Have you ever heard complaints from your employees about how much time is spent on training? They may express the fact that, while training is helpful, they can't afford to spend so much away from their daily responsibilities, especially if the training requires travel. So, how do you reduce time consumption in employee training without compromising effectiveness?

Most businesses are familiar with the concept of a compliance training program. Compliance training is training that is mandated by law, or required as part of a regulation or policy. For that reason, many businesses think of compliance training programs as a schedule for those required training sessions, “checking the box” as employees complete them.

Buying eLearning content is easy, but shopping for content can be a nightmare. There are so many options and factors you need to consider to ensure you’re getting the right content for your organization. Then there’s a fear of buyer’s remorse.

Congratulations! You’ve worked hard at your job and now you’ve been rewarded with a promotion. After your initial excitement wears off, you’re hit with a wave of nerves and stress. How do you alleviate the promotion anxiety? How do you adjust to being promoted in your department and going from coworker to boss?

So, you are thinking about your future in sales and possibly becoming a sales manager. You have years of selling experience and multiple top performer trophies and you think you are ready for the next step in your career. Before you embark on your journey as a sales manager-in-training, let’s think about what this really means.

I once saw a sign hung in a dry cleaner that read: “We can do it fast. We can do it well. We can do it cheap. Pick any two, but you can never get all three.“

If 2020 taught us anything it’s that technology has fundamentally changed our daily lives. When a deadly pandemic swept the globe, companies were able to pivot from in-person to remote work. Many companies even saw an increase in productivity from their newly remote workforce. Celebrate National Technology Day with a focus on some new training topics to keep this momentum going.

Employee retention management is more than just attracting and retaining key talent through things like salary and benefits. It is being strategic and intentional about the activities that make employees loyal and that enhance team performance.

National Thank You Note Day is officially celebrated on December 26th, but don’t you think expressing written gratitude is a good habit anytime? I think the spirit of this day is focused on a handwritten note, but I would argue that a thank you email can be effective, especially in the workplace.

These days, terms like “modern workforce” and “professional development skills” mean something different than they did even a year ago. While modern professionals have always needed to manage their time, communicate their ideas, and manage their stress, these skills have taken on a whole new slant—and priority!—with the pandemic.

Because they are the public face for your company, you know your frontline employees are essential to your business and your brand. You’ve invested in training that shows them how to greet customers with a smile, offer help, and create an atmosphere that inspires positive Yelp reviews. You’ve even taught them the basics of customer conflict resolution when it comes to things like return and exchange policies. Black Friday during a global pandemic is a whole new story.

When an employee acts in a way that goes against your company’s values, the results can be costly. With the prevalence of mobile phone viral videos, and access to social media, companies around the world have found themselves the victims of being “cancelled”. A learning culture, as well as the type of employee training you offer, can create a corporate environment that may inoculate your company against the behaviors that would result in an organization being examined under the microscope of cancel culture.

Nothing is stressing out parents more right now than the uncertainty around school reopenings. While many schools are now meeting in-person (with precautions), the vast majority are still doing either virtual learning or some sort of hybrid model. While a few parents relish this time with their families, the majority of parents teaching their kids feel unprepared and underserved.

Mindfulness is a popular practice in yoga and meditation but it also applies in the workplace, specifically with mindful communication. Think about being more present and multitasking less. Be more thoughtful about the tone you use. Develop empathy for your coworkers, customers, and suppliers. 

Many supervisors and managers will find themselves in a situation where they inherit underperforming employees. Hopefully, these tips to improve work performance will give you a plan with the intention of a positive outcome for your new team.

Today, selling to enterprise accounts requires more than charisma and a handful of closing techniques. Customers are coming armed with more information, they may be more open to receiving presentations from your competitors, and they are constantly on guard against “being sold to.” This represents a shift in the buyer/seller relationship. The winners coming out on top in this new selling landscape are the ones that cultivate enterprise accounts.

“Microlearning” has become something of a hot industry topic in the past few years. That’s not because it’s new—in fact, we’ve been creating microlearning content since 2004. What’s happening is that people are realizing the benefits of microlearning as more and more companies are incorporating it into their training programs.

An employee works to clear a jam on a conveyor belt, only to have their hand crushed when the conveyor belt suddenly lurches back to life. A maintenance person working on a pipe gets a blast of steam when a nearby valve automatically vents. An electrician working on faulty wiring gets a nasty shock. These are the kinds of dangerous situations that can be avoided with appropriate lockout tagout training and procedures.

It’s interesting when I see marketing strategies translating into the HR and training spaces.

Performance reviews are still the most common and widely recognized way for supervisors and managers to develop their direct reports and to provide formal feedback. Providing training to your employees will help your managers give more productive performance reviews and help your employees be better prepared themselves.

Most HR professionals see compliance training as something the organization has to do, under penalty of law. But what if it could actually bring value to your company, when done well? What if it could revolutionize your company culture and make your workplace safer, more productive, and ethical?

Have you ever sat through a presentation for corporate training content where they talk about their library of off-the-shelf content? If so, how long did it take before the presenter gave you a statistic about how large that library was?

Hunting for a job has to be everyone’s least favorite task. Maybe you just graduated and you’re looking for your first real job. Maybe you’ve been fired, laid off, or furloughed, you’re in a toxic environment, or a dead-end position. All of these situations are stressful and you just hope to find the right job and get hired quickly.

“What, exactly, is microlearning? Does it work? Is this just the next popular trend, or is it supported by science?” These are some of the questions we hear from prospects about microlearning, but what many people don’t know is that microlearning has been around for a very long time—and precisely because it works so well.

If you have a family, a lot of learning already has moved to the kitchen table. This past spring, students and teachers alike adapted to using Zoom, storing assignments in the cloud, and working where they could. What happens when it is workplace learning that has to move to the kitchen table, too?

I think it’s safe to say that every organization has had to make some adjustments and deal with a fair amount of uncertainty here in 2020. Personally, I can’t even count the number of emails and articles I’ve read that talk about “the new normal.” Sometimes change—and the challenges that come with it—lead the way to new opportunities. That’s what I see when I look at today’s training challenges in the workplace.

The COVID-19 pandemic has meant a change in routine for everyone, and change has a way of bringing some anxiety and stress with it. That has had some pretty big implications for our mental health. Companies should consider offering mental wellness tips to employees.

