Free T&D Webinars for August 2014

Lazy summer days? Not likely in today’s high-performing organizations! The great thing is that by tapping into the right mentorship, and by working smart, we can hit our performance targets—and enjoy a few beach days too. Why not get some new ideas from one of the free webinars being offered this August? We hope they will inspire and motivate you.

Wednesday, July 30, August 13, and August 27, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Summer School for the Virtual Trainer

Register for this three-part webinar series with Jennifer Hofmann, president of InSync Training, to discover how to design and deliver an effective training program that will help you finish the year strong.

Join us for this series to learn:

• A blend of delivery methods designed to maximize learning.

• What training content is best delivered in a live, virtual format.

• How to overcome common hurdles on the road to blended learning.

• Key strategies for performing and facilitating online training.

Tuesday, August 5, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: e-Learning:  Are You Serious?

If implemented correctly, e-Learning can positively impact any organization. But so much of the e-Learning created and invested in today relies on technology, and focuses on content instead of the learner and improving performance. The result: boring e-Learning and wasted budgets! 

Join Dr. Michael Allen as he explains how the 22 principles of the Serious e-Learning Manifesto can help combat today’s e-Learning failures by creating learning solutions that generate business impact. In this webinar, attendees will:

• Gain valuable knowledge of the e-Learning Manifesto Principles.

• See examples of e-Learning created with the Principles of the Manifesto in mind.

• Understand the ROI of using the Principles of the Manifesto to create your e-Learning.

• Understand the performance impact of using e-Learning that takes into consideration the Principles of the Manifesto.

Tuesday, August 5, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Thinking of Replacing Your LMS

This session will help you reduce your fear and create a strategy for success during the process! Your business needs are changing fast, and so are the demands placed on your current learning technology. Learning leaders must stay a step ahead of their business, but that can be difficult when dealing with antiquated technology and limited delivery options. Do you have that nagging awareness that it is time to switch your learning technology, but haven't wanted to face the reality of doing so? Over 30 percent of organizations in a recent Brandon Hall survey had plans to replace their existing LMS solution. Most of them look forward to the transition with dread and concern. Can they make a solid business case for the change? Will the transition impact business processes or mission-critical learning needs?

Wednesday, August 6, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Death By Mismanagement: The Devastating Impact of Micromanagement (Free for ASTD/ATD members)

Employees today are often promoted through the ranks without always receiving the necessary training on how to be a rock-star manager. Through their ineffective behaviour, their teams’ production levels begin a steady downward cycle, ultimately ending in terminations, resignations, or demotions. Many productive employees leave an organization because of something their supervisor is doing—or not doing. Whether leaders find themselves too overwhelmed with responsibilities to take an active interest in employee development, or haven't received the proper leadership training to inspire creativity, take risks, and cultivate project ownership, the results are the same.

One of the biggest trouble spots arises in finding the balance between micromanaging and delegating. New, overzealous managers feel they need to know everything at all times. From their employees’ perspectives, this may be interpreted as a lack of trust and autonomy.

Help your supervisors learn how to walk the fine line between micromanaging and delegating, and enable them to motivate, lead, and inspire in even the most challenging times.

Wednesday, August 6, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: HCM Technology Trends and Excellence Awards

Are you a solution provider that offers phenomenal, innovative technologies to Learning and Development, Talent Management, Human Resources, Talent Acquisition, and Sales Enablement functions?

Or are you an organization that has created or implemented technologies to help streamline, save costs, and improve productivity within your organization?

Then we want to hear from you and invite you to apply for Excellence in Technology Awards Program.  The program offers you an opportunity to showcase your products, which will be reviewed by Brandon Hall Group’s elite analyst team and industry experts.

Now entering its 20th year, the Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards Program is the most prestigious awards program in the industry. Often times called the “Academy Awards” by Learning, Talent and Business Executives, the program was one of the first of its kind in the learning industry, which was pioneered in 1994.

Thursday, August 7, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Breaking Training Development Project Rules

In 1969, the Project Management Institute (PMI) was founded. Project Management specialists were  building roads, buildings, the new “computers,” and lunar modules. The AT&T telephone operators still plugged wires into boards to transfer calls! Paper memos slowly communicated work to be done. Multi-tasking was unheard of. The PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) established a standardized and control-focused approach to doing projects, much like ADDIE brought to the new field of training.  

Now, 45 years later, our work looks more like a flashmob: interruptions, unending work, dysfunctional multi-tasking, and highly matrixed organizations. Everyone needs everyone to do their pile of projects. We have to embrace the structure of the PMBOK while looking at our project artifacts and tools in a new way. Join Lou Russell to learn about shortcuts that help “accidental” project managers organize and adapt to chaos.

Thursday, August 7, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Moving from the Classroom to VILT with No Drama (ASTD/ATD subscriber content)

Virtual Instructor Led Training (VILT) is now a fact of life for most organizations. Yet a lot of training professionals still struggle to make the move from the classroom to the virtual environment.

This webinar is hosted by Wayne Turmel, writer, speaker, and president of GreatWebMeetings.com, which teaches companies and their people to sell, present, train and lead people using online and virtual presentation and meeting tools.

Thursday, August 7, 2014, 9AM – 10AM PST: Thursday, August 7, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Best Practices to Ensure Maximum ROI on Learning and Development

Employee development these days is a big deal and it is at the top of CEO priority lists. Billions of dollars are being spent on development, and this number is ever increasing. Research studies show that companies that develop their employees - and do it well - reap big rewards in terms of product innovation, market share, and greater efficiency.

This webinar will be an informative and engaging one hour session that will conclude with five best practices that need to be considered to ensure maximum ROI investment for all L&D activities. This webcast will be of particular interest to: Instructional Designers, Trainers, ELearning Trainers, LMS administrators, Employee and Management Development, and Organizational Development – and has been pre-approved for one hour of continuing education (HRCI) credits!

You will learn:

• The difference between training and development and how the difference effects your development communication plan

• The definition of “scrap learning”

• How people best develop new skills or capabilities

• What learners are expecting in their development programs

• How to ensure that development will lead to organization success

Monday, August 11, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Global Best Practices in Building Service Cultures (Free for ASTD/ATD members)

Organizations with a powerful service reputation and a superior service culture attract and retain the best talent, achieve market leadership, and enjoy sustainable success. Ron Kaufman will show you why some organizations succeed beautifully, while others fail miserably. Find out what works, what doesn’t, what your organization should do, and what you must avoid.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Mixing It Up and Flipping the Classroom

Organizations have adopted the virtual classroom as a way to maximize training opportunities while minimizing costs. After a decade of ineffective sessions, training organizations are looking for instructional design techniques that will create virtual programs that will meet, or even exceed, the results achieved in more traditional settings.

Trending in the virtual classroom design space are two concepts: how to “flip the classroom” to maximize valuable collaboration time, and how to apply the latest thinking with regards to Bloom's Taxonomy to determine how best to deliver content in this new environment. Another key consideration concerns how blended learning fits into the equation. Do we need to both FLIP and BLEND?

In this session, techniques will be shared that will help you to:

• Determine what content is best delivered in a live, virtual format.

• Map learning objectives to the appropriate virtual classroom tools using a modern application of Bloom'sTaxonomy of Learning.

• "Flip the classroom" to maximize the collaborative impact of "together time."

Tuesday, August 12, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Maximizing the Effectiveness of of Sales Training (Free for ASTD/ATD members)

Companies spend about $20 billion a year on various forms of sales training. Still, many sales leaders report low ROIs from their sales training initiatives. Join ATD for this webcast and learn how to maximize the effectiveness of your sales training initiative. Norman Behar and David Jacoby discuss five essential factors that can help you achieve sustainable success from your investment in sales training programs. Learning takeaways for attendees:

• Motivate your team for training success.

• Leverage the benefits of virtual sales training.

• Reinforce training to make new skills lasting habits.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Building Trust and Transparency in Your Organization (Free for ASTD/ATD members)

We have a faltering economy and most organizations need top performance from their workforce to survive. Yet some of the actions needed for a company to remain viable come at the cost of losing the hard-earned trust of their employees, which greatly reduces productivity. If this is a familiar scenario for you and your organization, you will profoundly benefit from this webinar.

Join Bob Whipple for an enlightening program that shows a clear pathway for enhancing trust and transparency in organizations. This session is interactive and will reveal some wonderful opportunities for turning a corner on the malaise of the economy and the resulting disconnect in communication between companies and their employees.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014, 10 AM – 11AM PST: Big Data: What It is and What It Means for You (Free for CSTD members)

The era of Big Data - the creation of massive amounts of data often too large to handle - is here and you are one of the sources. You shop, text, Like, tweet, check-in, watch movies on Netflix and Google everything. And just maybe, your smartphone or tablet has become an extension of your body that you can't sleep without. Big Data is the present and future, and it is affecting you whether you like it or not, and whether you are aware of it or not. But what does that mean? How do we bring this new reality down to our day-to-day lives and careers?

Join Jamie Good, Social Media Specialist at Global Knowledge Canada, as he explores with you the implications and effects of Big Data on your present and future. Learn how being a part of our data-driven society impacts so many facets of your daily life and how Big Data will change the face of Learning and Development forever.

Thursday, August 14, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Next-Generation Learning Strategies for a Next-Generation World

What are your employees learning today? Or maybe a better question might be: are your employees learning today? If you aren't certain of the answer to either question, or the answer to either question is negative, you might have a problem. And the problem might not be your employees, either.

In March, we talked about a next generation of learning content strategies. Now we'll go deeper into that concept of a next generation of learning by exploring a new look at the very foundation of learning strategies more broadly. In this webinar, we'll explore what a next generation of learning strategies might include, how to develop such a strategy for your organization, and how you can begin taking action right away to build an effective employee learning program that will prepare employees to acquire the learning skills needed to learn how to perform effectively in jobs that might not exist today.

Thursday, August 14, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: On the Right Track: Designing Programs That Last (Free for ASTD/ATD members)

Using a one-size-fits-all approach when training can frustrate advanced learners and leave others behind. Training tracks address the spectrum of competency levels possessed by employees, and are more successful when teaching complex skill sets. In this 60-minute webinar, OpenSesame's Marketing Manager Katie Hurst will show you how to use backwards planning to build a series of lessons, ensuring your employees retain knowledge and more effectively apply skills in the workplace. You will learn to:

• Differentiate between the levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.

• Learn the value of varied practice and lesson spacing.

• Practice the Backwards Design process.

Participants will also receive a free copy of the accompanying e-book, which includes worksheets for use in designing your own training tracks.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: How Change Gets Stuck (Free for ASTD/ATD members)

The path to implementing change in an organization isn’t always smooth. On the way, you run into frequent speed bumps, wrong-way signs, and even concrete barriers. These road hazards on the way to change are obstacles that prevent you from moving forward. Despite your best intentions, you and your change initiative can get stuck.

In this webcast, you will learn the warning signs that your change initiative is stalled, and identify some of the root causes that may be preventing the organization from making progress. We will also discuss what you can do to get unstuck, and how to avoid getting stuck in the first place. Bring your challenges and your experience to this interactive session where we’ll uncover the common obstacles to organizational change.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: How the Digital Skills Gap Is Killing Your Team’s Productivity—and What You Can Do About It

A recent study by Deloitte found that the rapid pace of technological change in the workplace is leading to a skills half-life of just 2.5 years. Even the most adept employee can quickly fall behind—and workers, businesses, and the entire economy are paying the price. Every year, the digital skills gap drives a loss of nearly $1 trillion for the US economy. For a firm with 1,000 employees, this translates to a $10 million loss each year on a compensation basis alone.

But we need not stand idly by as our organizations bleed productivity. By laying out the eight core competencies of digital skills, this webinar provides an action plan for addressing the digital skills gap in your team.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Best of DevLearn: Design Models and Patterns for Creating Better e-Learning

More people within organizations find themselves in the role of e-Learning designer without having the experience needed to solve particular design problems. Participants will learn a core set of learning-design models or patterns that even inexperienced practitioners can quickly understand. These models combine some of the best principles and leading practices gained from years of research and experience, and are easily applicable to the vast majority of learning requirements that come your way.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Business Side of a Successful Performance Consulting Practice

This session is about the folklore and implications of different legal structures, including partnerships, sub S corporations, sole proprietorships, and non-profits as they apply to operating a successful consulting practice. You will understand the importance of asking the right questions when working with your lawyer, banker, and accountant. 

This series is for you if you are new to consulting or are thinking about starting your own consulting practice in the areas of training, e-Learning, process improvement, or performance improvement.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Four Roles and Secret Skills of Followership

According to research in The Harvard Business Review and from Lloyd’s of London, the ability to grow effective leaders is an international crisis for organizations: poor leaders are hurting the results of most companies around the globe.

Twenty years of leading in the military, academia, business, and politics has taught Cory Bouck that the best leaders act, paradoxically, as both a leader and a follower at the same time throughout their career. Everybody has a boss, and both of you can enhance your reputation for strong leadership through your "followership.”

