Elearning blog: Learning re-imagined

Environmental, Safety and Health Employee Training

By Donna McEntee, Practice Manager, ES&H solutions, Skillsoft

Nearly every industry needs to conduct specific training because of mandates by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Transportation (DOT). To remain compliant, elearning is an effective way to reach broad audiences, provide multiple delivery methods and track completions—all in a consistent manner.

Whether it is new employee training or annual topic refreshers, Skillsoft’s learning resources are designed for a range of needs, from workers requiring rigorous training, to business professionals that might only need general awareness or periodic training on special topics. Through our Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) library, courses are available to your learners at their convenience through our cloud-based solution. This means that learners may access their training 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days per year through the Internet connection. The training is very interactive and includes review exercises, case studies and graphical representations. Organizations can utilize our LMS to assign courseware and track training efforts and ensure compliance with regulations.

Watch Skillsoft client, Kleinfelder, to learn how the organization uses elearning to keep their employees safe. 

Donna McEntee is a Practice Manager for Skillsoft’s Environmental, Safety and Health Solution Area. With more than 15 years of experience in online learning, she supports the development of new compliance courses and provides product expertise for our customers using our library of ESH courses and Learning Management Systems. She has worked as a safety training professional in hazardous waste operations, as a corporate compliance training manager and training consultant to government and commercial clients for more than 25 years. 

Time: the hidden cost of free

By John Ambrose

As I described in my 2012 Skillsoft Perspectives Global keynote, “time” is the single most important asset of any organization. The hidden cost of “free” is the time required to make that content relevant to the individual in the context of the organization’s goals and mission. Misdirected time is the ultimate enemy of human productivity. Skillsoft’s business model has enabled it to invest literally hundreds of millions of dollars over the years in building a full spectrum of connected, inter-related learning modalities that optimize the transfer of relevant knowledge and skills. Unlike the academic world where reflection and scholarship are an integral part of a largely time-insensitive learning process, corporate solutions focus on delivering highest quality in the least amount of time to drive specific business outcomes. Time equals money.

Moreover, the larger and more complex the organization − the greater the challenge. An effective, global learning program in a large, dispersed organization requires not just access to content, but a significant amount of consulting, tailoring and advisory support to drive successful business outcomes. This includes subject matter expertise, platform integration, alignment to initiatives, program design, rollout planning, marketing communication, alignment to competencies, leveraging of social and mobile platforms, mapping to initiatives, reporting, and business impact analysis. 

These services have been key to distinguishing Skillsoft’s value proposition over low cost and “free” sources of content, as well as higher priced alternatives such as classroom-based learning which is costly and not scalable.  

Nonetheless, the “free” dynamic is a big driver of why Skillsoft continues to push its thinking around how to evolve our business model to continually enhance the overall value and service it delivers. It is clear that all types of standalone content products, including traditional courseware, face some level of greater pressure especially when the “buyer” is less discerning about quality, accuracy, relevance, time-commitment, and consistency of the content.

Skillsoft understands this dynamic and continues to migrate to a model that leverages our relentless focus on organizational development and results. Ultimately SkillSoft must and will continue to deliver an experience that customers cannot receive elsewhere through its unique combination of content, services and total user experience.

Get the biggest bang for your training dollars – spend your money where it’s needed

The need or request for training can come from many avenues—from solving key business problems— to the employee themselves. Wherever the initial spark has come from, the next step is to identify what training method would produce results cost effectively.

Identify your business needs. For example:

• Highly skilled workforce
• Performance improvement
• Greater customer satisfaction
• Improved results
• Better looking bottom line
• Sustainability and/or growth

If your initial goal is to have a highly skilled workforce, you need to ensure employees have the knowledge to do their jobs effectively and efficiently. In the world of employee training, this means focusing our resources on finding the best training products that align with that need.

This is especially true in the Small to Medium Size Business (SMB) sector where margins are tight and training budgets are limited. Ensuring the SMB executive is driving performance with every dollar spend is crucial to the company’s success and often survival.

Much like when sending employees out to a boot camp, or local college, it’s the quality of the course content and result that’s of interest rather than how well equipped the facility is. Identify what’s going to have the biggest impact on the result: the content. Then worry about how to deliver it. Thankfully Skillsoft has been able to take this into account by providing comprehensive content and a user-focused learning management system (LMS).