How do you maintain your sanity and stay productive? How do you keep your cool when the news is bombarding you with all that’s wrong in the world? More to the point, how can you help your employees and coworkers do the same? How can the people in your organization find ways not just to survive, but to thrive?

Many employees will eventually be in a position where they need to present information to a group of people. Whether it's a casual presentation in a small update meeting or a more formal presentation on a stage or in front of a large group of people, presentation skills training will be helpful. 

According to The Chapman University Survey on American Fears, public speaking is consistently ranked as one of the most common personal fears for Americans. This illustrates the need for more organizations to provide training for the employees on presentation skills.

Confidence is a funny thing: Not only is it highly personal and hard to measure, it fluctuates throughout time depending on the situation. Those are two big reasons why managers should spend time on confidence training for their employees. 

Everyone who works in customer service or in a customer-facing job needs training for dealing with rude and upset customers. It’s even more important in today’s world of cell phone videos, social media, and the divisive state of our country. It seems like people are emboldened to spew anger and bully workers despite being filmed by a stranger on their cell phone. The pandemic has now put workers on the front-line of the great mask debate.

“Thank you.” Isn’t that nice to hear? Would you like to work for a company that makes cultivating gratitude in the workplace a priority? Yes, me too. Treating your employees with gratitude can pay off with stronger engagement. It is also a topic that will help companies stand out from the competition when trying to attract and retain the top talent. 

What does the future hold for training and development? What are the trends, and how should you prepare? Those are great questions, and if you’re asking them, that means you are being proactive about preparing your organization for the future.

Most organizations see their corporate training as a cost center, rather than a profit center. That makes sense if you look at a company’s typical offerings—their goods and services—but profit can also be made if a particular investment saves the organization money in the long run.

Have you ever taken a first aid training course? I’ve had friends and colleagues learn first aid in health classes in school, or through their kids’ scouting programs, or during a course of instruction to get certified for something else (child care, scuba diving instructor...you name it). Rarely do I hear about people receiving quality first aid training in the workplace.

If you are responsible for managing projects, you understand the importance of timelines and deadlines. The work can be much more enjoyable and much less stressful if you follow these tips for never missing deadlines. There are many productivity apps, tools, and programs you can use but ultimately it comes down to your own actions as the project manager.

Many of us know the importance of corporate training but struggle to get our employees to make the time to complete training. If you need to train shift workers, your managers have the additional challenge of setting aside non-production time during the shift to let employees take the training. A challenge that is, fortunately, completely solvable with a little technology, and a little science.

A summer internship can really help bolster your resume while you are still in school. Internship’s can help you get exposed to jobs in your field and gain valuable experience. Not all students take full advantage of these opportunities so I wanted to share a few tips to help you get the most out of your internship.

New hire training is a part of every organization’s onboarding and orientation procedures. It should be designed to cover the administrative details of joining the company but it should also give the new hire clear direction on how they can be successful in their job. No matter how in-depth the training is, there is always room to make that training better. Some aspects are centralized in HR, others are decentralized and handled by each department.

Many people are selling right now and they don’t even realize it. You see, I believe that anyone can sell. You just need the right attitude and the right training to get into sales.

When my team talks to HR professionals about the topic of compliance, there are some usual suspects that come up: Anti-harassment, workplace safety, substance abuse, diversity. Rarely do the topics of bribery, anti-corruption, or FCPA requirements get mentioned as part of a compliance program—but this is becoming a topic that every business with foreign dealings will need to know about.

How is communication skills training different today? Modern communication appears to lack eye contact, grammar, and the use of your vocal cords! Look around. Everyone is looking down at their phone and not at each other. Even at the dinner table in a restaurant. Texting looks more like modern hieroglyphics with mysterious abbreviations and cartoon faces, hands, and produce emojis. No grammar and no spelling required. Kids don’t answer the phone, they text you back. And now adults are doing the same!

Communities across the country are attempting to re-open and sending employees back to work. Our experience is unprecedented. As business leaders, we are in uncharted territories. We’ve never been through this before. There is no handbook or best practice for returning to work after quarantine during a global pandemic crisis. We are all figuring it out as we go.

I know it is so frustrating, we’ve all been there. No one really teaches you how to land that first entry-level job. You can’t get a job without experience and you can’t get experience without that first job.

The latest news coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic is the urgent need to hire and train over one hundred thousand contact tracers to trace and monitor contacts of infected people and notify them of their exposure. Along with continued quarantine, increased testing, and improved public communications, the contact tracing efforts are a critical component in the efforts to control the pandemic.

Imagine your resume is sitting in a pile of 200 other resumes for the same position. How can you make your resume stand out? I am not talking about printing your resume on pink scented paper like Elle Woods in Legally Blonde! I will give you practical tips to help your resume and application stand out to hiring managers like myself. 

It’s a sad state of the world we live in but furloughs are becoming a common business practice when companies are navigating tough times. We’ve seen furloughed government employees during government shutdowns. Now during the COVID-19 pandemic, we are seeing thousands of furloughed non-governmental workers. 

Whether you are searching for your first job or planning a midlife career change, it can be a stressful time. If the job search was forced on you via a furlough or layoff, it’s even more trying and difficult. No one really teaches you how to look for a job. 

As people around the world work from home in quarantine, think about new uses for your eLearning authoring tool to fill your communication needs with video. E-mail is a dependable channel but it can lack the human touch that video can deliver. Webinars and video chat calls are useful alternatives but not everyone has access to those tools.

Working with indecisive employees can be wildly frustrating. It also greatly inhibits progress, productivity, and the sanity of your employees. Employees can spend a lot of time wavering, hesitating, and avoiding decisions. A combination of training, mentoring, and empowerment can help indecisive employees at any level.

During an extended period of working from home, I get concerned about employee health and safety at home. This is especially important during the coronavirus pandemic quarantine with the added fear and anxiety we are all feeling. 

Companies are temporarily closing brick and mortar offices and having employees work from home in efforts to slow the transmission of COVID-19. This raises new issues around productivity, communications, and processes. The benefits of online training are highlighted with a new twist during these self-imposed home quarantines. Training doesn’t have to come to a halt with employees being dispersed.

A pandemic is most likely one of the disruptive scenarios your crisis management team has considered in their planning process and hopefully training employees for this situation has been included.

