Coloring Inside the Lines
Last month, we introduced the mistake-filled “T1 Training Company” and talked about the mistakes they made when assessing “Acme Company’s” training needs. This month we examine T1’s mistakes during the Design Curricula phase.
T1 had a standard day-long time management course that it cut to four hours, per Manager Fred’s request. Analysis of the end-of-course evaluations …Read More
Setting a Course for Success
Does this story sound familiar? “Acme Company” determined that it wants to be known for having the best customer service. It implements new policies to encourage better customer service. It launches an internal campaign to boost employees’ awareness of the goal.
Halfway through the year, Bob, the Accounting Manager, is frustrated with the number of complaints …Read More
The Circle of Life, Training Style!
Now that we have all finished celebrating the winter holidays, it’s resolution time! It’s that time of year when we look back on everything that didn’t go so well in the past year and vow to do things better this year. We make resolutions, then keep them until about February. Then we lose interest and …Read More
The Gift of Time
The holiday season is always a stressful time of year. At home, you have gift purchases, holiday planning, household cleaning, and travel preparations to do. At work, the last month of the year is stressful either because you are trying to finish everything before everyone disappears on vacation, or because you have limited work. If …Read More
Engaging the Brain
Since the 1990s self-paced (asynchronous) online learning has seemed like Camelot for corporate training departments: It is the mythical, low-cost, low-interference way of training employees to increase productivity or comply with regulations. Although 90% of companies now use some form of online training, self-paced elearning lags behind other forms of online learning. Why? Quite frankly, …Read More
How Interactive Are You?
Which do you prefer: to sit in a room and listen to a speaker talk for four hours straight or to hear a few concepts and then figure out how you can use it for your own purposes? Most people will tell you that they prefer the latter. In general, adult learners prefer to learn …Read More
Taming the Meeting Monster
A 2021 study by Reclaim.ai found that since the COVID-induced shift to working-from-home, the average business professional attends 70% more meetings weekly than in 2018. In 2021 professionals spent almost half their official work week in virtual meetings: 21.5 hours! The reason for this is obvious to anybody who has been caught up in this …Read More
Virtual Celebrations
As Martha and the Vandellas and, later, Van Halen sang, “Summer’s here and the time is right for dancing in the streets!” The USA, France, Canada, Burundi, the Solomon Islands and 21 other countries celebrate their independence this month. All these festivities are a good reminder that, as managers, we should also celebrate the achievements …Read More
Working or Living?
A recent study by Robert Half found that 45 percent of US professionals who transitioned to working from home because of the pandemic say they regularly work more hours each week than before the pandemic. A separate National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) study found that the average workday worldwide grew by 48.5 minutes since …Read More
Move It! Move It!
The magic number these days is 10,000: 10,000 steps every day to stay fit. Working from home makes it harder to hit that goal because it removes the opportunities for “shadow exercise:” those times we walk for a purpose rather than just for exercise. For example, if you live in a city and work at …Read More