No matter how fun your game-based solution is supposed to be, you will still need a plan for launching it, promoting it, and measuring it. How will you communicate about the game? Will you require players to play? How will you incentivize play... or do you need to incentivize?

Analytics are at the heart of a modern data-driven business. When it came to content, we used to rely almost entirely on anecdotes and guesswork. That is no longer good enough - content is at the heart of the sales and marketing process and we must know how it is being used and how it is performing.   Marketing Automation tools made that a reality for marketing content. They let marketers analyze and optimize content marketing efforts during the first half of the sales cycle, providing analytics to show how effectively content moves customers through the funnel. But until recently, as soon as a deal was handed off to the sales team, it entered a content black hole.   There has been no way to answer very basic questions about sales content. Do reps have what they need? Do they use it? Do customers pay any attention to it? Does any of this actually generate real revenue? Even in our increasingly data-driven world, sales content has remained back in the days of guess and hope. But an emerging set of Sales Enablement platforms has changed that. They manage sales content throughout your sales engagements and use analytics to give you full visibility into how that content performs. This guide walks through eight reports that answer the key business questions about sales content and shows how to use them to optimize the way your company engages with customers.

Tracking and assessing workforce-diversity programs shouldn’t be hard work, but it should be a top priority. Because businesses benefit when they employ highly engaged workers with different backgrounds, HR leaders and hiring professionals contribute directly to a company’s success when diversity programs meet their goals. The opposite also is true: Workforce-development professionals who do not effectively measure the outcomes of their diversity programs are in danger of having the programs — and perhaps their jobs — deemed expendable. Ongoing competitive pressures are driving business leaders to demand that all investments return bottom- or top-line improvement, including workforce diversity programs.

Executing talent management activities before they’re needed is an earmark of a successful business. With aging workforces and a shortage of critical talent being among the biggest challenges facing today’s businesses, strategic workforce planning - the discipline of forecasting future gaps between demand and supply of critical talent, to ensure that you have the appropriate workforce mix three, five or ten years from now - has become one of HR’s most important responsibilities.

Goal management is among the most powerful methods companies have to execute business strategies. Thousands of studies have examined the impact of goal management on workforce productivity.  The common finding from this research is: Effective use of goals often increases employee productivity levels by 25% or more.  The financial value of goal management is staggering given the relatively low cost associated with implementing goal management methods. Because the value of goals is tied to fundamental psychological principles of employee behavior, the benefits of goal management do not depend on being in a certain industry or market.  If a company employees people then it will benefit from better goal management.

Research shows that effective sales coaching can dramatically improve the performance of sales teams - in some cases driving up revenues by 20% or more. But all too often sales organizations find it challenging to develop a sales coaching program that's embedded in a coaching culture.   Read this 5-page white paper and learn best practices and strategies for developing an effective sales coaching program for your sales organization.   In this white paper you will learn how to: Implement a proven sales coaching model Create a coaching culture Use metrics to maximize the ROI on coaching Turn sales managers into great coaches

According to Accor Services 90% of organizations say employee engagement impacts business success, but 75% of organizations have no engagement plan or strategy. Senior leaders are the visible face of an organization. These leaders are responsible for building and communicating the vision and strategic direction of the company. Employees belief in senior leadership is one of the three critical ingredients of employee engagement. When employees believe in and trust senior leader companies are more likely to have a higher level of organizational engagement. Dale Carnegie Training’s White Paper "Building a Culture of Engagement: The Importance of Senior Leadership" explains how leaders can build a workforce around organizational engagement which gives their company's a competitive advantage.

The employment market is fragmented and diverse. Every sector of business requires instructional designers and developers. Many employers prefer Instructional Designers (IDs) with experience in their business sector. This means that subject/content experts with a talent for teaching often move into instructional design using their field-specific knowledge as the key to open the door to course design and development, but with little or no formal preparation for quality instructional design and development. This paper discusses the practice analysis process, including survey results that generated nine primary skill set domains for IDs.  

In this white paper we examine valuing alternative futures and the use of qualitative probability theory to weigh the consequences of different actions.  We'll show how to use a common platform to engage their clients in the process of identifying assumptions, weighing the risk of those assumptions materializing or not, and valuing choices based on the probability of possible outcomes. Benefits: The benefits are participants will receive a set of tools and decision models that encourage logical thinking, discipline, and consideration of organizational realities that, in turn, will help them:   Save time.   Avoid unnecessary costs.   Increase their confidence.   Be perceived as having business smarts.   

There are dozens of studies and surveys each year reporting on the "state of the training industry." With some modest differences, these reports are consistently reporting very similar data. Among the data points routinely reported are the following: annual per employee spending on training, how many hours of training are available to employees, what training areas organizations are emphasizing, the ratio of training budget to overall expenses or payroll, etc. In other words, you can find a myriad of fascinating metrics all telling about the training industry from the organization’s perspective. What about the employees’ perspective? Aren’t we all supposed to be training employees?

Write like a leader who gets results Highly competitive companies are changing the way they write. You can, too! Learn three ways you, as a leader, risk your credibility when you write:   Failure to understand your readers Evasion or falseness Too many topics in one email Download these first 3 book chapters to boost your leadership brand.

