Learning: The Magic of Making Training FUN

The European Commission has presented a green paper - flexicurity - to balance flexible contracts with the need for job security. This system has been hugely successful in Scandinavia. The unions and employers have been unimpressed.

Talent Management: Don't forget the B players There is so much focus on the War for Talent. Everyone talks about the looming talent crisis. Stars, A players and the top 5% hog the limelight of all discussion. What about the B players? This afternoon I presented a tele seminar on the subject and late at night I was reading the magazine from the Institute of Personnel & Development, United Kingdom. The article Room for Growth made a huge impression on me. The story about Hilton Hotels learning strategy coincided with my thoughts on the subject. The international hotel chain believes it has internal talent that it needs to focus on. The business results have been impressive. The Company's long term plan is to fill 80% of its senior positions from within.

M-learning , or "mobile learning", now commonly known as "m Learning" promises to be the next learning revolution. From a survey of literature, it looks like it means different things to different people. Even though it seems to be close to e- learning and distance education, the primary focus seems to be on learning across contexts (learner mobility) with mobile devices . One definition you commonly find on the Internet is “ Learning that happens across locations, or that takes advantage of learning opportunities offered by portable technologies.” We talked about collaborative learning in the past blogs. We have a m learning product coming out next year. The last couple of days I have talked to at least three collaborators who seemed very excited about accommodating and supporting the learning of an increasingly mobile population. Imagine the difference we can make to learning in countries such as China, India and Indonesia. Their huge populations are connected to

Successful Companies enforce Postive Discipline. They are high on Emotional Intelligence, that does not mean being nice but straight to the point. My friend Uday calls it straight talk. What can we do to enforce positive discipline and get employees to recognise it is for their well being.

Yesterday we talked about Accountants with a heart and the benchmark data, to day, let us review the need for HR professionals to be business savy. One reason HR professionals have not been able to make headway is their inability to partner with business. Jim Kirkpatrick has time and again written about the need for business partnerships. Business Savvy is a competency in short supply among HR professionals. What can we do about it?

Succession Planning 76% Small and 72% Medium organisations have a program in place. Top HR Professional reporting to the CEO 88% of organisations ensure HR person reports to CEO. Employee Referral Bonus 68% Small & 92% Medium compnaies pay an employee referral bonus. Paid leave to volunteer 80% Small and 88% Medium organisations allow employees to take paid leave to volunteer. Source SHRM Magazine

Heinfield, Meech & Co. PC,an accounting practice,rated by their clients as "nice", "helpful" and "great staff" to describe the partners, believes that happy employees equal happy customers. FUN is a big part of the firm's culture. Their principal partner says that they don't have a 'gotcha' attitude but reverse their approach with a positive orientation - seeking what they can do or teach rather than catch. They practice diversity, team work and a strong service orientation. They recognise their power comes from helping the businesses. The company was rated one of the best 50 Small & Medium Companies to work for in America by the Society of Human Resources Management(SHRM), USA. Interesting piece from the SHRM magazine.

Effective leaders use decencies to build great workforces one gesture at a time. Steve Harrison writing in the HR magazine talks about examples of best practices that he calls as decencies. You can mould a company culture by adopting small decencies. In my own experience, I have either experienced some of these decencies with the people who I worked for or tried them out. It is about the way leaders choose to behave – the actions leaders embrace – every day, especially during the quite moments when we think no one is watching. Some of them are: 1. Be sure that nothing important or creative is perceived as the leader’s idea, 2. Write personal notes to employees and customers, 3. Walk an employee or a customer to the door, 4. Always greet people in a sincere way, 5. Make as many allies as you can within the organisation all the time, 6. Talk about disagreements in private personally and try to resolve them or atleast agree to disagree, 7. Let every employee have a sense of ownership – g