Elearning blog: Learning re-imagined

2013 Global Skillsoft Perspectives is Around the Corner

Skillsoft Perspectives is next week in Orlando, Florida! Learn why Lynda Cribari, Executive Director of Performance Excellence, Davenport University, rates Perspectives as “top notch.”

Davenport University Rates Perspectives as "Top-Notch" from Skillsoft on Vimeo.

Looking for a learning partner? Now what?

As you plan your learning programs for the year, it’s important to get the most value from your budget. It’s often a struggle to weed through the solutions available and really understand what to look for as you make difficult decisions to enhance your learning programs. Having a trusted partner will increase the likelihood of long-term success, and give you tools and advice to align your learning with business goals.

Complimentary webinar: Top Three Things to Look for When Selecting a Learning Program Partner

Join Skillsoft Learning Strategists, Joni Locht and Sue Orchanian, to hear how people, resources and tried and true processes will enable clients to create and maintain thriving learning programs. During the webinar, you’ll learn:

1. Key benefits of a learning partnership.
2. Best practices for maximizing pilot success.
3. The people, processes and resources that will add value to your overall program success.

Register today!

About the presenters

Joni Locht, Learning Strategist, Skillsoft, has over 25 years of top-level performance supporting companies ranging from small and privately held, to Fortune 100 level clients. Joni’s unique skill set allows her to gather and analyze information and create custom solutions quickly and efficiently. 

Sue Orchanian, Learning Strategist and Client Community Co-chair, Skillsoft, consults with Fortune 500 organizations on elearning program design, curriculum development, strategic marketing and communication planning and program measurement. Sue also co-chairs the Client Community, a dedicated resource center that supports the implementation and management of Skillsoft customer elearning programs.

Who are you? What’s the point? Is this more compliance stuff?

By Ivonne Smith

We’re pleased to bring you a guest blog post by Ivonne Smith, a Skillsoft Learning Strategy Consultant

I know these questions sound a bit harsh, but it might be questions that your learners ask if you haven’t created a solid brand around your learning program. Our research has found that, quite often, learning organizations are defined by their 20-year-old “training” images or are associated with their most abundant learning requirement (i.e. is this more compliance stuff?). With this in mind, I challenge you to look in the mirror and see how employees are truly viewing the learning brand of your organization. Set up a focus group, survey your audience—however you do it, be honest and clear on your learning organization’s current brand image.

Once you have a good sense of how your learning organization is perceived, you may need to think about your brand and how you can reinvent it. In a Skillsoft blog post last spring, Shawn Hunter, Executive Producer of the Skillsoft Leadership Development Channel™, asked you to “think about your learning product. Who your learning team is, not what you do? What does your learning team do for employees? What kind of aspiration does it tap into of the employees or managers? What does your learning do more for the employees that employees cannot do without it?” Asking these questions is a perfect way to start thinking of your learning brand and what value is provided to the organization.

Destination unknown

By Beth Baker

We’re pleased to bring you a guest blog post from Beth Baker, a Skillsoft Learning Consultant

I love maps.  I have always loved maps.  It is like a one page overview of where I have been and all the paths available to get me where I want to go.  As long as I know where I am starting and what my destination needs to be, I can choose any number of options to get there.  I can even reroute myself midway if necessary.

I may lay out a specific “actionable” path with designated rest stops precisely every 156 miles or I might just decide I need to head west and rely on nothing but a compass.  It is just a personal preference. The important thing is that I know where I started and where I need to finish.

Do you know where you started?  What about your destination?  How about your team?  Do they know the desired destination for your organization?  If not, how will they know which direction to head when you aren’t navigating for them?

My first job out of college was working for a CLO at a major telecommunication firm in the southeast.  It was a very tumultuous time at the company; we were just coming through an acquisition involving very different cultures, and the T&D function was being centralized.  One of the first things the CLO did was to go on a road show all over the country, with the express purpose of involving everyone in creating the vision for the new organization.  In every city, the employees were asked to create a vision of what they thought this new group could accomplish.  What they created was far greater than what was thought possible at the upper levels.  When the comprehensive vision was decided, there was immediate buy-in because it was created together.  Even though the specific steps and action items were to come later, every employee had an idea of where we were headed and could begin to make decisions (great and small) with the destination in mind.

