What’s ahead in 2012? Just like last year, we see two major themes emerging for employee training initiatives and efforts in small and mid-sized organizations.
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1. Training/HR Professionals will deliver less formal training content, but they will actually facilitate MORE employee learning.
2. Informal learning strategies and tools will continue to grow in utilization. |
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We know the workplace is changing. We also know the workforce is changing, but we are not – yet – seeing the corresponding changes to employee develop methodologies. The November/December issue of Training Magazine contains some interesting information about the expected growth in training spending in 2011. According to the survey data, total spending jumped to about $59.7 billion. But – and this is in the SAME survey – the market reported that for all companies in the survey, training spending PER EMPLOYEE went from $1041 in 2010 down to $749 per employee. That’s a 28% drop. This rather significant discrepancy in the data (increase in spending overall, reduction in spending per employee) is never explained.
So, what do we make of it? Given what BizLibrary is seeing, training budgets (spending per employee) remain under duress. Our clients (small and mid-sized organizations) continue to struggle with training budget pressures to reduce spending, coupled with increasing demands for more and more content and results. The ONLY ways to effectively increase the impact of training while spending less money per employee is to:
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a. Provide more on-demand content that is shorter (think streaming video),
b. Push LESS formal training to employees, and facilitate and encourage informal and social learning. |
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These two strategies lead us directly to the second prediction – the continuing growth in the utilization of technology tools to facilitate informal and social learning.
Informal and social learning are not new. What is new is the emergence of
technology tools – inside organizational secure networks – that hold the promise of capturing these important learning activities.
BizLibrary, like other learning technology companies, is introducing our own informal learning platform – Community. Like other quality products we will see emerge in 2012.
Community will serve as a place for employees to gather – in a secure environment – at a virtual “water cooler.” This is a place where employees share ideas, ask and answer questions, connect with experts, share information and knowledge and communicate. Other tools will suggest and maybe even claim to do these things. We are confident the market will be busy as more and more organizations enter this space, and many organizations looks for solutions to help employees work smarter, learn more, and become more productive. If you want to learn more a bout Community, click here. You can sign-up for a free trial. We think Community is unique, and we hope you’ll agree after you see it!
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