During this interactive webinar, you will be introduced to four key roles and learn how to demonstrate the secret skills of followership. Followership is the first—and most career-enhancing—form of leadership.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Four Leadership Behaviours That Build or Destroy Trust (Free for ASTD/ATD members)

Trust continues to be identified as a missing ingredient in today's workplace. As surveys show, only a small percentage of today's workers strongly agree that they trust their leaders. To ensure high levels of organizational performance, leaders need to tackle trust head-on. The key is to demonstrate the behaviours people most associate with trust.

In this webinar, participants will learn how to:

• Recognize the warning signs that people lack trust in you and your leadership.

• Purposefully engage in the four trust-building behaviours.

• Create strong, long-lasting, trust-based relationships.

Don't miss this opportunity to learn how to raise the level of trust in your organization by increasing the “trust-ability” of your leaders.

Monday, August 25, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Aha Moments in Talent Management (Free for ASTD/ATD members)

This webcast addresses the biggest issues in talent management. We will discuss some best practices to emulate and some worst practices to avoid. Anyone who manages people is a talent manager, so what are the essentials that everyone should know? By attending this presentation, you will learn answers to the following:

• What is talent management?

• What are the functions of talent management?

• What do we mean by the word “talent?" (Spoiler alert: The word is not synonymous with “people.”)

• What is the true nature of the job of anyone who manages people?

• How do you create accountabilities for talent management?

• How can you avoid the single biggest mistake in talent management—one that most organizations are guilty of committing regularly?

Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Variables: 10 Things Every Storyline Developer Wants to Know

As e-Learning developers we often get caught up in designing only what we know from experience. The same holds true with e-Learning developers using Articulate Storyline. The more you know, the more options and ideas become evident to solving instructional design challenges. The more you know about variable programming in Storyline, the more the world opens up to unlimited design possibilities.  

Those who attend will learn... 

• Variable types and their differences.

• The various uses of variable types.

• The best time to use a variable.

• Tips for how to best manage multiple variables.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Thinking Beyond ROI: A New Way of Looking at Learning Metrics (Free for ASTD/ATD members)

Learning professionals often mistake learning metrics for business metrics. Attendance rates and ROI are great indicators of a training program’s internal impacts, but often are irrelevant to an organization’s competitive goals. Koreen Pagano, director of enterprise product management at lynda.com, explains how to compile and share metrics that expose greater value. After this session, you will be able to:

• Think beyond ROI.

• Translate training benefits into the language of business.

• Frame learning as a competitive advantage.

Thursday, August 28, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Closing Skill Gaps at Caterpillar Starts with Content Strategy

High Impact Learning Organizations (HILO) facilitate continuous learning. One where the development of new and increased skills ensure their employees can adapt quickly to a changing environment and help the business compete effectively. HILOs like Caterpillar strive to build long-term organizational capability through personalized learning paths and development plans. 

According to Bersin by Deloitte, one of the top three factors separating HILOs from the others is Content Capability. Join David Mallon, Head of Research at Bersin by Deloitte, as he interviews Michael Miller, Process and Standards Supervisor at Caterpillar, Inc.  to learn how Content Strategy is driving Caterpillar’s drive to personalized learning and transforming how their dealer technicians will learn and demonstrate competency and skills in the future.

In this session you will learn:

• Caterpiller's approach to creating bite-sized learning that can be tailored to individua learning needs.

• Unique methods for delivering learning content at the right time in the right place.

• Measuring results at the content, personal and organizational level.

• Personalized learning as the most effective approach to closing organizational skill gaps.

Free T&D webinars for July 2014

Happy summer! July is just around the corner, and so is that baking summer heat we look forward to every year. It’s fun to bask in the sun, but when you’re ready for some shade, why not check out a free webinar or two? July is full of good ideas—we hope they will inspire and motivate you.

Tuesday, July 1, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Designing eLearning for Maximum Motivation

When asked to identify the weakness in most eLearning, designers and students alike often note the failure to engage the learner’s attention as a chief problem. The problem is, “How do you motivate the learner while still doing the serious work of instruction?”

In this webinar, Ethan Edwards will explore the importance of motivation in the design framework for eLearning and present rules for creating maximally motivating eLearning, which will be illustrated through several successful corporate eLearning courses. In this webinar, learn to:

• Analyze the importance of motivation in an eLearning design framework

• Apply six rules for creating maximally motivating eLearning solutions

• Examine design considerations for content, scope, difficulty, judgment, levelling, content placement, and user control

Tuesday, July 1, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Absolutely, Positively Achieve Level 4 Outcomes (Free for ATD members)

In this webinar, James Pepitone will brief you on what experienced work design consultants know about how to increase business results that are specifically dependent on people. James will help you see and understand the broader system of challenges involved. He also will share numerous stories from his work partnering with his clients’ training and development functions to create Level 4 business results. Participants will learn:

• Why most training programs do not achieve Level 4 outcomes

• The primary factors determining business results dependent on people

• How to respond more effectively to the expectations of managers

• How to absolutely, positively achieve Level 4 outcomes

Wednesday, July 9, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: How to Create a Learning Measurement Strategy

In this session, you'll learn the essential steps needed to build a learning measurement strategy to sustain a practical and scalable measurement process. The session will also explore the key elements to build the measurement culture, including leadership, skills, tools, and technology. Real-world examples of measurement strategy in practice will be provided. This webinar will:

• Provide an overview of learning measurement strategy

• Discuss the criteria to create a strategy that sustains a measurement process

• Listen to real-world examples of how learning measurement strategy is successful

Wednesday, July 9, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Research Spotlight: Workforce Management Trends

Workforce management is often the misunderstood stepsister of the Human Capital world. Images of timecards and payroll reconciliations can be shudder-inducing. But today's modern workforce management is all about how organizations can use technology to optimize processes and help improve efficiency, effectiveness, and employee engagement.

Join Mollie Lombardi, Brandon Hall’s new Principal Analyst covering Workforce Management, as she discusses:

• What workforce management means to today's organizations

• How technology can drive transparency, integration, and analytics to drive business results

• Where workforce and talent management intersect, and how to manage the integration points

• The role of mobile tools and modern business intelligence in optimizing the workforce

Wednesday, July 9, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Talent Development Reporting Principles (TDRp): Standards for the Reporting and Management of Human Capital (Free for ATD members)

Talent Development Reporting Principles (TDRp) is an industry-led initiative to develop and implement internal reporting and management standards for all key human capital processes, such as L&D, leadership development, and talent acquisition. TDRp employs common industry measures to create three standard statements and three standard management reports to enable practitioners to run talent like a business, ensuring that planned, measurable outcomes are delivered effectively and efficiently. In this webinar, Dave Vance will discuss what types of measures should be reported. He also will explain how to:

• Organize measures into three standard TDRp statements

• Create three management reports from the key measures in the three statements

• Show alignment and expected impact of talent initiatives

• Use the reports to execute with discipline

Thursday, July 10, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Connecting Learning to the Bottom Line and Showing Impact(Free for ATD members)

In this webinar, Martha Soehren, the chief talent development officer at Comcast, will present a compelling case for using a governance structure to help drive the learning agenda and learning strategy with a keen focus on aligning learning outcomes to business metrics. The Comcast team of 500 L&D professionals uses a standard training measurement strategy that leverages Kirkpatrick’s model and connects the dots from analysis to evaluation. Martha will share a couple of business impact stories and some of the lessons learned from their work. This work is important to Comcast as the largest mass media and communications company in the world by revenue. It is also the largest cable company and home Internet service provider in the United States, and the nation's third largest home telephone service provider.

Tuesday, July 15, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: How and When to Allow Learners to Cheat in Compliance Courses

Experience shows us that learners try to circumvent or trick the learning process or "cheat" the eLearning compliance course. This behaviour often happens when the requirements of the compliance course are impossible to meet or are completely unreasonable. In the process, the learners find a workaround that designers, developers, and trainers condone. How do we address the dilemma about rigid, inflexible, tracking-only types of eLearning? How do we make a difference in spite of our limited capacities and roles? In the webinar, you will learn:

• What can be done to reduce the pain of boredom and poor learning in compliance courses?

• How do you engage learners during the certification course, even with rigid tracking requirements?

• How do you differentiate between the typical compliance course and story-based compliance course learning environments?

• How can you help learners obtain a few main ideas, yet still comply with the tracking requirements?

• How do you find opportunities to identify must-learn content and apply the “embedding technique” in stories used in your course?

• How do you avoid confusing the administrative control function with the learning function of compliance courses?

Tuesday, July 15, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Manage More Effectively with Emotional Intelligence (Free for ATD members)

It is said that emotional intelligence (EQ) is the key indicator of our success in business, relationships, leadership, and even in our personal happiness. But what makes EQ so important?

This webcast will help you understand how better relationships produce better results. When leaders have EQ skills, team members are motivated to work better and more quickly. They also have more respect for those in leadership, and tend to have a greater sense of pride in their work and in their company.

To ensure that we're leading effectively, we should all have our emotional intelligence skills assessed, and decide if we should work to improve our EQ. This work will pay off, as our emotional intelligence enables us to establish relationships founded on trust, confidence, and respect—qualities of great importance to us as managers.

Thursday, July 17, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Accidental Instructional Designer

Chances are, you didn’t dream of becoming a designer of eLearning when you grew up, did you? Most of the working instructional designers in the eLearning business got here by accident. So now that you’re here and doing this work, how can you become a more intentional practitioner? We’ll take a look at four key areas to focus on in order to become a well-rounded eLearning designer, talk about ways that you can take your practice to the next level, and share some quick tips for better eLearning design. In this session you will:

• Explore the four slices of the “eLearning pie” so you have an understanding of the big picture that is our industry

• Identify your own sweet spot as an instructional designer and identify areas where you could dig deeper in order to advance your practice

• Apply simple strategies to your current projects for better eLearning outcomes and more engaging designs

Thursday, July 17, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Putting Our Brains Back in the Office (Free for ATD members)

What is a "brain-friendly workplace," and how might you play a role in developing brain-friendliness in your organization? Applying recent neuroscience research to management practices, process and system design, and organizational culture, Dr. Erika Garms will introduce the concept of brain-friendliness, compare it to other organizational improvement methods, and offer recommendations for both evaluating the current degree of brain-friendliness in a work group or organization and embarking on an effort to leverage pertinent neuroscience to improve your workplace. Join us for an eye-opening (and mind-opening) session during which you will learn:

• What a brain-friendly workplace is

• Why learning and development professionals are uniquely positioned to drive and support brain-friendliness at work

• How brain-friendliness compares to high-engagement or productivity cultures

• Ways to implement small changes quickly for the beginning of a culture shift

• How to apply principles of brain science to your work

Tuesday, July 22, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Engaging Learners through Game-Thinking

Gamification should be thought of as a design sensibility and not merely a digital tool. It is a thought process and a methodology to think about engaging and motivating learners. While the result of gamification is often fun, the ultimate outcome behind developing a gamified approach is increased engagement and motivation.  In this webinar, explore several methods for applying game-thinking to your own online and classroom learning designs.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: 10 Ways to Ruin Your E-Learning: A How-To Guide in Reverse(Free for ATD members)

In many professional areas, it is usually a good strategy to look to common practices in the field as a guide—maybe not for the most cutting-edge ideas, but at least for reliable models to follow. Unfortunately, in eLearning this can often be a recipe for disaster. Join Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist with Allen Interactions, on a journey uncovering the 10 most common design practices that are sure to ruin your eLearning.

Wednesday, July 23, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Best of mLearning DemoFest 2014: Award-Winning mLearning in Action

This year at mLearnCon, dozens of conference participants will show off their latest mobile learning projects at mLearning DemoFest. Presenters will offer fellow attendees the opportunity to see cutting-edge mobile learning and performance support solutions in action, and share information about the tools, technologies and processes used to build them. Meet some of the winners from this year’s mLearning DemoFest in this free webinar, and see their award-winning solutions.

Wednesday, July 23, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Top 125 Think Tank: Benchmarking Your Learning Strategy against the Best-of-the-Best

Is your learning strategy firing on all cylinders? We're currently in the process of benchmarking learning techniques and technologies used across multiple Training Magazine's Top 125 winners. During this one-of-a-kind webinar event, we'll share some discoveries from preliminary data on innovative best practices in such areas as proactively establishing an informal learning strategy, using mobile at the right time and for the right reasons, engaging participants in social learning communities,  extending learning to partners and customers, creating macro-level blends; and much more.

In this webinar, you will learn about successful strategies used for:.

• Just-in-time, informal learning

• Mobile learning (using mobile for the right purposes)

• Engaging learners in social learning communities

• Training partners and customers

• Blending techniques and technologies for maximum utility

Wednesday, July 23, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: PM Blasphemy: When Not to Do PM the Official Way (Free for ATD members)

In 1969, the Project Management Institute (PMI) was founded. Project Management specialists were building large buildings, roads, bridges, some of the first computers, and lunar modules. AT&T telephone operators still plugged wires into boards to transfer calls. Paper memos slowly communicated work to be done. Multi-tasking was unheard of! The PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) established a standardized and control-focused approach to completing projects, in the same way ADDIE standardized the new field of training.

Flash forward to 2014: Our work is filled with interruptions, unending work, dysfunctional multi-tasking, and highly-matrixed organizations. To be successful, we have to look at our project artifacts and tools in a new way. Join Lou Russell to learn about shortcuts that help “accidental” project managers organize and adapt to chaos.