2012 Skillsoft Perspectives Highlights, New Zealand – another successful event!

We’re pleased to bring you a guest post from our APAC region − Kath Greenhough, a Learning Strategist in New Zealand.

By Kath Greenhough

We have just farewelled the last of the Skillsoft New Zealand customers after our two-day Perspectives Highlights event in Auckland and Wellington on 21 and 22 June. It was great to see all of our customers
gathering together to “Motivate, Innovate, Learn” and to “Drive Value Through Learning.” 

As in previous years, we welcomed new organizations on their elearning journey. We are privileged that our customers chose to spend time with us to help develop their thinking and strategy in learning for business results and learning from each other. Attendees represented a range of industries – Manufacturing, Construction, Education, Government, Health, ICT, Telco and Financial Services.

Why Learning Consultants Want Our Customers to Attend Perspectives

By Molly Scholes

SkillSoft’s annual user conference Perspectives will be taking place April 30 – May 3, 2012 in Orlando, Florida.  I wanted to share the top reasons why SkillSoft Learning Consultants know this is a “can’t miss” event and why we hope our customers choose to attend.

• Hear Best Practices – Directly from Other Customers.  The role of the Learning Consultant is to advise our customers on best practices and share strategies for program success.  While we have a broad set of examples to share, nothing can compare to hearing specific stories and examples from other customers.  Customer sessions are filled with specific lessons learned, recipes for success and often include how their program impacted their organization’s business.

Working in the Creativity Age

We are pleased to bring you a guest blog post today from Dan Coughlin, president of The Coughlin Company, Inc., and a leading authority on managing for long-term business success. He is a business keynote speaker, seminar leader, and executive coach on leadership, innovation, and branding. He is also the author of four books on generating sustainable, profitable growth. His clients include McDonald’s, GE, Toyota, Coca-Cola, Marriott, Prudential, RE/MAX, Jack in the Box, Boeing, Abbott, Denny’s, Subway, Holder Construction, Kiewit, Ace Hardware, St. Louis Cardinals, and more than 150 other organizations.    

by Dan Coughlin, President, The Coughlin Company, Inc.

When I was a kid, there was a very popular song on the radio called, The Age of Aquarius. It was written in 1969. Some of the lyrics include:

This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius …
Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions

That age never quite happened, but right now we are living in an age that really is happening. It’s called the Creativity Age. The world has evolved from the Stone Age to the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age to the Information Age to the Creativity Age. This era is relatively new. It began with the proliferation of the internet and email and has gained speed ever since with technologies that have connected people all over the world and given people the opportunities to do things they could never have done before. 

Where Paid-Work Happens

If you’re going to earn a paycheck, it’s going to happen in one of a few ways. You will either work for a for-profit or a not-for-profit organization. You will either own a business or work for someone else. You will either manage the efforts of other people or you will not. You will either work with other people in an organization or you will work completely by yourself. Your work today and in the future is going to fall into one or more of those categories. We can break it down even further. Toss out your title and your industry and the size of your organization and your bonus and where you went to school. None of that stuff really matters. Regardless of the way in which you work, there are certain key elements that absolutely matter in the Creativity Age. Here are five of the most important.

When Duct Tape Isn’t Enough….

By Beth Baker, Learning Consultant, SkillSoft

For many, the term “Performance Management” elicits visions of the annual development process, complete with competency listings, skill gap discussions, and performance review documentation.  We treat performance management as an annual employee inspection. 

Annual inspections are important - just ask any homeowner.  Once a year we check the fire alarms, we clean out gutters, we even call out the plumber to take a look at the pipes and make sure that things are running smoothly. But what happens when little leaks pop up in between the inspections? 

Why duct tape of course! Duct tape can fix anything.  Just slap a little around the pipe and voila!  It is just like new. Unfortunately, no amount of duct tape can hold a leaky pipe forever.  It might slow it down, but eventually you will have a basement that looks like the Pacific Ocean. You will need to wear scuba gear to do laundry, and Nemo will keep interrupting, asking if you have seen his Dad.