Information about the coronavirus changes daily. Yahoo now has an entire tab dedicated to the topic in their navigation. Fears of the spread of the virus shut down the Louvre Museum. Communicating coronavirus precautions to your employees will help manage their fears so they can take preventive actions to be safe and give them peace of mind.  

We frequently receive invitations to participate in the RFP process for employee training partners and eLearning services. It’s good to provide some structure around the search process so you can compare potential vendors. But many times we wish we had been involved earlier in the process to help the potential client ask the right questions so they find the best solution for their needs. After all, our goal is to provide solutions, not necessarily to sell our services.

Employees are paid a salary and benefits for doing their job. Incentives are designed for incremental effort and stretch goals. So, what makes a good incentive plan? I will give you six tips that will tap into employee motivation to help create an effective incentive program.

We frequently get requests from prospects inquiring about the pricing of our employee training videos, as if we are selling widgets. When we explain that we are not like other training companies and we customize our pricing based on your needs, they push back and many say their boss just wants the cheapest option.

More than half of American adults have tried marijuana at least once in their lives, and close to 35 million consider themselves "regular users." Those are the findings of a Yahoo! News/Marist poll conducted just over two years ago, and it shows that marijuana use was, and is, pervasive in our culture now. Yet many organizations still routinely do drug screenings that include tests for marijuana, both for new hires and randomly for current employees. Leadership seems to be worried about marijuana in the workplace and employees coming to work high, an attitude reinforced by concerned coworkers and echoed by the general public.

Employee financial wellness, like physical wellness, is a topic that companies are finally beginning to address. Just as employees are more productive and happy when they are physically well, they will be less stressed when they are financially well, too.

Crisis management training should not be limited to crisis planning, disaster readiness, or risk management teams. A crisis can hit any employee at any time and there are situations everyone should think about and plan for. Empower your employees with a variety of crisis management training videos so they will be prepared to handle the situation.

The #1 reason employees say they are not engaging in workplace learning is because they don't have the time. It is a common finding in many of our industry trend reports. It’s hard knowing how to motivate employees to make time for training. There have been many times when our company has met with a potential client, and they’ve wondered: “But how do we get our people to engage with this awesome new training tool (/software/process/LMS/etc.)?”

Everyone starts the new year off with resolutions and goals but you can start any day of the year with this goal setting worksheet. Any motivational speaker will tell you that you have a much better chance of achieving your goals if you simply write them down.

Compliance training is a fact of life in most U.S. businesses today. Beyond the mere fact that it is mandated by law, compliance training is the single most important tool for maintaining a safe, productive workplace.

When someone says the words “leadership training program,” big seminars like Dale Carnegie Leadership Training or those put on by the American Management Association pop into mind. Those can be great experiences for some; but they are a small, small slice of what’s possible with leadership training.

We gray-haired sales folk like to say, “People buy from people they like.” This is the basis of relationship selling. Rather than determining whether the features or pricing is right for the client, a focus is made on the connection between the seller and the buyer. If the buyer determines that they like the seller, they are more likely to trust the seller. If the buyer trusts the seller to provide him with the best solution, he will buy. Since the keyword here is “Trust”, we might be more accurate to say, “People buy from people they trust.” Like=Trust.

If you have customers, you have people whose job is customer care. We know it’s more costly to gain a new customer than it is to retain a current one. Customer care, customer relations, or customer service are synonyms for the teams responsible for protecting this part of the business. For many companies, that has traditionally meant trained professionals in a call center or at a customer service desk in a brick and mortar location.

When I tell people I work for a company that makes employee training videos, their typical reaction is a loud groan with eye-rolls and a story about a horrible video on sexual harassment they are “forced” to watch every year. It’s true, they think I am the one to blame! Stories include details about the 1980’s video quality, and awkward role-plays portrayed by amateur actors. Other stories mention the embarrassing and uncomfortable role-plays they were required to act out with their coworkers! I quickly reassure them that sexual harassment training for employees does not have to be painful or cringeworthy to be effective.  

The holidays are coming up, and that often means a lot of employees and customers taking vacation days to spend time with families, bake holiday cookies, and scramble to finish holiday shopping. With all the holidays that fall between November and January, there are a lot of days with everyone out-of-office. Throw in some snow and ice storms, and you may have days when everyone works remotely instead of trekking into the office. That makes it hard to keep your projects moving and hit deadlines.

Whether you’re creating your first or fiftieth video, I think you will find these tips helpful. It’s important to know upfront if you need to include a banana. (Banana? Yes, a banana. You'll get it if you keep reading!) And whether you hire a company like ej4 or create internally, we want you to have a successful corporate video production process. We have found that the more thinking and planning you do upfront, the smoother the production process.

You might think diversity training is a one size fits all approach to get everyone working together. If diversity training covers gender, age, and ethnicity, isn’t that enough? Why do we need special courses on LGBTQ topics?  

Have you ever binged a new show on Netflix but when you discuss it with your coworkers, you don’t remember some of the plot points? Or gone to a party where you met a group of people and could not remember their names an hour later? (Who was the tall guy by the chips that looked like Fred from Scooby Doo?)

I traveled to DevLearn with an extra amount of excitement about the keynotes. First, because of the modern, forward-thinking topics and how they will affect the future of eLearning. Second, because of the all-female line-up. I should note that while Sophia the robot, in her words, is biologically neither male nor female, socially she identifies with she and her. Like Janet from “The Good Place.”

If you are doing your due diligence and researching different eLearning training providers, we are happy you have found ej4. We genuinely want to make sure you find the right partner to solve your pain points and change behaviors with the right training. Things like high employee turnover, increased safety or harassment incidents, or the lack of soft skills with new hires.

Of all the challenges an HR department runs into, diversity tops the list as one of the most discussed and most well-researched…and one of the most misunderstood and anxiety-provoking.

Many organizations create their own training content in-house, rather than using off-the-shelf eLearning content. Our sales team hears from prospects all the time that “We create everything in-house.” We have to wonder: How do they manage that?

When you say the word "etiquette" I worry about which fork to use, keeping my elbows off the table, and drinking with my pinky up. In the world of sales calls, etiquette has a different spin.