Skillsoft addresses this need for SMBs with knowledge products tailored to the specific needs of all levels of employee from the new graduates to leaders. Skillsoft KnowledgeCenters, Skillsoft Leadership Advantage™ and Skillsoft Professional Advantage™ have all been designed to get the right training to where it’s needed fast.

For more information on Skillsoft’s SMB solutions, please visit: http://skillsoft.com/solutions/small-to-medium_business.asp

Skillsoft helps you think like a CFO

In today’s business where departments are competing for more resources and budget, professionals need to make a strong business case and value proposition for their operations. Managers need to have a chief financial officer (CFO) mindset when running a department to help them make decisions and business proposals that are more likely to win senior management's support, as they’ll be based upon sound financial and operational analysis.

To help professionals take a strategic view of financial decisions and activities in their organizations, Skillsoft today announced a new solution created to help managers develop a CFO mindset in the management of their departments to ensure that their decision making is founded on solid financial considerations and aligned with the overall goals of the organization. 

The new series, Thinking like a CFO, is offered through Skillsoft’s award-winning Business Skills Library. The new series is based on the financial priorities and mindset of a CFO, including growing the top line, keeping fixed costs low and maintaining cash flow needed for paying bills and making funds available for new projects. The series also discusses how to make key organizational decisions involving financing, investments, and risk.

To learn more about Skillsoft’s Business Skills Library and specific products such as the Thinking like a CFO series, please visit http://www.skillsoft.com/online/fy12/courseware-innovations/?srcID=BLOG

Is free training actually effective?

By John Ambrose

Since the dawn of the web, “free” has been a seductive concept.  Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine has made a career touting the “free” model.  Yet, Wired magazine is not free, nor are Chris’ speaking fees. 

The latest “free” craze is university curricula as well-known universities declare their intentions to post some or all of their courses on the web.  How will this affect corporate learning departments? 

It won’t.

“Free” is not new.  In fact, MIT had been making its courses available online for nearly a decade now.  While free university content will appeal to some individuals, it is no substitute for the highly sophisticated and organizationally aligned learning & development models that have evolved over the past decade. 

Relevance Matters.

Think about the extreme for a moment.  What if every university put every course online for free.  Users would then have everything they need at their fingertips, why bother with corporate training of any kind, right?

First, this sounds like the same argument when web search engines like Google first appeared.  That simply having access to content − is somehow equivalent to doing something useful with it.

Second, there would be massive redundancy.  Most university curricula are differentiated by instructor and approach, not topic or objectives.  Users would face a dizzying array of options (not unlike how we feel with a typical Google search) and corporate trainers would face a daunting task of alignment.

Third is inherent mission conflict.  We all now know that the mission of search engine content is simple: Drive page clicks that generate advertising revenue.  The mission behind putting university curricula online is not altruism, but self-preservation. Clay Christensen’s book, Disrupting Class, was a wake-up call to all universities because their business model is no longer sustainable. Higher Education costs have risen even faster in the US over the past decade than health care costs! Tuitions are no longer affordable and with the balloon of student loan debt, universities are scrambling to find replacement revenue fast.

Designing Skillport® 8: notes from the trenches

By Stephanie Pyle

At the 2012 Skillsoft Perspectives conference, we unveiled an advanced look at our upcoming Skillport® 8 release. Skillport 8 brings together all formats of learning content, integrating books, courses and videos in the same library, giving the user a single, seamless experience. To support users on-the-go, Skillport 8 is cross-platform and cross-device – it works as well on a tablet as on a desktop. Many customers asked how we arrived at such a dramatic (and effective) design. There’s a story there and we’re pleased to share it.

Early on, the team went back to basics to ask ourselves just what is Skillport’s “role” in the customer relationship?  Is Skillport why they do business with Skillsoft in the first place? After much discussion, we arrived at the collective realization that though Skillport was our own passion (because we work on it every day), it is really more of a supporting player to most of our customers. For them, Skillsoft content is the driving force behind the business relationship, with Skillsoft’s service and experience sealing the deal.

