DOES USING SOCIAL MEDIA INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY?

A few months ago at around 1:00am, I walked into my bedroom, flicked on the light switch as I usually do 4 or 5 times a night, and before I could take one more step, I had to stop abruptly in my tracks.  I couldn’t see anything - total darkness. As I stood there staring into space, I realized that all the years of faithful service I took for granted from my little ceiling light had finally ended. 

The next morning, after some quick troubleshooting, I realized it was not just a bulb problem, but something internal within the fixture. My mind jumped to 3 traditional options: “Should I go out and buy a whole new fixture?”, “Should I call an electrician and make an appointment?”, and finally “How can I find that little paper manual that came with the light so many years ago?” After I briefly pondered some of these less desirable options, I decided to think more creatively, take to social media, and turn it into a more engaging Do-It-Yourself opportunity. Succeed or fail, it has to be better than waiting around or putting it off - and maybe I’d learn something interesting along the way. 

I sat down in front of my PC, typed in a search for “how to fix a ceiling fan and light fixture” and within minutes of clicking around I found posts with questions, answers and directions addressing my specific fixture.  One even linked me to a how-to video of someone replacing the exact same switch step by step.  I cued it up, readied my mouse between play and pause and stepped up on my stool to start working. One hour later I was done.

While I always appreciated the potential value of social media as an on-the-job training tool, it wasn’t until I started playing out specific scenarios (like the one described above) that I began to fully grasp the real potential return on investment of using them in the workplace. Read more about how I measured the impact of tapping into social media and take away some ideas about how you might start measuring this important resource within your own organizations...

Training Industry Magazine Fall 2015 

TAKE YOUR IMPACT TO THE NEXT LEVEL

If you want a quick synopsis of the traditional 5 levels of evaluation and then want to really shift your measurement strategy into overdrive with Level 6, take a look at my new article in Europe's largest professional training publication - Training Journal.  I give you all the tools to start your own Level 6 and uncover the real factors back on the job that can either make or break all your training initiatives.


Read the article in the July 2015 issue of Training Journal

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OR VACATION?

If you had to choose between 3 days of training or 3 days of vacation?  Which would you choose?  OK when you stop laughing - consider this: training and professional development (of done right) should give you higher pay and more vacation time in the future.  It's all about your return on investment! Check out this article in Training Industry Magazine where I consider the investment in professional development and present a case study at Verizon where new front-line retail leaders attended training and outperformed other leaders who had not yet attended the very same training...


Summer Issue: Training Industry Magazine

WATCH YOUR TRAINING BLOOM

Training effectiveness is all about the care and nurturing that occurs after the training experience.  As training professionals, we all knock ourselves out to create the perfect content and delivery mode, yet we do little to understand and optimize the environment employees return to - where they actually have to apply the training.  Of course planting the training right is our responsibility, but making sure it blooms is where immediate managers and business leaders need to contribute.  Read more in my article in ATD this month...




April ATD Article

WANT TRAINING TO "WORK"? TRY A WARMER CLIMATE

Imagine if you were training for years to be a major league baseball pitcher and then on your debut opening day it was snowing.  Or raining? Or how about if the weather was perfect, and still after all that training, your new coach just decided to keep you on the bench?  Here, it really doesn’t matter how good you are or how hard you trained – the “climate” wouldn’t let you pitch!  In all the same ways, we are constantly sending employees through training and then letting them go into an environment where something is preventing them from changing, improving and truly maximizing their return on investment. Obviously, I'm not just talking about weather here - I'm talking about anything in your immediate work environment that's frustrating your ability to demonstrate what you've learned. 


Want to learn more?  Read my article in this month's issue of Training Magazine...


Training Magazine


http://www.trainingmag.com/does-your-training-work-try-%E2%80%9Cwarmer%E2%80%9D-climate

CAN SOFT LEADERSHIP SKILLS LEAD TO HARD RESULTS?

Of course they can!  That's why we're here in the first place.  Check out this article about a case study where I measured the impact of Ken Blanchard's Situational Leadership training program...


Training Industry Quarterly




http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/trainingindustry/tiq_2015spring/#/56

DON'T JUST PUT TRAINING OUT THERE

Like any other consumers, your consumers of training in the workplace also want to know what they'll get for their time and money.  That's why it's critical to measure the impact of your training and describe the real value it can bring to both employees (the trainees) and their businesses.  This information can be used not only to make them feel good about previous investments, but also make them more confident in their future investments.  Not to mention what it can do for your training marketing strategy.  By including some real impact data, everyone wins. 


So why has it been so hard for training groups to conduct these studies and present this type of data?  Check it my new blog post on ATD's website to read more...




ATD L&D article








https://www.td.org/Publications/Blogs/L-and-D-Blog/2015/02/Its-Time-to-Measure-Your-Training?mktcops=c.learning-and-development%7ec.sr-leader&mktcois=c.measuring-and-evaluating%7ec.eval-learning-impact%7ec.managing-learning-programs

IT'S ALL ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE

The most significant finding that can come out of measuring your training impact, and one that is trending now in some of the most forward-thinking organizations, is identifying your most powerful post-training climates – those that can literally “make” or “break” the impact of training.  I call these post-training environments “transfer climates” because they represent all the factors that can either help or hinder the “transfer” of learning from the training experience back to the job.  If we make the climate suitable for learning transfer, the training sticks and ultimately yields high returns.  If the climate is not suitable for learning transfer, the training impact dies there and all your time and resources are wasted.  Once you understand these factors and make your climates more amenable to training transfer, you’ll get more ROI from any program you run.  See my article and read more in this month's issue of Training Industry Quarterly...


Training Industry Quarterly

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/trainingindustry/tiq_2015winter/index.php?startid=52