Blended Learning Strategy– Cost Effective Training

If you've not satisfied with continual staff turnover, escalating salary bidding wars and the quality of your current workforce skills you may want to consider a Blended Learning Strategy for your company. With the advent of eLearning, a cost-effective blended learning strategy for a small business employers can now be developed to train a workforce for both soft skills and practical skills. The formula might include a syllabus of off-the-shelf eLearning for soft skills, on-the-job training for practical skills, a process for filtering likely successful candidates, a means of testing milestone comprehension and a good benefits package to attract and retain the best possible candidates. 

It is an investment, for sure, but it can be very cost effective when you measure this against all the time and effort you dedicate to managing your workforce, the quality of work preformed, the cost of developing leadership and communications skills, the cost of retaining good performers and the effect that "churn" has on productivity, Developing a focused Blended Learning strategy pays long term dividends for businesses and organizations that are focused on growth. The changing economy and the rise of the too-skilled worker demographic has led to an unusual segmentation in the available labour force. This is borne out by the many discussions I have had with small to medium size employers who experience on ongoing shortage of talent. Many companies we work with could actually grow more rapidly if they could count on a skilled workforce to meet their demands.  

Pundits and experts point to the lack of training investment, economic uncertainty, poorly designed government programs and lack of employer vision in developing training programs - as the main culprits in this seeming shortage of qualified labour. Hard to lament a shortage in labour when the economy as a whole continues to sputter and unemployment continues to be an issue.

I believe, however, the employment shortage is real and not just imagined. In recognizing this shortage - I have identified three distinct groups of unemployed which can help us create solutions. The first group is the over –qualified university “Educated Worker” with eyes on a middle management position and little or no experience, the second is the “Employed” that has the skills and are actively being pursued by competing companies, while the third group, in this over simplified model, is the unemployed who may have little or no post-secondary education, not a lot of experience and are seeking opportunities with a future in a marketplace filled with service industry and part time positions.

A recent Labour Market Partnership (LMP) study (over 2,000 small businesses participated ) identified the following 10 learning requirements for small businesses, including: people skills/relationship-building, communication skills, problem solving skills, analytical abilities, leadership skills, industry-specific knowledge & experience, functional knowledge, technological literacy, project management skills and creative thinking.  

Accessing available online training for the bulk of the skills required and implementing a structured on-the job-training program can address the need for skilled labour in an organized and cost effective way. Adding a means of filtering recruits, testing for milestone comprehension and developing a strategy for ensuring they stay with the organization over the long term can make this training initiative a very cost effective means of acquiring and retaining a skilled workforce.

In today’s workplace it’s no longer good enough for employers, particularly in the manufacturing and industrial marketplace, to simply hope that there is a qualified talent pool, outbid competing companies or count on government initiatives that will address the need for unique skill sets. Employers need to invest in their own training program that leverages available low cost learning solutions for soft skills coupled with an on-the-job training program for practical skills. The magic additional ingredients in such a program are: the ability to benchmark test applicants, filter and select only the best potential applicants and develop a strategy for retaining these skills with a strong company vision and a good benefits package. Contact us to learn more.

Curating Conferences In The Digital Age

Curating content in the Digital Age and promoting its
 value is an important part of a conference, workshop,
or seminar digital strategy 

In talking to clients over the past year or so I have noticed a trend; many organizations are beginning to question the effectiveness of workshops, seminars and conferences in terms of costs and effectiveness. While these events are a good place to network they rarely have any tangible effect within an organization. These types of learning events have been commonplace in the corporate life cycle over the past several decades, but that is about to change.

Don’t get me wrong, live events and their spill-out of social discourse and knowledge transfer continue to thrive – but in a more focused and scaled manner as organizations struggle to continue to create these kinds of learning opportunities. Over time costs for events such as workshops, seminars and conferences have steadily increased as food, hosting infrastructure, accommodations, transportation and support services spiral upwards. These factors coupled with an ineffective measurement of comprehension offers us an uncertain picture of the benefits of a live event. 

As a result, audience make up at such events is changing and the number of attendees is shrinking. Conferences, workshops and seminars were once attended by a broad spectrum of audiences, ranging from local and regional representation, including: organizational members, employees, interested stake holders and subject matter experts. Today the attendee demographic is fairly similar but we have seen a drop in the longer distance traveler – where accommodation and travel costs are influencing attendance decisions. 

This has created an opportunity for technology to step in and create a two-tiered conference strategy that employs a smaller, local or regional foot-print for attendees and a second larger provincial and regional attendance footprint through the use of curated digital content. In the past such content was treated in a very circumspect manner – digital videos, print and ancillary content was posted un-curated, in aggregate online, for a wider audience. These digital elements were not well attended since the content was generally long, boring, and did not reflect the social interaction and knowledge sharing of a conference or seminar.

Progressive organizations now are using a more forward thinking strategy by focusing their live events  towards the demographics of the attending audience -  and then curating the resulting assets which could include: eLearning, documentation, statistical data, PowerPoint presentations, video and /or audio in an organized forum for access by an expanded audience of learners.  Another important consideration is the promotion of curated assets. It is not good enough to just organize, distill and post – we have to let our audience know what information is available, ensure that there is a strategy for periodically reviewing and updating curated content and advise our potential audiences of the value of, and benefits for the information posted in an ongoing strategy.

A personal axiom I use to often describe this issue is “If you do not show respect for the content how can you expect your audience to value it?”  Having a curating strategy as we move deeper into the digital age will become increasingly important as new technology evolves and improves our access to digital information. I believe the live learning event has an important place in learning and the ephemeral nature of the information gained at such events will become increasingly important as we all learn to curate and create relevant archives of the valuable knowledge gained at conferences, workshops and seminars.