Let’s face facts, no one wants to talk to salespeople on the phone. No one. That’s the first obstacle. The salesperson on the phone has a flash of an instant to overcome that obstacle and make a positive impact on a stranger that is yearning to hang up. Adding any additional obstacles to this scenario only diminishes the salesperson’s chance for success. Presenting yourself with the most polished phone etiquette on sales calls will only help.

Are you looking for a library of corporate training videos to complement the training you create in-house? Not all videos are created equal. And not all vendors offer the same services and support. How do you compare?

Before you even start thinking of how to setup your employee training program, you’ll need to think about how to conduct employee training assessments. Not only will it indicate that you need a training program, but it will influence how you set it up.

Are your preconceived ideas about eLearning services getting in the way of actually helping your employees?

The study of ethics is a field that existed long before the first corporation, assembly line, or training class. “Ethics” as a concept dates back to ancient philosophers like Socrates and Plato, but –– as any business leader can tell you –– ethics is a very modern concern for businesses. Instead of classic ethical conundrums (like if a starving man should steal a loaf of bread to feed his family), contemporary employees deal with ethical situations that arise around the workplace every day.

Maybe your internal team has spent months getting certified, creating materials for leader-led courses, buying new software or licenses, booking venues, and scheduling the events. Or maybe you have a decision-making committee that has been evaluating external vendors, participating in trials, watching demos, testing technology, comparing videos, and finally choosing a partner. That’s a lot of time, money, blood, sweat, and tears you’ve put into this new training initiative, and it’s an exciting time for the company when the new training launches. 

For the most part, I like roller coasters. Everything from the tension-building climb at the very beginning of the ride, to the feeling of weightlessness as you hit the top of a hill, or the heavy feeling as you hit the bottom of that same hill, to the relief of surviving the ride at the very end. It’s all very thrilling.

Office etiquette training covers many concepts that should be common sense. It’s not always that simple. When we encounter situations that are awkward or uncomfortable, we freeze and don’t know how to handle them. Or we look away, cringe, or choose to gossip and joke about the occurrence.

Creating an employee training and development program from scratch is a challenge. Do it right, and you’ll give your organization a foundation for success for years to come. Do it haphazardly, and you’ll find yourself working and reworking the program, eating up valuable time.

There’s nothing like a fresh coat of paint to make a room “pop.” A new vibrant color can make a space feel alive, turn a dreary office into a center for creativity, transform a house into a home. In the same way, businesses should consider new ideas to revitalize their employee training programs from time to time in order to inspire the best performances from their team.

When onboarding new employees, there is a lot of “showing them the ropes.” They need to learn about your organization’s particular culture, values, and ways of doing things. If you think this means that all your onboarding requires custom content, however, and that you can’t use off-the-shelf content...you’ll drive yourself and your team crazy with a never-ending list.

How would your organization change its training procedures and technology spend if it was discovered that there was a poor fit between those things and your company learning culture?

When things change and evolve in your company, you'll notice the little details telling you that your training program is in need of updates as well. Revamp as a verb means "give new and improved form, structure, or appearance to." So, it doesn't necessarily mean a total gut rehab. 

For business owners who live by the eternal adage, “time is money,” the idea of dedicating more hours to compliance training can be a tough sell. Managers and professionals already have jam-packed schedules, and taking time out of your day to complete compliance training can feel like a chore –– if it’s not handled correctly.

At the TICE 2019 Conference in Raleigh last week, people were sharing ideas, information, and experiences everywhere you looked. Trainers were bonding over their shared struggles to find ways to engage and excite their learners. L&D professionals were sharing the ways that they had successful learning in their organization. Along with addressing the challenges of the modern trainer, an overarching theme of the conference was fostering a culture of creativity.

One of the things I love about what I do is knowing that the training ej4 provides not only helps our clients be more successful, but it also helps employees in their personal lives. In the case of safety awareness month, much of our safety training could be shared with family members to help keep them safe as well.

Sales opportunities don't just spring up out of thin air. You have to uncover them during discovery. Sometimes you need to help the client uncover them. Either way, if you aren't prepared to ask the right questions, and if you don’t have the correct focus when asking those questions, they could be precious opportunities lost.

Here at ej4, we talk a lot about compliance in the workplace, and it's not always the most fun topic to talk about. Keeping your company compliant means ensuring employees have the right training on a variety of important compliance training topics, including things like safety, harassment policies, HIPAA/privacy, and so on. Compliance, and compliance training, are usually mandated by federal, state, or local laws and regulations. 

ATD 2019 in Washington D.C. featured two keynote speakers whose messages overlapped very nicely for the talent development audience. Seth Godin talked about how people want to be seen. Oprah explained how people want to be heard.

Some old school cynics may argue that you get paid to do your job. Salary, benefits, etc. 9-5 get your work done. No “thanks” necessary. I believe in showing employees appreciation and saying thank you. From a civility and common courtesy perspective and for motivation to do their best.

Most of us have seen or experienced, a workplace bully. One in five Americans have been the target of a workplace bully, and an equal number have witnessed such bullying. Management must lead the way in getting the message across that bullying behavior will not be tolerated by anyone in their place of business. Training employees in workplace civility can be an important tool in building a corporate culture of respect where bullying and harassment aren’t tolerated.

With the labor shortage and skills gap, it is already difficult to hire or promote qualified candidates. You don’t want to blow it with poor onboarding. According to an article from SHRM, new employees who went through a structured onboarding program were 58 percent more likely to be with the organization after three years.

Why is your prospect hesitating to change?

They don’t trust you. They have other sellers ahead of you. They struggle with the price. They don’t have time to haggle or move forward. And one of the hardest to nail down, they are heavily resistant to change.

Have you ever known someone who just “knew” what people needed? Or who could easily ask questions to get at the heart of some issue or challenge? Or who could just look at something and predict that there would be a problem? All of these abilities stem from a single valuable skill: Critical observation.

With unemployment rates at a historic low, the U.S. is in the midst of a labor shortage: There are about 7 million job openings in the U.S. right now, with only 6.2-6.3 million people looking for work. This is making the growing skills gap even worse.

Look around. Especially in a restaurant or airport. People are eating and traveling together but they are not really together. Everyone is staring at their phone. Perpetually scrolling through Facebook and Instagram, playing Candy Crush or Words With Friends and not being present with their people. Have you ever texted a family member in another room in your house? I know, me too. Last week I texted my son to adjust the thermostat because I was upstairs and I was cold.