Tuesday, July 29, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: ROI of Public Speaking (Free for ATD members)

This event will teach the public speaker how to show their clients the benefits of hiring them for a public speaking event using tried-and-tested methods of ROI. Participants will be able to answer one or all of these questions:Will this make me money? Will this save me money? Will this solve a problem?

Attendees will then be able to report on these results, showing their clients the ROI of their speaking engagements. Reporting on the ROI level of evaluation is a powerful tool for the public speaker to sell their services and improve their clients’ business. By the end of this webcast, attendees will learn how to:

• Define the ROI process for public speaking opportunities

• Determine if ROI is right for their service

• Map the ROI to a client’s requirements from a public speaking engagement

• Communicate on industry- and client-specific results of public speaking opportunities and training

• Put the puzzle together: evaluation process of public speaking engagements

• Overcome the barriers of ROI

• Report data so that they are perceived as usable and relevant to the target audience

Wednesday, July 30, 10AM – 11AM PST: Employee Engagement for Dummies

You’ve heard of employee engagement, but how do you take it from an idea to an actionable plan? SilkRoad is pleased to partner with Bob Kelleher for the virtual book launch of his latest work, Employee Engagement for Dummies! From the author of Louder Than Words and Creativeship comes this all-inclusive, step-by-step guide to all things employee engagement. Join us as Bob takes attendees on a journey through his brand-new book. He’ll explain concepts that will help you foster employee engagement, a concept that furthers an organization's interests through ensuring that employees remain involved in, committed to, and fulfilled by their work. Learn about:

• Creating a new-hire onboarding checklist

• Implementing a new-hire employee orientation process

• Learn how to improve employee engagement

Thursday, July 31, 10AM – 11AM PST: Show Your Work: L&D's New Frontier

The complaints are familiar: Traditional means of managing organizational knowledge—in reports, status meetings, and standard operating procedures—just don’t work very well. We amass piles of documentation yet can’t find what we need when we need it; we find out too late that a task was already accomplished, better, by someone in another organizational silo; we spend hours never finding the information we’re looking for. 

"Working out loud" (also known as "narrating work" or "showing work") is an increasingly easy way of overcoming a lot of these problems. L&D is uniquely positioned to help in the effort, supporting workers with new tools and techniques for sharing tacit knowledge, building bridges between talent pools, sharpening communication, and helping organizations build better maps of work and activities.  This session explores some approaches to showing work—and how L&D can help.

Thursday, July 31, 10AM – 11AM PST: Using Social Collaboration to Accelerate Traditional Learning

According to Brandon Hall Group’s Business Focus 2014 survey, more than 50 percent of organizations say social media will be of great interest to them over the next 12 months, more so than a shortage of talent, Big Data, or global expansion. Companies are recognizing the power of social and collaborative tools for learning, yet most struggle with exactly how to leverage them.

Join David Wentworth, Senior Learning Analyst with Brandon Hall Group, and Shelley Schmoker,  VP of Marketing for Bloomfire, as they examine how social media can enhance and accelerate your organization’s traditional learning models. Discussion topics:

• The rise of social learning technologies

• How does social fit?

• Bridging internal and external social media

• Examples of companies leveraging social/collaborative learning

Thursday, July 31, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: What's New in Training Effectiveness? (Free for ATD members)

In this fast-paced and interactive webinar, 6Ds® Company CEO Andy Jefferson and CLO Dr. Roy Pollock will introduce fresh insights into what makes training truly effective. You will come away with practical ideas you can implement immediately to boost training transfer, reduce learning scrap, and move from order-taker to strategic business partner. Andy and Roy will introduce key concepts from the 6Ds® and ATD’s Learning Transfer Certificate Program, including:

• The only two questions that matter when it comes to training transfer

• The six disciplines practiced by the most effective training organizations

• The weakest link in corporate training programs and how to mend it

• The implications of neuroscience for training design and delivery

• Why performance support must be built from the beginning

• Guiding principles for practical and effective program evaluation

Free T&D Webinars for June 2014

It's hard to believe we were wearing mittens just a couple of months ago! Spring is well into its stride, and everywhere you look, things are blooming. This is a great time of year to shake off any remaining cold-weather cobwebs and make an action plan. Why not check out a free webinar or two and get some fresh ideas? We hope they will inspire and motivate you.

Tuesday, June 3, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Creating Highly Effective Virtual Teams – A Case Study

Can a virtual team be as effective as a co-located team? This is a question that organizations are debating, and the arguments on both sides are very compelling. The reality is, a virtual team can be very effective if the correct conditions are met and maintained. It’s about putting together the right personalities, ensuring they have the right tools, and leading the team successfully. After discussing the arguments for and against establishing a virtual team, this workshop will use real-life examples to address six key enablers for success:

• How to form the virtual team

• How to enable the virtual team

• How to maintain the virtual team

• How to protect the virtual team

• How to lead the virtual team

• How to reward the virtual team

Tuesday, June 3, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Leading Collaborative Virtual Teams

As advancing technology and globalization continue to impact many organizations, it's clear that virtual teams require consistent attention, direction, and recognition from managers. Strong work relationships remain critical to drive productivity and support innovation, trust, and nimble teamwork. But building and maintaining strong relationships becomes challenging as teams become more dispersed. What must a leader do in the virtual workplace to effectively manage distributed team members? After attending this one-hour webinar, you'll be able to:

• Design your "game plan" around eight practices used by the best virtual team managers

• Bring attention, direction, and recognition to your virtual team

• Build accountability even when you can't sit down next to your colleagues

Tuesday, June 3, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Trends in the Corporate Training Market: MOOCs and Online Development Programs

In today’s online environment, the ability to learn any subject is merely a click away. People can use the Internet to learn how to play guitar, bake a cake, or repair a dishwasher. Open online courses allow learners to easily drop into learning environments that meet their specific needs. Why shouldn’t they be able to learn business skills and concepts that will help develop their skills and grow their careers in the same way? With the growing skills gap, it is more important than ever to invest in continuous learning within the workplace. Join Senior Analyst David Wentworth of Brandon Hall Group as he explores the power of incorporating an online learning platform to attract top candidates, train new employees, and develop the skillset of their workforce. Key takeaways include:

• A look at how individuals learn best today and what that means for the future of corporate learning

• The role that MOOCs play in the corporate training environment

• How organizations can adapt their learning and development programs to keep their employees’ skills up to date

• Real-world examples of companies successfully embracing online learning platforms

Wednesday, June 4, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Three Top Tips for Applying to Brandon Hall Group’s Excellence in Technology Awards Program

Are you a solution provider that offers phenomenal, innovative technologies to learning, talent management, HR, or sales and marketing organizations? Or are you an organization that has created or implemented technologies to help streamline, save costs, and improve productivity within your organization? Then we want to hear from you, and invite you to apply for the Excellence in Technology Awards Program in mid-June. The program offers you an opportunity to showcase your products, which will be reviewed by Brandon Hall Group’s elite analyst team and industry experts. Now entering its 20th year, the Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards Program is the most prestigious awards program in the industry. Often times called the “Academy Awards” by Learning, Talent, and Business Executives, the program was one of the first of its kind in the learning industry, which was pioneered in 1994.

This 15-minute webinar will offer you step-by-step instructions, including:

• Overview of a simple process for applying

• nside tips on what the judges look for in the applications

• What not to do

Thursday, June 5, 2014, 7AM – 8AM PST: Coaching with a Global Mindset (Free for ASTD members)

This webinar will develop a foundation for understanding what coaching is and how culture influences the coaching process. Participants will harvest the creative potential generated when people who think and act differently come together. In today’s interconnected and interdependent global workplace, it is vital to shift paradigms from cross-cultural to intercultural to inclusiveness. By doing so, we build bridges across the cultural, linguistic, generational, and gender divides found when working across national boundaries, organizational boundaries, and the boundaries created by different disciplines and educational backgrounds.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Key Practices for Developing a Game-Changing Candidate Engagement Strategy

The name of the game in recruiting has changed in recent years. With competition for talent at an all-time high, sourcing has become a long-term strategy. As if talent acquisition teams didn’t have enough on their plates with finding qualified candidates and getting them in the door, they’re now expected to attract and engage talent on an ongoing basis. To accomplish this task while keeping up with their day-to-day responsibilities, some have drawn inspiration from customer relationship management techniques used by marketers and salespeople to keep leads warm and foster repeat business. The result is rapidly evolving into a standard component of effective talent acquisition best known as candidate relationship management (CRM). Join Brandon Hall Group Talent Acquisition Analyst Kyle Lagunas as he discusses key practices in CRM, including:

• Establishing a working definition and value-add of candidate relationship management

• Identifying effective CRM techniques in use by today’s most successful hiring organizations

• Highlighting tools and technologies available to support CRM as part of a long-term talent acquisition strategy

Tuesday, June 10, 2014, 9AM – 10AM PST: Leaders as Teachers: Improve Organization Foresight and Fast Sight(Free for ASTD members)

Foresight means seeing what’s ahead. Fast sight means responding to change faster than competitors. Learn how a leaders-as-teachers (LAT) approach improves these two essential characteristics of sustainable success. A formal LAT program develops leadership capacity to analyze and learn from failure; encourage discussion, debate, and experimentation; distribute wisdom deeper into the organization to strengthen alignment and execution; and create a culture that is open to learning. When leaders teach, they create environments to help teams discover, adapt, and respond effectively to changing business conditions. This session will teach participants:

• Evidence to build a business case for a LAT approach

• Ideas to shape the size and scope of an approach that will succeed and survive long term

• Considerations for expanding the role of leader-teachers far beyond the boundaries of the traditional classroom

Tuesday, June 10, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Zeroing In: How to Meet Your Leadership Development Challenges

As many industries recover from a withering worldwide recession, organizations are focusing on new ways to expand the strategic contributions of their leaders. AchieveGlobal conducted research with 50 major companies to get a clear picture of what leadership development looks like—the challenges, goals, approaches and outcomes—and to share insights you can apply in your organization. Join us to zero in on new findings on critical ways to develop your leaders, including:

• Challenges – Surprisingly, rather than grappling with external business conditions (the economy, technology, etc.), organizations are more stressed about solving eight functional leadership development challenges.

• Goals – Regardless of the challenges they face, most organizations want their leaders to be able to improve day-to-day results in nine behavioral areas.

• Approaches – To reach their goals, organizations need to decide how much they’ll commit to learning initiatives. Consider four ways to define your learning initiatives and key questions to help you decide which approach to take.

• Outcomes – The webinar will conclude with details on how four top organizations in different industries successfully met their most pressing leadership development challenges.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Bridging the Gender Gap – A New Approach to Shattering the Glass Ceiling

Despite strong efforts in many organizations, women continue to be poorly represented in top leadership roles worldwide. This means many businesses are failing to reap the well-documented "gender dividend." So what are all these well-meaning companies doing wrong?

Chances are, they are looking at “advancing women leaders” as a development issue, or perhaps as a hiring-and-promoting challenge—when, in fact, it’s a culture change issue. Advancing women into leadership roles successfully requires bringing together all stakeholders (and both genders) in a concerted change effort, with support and energy from top leadership. The organization must change, to bridge the gender gap and make the very best use of all its talent, thereby gaining a competitive advantage. In this webinar, you will learn:

• The gender dividend: the business advantage of developing women leaders in the organization

• Why addressing this challenge as a change effort that brings many stakeholders together is essential to success

• How your change management initiative can succeed in bridging the gender gap to include everyone

• How to use your talent management strategy as a key lever

• Some specific skills women leaders need to be effective in positions of power

Thursday, June 12, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: A Framework for Mobile Learning

Mobile learning may still be in its infancy, but according to a new Brandon Hall Group survey, it is proving to be effective, and high-performing companies are leading the way. The challenge is where to begin. Organizations are struggling to understand whether mobile learning is important to them, and if so, how it fits into their learning landscape. In fact, according to Brandon Hall Group’s 2013 Mobile Learning Survey, only 21 percent of companies worldwide have a formal mobile learning strategy.

Join Senior Analyst David Wentworth of Brandon Hall Group and Pete Barrett, NetDimensions’ President (Americas) and General Manager of NetDimensions Interactive, as they examine what a fully mature mobile learning framework looks like and offer ways for organizations to either get started or move ahead.

Key takeaways include:

• A view of the current mobile learning landscape

• Mobile learning strategies of high performing organizations

• Real-world examples of mobile learning and performance support in action.

Thursday, June 12, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Let Go and Replace Very Old LMSs that Do Not Support New Learners and Business Needs

Studies have shown that companies are systematically changing LMSs into newer and better-suited learning systems to support newer learner needs and business demands. But how do you assess whether it’s time to make the change? In this webinar you will learn:

• What are the common moans and complaints based on studies about LMSs, their cousins LCMSs, Knowledge Management and Performance Support systems?

• Where are the fracture points between learner and business needs, and the capabilities and strategies of LMSs, etc.?

• How do you conduct, collect, and present data to determine whether it’s time to let go or replace your LMSs?

• What important strategies must you plan and prepare to implement the change?

• How do you ensure that the new solutions will meet new learner and business needs?

