’s core values and compliance initiatives, and a learning management system to track elearning and instructor-led course completions.  So what did USO employees think of USO university?  Employees logged 1,000 online course completions in the first 37 days USO University was live.  What makes that number significant? Learning was not required.  “Our staff were so hungry for learning,” Dr. Kegler says. “When you provide the right tool at right time, your people will use it.”  Additionally, 84% of learners said they’d recommend USO University to fellow employees.

To learn more about how the USO achieved such fantastic results with their program, take a look at our full (2-page) case story, here.  And, check out this InformationWeek article that explains how USO University was the catalyst for the USO’s adoption of a complete cloud strategy.

A big Skillsoft THANK YOU to Dr. Angela Kegler and all our friends at the USO!  It’s partnerships like this that prove that effective, global training and development programs can be built for nonprofits and SMBs. Oh, and you make my job easier, too! Cheers! 

Trackable compliance training: A must-have for government contractors

By Katherine Doe, Skillsoft Marketing Manager, with Charlie Voelker, Esq., Skillsoft Legal Compliance Solution Manager

While Charlie contributed previously here on Learning re-imagined, I’d like to take an opportunity to more formally introduce him – our Compliance team has an impressive level of expertise!  Charlie Voelker, Esq. is the Product Manager for our Legal Compliance Solution.  In this role, he works with Skillsoft customers to create and implement cloud-based compliance training programs designed to reduce violations and mitigate risk, all while promoting an ethical culture and principled governance.  Charlie is also involved in setting the strategy for new content development within the solution.  Below, he shares a bit about why trackable compliance training is so important, especially for government contractors… 

“An efficient, scalable, and reliable training deployment strategy is essential to any organization’s compliance program.  But this is particularly true for firms that provide goods and services to the U.S. government.  For instance, in many cases a federal contractor is required to deliver ethics training across the enterprise, including directors, managers, employees, agents, and subcontractors.  The training must reach the entire organization with a consistent message, regardless of geography, in a format that is educationally effective.  Just as important is the ability for the program administrators to maintain detailed electronic records of training assignments, completion dates, and other crucial data that can be easily retrieved in the event of a government audit or investigation.  Skillsoft’s cloud-based compliance training solution delivers on all of these requirements, assisting hundreds of our customers, like Catapult Technology, meet their mission-critical training obligations.”

Watch a mini video case study on YouTube featuring Katie Cawood, Catapult’s Corporate Professional Development Administrator.  She describes why her Skillsoft compliance and on-boarding program has been “completely invaluable.”  

 

Getting the most value from learning

We’re excited to share some of our key priorities for 2013 that were announced at Skillsoft’s recent annual global kick off meeting! These initiatives will help our customers and prospects get even more value from their learning programs. 

• Supporting continuous learning:  We’re entering an era of continuous learning, where a combination of formal, informal and social learning are constantly available to support your learners, which will help you achieve organizational agility and business excellence. 
• Learning strategy: We will continue to focus on customer market issues and leverage our Content, Service and Experience to lead you to an optimal learning approach. Read about our framework.
• Skillport® 8:  We’re very close to releasing the next generation of Skillport – Skillport 8.  Skillport 8 is a modern LMS, which takes into account the user experience first and foremost, with native mobile device support and collaboration features.  Read more.
• Skillsoft® Sales Advantage™:  Our latest release in the Advantage series is geared toward a new audience – sales professionals.  Skillsoft Sales Advantage builds skills in key areas of sales competency including conducting effective meetings, negotiations, closing and more. 
• Industry research: New research, conducted in conjunction with KnowledgeAdvisors, found that Skillsoft elearning was as good as or better than in-house developed elearning and that Skillsoft elearning was as effective as classroom training in its ability to positively impact the job. Download the new research paper. 
• Skillsoft Perspectives event, May 13-16 in Orlando, Fla.:  We look forward to welcoming 1,000 learning industry professionals for four days filled with presentations, collaborative working sessions and networking. With keynotes from Seth Godin and Professor Peter Cappelli of The Wharton School, and panel discussions with CLOs and industry analysts, it’s sure to be a fantastic week!  Register here. 

We are committed to bringing you the best in technology enabled learning.  Check our website, and subscribe to our blog and other social channels to see on-going updates of these developments. 

Throw back Thursday: Content alignment tools and resources

We receive so much valuable content from our customers, partners and internal subject-matter experts. On Thursdays, we thought it would be fun to do a “throw back” and bring back an older post that was valuable to our audience. Today’s throw back is about content alignment.