It’s a new day for corporate training and those who manage learning functions. Today, traditional training programs aren’t enough to meet growing demands for better company performance, consistent compliance, changing employee expectations, and cost control. Companies can take learning to the next level with new tools and approaches that increase employee interest and engagement in learning, and are linked to employee performance, goal setting, and succession planning…all making a direct contribution to business growth. Ready to take learning to the next level? This Guide can help you get there. You’ll read about: Five essentials to transform learning Measuring ROI Tips to improve existing programs Case studies -- real-world examples of companies taking learning to the next level  

Large, global organizations typically operate disparate business systems around the world - increasing information technology costs and impacting service consistency for customers. To increase efficiency and performance, many enterprises choose to optimize their operations based on globally standardized ‘core’ systems. Implementing core software applications, such as SAP, PeopleSoft, SalesForce, Maximo, WorkDay, etc., takes a major investment not only in the technology infrastructure but also in preparing the end-users to operate within the system. Business cases are prepared to forecast the potential savings resulting from the installation of the new application. Assumptions are made on how quickly and thoroughly the users of the application will be able to use it efficiently and effectively. These expectations can be jeopardized if the technology roll-out is delayed or slowed because the users are not ready to meet these assumptions. If a company wants to achieve its business case goals, they need to ensure they get maximum end-user adoption with skilled, competent users.

"How long does eLearning take to develop?" is a question we are frequently asked. With heavy workloads, people who create eLearning want to have a simple method of predicting the time it will take to create a course. But is there a simple method we can use to answer the question? Please click below to download this eBook.

This report looks at the implied promises to the instructional design field which include:  -Promises to the instructional designers/developers that they are valued not only financially but also as a professional.  -Promises to the instructional designer/developer’s organization that instructional designers/developers get better, deeper learning and show results through learning transfer.  -Promises to learners that their learning experiences are valuable use of their time and support their current and future work.  Finding ways to reach into organizations for these measures required tapping the instructional design industry and market. A series of focus groups or interviews was planned. This report summarizes the interview process, data, and projected next steps based on interview results. Data gathered about these promises will become part of the ID Certification application process of 2016. 

Here are 5 myths that limit individual performers, managers and their teams. Click below to download the free infographic that reveals the truths and strategies that can dramatically expand your performance. Myth #1:  A manager's job is to run the operation. Myth #2:  Coaching is for Low Performers Myth #3:  It's not a part of our culture. Myth #4: Coaching is confrontational Myth #5:  The person has reached their potential  person has reached their pote

The forgetting curve demonstrates the decline of memory retention in time…How information is lost over a period when there is no attempt to retain it. For strategies to overcome the "Curve" in the context of the human learning process, click below to download this complimentary white paper.  And don’t miss joining us in the live webinar or recording.

When you're leading remotely, with store visits at a minimum due to time and distance, you have to rely on technology to engage, motivate, and leverage the strengths of the entire team. This handy guide outlines the pitfalls to avoid and the pointers for effectively using the most common forms of electronic communications, including email, text messages, telephone, and voicemail.

Successful leaders think differently. They think intentionally about where they are and where they want to go. They think strategically about how they can get there from here. And successful organizations are made up of successful leaders. Can changing your thinking really change your life and how your organization functions? Consider this: after studying successful people for over forty years, John C. Maxwell believes they are all alike in one way: how they think! That is the one thing that separates the successful from the unsuccessful.

Do you wake up every Monday raring to go to work, full of new ideas, confident that you’ll be able to implement them, and passionate about what you do? If so, would you like to stay that way? And if not, doesn’t that sound pretty great?

After spending close to 30 years in human resources and organizational development, and participating  in  countless  retention and succession planning initiatives, I’ve  come to the conclusion that employees are not primarily fired or promoted because of their education, skills, or even amount of experience. Of course, those things are important in their own ways; you are expected to be informed, up-to-date, and capable of doing the job, whatever that might be. However, it’s often the intangibles that define an outstanding employee (or conversely, the less-than-outstanding employee). Companies increasingly understand this shift, and have implemented behavior-based interview techniques during the candidate evaluation and selection process. This approach aims to match the key behavioral and / or trait competencies of an applicant to those that define success in  a  particular job - or in a broader sense, in the larger organization.

Today’s dynamic global economy has increased the need for organizational training across all industries. Efficient, cost-effective training and employee development are necessary for day-to-day operations and for meeting strategic business objectives. Many organizations turn to online meeting tools to meet their needs, and there’s no shortage of options. Simple and free. Low-cost/low-feature. Enterprise-grade offerings built for business. But online learning and collaboration require more than a one-size-fits-all solution.

Just as B2B sales strategies must adapt to increasingly savvy buyers, sales training must change too. This brief discusses how newer training content and methods can result in a better, smarter sales force.

Able, adjusted, all systems go, apt, equipped, fit, in order, organized, planned, prepared, primed, qualified, rehearsed, set. These are all synonyms for the word ready. The question is, can you really be sure that these words apply to your sales team? To help you not only shift the way you think about sales readiness, but actually take steps towards ensuring your own sales organization’s readiness, we have compiled 22 tips to guide you.