People appreciate when you show care and concern

Empathy is defined as “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” It’s a skill that can be and should be trained in the workplace. It’s critical for a leader to be effective, for employees to successfully work together, and for everyone to be more socially aware. If you think about it, more empathy in the world would be good for everyone.

Culture happens. I know, it sounds like a bad bumper sticker from the ’90s, but it’s true: Your organization has a culture. To be successful, that culture will need to be one where learning is valued. Growing and sustaining that kind of learning culture starts with leadership.

Setting priorities at work isn’t just about choosing to do one thing over another; it’s about choosing to do important things first so that you can achieve your long-term goals. Once priorities are established, they help us to stay organized and on-task.

Ever wonder how to motivate employees so they are more engaged with their work, and better at it? Of course - what manager or leader hasn't? Unfortunately, many attempts to get the best out of our employees backfire. Instead of showing leadership, we exemplify the opposite: impedership. 

At the Training 2019 Conference & Expo in Orlando last week, one of the main themes was overcoming obstacles. The majority of attendees were trainers, a group of people that knows a thing or two about obstacles. The most common training obstacles I heard about were convincing learners that training is worth their time and convincing decision makers that training is worth their money. 

Question: Is your organization proactive when it comes to a corporate learning strategy?

Or two, three, or four? How can you possibly create 100% of the training you need for all of your employees? Whether you have 30 employees or 300, one person can’t do it all. You can check the box and handle the training to keep your company from being sued. But what about the soft skills gap we keep reading about with the labor shortage?

Albert Einstein is credited with saying, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.”

Don’t Let Different Meanings Confuse You

As CEO of ej4, I get to talk not only to many industry experts but also to clients and prospects as well. So do my sales and marketing teams. One thing we’ve discovered: People use the term “eLearning” differently.

Start With Healthy Balance

There’s a lot of research showing that healthier employees are a benefit to organizations. They are more productive, less likely to miss work or be involved in accidents, less likely to file workers’ comp claims, and more likely to stay with the company. Beyond productivity, we look at our employees as human beings, not just numbers or drones. We genuinely care about their well-being and want them to be and stay healthy.

Employee turnover is a problem all companies are trying to solve. According to an article in the Huffington Post, the top five reasons employees leave a company are:

1. They don't feel appreciated
2. The company isn't innovative
3. There is a lack of training
4. They don't like their coworkers
5. Poor work-life balance

We often take for granted that people know how to learn. After all, we all had to learn while in school, right? But that can be a dangerous attitude to take when it comes to corporate training initiatives. School curricula are built on theories about how children and teenagers learn (and how much time they can dedicate to learning). Have you ever considered whether adults learn in the same way? (Spoiler: They don’t!)

If you’re in sales for any amount of time, you’ll notice that there are some typical topics around sales emails that salespeople ask about a lot (or, more likely, turn to Google for):

Have you ever wondered why some teams get everyone rowing in the same direction, while others just struggle or sink to the bottom?

I didn’t grow up with active shooter training in school. Tornado drills, yes. Active shooters, no. Unfortunately, this training is now common for students of all ages and employees in all workplaces. It’s a conversation you have with your friends and family when you go to a movie theater or concert. Our new reality is that an active shooter situation can arise anywhere.

“Which LMS should I use?” is a question we hear a lot at industry gatherings. Whether you are buying an LMS for the first time or merely looking to replace your old clunker of an LMS, you know the importance of doing your homework and finding the right one for your organization.

How to Budget for Training and Development—And Get Others to Help

Creating a budget for training and development is easier said than done. Most CHROs and HR directors focus on how to budget for training and development, but the real obstacle is how can you convince the organization to pay for it?

And How Are They the Key to Corporate Learning?

Sometimes I am amazed at (and proud of!) the loyalty our clients show us. We have a 95% client retention rate, and several of our clients have been with us since Day 1—meaning they have been clients for 14 years and running.

Whether your job description or title includes words like training, eLearning, instructional design, talent, safety, or performance, we all need to be creative in our jobs, specifically when creating training content. The sessions I attended at DevLearn 2018 were especially inspiring so I thought I would share my observations and lessons learned.

In my sales role, I have to be in front of people a lot. So when our marketing team asked me to help with a short video for our website, I thought it would be easy. Is there really any difference between making a presentation to two dozen people and two billion? But what I thought would be a simple favor turned into a great (and humbling) learning opportunity.

Since the beginning, ej4 has always partnered with our clients. We don’t sell training widgets, our solutions vary based on client needs. We are in the business of changing behaviors. Our vision is to ignite employees’ full potential. Our mission is to provide a unique learning experience to employees by delivering the unexpected in modern learning content and technology.

Cybersecurity training as an extension of your safety training

When it comes to learning engagement—or lack of learning engagement—I am reminded of the words of Gary Vaynerchuk. “You're always one great piece of content away from having your life changed."

Unfortunately, many employees will be waiting a long time for the one great piece of life-changing content. For example: There’s a TV show, Superstore, that takes place in a fictional big box store (set right here in St. Louis, in fact). In one episode, a well-meaning employee tries to help some customers, but it leads to a racially charged incident. In the very next scene, everyone is dragged into the employee break room to watch a VHS (VHS!) tape from the 1980s, where a woman with big hair and shoulder pads talks down to the viewer about race in the workplace.

Candy Cane Neck. That is the name I have given to a future medical condition of our youth. This is not the S-curve version of scoliosis I grew up hearing about in the 70’s and 80’s. This is a new version that will be caused by spending too many hours looking down at a tablet or phone. Scoliosis normally is caused by a growth spurt before puberty but I fear Candy Cane Neck will be striking adults too. It’s also the most obvious form of nonverbal communication that shuts you off from the live human beings around you!

We recently released an updated series on nonverbal communication in our business skills library. The last series was created in 2014. Mobile phone use alone is a reason we needed to update this content! What are you unknowingly communicating to those around you? Is it affecting your reputation at work?

Without the use of spoken language, nonverbal communications includes body position, facial expression, gestures and mental alignment.

Every company should have a portion of their mission that's dedicated to giving back. Here at ej4, once a year we bring out our Christmas spirit a little earlier than most people and host a "Christmas in July" fundraiser and donation drive for Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC). We strive to be "Everything but Ordinary," so hosting a holiday-themed fundraiser in the middle of summer fits right in with our company's mission of delivering the unexpected. It also helps any charity experiencing a summertime donation lag. 