• What are models and examples of learning systems that are highly flexible, affordable, and creative, and that allow learners to go through discovery, play, and structured learning?

Monday, June 16, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Mediocrity or Greatness: Transformational Leadership in an Incremental World(Free for ASTD members)

The world is changing so quickly that just being competent or improving incrementally isn’t sufficient for sustained success. Yet most organizations are satisfied with only getting a little better, consistently resisting more transformational initiatives. This webinar presents a proven, low-risk methodology for developing transformational leadership throughout an organization. Based on the recently published book The Star Factor (written by the presenters), the webinar shows people how to discover the “wisdom” that makes star performers exceptional. This webinar will teach you to use the latest in the neuroscience of learning to develop others in your organization to think and act like the stars and transformational leaders.

Tuesday, June 17, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Big Data(Free for ASTD members)

This webcast is based on the recently released report from ASTD and the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) titled, Big Data, Better Learning? How Big Data Is Affecting Organizational Learning. The report dives into the trending field of big data and examines how organizational learning is gathering and leveraging big data for training and development.

Join Carol Morrison, senior research analyst at i4cp, and Jenny Dearborn, senior vice president and chief learning officer at SAP, as they explore the findings of the report and how organizations are using big data.

Wednesday, June 18, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Best of Performance Support Symposium: Extending the Learning Blend with Performance Support

Organizations today face an urgent need to continuously support learning and performance on the job. The scope of the learning environment extends beyond classroom and online blends to include learning and performance-support opportunities at the point of work. Considering workforce mobility alone forces a reassessment of how we design, develop, and deliver solutions at the point of work. While we excel at linear learning methods in formal training, the work context requires a more diverse mix of smaller, task-level, role-specific learning and performance-support assets.

Participants in this session will learn how to create seamless, edge-to-edge solutions that extend a blend of the right learning and performance-support assets to the right learners and performers—at their moment(s) of need, in the right amount, in the right format, and to and from the right devices. You’ll learn why expanded discovery at the point of work reshapes and drives agile, iterative design and development methods that extend into the post-training point of work.

Wednesday, June 18, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Business Side of a Successful Performance Consulting Practice – Session 2: Finding Your Niche

This series is for you if you are new to consulting or are thinking about starting your own consulting practice in the areas of training, e-learning, process improvement, or performance improvement. The series will explore issues like:

• If I’m good at what I do, why do I need to worry about the business side of my business?

• Why should I find a niche? I like doing a lot of stuff and I’m more interesting getting paid.

• Why should I worry about legal structure stuff? I hire people for this.

• What will insurance do for me? What’s the difference anyway?

• Contract! I didn’t sign up to be a lawyer.

• I already have a network. Why worry about marketing channels?

This session is about finding your market niche so you stand out in the noise of established players, wannabes, and has-beens. You will understand the importance of branding yourself in ways that distinguish you in the marketplace.

Thursday, June 19, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Using Kirkpatrick® to Move Beyond Training Order-Taking

Do you feel like the order-taker in the training drive-thru lane? Then you won’t want to miss this new webinar. During this session, you will discover tactics to create more meaningful communication with training requesters so that you can better understand the performance and results that the training is intended to support. You will learn the critical questions to ask that will allow you to move beyond the training talk and into conversation about organizational needs. You will witness role plays demonstrating how key conversations could occur, with a focus on where the conversation went well and where it veered off track to assist you in managing your own conversations successfully.

Whether you lead a training department or are an instructional designer hoping to get better direction and feedback, this session will assist you in creating and delivering training that impacts performance and key organizational results.

Tuesday, June 24, 10AM – 11AM PST: Why Sales Training Doesn’t Work and What to Do About It

Improving performance of the sales team is likely the most difficult task any Sales manager or trainer faces. The pace at which we work and the amount of information needed on the job is overwhelming. Traditional methods of training just don’t work. Join experts from Sales and Marketing Management (SMM) magazine and Brainshark to learn how to turn training from a one-time event into a continuous journey that leads to increased sales. On this webinar with SMM and Brainshark you’ll learn:

• Strategies to take training to the next level with continuous sales performance support

• Techniques for creating a sales training process and tips on how to implement it

• How to measure and understand what works

Wednesday, June 25, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Is the Loss of Institutional Knowledge Hurting Your Company?

Over the next decade, organizations will experience the largest wave of retirements in history. To further impact turnover rates, Gen X and Gen Y workers on the average are leaving after only five and two years of service respectively. Without a solid and ongoing information succession plan to capture, transform, align, and track your employees’ tacit knowledge, your company’s ability to maintain and/or increase its performance will be affected. Register below to hear more about this challenge and to learn about strategies you can implement at your company to protect your institutional knowledge.

Wednesday, June 25, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Positive Workplace: Bridging the Gap Between Science and Exceptional Performance(Free for ASTD members)

Everyone is talking about the positive workplace! From The Journal of Positive Psychology to Harvard Business Review and The Wall Street Journal, improving productivity through workplace well-being is the hottest topic around. Join industry-leading experts Kim Rowe and Patrick Howell for this dynamic, application-focused webinar, and learn to transform your workplace into a positive one. Find answers to some important questions:

• Why do some organizations change, grow, and perform better than others?

• Why do certain employees remain engaged, stay focused, and exude optimism, while others are easily distracted and disengaged?

• What makes some organizations great places to work, fostering lasting friendships and professional relationships?

Thursday, June 26, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Culture Factor (Free for ASTD members)

Lewis Thomas once wrote: “If the air is right, the science will come.” The “air” in organizations has to be right for everything else to come, from gaining a marketplace advantage to attracting top talent, engaging employees, and developing new ideas to sustained profitability. Effective leaders are great at creating cultures that supply that air because they know that until they get culture right, nothing else will work well, at least not for any length of time. In this webcast, we will discuss why culture is such a game changer, strategies to create a culture that produces business results, and some immediate steps you can take today to up the air quality in your organization.

Free T&D Webinars in May 2014

Traditionally May signifies new growth and development—it’s a time for sowing seeds and seeing what sprouts. The very best gardens grow when we strategize and plant carefully. Just as our flower beds need water and sunshine, our minds love new ideas, and this month there are tons of interesting webinars to help your professional life flourish. Check out one of the free sessions this month—we hope they will inspire and motivate you.

Wednesday, May 7, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Creating an Engaging, Empowering and Electrifying Learning Culture That Drives Results

Successful organizations understand that people are their most important assets. When high-performance businesses understand employees’ core skills and development needs, they’re more likely to achieve superior results. But building out a dynamic learning culture that really understands your employee needs is not a simple task. Join this session for a lively discussion on how to build out a learning culture that will generate superior business results for your organization. Learn:

• Why it’s important to engage leaders across your organization when building a learning culture—and how to approach them.

• Top things to consider for delivering impactful training and development programs to your organization.

• How to tie your learning culture and programs back to business results.

Thursday, May 8, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Captivate Your Virtual Classroom

Captivate your virtual classroom with these ready-made activities for online training. Attend this interactive webinar to learn how to:

• Immediately engage your virtual classes.

• Teach technical topics using creative techniques.

• Instantly apply activities for interaction.

• Increase participant interaction with GoToTraining.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Grow Your Emotional Muscle

Join us for a Power Hour and build a personal strategy for growing your own emotional awareness and regulation:

• Learn how to notice and change the thought processes that trigger debilitating emotions.

• Identify the triggers that take you off your game.

• Set a goal to reduce the stress that keeps you from the success you are capable of.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Thinking of Replacing Your LMS

This session will help you reduce your fear and create a strategy for success during the process! Your business needs are changing fast, and so are the demands placed on your current learning technology. Learning leaders must stay a step ahead of their business, but that can be difficult when dealing with antiquated technology and limited delivery options. Do you have that nagging awareness that it is time to switch your learning technology, but haven't wanted to face the reality of doing so? Join David Wentworth, Senior Learning Analyst for Brandon Hall Group, and Saba's Charles DeNault, Senior Director, Product Marketing, as they share insights that can help reduce your fear of change and increase your odds of success. They'll discuss best practices from hundreds of successful transitions for creating a strategy for the upgrade, as well as tools and tricks for preparing your organization for a limited-impact change.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Learn to Get Your Expertise Utilized – Peter Block’s Flawless Consulting Skills: An Introduction

Bill Brewer will introduce participants to the basic concepts underlying Peter Block’s highly successful Flawless Consulting workshops. The principles are simple and practical.

These workshops, continually updated and enhanced by Peter Block, and the basis for his best-selling book Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used, teach staff professionals the competencies to successfully navigate the consulting relationship in situations where they have influence but no direct control. In the last 25 years over 1,000,000 people in hundreds of companies worldwide have been trained using Peter Block’s Flawless Consulting workshops.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Creating More Effective Online Training Through Interactivity – No Coding Required (Free for ASTD members)

Slide decks and videos are wonderful training tools, but have you ever wondered if there is a better way to engage learners? Are you leveraging the power of computers and the Internet to bring training to life? Join Christopher Poseley, vice-president of business development at Versal, to explore the value of active learning, and detail how to create interactive online courses that rival classroom-style exercises. Learn methods to improve retention and make training more effective. View case studies from companies at the forefront of online training. Takeaways:

• Interactivity and engagement is key to establishing long-term training retention.

• Consistent assessment throughout an educational experience is necessary to track learner progress and ensure quality training (and ROI).

• Discover a new, interactive training platform through Versal.com.

Friday, May 16, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Organizational Conflict: Get Used to It and Use It (Free for ASTD members)

Organizational conflict can be debilitating to a manager and negatively harm organizational productivity and employee engagement. Organizational conflict does not have to be dysfunctional—you can leverage it positively with the right strategies. So how do you remake this dreaded workplace activity into something positive? This webinar will better equip you to:

• Accept the dual nature of conflict—its disadvantages and its benefits.

• Assess the potential benefits you can achieve by handling your workplace conflicts more strategically.

• Avoid harming your organizational standing by becoming unbalanced in your conflict resolution approach (too nice, too aggressive, or too collaborative).

• Improve your working relationships and organizational standing by using appropriate conflict-resolution strategies.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Putting HR in the Driver's Seat of Collaborative Talent Management – 4 Talent-Centric Technologies to Tune Up Your Talent Strategy

Social media, collaborative learning, the pervasive power of video, and shifting workforce demographics are changing how we recruit talent. They also impact how work gets done, by whom, how knowledge is shared, and how we continuously learn and develop. As social tools climb the maturity curve, HR must lead in making organizations more talent-centric and ensuring they strengthen internal connections and promote the company culture—from recruitment  to onboarding, to developing and retaining talent.

Join Laci Loew, Vice President Talent Management and Principal Analyst at Brandon Hall Group, and Kevin Grossman, Director of Product and Content Marketing at Peoplefluent, to learn how analytics can help forecast critical talent needs throughout the employee lifecycle. It’s time to tune up your talent strategy and put you in the driver’s seat! Join us!

Wednesday, May 21, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Best of mLearnCon: Tools and Techniques for Creating Mobile Learning

This webinar showcases one of the best-rated, most popular sessions, speakers, or topics from mLearnCon 2013 Conference & Expo, now available to all through this special online presentation. Join Qualcomm senior director of mobile learning Geoff Stead as he shares some of the mobile strategies, tools, and technologies that help Qualcomm reach all 28,000 staff. Geoff will demonstrate Qualcomm’s latest in-house mobile-learning apps and discuss their mLearning development tools and approaches. Participants in this session will experience the mobile learning available to Qualcomm staff; be able to ask Geoff specific questions; and learn tips, tricks, and best practices for your mLearning projects.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Mentoring Partnerships: An Intergenerational Strategy (Free for ASTD members)

Do you agree that the differences among the four to five generations in the workplace are affecting productivity, retention, engagement, staff development, and succession planning? Do you realize that different mentoring approaches have similar goals? This session introduces a unique contemporary mentoring strategy that provides a two-way, mutually beneficial learning experience addressing these intergenerational challenges. The resulting outcomes are to retain and expand working relationships among the generations for reinforcing talent engagement and productivity and identifying future leaders.

Thursday, May 22, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Pinterest for Learning (Free for ASTD members)

One of the unique products to emerge in an increasingly crowded field of social tools is Pinterest—a fun combination of social bookmarking, images, commenting, and public sharing. It’s a great place for connecting with and sharing resources for your own professional development. So, you might be wondering how Pinterest can be used for learning and development.

Join Jane Bozarth for a quick example-filled tour of using Pinterest to support your practice and your professional growth.

Thursday, May 22, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Google Analytics Approach to Measuring Learning: Allowing You to Move at the Speed of Business

Learning is the engine that drives performance, so why is it that we can’t link the training we provide to performance? Today, we create learning using any number of rapid authoring tools, and then attempt to measure the effectiveness of that learning through metrics such as time-in-training, completion rates, and test scores. Unfortunately, these don’t tell you if the training you are providing is actually working. The business wants more. They want low-level, actionable metrics that speak their language. This can only be accomplished when we take a “Google Analytics” approach to measuring learning.

Join us for this webinar with Michael Rochelle, Chief Strategy Officer at the Brandon Hall Group, as he shows you how to apply the same “Google” content metrics the rest of the business uses to your own training content.