Don’t go it alone… Skillsoft provides content alignment tools and resources

By Molly Scholes

An important challenge many organizations face is how to create a meaningful learning strategy that is aligned to strategic business initiatives and impacts performance.  Business impact should be the most important goal for any type of learning intervention offered to employees.  In order to impact the business, learning must be targeted, relevant and often – quickly!  Skillsoft can help your organization design this type of learning program with various tools and services.

Content mapping
As a Skillsoft customer, your organization likely has access to thousands of learning assets including courses, books, videos, job aids, simulations, leadership tracks and more!

It’s an overwhelming task to think about reviewing all of these resources to find the specific content that is most applicable for your program objective.  Let Skillsoft identify the most applicable resources for your organization based on a competency or business initiative.  Skillsoft will map the most relevant learning resources to up to 60 business skills competencies or initiatives once annually at no charge.

Here’s a common example where Skillsoft can make a difference in how your organization promotes impactful learning.  Many organizations have a set of organization-wide competencies or behaviors they expect from their employees and often measure them against these competencies using a performance process.  Common organization-wide competencies include:  teamwork, communication, trust, business execution, etc.  If you provide this list of competencies and the related descriptions, Skillsoft will map learning resources to those topics.  Once you receive the mapping from Skillsoft, a best practice is to review the list and verify the learning resources are appropriate for your organization and culture.  After that quick review, you’ll have a list of resources to promote within your organization.  Your Skillsoft Learning Consultant can provide additional recommendations regarding marketing materials and promotion strategies so you can make learners aware of the targeted learning.

Universal competency tool
Another fantastic resource Skillsoft makes available at no charge on the Client Community is the Universal Competency Tool (UCT), which identifies learning assets for specific competencies in a number of job families.  The UCT presents fifty-eight business competencies commonly recognized in the models adopted by today’s high performance organizations.  Your organization may name or define your competencies in slightly different terms; it is likely, however, that you will find many behavior statements that closely approximate your own definitions.  When you identify the competencies and behaviors that align with your own organizational model, you will immediately have relevant content recommendations from Skillsoft.  Subject matter experts, business stakeholders or training managers can make final selections by reviewing hyperlinked course descriptions to find the most appropriate learning assets.

Need more information?

Watch an on demand webinar titled Content Alignment: Best Practices to Ensure Learning Impacts the Business. You’ll hear more about these resources and best practices for aligning content.

Establishing program metrics & aligning communications

We’re pleased to bring you a guest post by Tera Gillen, Manager of Inside Sales, Skillsoft.

By Tera Gillen

Successful programs come in all shapes and sizes but no matter what the contract value, audience size or product(s) sold, all programs have one thing in common — they’re evaluated by the company’s stake holders to determine its success.

Success can be measured by metrics such as total course completions, number of training hours fulfilled, knowledge transferred to job role or learner feedback.

One of the challenges in implementing a training and development initiative for the first time, is to determine what metrics to measure and why.

Probing questions can help to ignite discussions around what is important to the organization. This may require the client to have some internal conversations or bring other people on board the project. Once the organization identifies desired outcomes, Skillsoft can create a framework that allows us to quantify the results. 

Using Talent Development Reporting Principles (TDRp) to run learning like a business

The most successful CLOs today run learning like a business. This means aligning learning to the business goals, carefully planning key programs and agreeing on measures of success, and then actively managing the programs to achieve the planned outcomes, effectiveness and efficiency.

Register for a complimentary webinar on September 13
Join Dave Vance, former CLO for Caterpillar and author of The Business of Learning to learn more about running learning like business and how TDRp can help. Dave, who is co-author of the TDRp papers, will provide an introduction to TDRp including recommendations for categorizing measures and creating standard statements and reports. See how the principles of running learning like a business combined with the recommendations of TDRp can help you be a better and more strategic business partner in your organization delivering the right outcomes with greater effectiveness and efficiency.

With the help of leading practitioners and industry thought leaders, TDRp answers the age-old questions in the context of running learning like a business:

Skillsoft’s new series helps professionals achieve PMI® Agile Certification

The popularity of agile development continues to grow, as organizations look for ways to cut costs, and save time and resources, while reducing overall risk in the software development process.  But how do IT professionals get up-to-speed on all the agile skills required for success? Training and certification are key.  

PMI, the world’s leading project management member association launched a certification named the PMI-Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP ^sm), which validates an individual’s ability to understand agile principles and concepts. To help professionals prepare for the PMI Agile Certification exam, Skillsoft today announced a solution based on the exam that establishes a baseline of understanding regarding agile philosophy, concepts, and general practices for project managers.