Kiosks for check-in. Mobile hotel keys. Tablets for tableside ordering. Table tracking devices for food delivery. These are a few of the innovations in hospitality technology improving the customer experience and removing the human element. So, what about the guests who are not comfortable with technology (like my mom)? Or when the wifi and technology is down? Or the hotel and restaurant chains without these innovations? Your employees will be there to make the difference for your guests and it’s your responsibility to train them.

The term “learning ecosystem” is a trendy one in learning and development circles. It’s an important idea; understanding it helps organizations and their leaders think strategically about their learning and training—and helps them achieve the goals they set for themselves.

To wrap our brains around this idea with a minimum of jargon and hand-waving, let’s start at the beginning: What is a learning ecosystem, exactly? Here’s our definition:

When you think of safety training, your mind goes to factory and warehouse workers wearing hard hats and using forklifts. We can't forget safety training for office employees. I was thinking about how I always say “be careful” to my friends and family, and how that applies to my co-workers.

Sales training is not just for new hires and salespeople struggling to meet their numbers. The most successful sales managers understand the importance of “getting back to basics” for everyone, and they make refreshers part of their regular process.

We’ll use ourselves as an example here: Recently, we set out to hire a new head of sales. We wanted to find someone with both the skills and the “fit” with our culture...which takes time to do correctly. In the meantime, we wanted our sales reps to know that we valued them and cared about their success—they wouldn’t be “abandoned” until the new head of sales came on board.

If there’s one trend that has gripped business headlines this year and put HR squarely in the spotlight, it has been the growing concern over compliance issues, particularly safety, diversity/inclusion, and of course, workplace harassment. It’s something I wrote about at the beginning of the year, and it hasn’t gone away. (In fact, we revamped our whitepaper on the topic specifically to better cover this topic.)

Hooray! It finally happened — you've decided to incorporate eLearning into your existing training and development programs. Your training is now going to be delivered using "blended learning," and part of you is wondering: Is this going to fundamentally change what I do around here?

2017 was a year of growth and innovation for ej4. To get a better look at what drove change in the past year, we sat down with ej4's Chief Technology Officer, Tom Lynch, to take a look back at the learning management system updates made to Thinkzoom in 2017. "The goal of all our updates is to make the content and experience more engaging to learners," says Lynch. The learner and administrator experience is paramount at ej4, with many tech improvements in 2017 catering to requests from clients.

Sexual Harassment in the Workplace, in the News and in Hollywood

Millennials currently make up the largest portion of the workforce, but many companies struggle to find ways to attract them. As a Millennial who just went through the job-hunting process, I have a few tips that can help you simplify the process of attracting and hiring Millennials to your company.

Blended learning has been a growing part of corporate training for a few years now. According to Training Magazine’s 2017 Training Industry Report, companies reported that around 34.7% of training hours were delivered with blended-learning techniques in the past year—up 2.7% from just two years ago.

It’s an honest question. These days you can’t turn around without seeing another article on how short our attention spans are, or how distracted we are at work. The assumption that attention spans are getting shorter and shorter has dramatically shaped the eLearning industry, with directors of learning looking for newer and newer technologies to cater to our diminished attention spans, and content providers building the assumption into their instructional design.

This past week we made some changes to our Thinkzoom platform. No, we didn’t just rearrange a few buttons or take away any of your fave features… We wanted to truly add something of value. And we did - with Learning Tracks, our new Thinkzoom feature that focuses on competency-based learning.

Working in the training industry you become more observant and appreciative when it comes to well-trained, employee interactions when you shop, dine, travel etc. Last week on vacation in Colorado I went on a 14-mile, all-day rafting trip on the Arkansas River in Brown’s Canyon National Monument with Performance Tours. It was completely out of my comfort zone and really tested my limits. In retrospect, it was a crazy team building icebreaker and team building exercise for six willing strangers.

Self-directed learning is any process or system that allows individual learners to direct their own learning, depending on their individual needs and interests. Self-directed learning can include tools for learners to discover their learning needs, set goals, find content to meet those goals, get feedback, and discover new topics.

Most sales professionals feel that their job is done after the close. Me, I like to keep up with our new LMS clients, right on through implementation and early use. In talking with many of those clients, I’ve learned that the LMS implementation process itself can be a bottleneck, leading to unnecessary delays.

It’s summer, which means companies are about to receive (and onboard) an influx of bright, eager, new college grads. I love the energy and enthusiasm those recent grads bring to the table, but consider this for a moment: What does it take to manage these bright, young people? I’m not asking this to find out who has an onboarding process in place.  (You all do, of course!) I’m asking because managing new hires requires a unique set of skills. If you are not teaching your managers how to handle new hires, especially millennials, you are setting them up for failure. I’ve seen it all too often.

Last week ej4 held our all-employee meeting in our Kansas City office. The mid-year meeting is all about recharging our batteries and giving the St. Louis and Kansas City offices a chance to reconnect and bond in person. Since creating training is our core business and we all regularly watch our own videos, it’s hard to sneak in a team building challenge that is fun and effective without eliciting the expected groans, eye rolls and a bad karaoke version of Kumbaya. In the past, we have tried a variation of speed-dating, scavenger hunt and the escape rooms.

The Association of Training and Development held their 2017 International Conference and Exhibition last week with over 10,000 attendees and 300 exhibitors. The week kicked off with an exciting, Monday morning keynote from Tony Bingham, president of ATD, who talked about the importance of microlearning videos, among other things. Being new to this industry (six-month tenure) I found his keynote exciting because he basically described ej4’s offering.

Picture this: One day, you’re put in charge of team-building training for your company. Maybe you’ve stepped into a new role at a company and need to build your department to grow the business. Or maybe your company just went through an acquisition, and your task is to build functional teams from all the separate existing ones.

As a child, I thought creativity only meant art, music, and dance; things I liked doing but I wasn’t very good at. In school, I was the kid who used every art supply on my project even though I was only supposed to use yarn and pipe cleaners. I thought my creativity shouldn’t be limited to yarn and pipe cleaners. If there was no glitter, it wasn’t a finished project! Creative meant “more” to me. Where some kids were satisfied following the art teacher’s rules, I broke free! I thought, “Well, Michelangelo wasn’t a rule follower, so neither am I.” But as I grew older, I realized Michelangelo didn’t have to follow rules because he had talent.