Thursday, May 29, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go: Career Conversations Employees Want

Despite economic conditions, unemployment levels, or any other business factor imaginable, your best employees—the ones you need most—want one thing from you, plain and simple: to support their growth and development.  Study after study confirms that development is the single most powerful tool managers have for driving engagement, retention, productivity, and results. Yet HR leaders know that career development is frequently the thing that gets sidelined unless or until the organization demands that some form be submitted during regular review cycles.

This session sheds a much-needed light on specifically what managers can do—within the time-starved, priority-rich, pressure-cooker environment in which they operate—to support employees’ careers. And it comes down to this: engage in short, ongoing conversations with employees about their career options, needs, and passions. It’s really that simple... and that complex.

Free T&D Webinars for April 2014

For many people this time of year represents a frenzy of activity. With fiscal-year time crunches and tax preparation, not to mention new business, it’s all we can do to keep up! But it always pays to make time for learning, and this month there’s a fantastic selection of free webinars to support you in your quest for excellence. We hope they will inspire and motivate you.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Business Side of a Successful Performance Consulting Practice

This series is for you if you are new to consulting or are thinking about starting your own consulting practice in the areas of training, e-learning, process improvement, or performance improvement. The series will explore issues such as business practices, niches, legalities and insurance, and networking. Session 1, Starting Your Own Practice, is about the three sides of a successful consulting practice and the often undervalued role the business side plays in being profitable and sustainable. You will learn the importance of using business acumen to support your practice expertise.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: First-Time Leaders: Leverage Leadership Insights to Accelerate Success(Free for ASTD members)

“If only I had known then what I know now about leadership.” Most people become good leaders only after stumbling through new situations, making mistakes, and learning from them. If you attend this webcast you will benefit from several lifetimes of leadership insights, learning from others' mistakes and positive experiences to cut out a lot of stumbling and pain and accelerate your success as first-time leaders.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Pushing and Pulling: Winning the Learning Tug-of-War

In order to work together so everyone in a business community is well informed, sometimes we need to push information out and sometimes we need to pull it in. Social networking and learning typically involve sharing vital information and hoping our colleagues pull. Wouldn’t it be great if we could push and also validate that the pull occurred? Let’s talk about how to play this game of informational tug-of-war and ensure everyone’s a winner.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: CLOs and Training Leaders: When Design Really Matters, Picking Our Battles

If you’re a CLO or training leader, you realize there are times when your clients are just checking-the-box, and a death by PowerPoint is what they want. Part of being a leader is having a track record for results—and knowing which battles to pick. This means you can identify projects, initiatives, and curricula that really must deliver results. And you can develop sponsors who value the investment and are open to collaborating on a genuine training solution. This session looks at strategies and tactics for driving retention, reinforcement, and transfer of learning. At the macro level the session addresses the organization and the change-management tasks that must be tackled. Using a different lens we will look at the micro level and explore tactical and tools such as e-learning, social media, and m-learning that can help drive retention and transfer of learning.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: The Benefits of Virtual Onboarding (Free for ASTD members)

Effective onboarding is critical to ensuring that new hires are quickly acclimated to your company culture, trained, and ready for success. Today’s onboarding programs, however, face new and difficult challenges posed by a geographically dispersed, multigenerational workforce. In this webcast, Tom Masotto, vice president of product management at ON24, will discuss how virtual onboarding environments can be used to:

• Train your global new hires at a significantly lower cost.

• More effectively assimilate new employees into your culture.

• Provide ongoing training, networking, coaching, and mentorship.

• Tailor your communication to multigenerational differences.

Thursday, April 10, 2014, 6AM – 7AM PST: BEST Webcast Series: Enabling Next Gen Learning Systems and Practices at Tata Consultancy Services (Free for ASTD members)

India's largest information technology services company, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), is growing at a rapid pace, and its learning and development team is ready to take on the challenge. Hear how TCS structured real-life situations to re-imagine the four streams of the learning ecosystem. You will also learn how TCS institutionalized virtual learning to provide a personalized learning experience through Next Gen learning practices.

Thursday, April 10, 2014, 12PM – 1PM PST: Nurturing Emerging Talent

A 2012 report by Deloitte identified eight trends in human capital that will have the most business impact over the next 18 to 24 months. One of the trends identified was the development of next-generation leaders. Identifying and nurturing emerging talent increases the availability of experienced, capable employees prepared to drive future growth. Alan Fine will explore the fundamentals of a high-performance environment, and the basic activities that create empowerment, accountability, and trust for managers and the emerging talent they lead. You will discover the three elements at the heart of high performance and will learn how to recognize and address obstacles that are getting in the way. Finally, you will explore a simple and reliable process that reduces interference, creates focus, and unblocks performance breakthroughs.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: How Change Gets Stuck (Free for ASTD members)

The path to implementing change in an organization isn’t always smooth. On the way, you run into frequent speed bumps, wrong way signs, and even concrete barriers. These road hazards on the way to change are obstacles that prevent you from moving forward. Despite your best intentions, you and your change initiative can get stuck. In this webcast, you will learn the warning signs that your change initiative is stalled, and identify some of the root causes that may be preventing the organization from making progress. We will also discuss what you can do to get unstuck, and how to avoid getting stuck in the first place. Bring your challenges and your experience to this interactive session where we’ll uncover the common obstacles to organizational change.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Research Spotlight: Highlights and Trends for Human Resources Systems

Trish McFarlane, Brandon Hall Group's Vice President Human Resources Practice and Principal Analyst, will present statistics on what drives HR system decisions, mobile solutions in the HR systems, key findings on why organizations change HR systems, and key practices in implementation. In addition, Brandon Hall Group Chief Operating Officer Rachel Cooke will present additional trends and highlight exclusive resources available to members of Brandon Hall Group through its Member Center. This webinar will include:

• Statistics on the importance of specific features that drive HR system decisions.

• Statistics around the impact of mobile solutions in HR systems.

• Key findings on why organizations change HR systems.

• Key practices in implementation.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Busting Myths, Facing Facts about HTML5 (Free for ASTD members)

HTML5? You’ve heard of it. It’s the most widely accepted standard for delivering high-quality, media-rich content on multiple devices. And yet there are ambiguities and misconceptions about what HTML5 can really do for your bottom line. Dig a little deeper and you hit issues concerning cost and complexity. What are the answers? In this webcast you will learn:

• What HTML5 is and its importance to content portability.

• The key benefits of having learning content in the HTML5 format.

• The process of developing and converting content.

• The metrics and standards to determine efforts for conversion and development.

• The common pitfalls to watch for during the development /conversion process.

Thursday, April 17, 2014, 10AM  – 11AM PST Creating Interactive Videos from Really Boring Talking Heads, Lectures, and Demo Videos

Most videos in training and elearning are talking heads, lecture-type presentations, or demonstrations of a product or process. Case in point: your training director suddenly decides that it is good for the CEO to present an idea. Or your company has a library of videos that can be repurposed for training. They are costly and took a long time to produce, hence the need to be “put to good use.” In this webinar, Ray Jimenez will discuss these topics:

• What do you do with really boring lecture and demo type videos? How do you make them engaging?

• What do you look for in a video, and how do you find opportunities to add interactions?

• What are the steps to augment your videos with interactions like discovery exercises, games, test exercises, and activities to improve retention and recall?

• If you are to start from scratch, how do you plan to create a new video and make sure they are provided interactive components?

• How do you cut costs, increase the speed, and increase the quality of your videos?

Thursday, April 17, 2014, 11AM  – 12PM PST: More Than Just "Click Next": Creating Innovative and Interactive E-Learning (Free for ASTD members)

Years ago, e-learning development was a complicated process requiring a full team of professionals. Rapid e-learning development tools changed all this. Now a single instructional designer can take on a project from start to finish. While these tools reduce costs and trim timelines, this sometimes comes at a cost to the final product. When the tools aren’t pushed beyond the basics of what they can do, we often end up with the dull “Click Next” e-learning that people dread taking. This means we need to use these tools differently for them to be effective. Attend this live, interactive webinar to:

• Learn what makes an e-learning experience engaging and interactive in the first place.

• Discover new ways to design innovative learning experiences with e-learning tools.

• Determine which e-learning features you should (and shouldn’t) use to increase interactivity.

• Know when e-learning isn’t the right tool for the job.

Friday, April 18, 2014, 9AM – 10AM PST: Frontline Leadership (Free for ASTD members)

This webcast is based on the ASTD research report: Frontline Leadership: Developing Tomorrow's Executives. The purpose of this report is to gain insight on training and development practices that are aimed at frontline leaders so that professionals can change and improve their processes in assisting frontline leaders to be successful. This study, produced in collaboration with the ASTD Forum, is based on the analysis of 513 learning professionals from various sectors and organizational cultures. Presented by Sarah Matney, senior curriculum designer and consultant at Ingersoll Rand University, this webcast will discuss Ingersoll Rand's journey in creating their frontline leadership development program, which has trained over 1,850 leaders across the globe and in a myriad of industries.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014, 10AM  – 11AM PST Innovative Intelligence: The Art and Practice of Leading Sustainable Innovation in Your Organization

A decade’s worth of executive surveys on innovation highlight a significant gap between what leaders say they want and what their organizations deliver. Over 80 percent of leaders surveyed believe innovation is important for their future success, but fewer than 30 percent are satisfied with their current level of innovation. So why, despite all the talking, have leaders not given innovation the attention it requires? This presentation explores the following questions:

• What is the innovation gap and its root causes?

• What are the three core principles for sustainable innovation?

• What is the systematic approach to innovative thinking that leaders utilize to gain insight and discover innovative solutions to complex issues?

Tuesday, April 22, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: The Business Leader's Bottom Line: Aligning Learning With Organizational Needs (Free for ASTD members)

Business leaders are under tremendous pressure to account for the performance of their division. “Supporting” business functions like workplace learning, however, are not held to the same scrutiny as operational business functions. Leaders typically view supporting functions as budgetary “black holes,” unable to prove direct contributions to business results. This is no longer the case. Leaders expect supporting functions to contribute to organizational objectives. This webinar identifies how to get your leaders to value workplace learning and how to make it a valued business partner. You will learn how to:

• Address the secrets business leaders believe about learning investments.

• Answer your leader’s questions that validate “learning” effectiveness.

• Discover how business leaders actually position learning in the workplace.

• Learn what leaders mean when they say, "return on learning investment.” (It’s not what you think.)

Wednesday, April 23, 2014, 10AM  – 11AM PST: 10 Big Data Insights for HR & Training

Big data is not just for the IT department.  What are some of the insights we can gather from big data that will affect how you plan your HR and Learning Strategy?  How do you set up your learning initiatives to contribute to additional insights on performance in your organization?  Join a conversation with award-winning authors and learning thought leaders Karie Willyerd and Heather Maitre as they explore specific ideas on how to use big data today. 

Wednesday, April 23, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Grateful Leadership: Using the Power of Acknowledgment to Engage All Your People and Achieve Superior Results (Free for ASTD members)

Effective leaders must find ways to enhance people’s level of engagement, commitment, and support, especially in the difficult periods all organizations experience at one time or another. Engaged employees work with passion and feel connected and loyal to their organization. This yields higher productivity, sales, and results. This can be accomplished through the practice of Grateful LeadershipTM. Learning takeaways for attendees:

• Understand the need for Grateful Leadership to create a culture of appreciation in the workplace and overcome the barriers to using acknowledgment.

• Demonstrate the language and subtleties of authentic and heartfelt acknowledgement behaviour so that people can and will practice and use them immediately following the webinar.

• Describe how to coach teams, managers, and other corporate stakeholders in how to use Grateful Leadership to produce breakthrough results.

Thursday, April 24, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Actions Louder than Words: 6 Steps to Improved eLearning Activities

There’s much frustration with the limited range of interactivity found in eLearning programs. Arbitrary multiple-choice and true-and-false questions, even when masquerading under flashy game-like interfaces, fail to engage learners’ attention. Worse yet, they usually fail to teach. Too often designers feel bound by the limits of actions available to the learner—senseless button clicking, random dragging, confusing entries. But, even working within the constraints of low-level authoring tools, it is possible to design eLearning activities that will engage, motivate, and captivate the learner’s imagination and enhance post-training performance. In this session, Ethan Edwards will present six simple and easily achievable transformations to make your eLearning interactions more impactful.

Monday, April 28, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Leading Change Courageously (ASTD Subscriber Content)

This webcast uses data from interviews with 60 executives in 14 Fortune Global organizations to highlight eight actions that matter in leading successful organizational change. The presentation suggests that a key leadership action involves integrating learning into change—courageously.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: A Street-Level Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience

Since the early days of “creativity training” and “problem solving,” brain research has vastly enriched our understanding of human mental process. New research findings with very practical, down-to-earth applications may well revolutionize our  understanding of the ways people think, learn, and perform. Functions like social intelligence, emotional intelligence, practical intelligence, cognitive preference, neuro-leadership, design psychology, and subliminal impacts of colour, language, and narrative are opening up new ways to approach teaching, learning, and development. According to Karl Albrecht, training is actually “applied cognitive neuroscience, and all learning professionals are aspiring neuroscientists." Albrecht will discuss the components of applied cognitive neuroscience; their implications for human development; and how to apply them in your work, career, and personal life.

