Some L&D Articles and Blog Posts from This Week

Happy August!  Hope you’re doing well. I spent last weekend in Prague on holiday. A beautiful city and highly recommended to visit. It’s also a city that has survived a turbulent history to say the least.  Yet the people there are inspirational and always looking ahead.  What I took out the experience most is that, as learning and development professionals, we should always have faith in  the ability to grow and progress.  Even with frustration being a reality sometimes, success and satisfaction is sometimes just around the corner! As usual, please find below some interesting articles and blog posts from this week looking at employee training and performance issues.  Please click on the article links, and have a great weekend! 5 Good Reasons to Build a Talent Pipeline (Total Learning) – Investing in the development of your workforce is as critical an element to company success as any other, in particular during difficult economic times.  The articles list of the benefits of building a durable talent pipelines within your organizations, including building a high performance workplace, creating a culture of organizational learning, and more. With the right approach, staff are empowered to take responsibility for their professional development in line with this strategy and senior management can plan their succession in a way that is sustainable and nurturing. How to Take Control of Your Mobile Workforce (Business 2 Community) – We all know that mobile technology has changed the way we work. With technology blurring geographical boundaries, and with reduced budgets available during the financial crisis, more organizations are adopting a strategy of some employees working from outside the office.  Yet how can managers manage them? Joyce Tam of Trimble’s Field Service Management writes that managers are increasingly turning to various workforce management technologies to “be there” with their employees more, and train them to be independent and to respond effectively and immediately to customer requests. If Employee Objectives Aren’t Clear, How Does Anyone Know Where to Go? (Forbes) –  The middle of the year is an excellent time to check on your employees’ performance objectives and make sure they’re still relevant and clear. Yet it’s important to check their relevance amid changed circumstances.  For examples, perhaps a big project got cancelled, or maybe a new one has developed.  Remember that objectives by clear and definable.  A great article. 19 Antiquated Employee Engagement Approaches Contributing to the Age of Anxiety (David Zinger’s blog) – David Zinger, an employee engagement expert, quotes the Canadian philosopher of communication theory Marshall McLuhan: “Our age of Anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s job with yesterday’s tools and yesterday’s concepts.”  Zinger gives a long list of employee engagement outlooks and concepts that are well, a bit out of date.  A thought-provoking post. Please feel free to comment and give your piece of mind. I would love to hear what you think!