Life is full of expiration dates including your food, household products, and believe it or not, even your training content. When something needs to be replaced, you don’t wait until it’s completely useless. We’ve all had that feeling when we’re excited about something only to find out that it is expired, sending us down the path of searching for other options. So why would you wait until your training content is outdated? Most of us don’t have the time, or budget, to constantly make sure our training is updated.

When I looked in my closet this past weekend, I was overwhelmed. I saw items I no longer wear. Am I really going to wear that bridesmaid's dress again?  No, I’m not, but it has sentimental value. Will I ever wear that leopard print spandex top from our Glamour Shots shoot? If I do, it would be a joke.  Then there are the items that no longer fit, but I thought maybe someday I could squeeze myself back into them so I saved a few for “motivation." Also, due to my unorganized chaos, I found items that I thought were lost and had replaced three or four times. What a waste of money and storage space! But it got me thinking... you need to keep these same ideas in mind as you build and organize your eLearning Library.

Organizations understand the need to train their employees, but there are a number of common challenges in designing the right training program. Two of the biggest issues are reinforcing formal learning on the job, and linking learning programs and outcomes back to business results. Microlearning using short-form videos is an ideal way to meet both of these challenges.

According to a study by the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM), the average cost of losing an employee is six months of their base salary. The average employee salary is $53,000, so the average cost of losing an employee would be $26,500. Turnover is inevitable, but don’t you want to do everything you can do to decrease these expenses for your company?

High-performing employees are the backbone of any organization. The old saying is true: Roughly 80 percent of the growth of any organization is achieved by 20 percent of its workforce. But high-performing employees don’t just fall out of the sky, they start as high-potential employees or HiPos.

If you’re a salesperson, your customers will always be asking you for “stuff.” Maybe they want a new feature, or better delivery time, or a customized product. As sellers, we are conditioned to say “yes” to these requests. After all, aren’t these signals that the customer wants to buy? Why not accommodate them?

All organizations want to identify, develop, and deploy their high-performance employees. And no wonder: The top 5% of a company’s employees account for a full quarter (26%, according to ERE Media) of its productivity.

In training and development, content is important. But finding (or creating) quality content is only the first step in the process of building a training library. Content curation (including content vetting) is just as crucial—and worth investing in.

No matter the size of your company, there are going to be laws and regulations that mandate certain kinds of training. Companies have to stay in strict compliance with these mandates, or else face penalties. OSHA, for example, penalizes companies every year for lapses in required training or training inefficiencies.

A leader not only brings a vision to their team, but motivates them to make their vision a reality. Contrast that picture with what we typically think when we hear the word “manager.” A manager has milestones and expectations, concentrating on the work, the day-to-day, and measures performance based on what the team does. A leader wants to develop other leaders; a manager has a to-do list the team must complete.

There’s an old saying that says, “Knowing is half the battle.” That’s true, and a good reminder of the importance of learning. Still, it leaves one wondering “What’s the other half?”

Everyone exists somewhere on the continuum from introvert to extrovert. That’s a good thing because both the quiet, introspective introvert and the outgoing, assertive extrovert have their place to communicate in the work environment.

Einstein once said that any idea “should be as simple as possible—and no more.” He realized that simplicity was a good thing, but like any good thing, there can sometimes be too much of it.

This is a story about finding creativity in something that normally does not come across as imaginative nor inventive: templates.

There's no denying it, Olympic fever has washed over us. Not only are we glued to our screens watching Phelps, Ledecky, Biles and Thrasher, but our social media feeds are filling up with “useful advice” inspired by our Olympians’ superb accomplishments.

The term “workplace harassment” often conjures images of 1950s-style gender-based pestering where men made women feel uncomfortable and powerless through comments and touch that would not fly in today’s workplace - "Mad Men" style.

“Workplace diversity” once meant representation by two genders and a small range of skin tones. Today, diversity means more: Different generations (Boomers, Millennials and Gens X, Y, and Z), the whole spectrum of LGBTQ, and vastly different cultures of origin. It also covers introverts, extroverts, and ambiverts; visual learners and verbal learners; geeks, hipsters, and moms.

Most trainers and teachers have heard of blended learning. Perhaps you yourself have tried to incorporate it into your training programs. Still, the term has been used so much that it frequently gets misused. Once one understands what blended learning really is, it becomes a lot easier to see its benefits, and to recognize vendors that are actually offering true value, as opposed to a buzzword.

Learning cultures don’t just appear out of nowhere; they take time to cultivate. The habits of your employees have to be changed at the same time you are changing the attitudes of your managers and the policies of your company or unit.

A study conducted by PricewaterhouseCooper found that only a mere 2.5% of companies complete all the projects they set out to do, and about 1 in 6 projects had a cost overrun of 200% or more. We thought it worth following up to see if anything had improved over the past couple of years—and if not, why not?

The front end of the Baby Boomer cohort—77 million strong —is turning 70 this year, with many of them already retired for a number of years. The back end of this demographic is age 52, with a lot of good work years left. In between are wave upon wave of soon-to-be retirees: deeply skilled and experienced workers leaving the workforce in unprecedented numbers. The Pew Research Center projects 10,000 Baby Boomers will reach age 65, the traditional retirement age, every day during the next 16 years.

When promotion time comes around, it makes sense to look to your best employees for potential leaders. Theoretically if someone has the skills and the work ethic to be a good employee, he or she should be able to teach, organize, and motivate a team, but this may not necessarily be the case.

There’s an old meme that gets circulated on LinkedIn and other sites, reporting a conversation between a CEO and a CFO:

CFO: What happens if we spend all this money training our employees and they leave?

CEO: What happens if we don't, and they stay?

We all have workplace habits that could themselves use a little work. Sometimes though, bad habits combined with bad attitudes can create a toxic combination that spills over and affects whole teams.

In day-to-day operations and their accompanying challenges in IT, marketing, compliance, and so forth, there often isn’t time to focus on projected problems. In reality though, effective company leadership must face the fact that any organization, including theirs, could experience just one life event — a big client expansion, a C-level sabbatical, or a maternity leave, that extends into a career switch—away from an unexpected change in leadership.

