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What's Destroying Training and HR?
November 23, 2009
By Margery Weinstein
"Why are training and human resources losing budgets and jobs?" was the question posed by Learn.com Co-Founder, Executive Vice-President, and Chief Operating Officer JW Ray last week at a seminar in New York City's Times Square that Training magazine was invited to sit in on.
"Executives know more about a laptop than their senior executives," said Ray referencing the in-depth knowledge company leaders seem to have about their organization's technology investment versus their greatest investment of all—their people (the same ones they charge with doing work for customers and selling their offerings). According to research compiled by Learn.com from other training and human resources industry experts, it doesn't look good for those in the learning or human development fields. Apparently, HR is thought of by company leaders as the worst performing business unit and its practitioners lack "even the most basic workforce information needed to do their jobs."
Not that company leaders are smart in their tendency to disregard HR. Ray said research he's reviewed indicates that, on average, the voluntary turnover of one employee costs companies $370,000. But that's not necessarily bad news—when it comes to room for improvement. The dire consequences of neglecting human resources means HR specialists can take such frightening statistics to executives to gain a voice in their planning process. "It's a huge opportunity for you to get a seat at the c-table," said Ray. Another frightening stat shared by Learn.com that you can use to freak out executives enough to listen to you? According to Gallup, some 71 percent of employees are not engaged in their jobs.
One company that takes seriously the need to align human resources with corporate strategic objectives is Robbins-Gioia, LLC, a program and project management consulting solutions company. Cari Bohley, director, Robbins Gioia University, filled attendees in on how her company optimizes Learn.com technology to ensure human resources is on the right track. The company always invested in developing its people, but the problem was it used disparate systems, such as Microsoft Excel and SharePoint, to deliver learning. That resulted in a difficulty tracking learner progress, and taking accurate measures on whether learning had occurred. For that reason, the company decided to invest in Learn.com's LearnCenter learning management system.
In addition to the solution being the right price (always important when making those "c-suite" pitches), the technology was "scalable," says Bohley, and had the advantages of a single sign-on and integration with the company's Outlook e-mail system. It also integrated perfectly with Robbins-Gioia's ADP-powered human resources and benefits system. The company likes the system so much it uses it for such learning activities as new employee orientation, compliance training, and virtual instructor-led training.
What's more, Learn.com's LearnCenter enables the company to more easily hold monthly manager training, weekly "brown bag" learning events, and even facilitates messages from corporate communications.
Training thought that's a good thing as it probably doesn't hurt to pass along messages from the c-suite when trying to get them to like you.
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