Reflecting further, we realized that while the various features and functions of an LMS are important, it is the optimization of the user experience with the content that’s key. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about Skillsoft content or an organization’s proprietary content.  By focusing on the content, we’ve designed Skillport to be a richer total user experience. The visual design features a more streamlined look to allow the content to be the focus. The navigation and actions are readily apparent and intuitive because of the use of established standards and consistency within the application. Our team took the latest web design principles into consideration for Skillport 8. With mobile on the brain, we made sure it would be suitable on a tablet by optimizing it for a gestural interface.

2012 Skillsoft Perspectives Australia keynote and speakers announced

Justina Phoon is Skillsoft’s Asia Pacific Marketing Communications Manager. She will be sharing updates on 2012 Skillsoft Perspectives Australia throughout the next few months. Stay tuned!

By Justina Phoon

Our annual Perspectives Australia event in Sydney will happen in just about six weeks, but there’s nothing typical about this year’s event! We will be extending Perspectives Australia over 2 days (15 and 16 August) and have lined up a fantastic keynote speaker and other great speakers focused on key topics that will provide you with valuable takeaways and insight into their own learning success stories.

Keynote

We’re pleased to announce Sue Langley, CEO of Emotional Intelligence Worldwide, as our keynote speaker. She will give the keynote presentation: Transforming Culture by Leading with Innovation and Fostering Creativity. Find out more about Sue and watch a clip of her interview with the Leadership Development Channel™.

Our topical focus aligns closely with this year’s theme – Motivate, Innovate, Learn: Driving Value Through Learning! Join us and learn from your peers and Skillsoft experts:

 

Do you have an elearning implementation strategy?

Implementing elearning goes far beyond installing an LMS and populating it with content. Vinolia Singh of MultiChoice South Africa has gone through three elearning implementations and discovered four components that are critical to program success.  Watch the video to see her tips:

 

On Wednesday, July 11 from 10-11am EST, Vinolia will present a webinar on Optimizing Your Elearning Strategy for Successful Implementation and Maximum ROI. Register now to ensure your elearning implementation plan covers all the bases.

Skillsoft Introduces New Personal Productivity Improvement Series to Help Professionals Get in the Zone

Skillsoft today announced a new solution that helps professionals develop and strengthen their personal productivity and time management skills. Personal Productivity Improvement is offered through Skillsoft’s award-winning Business Skills Library. The series offers interactive courses, searchable full-text digital books, job aids, and videos of CEOs and globally respected business thought leaders.  To further foster personal productivity and any time anywhere learning, many of these elements can be accessed through mobile devices.

Skillsoft’s engaging learning assets also include Personal Productivity Improvement: Workspace Management. This interactive experience introduces ways in which an organized workspace can bolster productivity. Specific guidelines for organizing workspaces in the most efficient manner possible are also introduced.  Personal Productivity Improvement: Self-Organization and Overcoming Procrastination, covers techniques to help you get organized and accomplish more. It discusses self-management, how to recognize and overcome procrastination and how to eliminate time wasters. The third asset in the series deals with task management and the breaking down of projects into smaller more manageable tasks. Personal Productivity Improvement: Managing Tasks and Maximizing Productivity reviews priority setting and ways you can use organizational tools to stay on top of key tasks and projects.

For time management specifically, Skillsoft is now offering free access to an ExecBlueprint to jumpstart professionals’ personal productivity and time management training. The ExecBlueprint, Making the Most of a Non-Renewable Resource: Seven Essential Time Management Strategies by  John Grant, L. Randolph Lowry, Stanley (Stan) C. Feuerberg and Mark Daley is available at http://www.Skillsoft.com/online/fy12/courseware-innovations/?srcID=blog

Improve the Office 2010 Skills of Your German Staff

The SkillSoft Office 2010 KnowledgeCenter™ is now available in German. This is good news for our German customers as well as our customers with offices overseas!  The content isn’t just translated – it’s localized so it’s contextually relevant for that market.

What’s a KnowledgeCenter, you say?

It’s a portal that gives learners instant access to targeted, pre-packaged content on key topics. Each KnowledgeCenter includes material specifically chosen to help learners build knowledge around a topic as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The new German-focused KnowledgeCenter contains articles, courses and online books in German, including hands-on Practice Labs allowing business professionals to learn and use Office 2010 skills in a real-time environment.