A training program can only be considered effective if employees apply the new behaviors or skills they’ve learned in the workplace. Studies have found that up to 90% of new skills are lost within a year and so, by that benchmark, a lot of corporate training is ineffective.

Employee performance reviews are one of life’s pesky and unavoidable necessities thousands of workers endure every year.

Successful businesses realized long ago that selling products and creating true brand advocates requires cultivating great stories. And because stories are a natural way for people to communicate, studies have shown that any communication with a story-like structure will be easily understood and remembered, and most likely drive action.

We’ve all had to deal with leaders who have noticeable flaws, and we’ve said we would never be one of those leaders ourselves. Despite those good intentions, bad leaders are all-too-common in the workplace. One study done by Barna Group, in partnership with Leadercast, found that 40 percent of Americans work for someone they consider a “bad” leader.

A study by CompTIA found 58 percent of employees saying professional development contributes to their job satisfaction, and that percentage grew even higher for millennial and Generation X employees.

A Future of Work study by PWC (a global professional services networks) found 35 percent of millennial employees reported “good training and development programs” were the most desirable qualities in a workplace.

No business wants to destroy its learning culture. Despite there being clear benefits to having a learning culture, many organizations give little-to-no thought on how to foster one, or even discuss why they would want to.

Suppose your company is putting together a team for a new project – perhaps it’s a new sales team, a product development team, or a marketing team. Naturally, it needs to be a high performing team, capable of working together to get results while still welcoming innovation.

There are over 893 groups in LinkedIn dedicated to change management, a fact which tells us two things: One, executives and business owners are worried about change and want to learn how to manage it effectively, and two, they believe change management is something they can learn.

One of the biggest challenges of employee training programs is getting the material to “stick.” If your trainees can’t recall relevant material in the instant they need it, the training was not effective enough.

Some say the only real way to develop and train leaders is throw them into leadership roles to get actual experience while pairing them with a mentor. This way, the theory goes, future leaders get experience and receive the necessary guidance and feedback to succeed.

No one doubts training is a worthwhile pursuit. But it also needs to pay off. And in order to pay off, employees must remember their training long enough for it to affect job performance.

In 2012, a joint study by The Conference Board and McKinsey asked over 500 executives to rank their top three human-capital priorities for both the near- and distant-future. It found almost two-thirds of respondents put leadership development as their top priority.

In business, few things carry more weight than a well-researched statistic. And few things are just as easily misunderstood.

In just about any organization, negativity is toxic.

There’s no doubt that executives are talking about emotional intelligence (EQ). A quick Google search will turn up hundreds of articles and posts about the subject. Some tout that emotional intelligence will be the factor to look for in employees and leaders for the foreseeable future. And some have us asking: “What's all the hype about?”

We’ve all been on the receiving end of a boring PowerPoint presentation. And we’ve probably created our own share of them, too. This despite the fact that we know how dull they can be.

We all want to be heard. And when coworkers say they want to be heard, it means they want their teams, their company, and their leaders to listen to them. An important part of leadership development, then, is improving one’s listening skills. Skills like active listening.

For many companies, investing in training and training resources tends toward two extremes. On one extreme, companies lean towards mediocrity: just enough training to say it got done, with as little money spent as possible. On the other, companies will “chase the shiny,” grabbing every new technology and teaching method that comes down the pike.

Let’s be honest: most training does not transfer well into the “real world.” You can sit someone down and expose them to a rigorous 48-hour training session, and even if they ace the material, precious little might come of it.

You know that people grow business. And the people bringing you the most long-term success are those that are creative. Creative employees spearhead innovation and find new ways to overcome obstacles. So it’s important to create an atmosphere where that magical, elusive substance called “creativity” can flow.

Changing the “culture” of any organization is a real challenge. It’s all too easy to focus instead on day-to-day tactical issues (How do we make this meeting shorter? What’s a better email program? How can we take steps out of our workflow?)

For the past few years, just about every senior executive has had the words “skills gap” on their lips. In fact, a report released last year by Adecco Staffing US found a whopping 92% of executives felt that there was a skills gap in their worker pool. And so thousands of jobs go unfilled every month because companies can’t find the right people with the right skills to fill those positions.

Other than software developers who code from home, we all work with people and must communicate with people every day. It’s important to understand your own communication style and how it affects your colleagues and employees. It’s also important to recognize their communication styles and preferred methods of communication.

The Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) requires employees to use personal protective equipment (PPE) when it is the best means to reduce risk of injury or harm. And yet, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show that, when an on-the-job injury does occur, in the vast majority of cases the appropriate PPE was not being worn.

Managing diversity and inclusiveness has typically been a human resources function—though that tendency is beginning to change in many organizations. What is still up in the air, however, is the “why?” of organizational diversity.

According to a Retention and Leadership Survey study done by Harris Poll (commissioned by Saba), 39 percent of companies surveyed offered leadership development programs, but only 15 percent of employees at those firms felt that the training they were receiving in any way prepared them for leadership positions. Those numbers, and a little math, tell us that about 60% of all leadership programs are failing their employees.

You just promoted one of your most promising employees to manager. Along with other new middle managers, she will also be leading a small team of three junior employees. While she has taken the lead on several projects, this will be the first time she’s “the boss.” The question isn’t “Can she do the job.” You wouldn’t have promoted her if there was any doubt.

A survey conducted by ConnectSolutions discovered that employees who worked remotely reported having better overall quality of life. For instance, more remote workers exercised regularly, slept better and ate a healthier diet than peers who came into the office. The Harvard Business Review supports these findings, stating that remote employees answer more calls, have higher job satisfaction rates and are more likely to stay at the company.

From achieving life goals to being happy to climbing the career ladder, the definition of success differs from person to person. It may even vary in your office. However, just because your employees might have their own picture of a successful life doesn't mean you can't inspire them to achieve it. For many, looking up to others who have reached their goals and developing the same traits and behaviors is motivational. With that in mind, let's look at some of the traits highly successful people have - some of your staff may share them.

Does your office feel like the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, or more like a classroom at five minutes until the final bell? Ideally, your office is full of energy, and each individual is working hard because they want to succeed. However, that's not the case in every company. In fact, many people who could be passionate about their jobs aren't. Fortunately, even if the work your team does isn't the most thrilling, you can help light a fire in your employees.