Free T&D webinars for March 2014

Crocuses are popping up, and the sun is putting in a longer work day lately—could spring be approaching? Clear out the winter cobwebs and jumpstart your spring with some new business ideas for March; there are plenty of free webinars to choose from. We hope they will inspire and motivate you.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Diversity and Inclusion: Inspiring Learning for a Changing World (Free for ASTD members)

With globalization and shifting demographics, understanding diversity and inclusion (D&I) is a requirement for every training professional to ensure that learning is relevant in a changing world. In this one-hour interactive webinar, you will learn how key trends are transforming the workplace, workforce, and marketplace, and what the implications are from a training perspective. The presenters will provide practical tools that you can adapt in your training initiatives going forward to address this business imperative.

• Learn what D&I is and why it matters to you

• Discover D&I best practices for greater effectiveness

• Enhance your professional skills to address changing requirements for success

Thursday, March 6, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Agile Project Management for Learning Projects – LLAMA!

Either by design or by default, your team’s environment and work practices are reflected in the level of service you deliver to clients and customers. New technologies, rising expectations, and shrinking budgets challenge us all to new levels. How do you keep your project from falling short in delivering on time and on budget when things are constantly changing?

Agile project management is a hands-on practical approach created by the software development industry to keeping up with the ever-increasing speed of change. In this session, we’ll explore how TorranceLearning’s approach to Agile project management (LLAMA: Lot Like Agile Methods Approach) creates the team ecosystem and project management methods that set the stage for delivering amazing results for your clients (internal or external) and for your team. 

Thursday, March 6, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Emotional Intelligence for Effective Leadership (Free for ASTD members)

Today’s fast-paced and complex business environment requires leaders who can cope more easily in stressful situations, exude confidence, and be flexible and optimistic. This webcast will explore the exciting topic of emotional intelligence (EI) and how it provides the foundation for the qualities and characteristics of an effective leader. Participants will look at the world’s first scientifically validated model of EI, the EQ-i 2.0, and understand how leadership connects to specific EI skills. The webcast also will present a plan to cultivate EI and empower one's ability to create greater leadership effectiveness.

Monday, March 10, 2014, 9:30AM – 10:30AM PST: Disengaged to Engaged Employees – The Impact on Your Culture (Free for ASTD members)

When you look around your work environment, do you as a leader/manager recognize the signs of a disengaged employee? Do you understand the impact that this can have on your organization as a whole? Constant negativity at the water cooler may be slowly poisoning your work environment. Good employees say very clearly that if a negative culture does not change, they will seek a position elsewhere. Remember that it is always the good employees who leave—because they can!

Join Doug Lawrence as he explores the signs of disengaged and engaged employees, and how both types can impact a mentoring culture. Doug will leverage past learning experiences to help you create an organization that has an engaged, empowered, and accountable workforce—enabled through a mentoring culture. This presentation will benefit leaders and managers in any organization, and HR practitioners who are struggling with a culture that is driven by negativity and disengaged workers. If you suspect this is you, then consider joining us for this presentation.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014, 9AM – 10AM PST: Are You Training Sales Managers for the Right Skills? (Free for ASTD members)

Sales managers have always worn too many hats, and that level of responsibility is only increasing. Still the question remains—is their development keeping up? To keep up, many sales organizations are turning to surveys to capture important sales manager performance data. Unfortunately, survey design is not something sales professionals know much about. The result is that many sales surveys produce faulty data that lead to bad decisions. In this highly interactive session, you will:

• Examine how the role of sales manager has changed

• Learn why assessments are an effective method for developing sales manager performance

• Analyze the common mistakes made when creating sales manager assessments

Tuesday, March 11, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Magnetic Culture – Tools to Retain Your Top Talent

Highly successful organizations know that the key to their success is keeping their employees fully connected throughout the entire employee life cycle. Connection begins as your top talent is on-boarded and continues as they learn, collaborate, innovate, socialize, and share. How do you improve the employee processes so that those employees not only feel connected but also share this feeling with others, creating a magnetic culture? How do you enhance your culture and make it one that employees do not want to leave?

Tuesday, March 11, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Next Generation of Learning Content Strategies – Learning Content in the Age of YouTube and Facebook

Every organization that delivers employee training and development programs must deliver learning content. The challenge in today’s world is that traditional approaches to content might no longer help organizations find, develop, and deliver the right content to the right employee at the right time. In this webinar we will explore the critical elements of the next generation of learning content strategies:

• Curating – organizing content to provide context and access

• Defining content – in today’s world, content is anything employees can use to improve job performance

• Delivery – using next-generation strategies to merge delivery tools with content for the greatest impact

Tuesday, March 11, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: How to Transform Your Training Content into an Engaging Story

As learning and development professionals, we know that we’re wired for stories. The problem is, we’ve got to teach facts and figures and processes and tools—which can get pretty boring. Here’s the good news. Even this content can come to life and be “stickier” through the power of storytelling. Anyone can learn to construct and deliver stories that spark interest and improve results. Join Roger Courville and get ready to take notes as he reveals how the world’s oldest pastime can rock the modern virtual classroom.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014, 12PM – 1PM PST: Survey Basics(Free for ASTD members)

Back by popular demand! Patti Philips will walk you through the fundamentals of creating and using surveys and questionnaires. Surveys and questionnaires are common instruments used to collect data of all types. Whether evaluating a training program or assessing an organizational climate, self-administered surveys are a tool with which we must contend. This webcast presents the four basic but critical challenges that can make or break a successful survey project. Upon completion of this session, you will be able to:

• Recognize the four challenges in survey design

• Calculate the sample size given the size of the population, when sampling is appropriate

• Calculate the appropriate number of responses required, given the size of your target group

• Improve the accuracy of responses by following the tips provided for asking the right questions the right way

• Consider key issues in developing survey questions

Wednesday, March 12, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: eLearning Salary & Compensation 2014

What do eLearning professionals earn these days? Are salaries in your country and worldwide rising, falling, or flat? How do your organization size, industry, years of experience, and other factors influence your salary and compensation?

Join 2014 Global eLearning Salary & Compensation Report author Patti Shank as she leads a panel of eLearning professionals to compare key report takeaways. The panel will address what the almost 6,000 survey respondents said in late 2013 about their salaries and compensation, review salary and compensation trends, and discuss the trends they expect to see moving forward. Whether you have read this report or not, attend this webinar to learn more about global eLearning salary and compensation.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Personalize the Learning Experience by Leveraging CRM and LMS (Free for ASTD members)

In today’s self-paced world of online learning, students are empowered to learn on their own terms. While this flexibility may be a significant advantage to the learner, it can be a challenge to provide learners with the support they need to be successful. In this session, we will look at innovative ways that CRM and LMS systems can be integrated to provide support teams with real-time access to learners’ status and information. By more closely linking these systems, potential up-sell or cross-sell opportunities can be identified more easily, and case-management solutions can be used to address learner questions and feedback. Leveraging both CRM and LMS systems provides an opportunity to make the learning experience more personal and bring back the human element with personalized interaction.

Friday, March 14, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Our Profession: Where We've Been; Where We're Going (Exclusive Webcast for ASTD's Professional Plus Members)

Join legend Elaine Biech as she reviews the history of the T&D profession and makes a case for why you should care, what’s important, and what’s not.

Monday, March 17, 2014, 9AM – 10AM PST: Career Development for Millennials (Free for ASTD members)

Hired the best early-stage talent? Are they staying with you as long as you had planned? Join  Dr. B. Lynn Ware to hear how your company can design its career development offerings so that they will appeal to this generation of talent and extend the employee lifecycle.

Ware will report the results of a recently completed, groundbreaking study about how Gen Y workers make decisions to change jobs. The reasons are different than you think. The results cry out for a change in company talent management practices to emphasize early career support and development, even during the on-boarding phase.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Demystifying Mobile Learning

A lot has been said about mobile learning and how it is taking enterprise training by storm. However, it has become quite challenging to separate the noise from facts. In this webinar, we will address:

• The state of mobile learning and key drivers behind mobile learning for enterprises

• Different types of mobile learning formats and use cases

• Low-cost approaches to jump-starting your mobile learning initiatives

• Pros and cons of various mobile learning models

• Recognizing potential minefields and best practices when it comes to building, deploying, and measuring learning impact

Tuesday, March 18, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Planning Lives and Building Engagement (Free for ASTD members)

Industry icon Marshall Goldsmith helps attendees to:

• Review why it is so difficult to achieve even simple change—and the classic delusions that keep us from changing

• Understand the classic debate between determinism and choice and see how most engagement work is deterministic

• Learn a new model for planning the future

• Understand why active questions can help people become more engaged

• Participate in the "active question" research study (optional)

Wednesday, March 19, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Best Practices for Virtual Leadership Development

The challenge of leadership in global organizations and the deficit of emerging leaders are two of the many factors leading businesses to explore alternative approaches to leadership development.  New technologies have opened to door to creative, cost-effective, and engaging ways to train your future leaders, regardless of their location.

Today’s virtual programs are a far cry from the online programs of just a few years ago. In this Training Magazine webcast, Tom Masotto—Vice President of Product Management at ON24—will discuss best practices for using virtual environments to:

• Reach global leaders faster and more cost-effectively

• Provide busy leaders with more flexibility

• More tightly integrate learning with daily work

Wednesday, March 19, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Research Spotlight: Recent Research Highlights from Brandon Hall Group's Talent Management Practice

This session of the Brandon Hall Group Monthly Research Spotlight Series highlights actionable talent management data. You will learn:

• Insightful analytics-based facts about leadership development drivers and talent management risks

• Talent management trends to plan for

• Talent management priorities on which to focus your attention for better business impact

• A framework for designing talent management excellence

• A model for diagnosing your current level of talent management maturity

• About upcoming talent management research

• Exclusive research resources available through our Brandon Hall Group membership

Wednesday, March 19, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Creating a Modern Mentoring Culture (Free for ASTD members)

Mentoring has proven again and again to be a powerful and effective workforce development tool, and the need for mentoring, knowledge sharing, and skill building continues to grow. However, traditional mentoring, where an older mentor meets with a younger mentee in person to help facilitate development and groom them for career progression, is no longer adequate in today's hyper-connected and fast-paced world.

Based on the September 2013 Infoline, "Creating a Modern Mentoring Culture," this webcast will describe how organizations today must embrace a new form of mentoring and knowledge sharing that allows workers to find and connect with their colleagues so they can learn while on the job, share best practices throughout all areas of the business, and collaborate with people no matter where they may be located.

Thursday, March 20, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Leadership Development – Strategy in Action

According to Brandon Hall Group’s recent Leadership Development benchmarking research, more than 300 survey respondents told us that leadership development was their top priority for accelerating business performance, yet only 25.3 percent of respondents rated their leadership development programs as extremely or very effective. How do we improve leader development, increase leader excellence, and in the process achieve higher and sustained levels of business performance?

Session topics include:

• Strategy: Understanding the what and why of leadership strategy to identify leader development priorities

• Culture: Shaping organizational culture to enable experience-driven development

• Action: Identifying key moments to spark change and being a passionate and courageous agent of change

• Sustain: Creating an enduring learning organization and building an internal coaching culture to sustain it

Friday, March 21, 2014, 9AM – 10AM PST: Gaining Credibility: Leading Executive Conversations to Improve Your Results (Free for ASTD members)

Are you a manager, director, or vice president (or aspiring one) who has found that conversations with C-level executives can be challenging? Do you want to improve your results? Executive coach Sally Williamson will share insights into what top execs value, and give you strategies to gain the credibility and influence you need to get buy-in for your recommendations and improve your results. You’ll learn:

• What top executives value and how they think

• The three core concepts that leaders listen for, and ways to deliver on them consistently

• How to define and create a compelling message

• Tips for developing a high-level conversation framework to capture executive interest and support for your projects and recommendations

Tuesday, March 25, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Engaging & Retaining Employees That Keep Your Customers Happy

Great performance is achieved through successful employees. Successful employees are highly engaged. Highly engaged employees receive feedback and recognition. Over 75 percent of organizations believe employees receive most of their feedback in the performance management process; less than half feel that feedback is highly effective. How do you improve the employee feedback and recognition process, increase employee engagement, and in the process achieve higher levels of performance? How do you help your employees become successful?

Join the discussion with Trish McFarlane, VP of Research from Brandon Hall Group, as she shares recent research and key practices on creating a positive talent management environment that focuses on increasing employee success, and in the process increasing performance outcomes.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: L&D Emerging Measurement Practices: From Executive Reporting to "Instant Insights"

This presentation will share the latest topics on the minds of L&D practitioners as they relate to emerging measurement practices, including executive reporting, big data, social learning, scrap learning, strategic program measurement, prescriptive “Instant Insights,” and building a business case for analytics. Glimpse into the latest trends and challenges on the minds of thought leaders and practitioners, and glean creative insights to augment your learning analytics strategies, now and beyond.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Learning and the Innovating Organization (Free for ASTD members)

In the fall of 2013, ASTD and Claude Legrand, managing partner of Ideaction, Inc., conducted an extensive survey on how the Learning and Development (L&D) community sees its role in the creation of innovative organizations. L&D has a critical role to play, because innovating organizations do not have more effective processes or more creative individuals. Instead, they have leaders, managers, and individual contributors who are trained to innovate systematically.