Not a good situation.

Loyalty is Earned

By Kieran King

We are pleased to bring you a guest blog post today from Kieran King, our Global Director of Loyalty Strategy. 

I am frequently asked why SkillSoft’s clients are so loyal.  For those who may not be aware, SkillSoft has been ranked #1 in customer loyalty by the world’s largest custom research company, TNS, for three consecutive years.  TNS doesn’t just benchmark learning companies.  Rather, TNS compares SkillSoft’s client survey responses to every software and IT company in its database ranging from $100M-$120B in revenues.  

Most anticipate that the secret to SkillSoft’s high loyalty level will involve some form of a repurchasing histogram, complex spreadsheet, or sophisticated causal analysis.  It’s actually quite simple:

1.    the widest content cloud,

2.    the best customer support,

3.    the strongest sustainability.

 

Content Cloud.  Content licensing has gone in the same direction as the IT cloud computing concept for the following reasons:

Buy versus Build - Unless you have infinite resource capacity and funds to develop learning content yourself, it makes economical sense to buy from a provider whose main business is building content.  SkillSoft’s core mission has always been content.  Because SkillSoft offers a large library of eLearning courseware content that covers a broad range of topics, there is consistency in the quality of the instructional design as well as the user interface.  These two factors tend to drive increased learner acceptance and the propensity for learners to come back. 

Less Operational Overhead - As with IT cloud infrastructures, most corporations also find it far more efficient to leverage a hosted solution because of the operational efficiencies it provides.  The Software as a Service savings eliminate the hardware and software investments as well as the IT staffing required of an in-house solution.

Corporate Agility - Our world is also increasingly more complex and the pace of change continues to compound, making it very difficult to forecast what skills a workforce may need.  This month’s quote from CLO Magazine Editor, Norm Kamikow, sums it up well, “To stay in fighting shape, learning organizations have to be agile, quick thinking and oriented towards both revolutionary and evolutionary workforce development.  That means flexible delivery, as well as learning that is responsive to the needs and demands of a diverse, dispersed and dynamic global workforce.  It means also arming and empowering the workforce to react to change with alacrity and intelligence and decisively win whatever competitive battles come along.”  

In such an environment, it’s an imperative to partner with a supplier that has the widest depth and breadth of topic coverage to address the uncertainly of dynamic skill requirements.  That is also why most of our clients choose to subscribe to a library of eLearning modules where the learner can take just what they need when they need it.  Of course a learner doesn’t need to consume thousands of resources…they only need one resource, every time they need one, and the probability of having the right resource is increased with access to a rich repository.

Customer Support.  By a wide margin, SkillSoft invests in client support more than any other eLearning provider.  The services we deliver ensure every program is poised to successfully achieve business results.  SkillSoft has over 500 client service professionals dedicated to customer success before, during and after implementation.  One of the most highly regarded elements of SkillSoft’s service team is the Learning Consultant.  The Learning Consultant provides guidance related to program design, technical planning, marketing, administrative management, and measurement strategy.  Competitors to SkillSoft will often claim to offer a range of support services that sound familiar, but no other supplier offers the number of personnel, depth of expertise, and industry experience that SkillSoft does. Our clients continually tell us what a difference our services make, and it shows in our 96% customer service satisfaction rating.

 

Strong sustainability.  While the effects of the economic recession may be subsiding somewhat, the importance of partnering with a sustainable learning supplier will continue.  SkillSoft’s experience, leading position in learning innovation, and financial stability are more important factors than ever before.  SkillSoft’s dependable and steady leadership team, coupled with tenured field staff, provide clients with an unparalleled level of reassurance.  When SkillSoft was acquired by a highly rated private investment consortium in May, SkillSoft’s sustainability was more deeply reinforced.  As a private company, we can accelerate our aggressive R&D in areas that have always been paramount to clients as well as explore peripheral markets that can bring enhanced value.

 

In closing, SkillSoft feels very fortunate to have earned our clients’ confidence time and time again.  We remain committed to focus on the aspects that have made the most difference - content, service, and business viability.  To hear directly from our clients, click here to view a set of customer video interviews.

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