Upcoming webinar: Kick-Starting a Corporate University

Learning and development are a crucial component of a well-defined talent management strategy. A solid talent management program not only increases employee engagement and leadership effectiveness – but it places employees ahead of the competition and drives customer success.

Join Skillsoft and First Data for a complimentary webinar
Kick-Starting a Corporate University
Thursday, September 6 from 1-2 p.m. EDT

Join Skillsoft and Mary Miller, Vice President, Learning Architecture, First Data, for a webinar that will show you how to create an aligned human capital strategy.

An E-Learning Tale of Two Companies: “Are you normal?”

By Kieran King

 

Clients often ask SkillSoft what kind of adoption they can expect to see from e-learning — whether it is to understand how many licenses they will need to start an e-learning program, or as a way to gauge “what’s normal” for a program that has been installed for years.  That’s a complex question to answer because each organization develops its own path for its learn­ing strategy by reflecting on their business objectives and organizational culture.   

 

When adoption doesn’t meet expectations, some organizations begin to question whether or not e-learning is “for them.”  Well, if your employees are using an Internet search engine to find information, they are e-learning.   It’s not a matter of whether or not e-learning works.  It’s not a matter of whether or not employees will find it valuable.  It’s a matter of the way in which learning lives within a company. 

 

Allow me to tell you a “tale of two companies” who operate in the same geography, same industry, and have similar employee sizes….

 

 
 

Which organization do you think has the higher level of e-learning adoption?  Better yet, which organization steadily experiences higher retention, a better competitive position, and stronger customer satisfaction?   

 

While many variables come into play, our experience with thousands of clients has given us a solid understanding of the factors that contribute to adoption.  Armed with this expertise, we counsel organizations every day as they work to overcome adoption barriers and  optimize the aspects that will spur habitual use of e-learning.

 

To learn about the factors that drive adoption and the trends we’ve seen along our journey, you can download our free whitepaper, “What Usage Can I Expect?”.

Does e-learning at your company come closer to Company A or Company B, or something in between? What are some other tales to be told?

Marketing is an Invitation to Learn

 

I am so fortunate to work with talented and articulate professionals.  I am amazed at the level of talent in the Learning Consultant organization.  One of our Learning Consultants, Beth Brock, wrote an article on marketing for the ASTD magazine  Getting the Word Out. Her ideas on marketing are simple and straight-forward. 

Beth once worked for a supervisor who believed that if they developed exactly the right training content, learners would just somehow materialize.  Her team consistently produced well-designed programs with thought-provoking content but the courses never saw much action.  Frustrated, they kept asking themselves why.  It wasn’t because the courses weren’t good or relevant – they were.

It was because nobody knew they existed.

The moral of the story is this:  no matter how good your program is, it is of little value if your audience doesn’t know about it.

For some, the idea of marketing conjures up images of used car salesmen hustling unsuspecting customers.  Indeed, many training professionals scoff at the need for marketing, believing that good training should be able to sell itself.  Ultimately it can, if it is supported by a good communication strategy that promotes the program’s value to the right people.  If you think of marketing as an opportunity to educate rather than sell, you will be providing a valuable service to your audience in helping them understand about how your programs and services can address their critical business needs.  All it takes is a little creativity and a healthy dose of insight into your audience’s needs.

The possibilities for promoting learning are limitless, but the realities of budget, time, and staffing constraints will of course ultimately determine what you do and don’t do.  Just remember that marketing doesn’t have to be expensive or time consuming to produce valuable results. 

One of the easiest and most inexpensive ways to promote your learning programs is to get previous students to do it for you.  Whenever I shop online, I always read the customer reviews.  As a consumer, they help me make informed purchasing decisions.  Student testimonials work the same way by helping others envision how your program will benefit them.  Praise from a satisfied customer is not only one of the easiest forms of promotion – it is also one of the most powerful.  When individuals hear from a peer and colleague how a particular program was helpful to them, it means more.  Weave learner feedback into your course catalog, or better yet, enable individuals to post comments online and learning becomes an Amazon.com-like experience.

To develop a learning program and just assume that learners will show up is a bit like throwing a party without sending any invitations.  Think about marketing and promotion as an invitation to experience great learning.  Marketing is where the SkillSoft Learning Consultant team can help steer you in the right direction.  Our customers have access to the robust Client Community, where we share templates and tools that customers have used.  If you give your audience a compelling reason to participate, chances are they will.

By: Lori Neblung