This webcast will discuss the results of the survey and what organizations need to do to become more innovative. Legrand, an expert in innovation for more than 25 years, will present a primer on how to create successful innovation programs, and will suggest options you can consider to help your organization become more innovative.

Free T&D Webinars for February 2014

February may be a short month, but it’s jam-packed with valuable learning to help you keep that 2014 momentum going strong. Make the month count by signing up for a free webinar or two. We hope they will inspire and motivate you.

Tuesday, February 4, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: BEST Webcast Series: ESL Federal Credit Union – Creating a Coaching Culture (Free for ASTD members)

How do you manage if you can’t manage to numbers? That was the question before the frontline leadership at ESL Federal Credit Union shortly after completing a comprehensive review of their sales program. Too much importance was being placed on raw numbers, and not enough on the customer-focused behaviours that ESL highly values. Closer examination revealed that many managers just didn’t know how else to evaluate employee performance. That is where the journey toward creating a coaching culture began. Developing managers as coaches increases the skill set of the management team while filtering the coaching process down to employees at every level of the organization, providing benefits to all.

Wednesday, February 5, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Leadership in Crisis, Turnarounds, and Challenging Times(Free for ASTD members)

How can you thrive, not just survive, in challenging times? What kind of leadership does it take to weather crises and turnarounds? This presentation, conducted by Bob and Gregg Vanourek, is based on their proven experience in the trenches of massive turnarounds and insanely challenging start-ups. Bob was the CEO of five companies, including a billion-dollar company and two NYSE firms going through crises. Gregg was a senior executive at a market-leading online education start-up and a prominent foundation during its turbulent start-up years.

Thursday, February 6, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Five Keys for Flawless Virtual Training Implementation

Designing a training program, training your trainers, and planning the schedule are hard enough. Wouldn't it be great if, once the program launched, it would magically unfold in perfect order, with participants fully engaged, and your metrics for success resoundingly achieved? Unfortunately, the best-intended training programs often fizzle after launch. How can you ensure that your training program ends up truly meeting your organization's strategic objectives? That the program measurably shifts the culture in positive ways? That the learning sticks? Join Cynthia Clay for this one-hour webinar to learn how to implement a flawless training program from soup to nuts, and get the results you demand.

Thursday, February 6, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Design and Deliver Interactive and Effective Online Training: Part One

Virtual training opens doors, but for your learners to be successful, you must first overcome the anonymity of the online classroom with truly engaging presentation techniques. Register for this first of a two-part webinar series with Cindy Huggett, author and CPLP, to learn how to design and deliver an effective, world-class virtual training program. Learn how to:

• Design successful courses with a simple three-step model.

• Promote interactivity using two key design techniques.

• Effectively engage out-of-sight participants.

• Get attendees talking with one another.

Part two is scheduled Thursday, February 13, 2014 from 10AM - 11AM PST.

Thursday, February 6, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Looking Forward: How L&D Needs to Change (Free for ASTD members)

Much of what we do in learning and development is based upon models that are increasingly incapable of addressing today’s world. With increasing change, organizations are going to need to acknowledge outcomes that have emerged from some important and yet not fully adopted realizations. The way we think, the way we work together, and what organizations need to succeed have shifted significantly in the past decade, and we need to acknowledge that logical thinking, independent working, and hierarchical structures no longer define how we need to work and learn. In this presentation, we’ll review the new models, and review the implications for L&D going forward.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: 7 Steps to Become an Engagement Role Model for Employees (Free for ASTD members)

Employee engagement is a very individual experience where "one size does not fit all." As a manager you play a major role in creating the conditions for your employees to choose to establish relationships and connections to the business and its purpose—known as engagement. Are you engaged? Have you asked yourself how your employees become engaged? Do you ever think about your role as a manager in the engagement of your employees? Have you considered how effective you are as an engagement role model for your employees? If you are wondering about these questions, then this webcast is for you!

Wednesday, February 12, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Learn Better and Faster: Helping On-Demand Learners in an On-Demand Era

With today’s business demands, worker knowledge and skills are rapidly and constantly changing. Consequently, organizations are increasingly relying on learners to “learn on demand,” on need, on the job, and independently. The challenge, however, is that workers are busy, on the go, and have limited time to study. Furthermore, learners are often left on their own, without the skills to access and apply knowledge quickly and effectively. In this webinar, you will learn how to design and deliver your content to support and train today’s on-the-go, on-demand learners.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014, 11AM - 12PM PST: Real World Tactics for Creating and Demonstrating Training Value in Government (Free for ASTD members)

In today's resource-strapped government, there exists greater pressure than ever to demonstrate the value of training. Training evaluation does not need to be complex or expensive to be effective; it needs to be strategically focused on organizational goals. Learn directly from the creator of the New World Kirkpatrick Model and subject matter expert for the OPM Training Evaluation Field Guide the correct way to implement the four levels to ensure that you are maximizing and demonstrating the organizational value of your training. Three key ideas will be shared for shifting emphasis from Levels 1 and 2 to Levels 3 and 4, including action points you can implement immediately in your own work. Government and military examples will punctuate main ideas.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Research Spotlight: Talent Acquisition Trends

This installment of the Brandon Hall Group Research Spotlight webinar features highlights from one of our newest practices: talent acquisition. This webinar will include:

• Statistics on talent acquisition effectiveness and maturity

• Models for excellence in onboarding and recruitment marketing

• Other talent management resources related to talent acquisition

• Exclusive resources available through Brandon Hall Group membership

Wednesday, February 12, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Thought Leaders Webinar: Interface Design for Learning

As designers of learning experiences, how much do we really know about how people learn? How do we design environments that support the cognitive and affective sides of learning, and how can we support creativity, problem solving, and collaboration through interface design? The answers have been hidden away in the research on education, psychology, and human computer interaction … until now.

Join us as we discuss the new book Interface Design for Learning: Design Strategies for the Learning Experience with author Dorian Peters. In this one-hour interview, we’ll examine how designing for the learning experience is different from designing for the user experience, and explore proven strategies, heuristics, and best practices for building powerful, engaging, and genuinely effective learning experiences.

Thursday, February 13, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: How to Measure L&D with Social/Mobile Technologies

This presentation will offer relevant insights for modern-day L&D organizations whose learners have smart phone devices and use social networking tools. You will learn the best practices to evaluate learner experiences using mobile devices and when in social networking platforms. You will also learn how to deliver reports and analytics to stakeholders using mobile tools such as dashboards via tablet devices.

Thursday, February 13, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Value of Learning (Free for ASTD members)

When making the connection between learning programs and bottom-line business results, organizational learning functions have a track record of limited success. Recent research conducted by ASTD and the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) found that, while most feel their learning goals are highly aligned with organizational business goals, very few say that specific business outcomes are included as drivers in the development of their organizations’ learning strategies. Additionally, investments in learning measurement remain quite low, and very few organizations have staff dedicated to evaluating the connection between learning and business impact. Join Kevin Oakes, CEO of i4cp, and Rob Lauber, CLO of YUM! Brands, as they explore the metrics learning professionals are tracking today, as well as the metrics these professionals should be tracking for business impact in the future.

Thursday, February 13, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Design and Deliver Interactive and Effective Online Training: Part Two

Virtual training opens doors, but for your learners to be successful, you must first overcome the anonymity of the online classroom with truly engaging presentation techniques. Register for the second part of this two-part webinar series with Cindy Huggett, author and CPLP, to learn how to design and deliver an effective, world-class virtual training program. Learn how to:

• Design successful courses with a simple three-step model.

• Promote interactivity using two key design techniques.

• Effectively engage out-of-sight participants.

• Get attendees talking with one another.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Getting Unstuck: Addressing the Paradoxes Faced by Managers and HR Professionals (Free for ASTD members)

HR professionals and managers often find themselves in the vortex of controversy, which creates professional and emotional challenges. For many, this is the hardest part of the job! In response we look for causes: unreasonable expectations, difficult personalities, busy schedules, or the rate of change; but the ultimate cause is unlikely to be found there. How we handle these challenges is crucial for our personal and organizational success. You will learn the concept of paradox and its practical importance, learn how to distinguish a problem from a paradox, and gain new tools to address the paradoxes and double-binds faced by HR professionals and managers.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Leveraging the Forces of Disruption: How Video, Mobile & Social Are Re-engineering Training

Disruptive forces—mobile, social and video—have fundamentally changed how training is designed and how learners learn. Learners are demanding access to training content 24/7, anytime, anywhere, and on more than one device. This “New Normal” requires a blended approach that aligns learning with organizational needs, provides more interactive learning experiences and collaboration, and integrates training into the workflow—all while maintaining consistent messages across geographies. Join this webinar to learn:

• Processes you can implement to successfully embrace the disruptive forces of change.

• How to integrate performance support and job aids into your training programs.

• How trainers are incorporating collaboration and knowledge sharing into their blended training programs to reinforce best practices.

• Examples of short, interactive training modules that improve retention and support sales in the moment of need.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Increasing Knowledge Worker Productivity: A New Opportunity for L&D Professionals (Free for ASTD members)

Research has revealed the effectiveness of new methods for improving knowledge worker productivity. Because knowledge work differs in fundamental ways from traditional manual work, improving knowledge worker performance requires different methods. Yet, many of the learning and development, management, and job design practices still in use are based on the needs of traditional manual work, and not on the requirements of knowledge work. This webcast will help you to create solutions for knowledge worker engagement and productivity, while also demonstrating enhanced credibility and potential in the learning function.

Thursday, February 20, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: 2013 State of the Industry (Free for ASTD members)

Laurie Miller, Director of Research Services at ASTD, and David Frankel, Research Specialist, will discuss benchmarking data from ASTD BEST Awards Winners, Fortune magazine's list of Global 500 (G500) companies, and other organizations from 2004 to the present. ASTD estimates that US organizations spent $1,195 per employee on learning and development in 2012. The content from this webcast is drawn from ASTD's 2013 State of the Industry report, sponsored by Skillsoft and CARA.

Thursday, February 20, 10AM – 11AM PST: Top Talent Management Trends – Linking Learning to Performance

Our world is changing dramatically—how we live, how we work, and how we perform. In order to keep up, learning and HR must also change and evolve. Join Michael Rochelle, Chief Strategy Officer at Brandon Hall Group, to learn how embracing adaptive learning models and focusing on relationships and communities will drive continuous learning and deliver better business results. This webinar will examine how organizations can make adaptive learning models focused on continuous people development, the centre of their approach to engage, build, and expand their talent.

Tuesday, February 25, 2014, 12PM – 1PM PST: Change Your Game: Become Your Company’s Most Valuable Organization

Is your learning organization seen as a cost centre or a strategy enabler? No matter what organization you’re in, change the game—stop being measured and limited by your budget, and tie the business investment into value. Leveraging work by Gartner, Info-Tech Research, and Growth Curve, you will learn a concise, repeatable approach to a complete innovative evolution—new organization, processes, focus, accountabilities, and agility. Learn from the success of Butler University, now wrapping up its IT Evolution, and change how your learning organization is valued by the CEO.

Thursday, February 27, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Integrated Talent Management Scorecards: Insights from World-Class Organizations on Demonstrating Value (Free for ASTD members)

This webcast will present a talent management model that includes workforce planning, talent acquisition, performance management, learning and development, succession management, and engagement and retention. It will provide methods for evaluating the results and showing the impact of talent management initiatives. Learn how top global organizations are using scorecards to demonstrate the value of talent management at the initiative, functional, and organizational levels.

This session will enable you to:

• Describe the components of integrated talent management (TM).

• Explain the integrated TM scorecard model.

• Design a micro-level TM scorecard.

• Assess the data required to populate TM scorecards.

Friday, February 28, 2014, 9AM – 10AM PST: Show Me the Money: Where to Find Public Funding and Resources for Training Programs(Free for ASTD members)

At the US federal, state, and local levels, billions of dollars are invested in worker training programs, in addition to programs that provide grants and other tax incentives. Where can your organization find these resources, and what is the best way to leverage partnerships to apply for funding?

Join us for this informative webcast that will discuss:

• Why the public sector subsidizes training.

• What kinds of programs are available (federal and state).

• Funding methods.

• What types of businesses are eligible for training funding.

• How to evaluating the effectiveness of these programs.

Free T&D Webinars for January 2014

For many of us January means embracing a new year full of possibilities. Some of us have resolutions; some of us like to wing it. Whatever your approach, it’s good to have some support. Why not check out one of this month’s free webinars and start off your year with some new learning tools? We hope January’s events will inspire and motivate you.

Tuesday, January 7, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Alignment: A Powerful Process for Peak Performance (Free for ASTD members)

Let us help you develop your conference game plan! Join us for the 2014 TechKnowledge orientation webinar for first-time conference attendees. Jump-start your conference planning by learning about key activities during the conference, the eight conference tracks, tips for success, and a broad overview about how to make the most of your conference experience.

Tuesday, January 7, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Battle of Top eLearning Tools

There are many authoring tools in the marketplace, and each has its strengths and weaknesses. At Training 2014 Conference & Expo, Joe will give an unbiased overview of all the tools in three categories: PowerPoint add-ins, installed (non-PPT), and Cloud-based. In this session, Joe will focus on four of the top tools to see how they compare:

• Adobe Captivate vs. Articulate Storyline

• Articulate Studio vs. Adobe Presenter

Joe will give you an honest appraisal and will invite your questions and input too.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Technology Tools to Make Training Stick

Most trainers would like to see their training stick so it is used by participants in their jobs... if only they knew how and had the time. This session will feature practical, evidence-based techniques for instructional designers and training instructors to increase transfer of training, whether it is instructor-led training, self-paced elearning, or a blend. Barbara will demonstrate several new training transfer technology tools to make it quicker and easier than ever to make the training stick.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Best of the Best: The 2013 Brandon Hall Group Excellence in Technology Award Winners  

Kick off the new year by learning which organizations are recognized for making the best advances in a variety of technologies, including: LMS technologies, content authoring technology, performance support technology, learning evaluations, marketing automation, other sales and marketing technologies, mobile learning technology, social learning technology, fully integrated talent management platforms, talent acquisition technology, compensation technology, rewards and recognition technology, CRM automation, and much more. In this special webinar event, you will:

• Learn the winners of the prestigious Gold, Silver and Bronze awards in more than 30 technology categories.

• Get snapshots of the award-winning technology advances being honored.

• Participate in online surveys on technology use in the learning, talent management, and sales and marketing industries.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: How to Avoid Nine Common Mistakes with Video(Free for ASTD members)

This webcast is for learning professionals who are new to shooting video. Join video-maker, speaker, and author Steve Haskin for a fun and illuminating webcast that will show you how to shoot learning videos like a pro. You’ll learn to avoid common mistakes such as jump cuts, cross cuts, misusing the lower third of the screen (supers) and much, much more.

Thursday, January 9, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Make Adult Learning Come to Life

Need to take your training from ho-hum to Oh YEAH!? But not sure where to start? Look no further! Through hands-on activities, this session will teach you how to use several easy and quick techniques to make your training more fun, interesting, and effective. Learn to:

• Trigger retention in learning activities

• Sequence activities for impact

• Identify creative and fun activities that appeal to various learning styles

Tuesday, January 14, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Cultural Intelligence: Effective Tools for the Global Workforce

While our world is now fully global, most educational institutions are failing us drastically when it comes to preparing employees to work across cultures. While most jobs nowadays require some type of across-the-border interaction, too few employees are appropriately prepared to avoid the cross-cultural land mines that lie within the international arena. Through this session, participants will learn how to:

• Discover the different cultural dimensions at play when interacting across cultures

• Position themselves within cultures

• Learn about culturally different leadership styles

• Tweak their communication style to bond across cultures

• Adjust their culturally rooted expectations

Tuesday, January 14, 2014, 12:30PM – 1:30PM PST: Micro-Scenarios: Affordable and Easy to Build

Learning is best achieved when learners are pushed to the edge and provoked to think and make decisions. Scenarios can effectively engage and draw them into the learning process. However, these can be costly and challenging to develop. This session will help you discover the quickest and least costly ways to build micro-scenarios. Ray Jimenez will focus on helping you develop sure-fire scenarios that take hold of learners’ attention instantly including:

• How to set up micro-scenarios for very important topics

• How to find the right challenge to engage learners

• How to ensure that the content is learned while learners are having fun

• How to build scenarios that are affordable and easy to construct

• How to design micro-scenarios for mobile, tablets, and desktop eLearning

Wednesday, January 15, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Best of Learning Solutions: Ideas You Can Play With

We learn through playful discovery and experimentation; our brains make sense of the world through actions, interactions, and the resulting feedback loops. But are we designing truly playful learning spaces, or have we merely ported the limitations of pen and paper to computers and tablets? You will examine some of the more interesting interactive learning environments, explore how their designs use principles from psychology and neuroscience, and focus on how learning comes from interactions with the external world. Learn:

• Seven ways our brains (and bodies!) make sense of the world

• Which new technologies hint at future learning environments

• What educational-technology companies are already playing at the intersection of new technologies and learning

• A framework for evaluating new learning products

Wednesday, January 15, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Use Micro-Learning Techniques to Change Behaviour and Improve Performance

Micro-learning refers to the tiny bursts of learning we do every day to solve problems, make decisions, and improve performance. All training involves a micro-learning phase if the goal is behaviour change and ROI. Trainers tend not to emphasize this last mile of learning because it is too personalized, short-lived, and entangled in work. Learn how new technologies and methodologies are changing that. Discover a new method for including micro-learning in training that breaks learning content into its smallest relevant chunks, called knowledge cards. Successful examples and demonstrations in leadership, innovation, teamwork, and emotional intelligence will be presented.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Research Spotlight: LMS Trends

This installment of the Brandon Hall Group Research Spotlight webinar walks through BHG’s latest research on Learning Management Systems trends and takes an advance look at the soon-to-be-released Learning and Development benchmarking study. You will learn about some of the intriguing results included in the LMS Trends 2013–14 report and give an advance peek at highlights of the Learning and Development benchmarking study, including spending, strategies, and learning and talent management integration. This webinar will include:

• Statistics on LMS spending per employee

• Trends on LMS deployment and satisfaction

• Information on enhancements to Brandon Hall Groups LMS KnowledgeBase

• Information on recent and upcoming Brandon Hall Group research

Wednesday, January 15, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Best Webcast Series: TELUS – Using Collaborative Tools to Build Your High-Potential and High-Performer Employees(Free for ASTD members)

TELUS believes “culture is our competitive advantage,” and one way this manifests is through the development of high-potential and high-performing team members. As an eight-time winner of the prestigious ASTD BEST Awards—one of only two organizations to do so—TELUS takes great pride in its human capital practices. Join us and learn how collaboration-based technologies can be used to help build your own high-potential and high-performer program.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014, 1PM – 2PM: Making Connections: A Training Magazine Networking Jam

Do you want to learn about gamification and see a great example in action? Do you want to make new connections to help your career and business? Do you want to learn the latest in analog and digital networking? Do you want to maximize your experience in a conference like Training Magazine's 2014 Conference, and meet your peers who plan to attend? Do you want to learn the secrets of conference hypernetworking? Then join Digital Team Building Expert, CEO of Geoteaming, and Your Training Magazine 2014 Chief Social Officer John Chen as he shares his secrets in this online Networking Jam where he’ll share his networking secrets gained from decades of practice. During this webinar, you will NOT sit passively. Instead you will:

• Meet passionate training professionals just like you

• Learn new face-to-face networking skills

• Learn how to install and use the networking and gamification technology Goosechase, which will be used at Training’s Training 2014 Conference & Expo

• Learn how to hypernetwork using Twitter at a conference to meet twice as many people

• Walk away with at least one new networking tool or technique to increase your sphere of influence

Thursday, January 16, 2014, 10:00AM – 11:00AM PST: Leadership Training That Sticks: Lessons Learned over 21 Years

With over 21 years of customizing leadership and management programs for hundreds of clients – and training thousands of leaders and managers – we know what works and what doesn’t when it comes to making leadership and management programs “stick.” Many leadership and management programs are events that come and go with little impact on the organization. However, when a leadership development program “sticks,” productivity improves, innovation increases, leadership emerges, and employee engagement and loyalty soars! In this short webinar, you will learn five characteristics that increase the “sticky-ness” of your leadership program, moving it from an event to an effective, culture-defining initiative.

Thursday, January 16, 2014, 10AM – 12PM PST: Employee Development on a Shoestring: Developing Talent outside the Classroom (Free for ASTD members)

With budget constraints and organizations struggling to do more with less, many employees (as well as those responsible for their development) are challenged to find ways to address employee development needs. WLP professionals may quote the "70-20-10 rule," which says that development happens mostly through on-the-job experience as well as coaching and feedback. Training professionals and the supervisors and employees they support need alternatives and complements to formal learning, because formal learning is not enough. In this webinar, explore other, non-training ways to develop employees on a tight budget. Consider the pros and cons of various non-training development methods, and the requirements and specifications of three employee development ideas. Then begin to develop a strategy for implementing new employee development methods for your organization.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Why Your Training Development Team Is Getting Bad Information… and How to Fix It

Content is only as good as the input your training development team uncovers to create it. You have skilled developers, but if they aren’t getting the information they need, their content will miss the mark. From requirements gathering to content, your training developers must be able to uncover the right information from all types of subject matter experts (SMEs), yet many developers struggle. Are SMEs uncooperative, or do your training developers need a different approach? Join this session to discover:

• The #1 reason why training developers don’t get the information they need

• When misinformation occurs most frequently during development, and how to fix it

• Three strategies to get accurate, useable information from executive SMEs

• Two strategies to handle SMEs who sidetrack conversations

• Three steps to fix it and get more accurate information

Tuesday, January 21, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Develop Your Change Intelligence Factor (Free for ASTD members)

The ability to change is your only real competitive advantage and the single most important critical success factor today. The stronger your change intelligence factor becomes, the easier it is for you to successfully navigate the challenges of a dynamic and complex environment. If your change intelligence factor is weak, you struggle to cope with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Change can be frightening, confusing, and downright scary. This webcast will introduce three change intelligence practices designed to help you embrace change cognitively, emotionally, and physically. Learn how to leverage your budding change intelligence in key areas of workplace life: engaging employees, holding powerful conversations, resolving conflicts, and leading effectively.

Wednesday, January 22, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Leveraging Game-Based Mobile Learning to Anchor Your Organization’s Critical Knowledge

What knowledge is most critical for your employees to perform at their best? How are you ensuring that this information is “above the noise” and differentiated from other information or training they are bombarded with every day? How do you know if they’re getting the message? And how engaged is your workforce, anyway?  This webinar will demonstrate how to leverage game-based mobile learning to deploy the most critical, “performance-impacting” knowledge to your employees, receive real-time analytics on how well they are assimilating it, and assess and drive overall employee engagement.

Wednesday, January 22, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Virtual Conferences: If You Build It, They Will Come (Free for ASTD members)

What are the pros and cons of virtual conferences? How are they different from regular conferences? What are the technology requirements for both the government entity and the participants? How do you keep participants engaged when hundreds or even thousands of people are participating remotely? These and many other questions will be addressed as we walk through best practices of sourcing, organizing, and managing a successful virtual conference. Join us as we examine the logistics of setting up a virtual conference and investing in and evaluating the needed technology with Bernie Izler of the Bureau of Prisons.

Thursday, January 23, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Identifying and Nurturing Employee Talent

A 2012 report by Deloitte identified eight trends in human capital that will have the most business impact over the next 18 to 24 months. One of the trends identified was the development of next-generation leaders. Identifying and nurturing emerging talent increases the availability of experienced, capable employees prepared to drive future growth. During this session, Alan Fine will explore the fundamentals of a high-performance environment, and the basic activities that create empowerment, accountability, and trust for managers and the emerging talent they lead.

Thursday, January 23, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Building a Sustainable ROI Process during Changing Times (Free for ASTD members)

Sustaining ROI in the face of accelerated change, moving targets, and competing resource demands is no easy task. Only by planning for sustainability, with a long-term line of sight, can your ROI efforts endure and excel. Join Holly Burkett, principal of Evaluation Works, as she highlights core characteristics of a sustainable ROI measurement process and provides proven tactics for helping you ensure its durability and organizational value over time. Learn:

• How to assess an organization’s evaluation process and practice maturity

• How to address common barriers that can derail ROI momentum and sustainability

• Best practices for implementing and sustaining the ROI process in the face of perpetual change

Tuesday, January 28, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Manager’s Employee Engagement Toolbox(Free for ASTD members)

Review the advantages of an engaged workplace from a manager’s perspective. Engaged employees can be a significant advantage for managers, themselves, and the organization. This program explains how employee engagement makes the workplace a more productive and satisfying work environment. Attendees will gain practical and useful tools that can be readily applied in their own work environments.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Beyond the Basics: Take Online Training to the Next Level

Your GOAL is to keep your learners focused, engaged, and learning during your online training sessions. PROBLEM: We, as online trainers, are not keeping attendees busy enough. They are multitasking because they can. It’s time to take your sessions to the next level. In order to accomplish this, you need a combination of compelling content and integration of the hottest new tools. This webinar, combined with our live conference session, will do just that. Join Sheri Jeavons, President of Power Presentations, Inc. to learn our Webinars that Wow® content development format. This provides a step-by-step process to guide you through developing dynamic content for your live online learning session.

Thursday, January 30, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Three Key Elements of Effective Leadership Development: Analytics, Strategic Stories, and Modeling a Proven Approach

In today’s disruptive and challenging marketplace, organizations are reinventing themselves to sustain a competitive post. Their leadership development (LD) is limping alongside—it is not bent; it is broken. Without the benefit of practical examples and success stories, the window to leading practices for high-performance leadership development and how they work best in your organization can be foggy. It can be even more challenging to implement practices that make a measurable impact on your business. This webinar is an opportunity to explore three leading leadership development practices, compare them to what is happening in your organization, and define your calls-to-action for closing the gaps.