An interesting or vital statistic?

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Bob

It has been revealed that the 422,000 workers in the City and Canary Wharf contributed £11bn last year through income tax – which is the same figure as the tax paid by the entire Scottish workforce.

According to research from Ambition, the amount of combined income tax and NI contributions paid by City workers is the equivalent to the total spent by the Government in 2009/2010 on winter fuel (£2.7bn), TV licenses for over-75s (£0.6bn), the entire wage and pension bill for the armed forces (£5.5bn) and aid in sub-Saharan Africa (£1.7bn).

Simon Lynch, managing director of Ambition UK, commented: “City workers come from an array of industries from law to accountancy, property to marketing. The amount they pay in tax goes a long way to help fund critical parts of the government’s expenditure.

“What’s more, £11bn doesn’t even come close to the overall sum the City pays in tax. Corporation tax, the levy on bonus pots and employers’ NI add a significant amount to the total haul the treasury receives.”

Again, to put things into a context, the average worker in the City and Canary Wharf has a remuneration package worth some £78,490 a year. The average UK salary is £23,556 a year.

Comment: Statistics are like a bikini: what they reveal is interesting but what they conceal is vital. Of course, you can prove anything with statistics but the key issue in this case should probably be who – (a) the workers in the City and Canary Wharf or (b) the entire Scottish workforce – should feel that they have the better deal out regarding their contributions to the UK’s Exchequer?

Articulate training courses help the expansion of e-learning courses in the UK

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Bob

Omniplex, a leading provider of e-learning solutions, has reported seeing impressive and rising levels of demand for its training courses in how to use the Articulate suite of e-learning rapid authoring tools. Omniplex’s managing director, Matthew Lloyd, explained: “Most of the people we see on these courses are HR or training specialists who are developing their knowledge of the software and its capabilities. They tend to be drawn from a wide cross-section of mainly large to medium sized organisations.”

The nine delegates on the course fitted his description.

Steve Russell, of the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) Group, explained that NEC Group is expanding the learning materials available to its 800 or so full time staff as well as the large number of people on ‘zero hours’ and casual contracts. He added: “Buying e-learning materials off-the-shelf can be expensive – so we’ve been attracted to the opportunities presented by Articluate to enable us to develop our own e-learning materials.”

Russell readily agreed that he was no ‘techy’ but said that the Omniplex Articulate course was extremely helpful and was giving him new skills which he could put to good use when he got back to his desk.

Kevin Clark, a training specialist with Getty Images, said that e-learning is offering a highly cost-effective and scalable way to make learning materials available to the company’s staff worldwide. He has responsibility for creating online, accessible and engaging e-learning materials – as opposed to ‘Word documents which have been put on a web page’.

“The Omniplex training course has kept up a useful ‘level’ of information and delivered it at a decent pace,” he commented. “One particular benefit is being able to have your laptop open during the course in order to be able to practise straight away the new techniques we’re learning.”

Lillian Livingston, a training coordinator with the pharmaceutical company Takeda Global Research, also praised the course – for filling gaps in her knowledge about Articulate. The University of East London supplied four of the delegates on the course – principally because it wants to develop its in-house authoring capability. The University’s Mat Tinker commented: “Articulate appears to be more all encompassing than other rapid authoring tools and, at a basic level, it’s highly intuitive and easy to use.”

Comment: Judging from those who attend these two-day courses, organisations are making increasing use of e-learning because it is scalable, available to a widely geographically dispersed workforce on demand and, by using a rapid authoring tool, it can be produced in-house with the minimum of fuss by training and/or subject matter experts.

Networking works

Posted on April 15, 2011 by Bob

Platinum Point, the unique business breakfast group – which is based in St Albans and which numbers this blogger among its members – has revealed that, since 2006 when the group began, the group’s members have generated an estimated £1.9m in revenue for fellow members’ businesses.

Tim Parfitt, managing director of the St Albans-based web design and digital agency Netcel, commented: “As a group, we don’t keep records of the amount of revenue we receive when another of Platinum Point’s members refers us to one of their clients. However, at a conservative estimate, group members can identify that their businesses have collectively generated some £1.9m of revenue from intra-group trading and from business referrals from other group members since Platinum Point’s inception.”

Begun by a small number of St Albans based businesspeople who wanted to improve on the business networking opportunities then available, Platinum Point membership is by invitation and currently stands at 16.

“While the group provides extremely useful extended business networking opportunities, much of the value in being member derives from the input of fellow members at the meetings – which are always ‘different’,” said Carl French, of business franchising specialists, Replico, and who is one of the group’s founders.

Fellow Platinum Point member, David Priseman, a business analyst and consultant, added: “This means that members offer insights into the industries they serve, as well as providing valuable tips and techniques which other members can apply in their businesses too. There is no way of measuring, in revenue terms, the amount of business that these tips help our members generate but it must be substantial.”

From time to time, the group welcomes visitors – including St Albans’ MP, Anne Main; the inspirational speaker and life coach, Jim Rees; Ron Overton of the St Albans-based charity, ReachOut Plus, and Territorial Army (TA) officer, Rhys Little, who spoke about his experiences while serving in Afghanistan with the Royal Anglian Regiment as well as outlining the advantages to employers of employing TA soldiers.

Comment: Although the business – and the money from it – that networking brings is both nice and necessary, the real value of being part of Platinum Point is the morale-enhancing friendship and encouragement that members offer one another on a weekly basis, as well as the valuable insights, tips and techniques that they dispense.

Hurrah for networking! Hurrah for – and happy fifth birthday to – Platinum Point!

E-learning industry news

Posted on April 15, 2011 by Bob

There are rumours that Trainer1, the north London-based producer and supplier of e-learning products has taken on Alan Samuel as its Director of Client Solutions. Until the end of October last year, Samuel was in charge of the UK operations for the e-learning content producer, Tata Interactive Systems (TIS), which is part of the India-based conglomerate, the Tata Group. For some months, TIS has been rethinking its role and presence in the UK’s e-learning industry and should soon be announcing that Will Pritchard, formerly of Third Force, is taking over as head of its UK operations.

Meanwhile, PIXELearning (PIXEL), a specialist in business simulations and games-based learning in the e-learning marketplace, has been acquired by Milamber Investments in a cash and share deal. PIXEL provides custom-built as well as off-the-shelf games and immersive learning services to blue chip customers, business schools and colleges.

Investors in PIXEL include regional venture capital fund Advantage West Midlands and loan fund Advantage Transition Bridge Fund. Both, along with others, will become shareholders in Milamber Group. Andy Hasoon, CEO of Milamber Group, joins the PIXEL board, while Richard Smith remains CEO of PIXEL and will continue to spearhead the growth of the company.

Headquartered in the Serious Games Institute at Coventry University’s Technology Park, PIXEL’s recent work includes the creation of a new recruit induction programme for KPMG and an online game for HP to help employees understand good practices for data security. Its published client list includes 3M, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Shell, Comcast, and CocaCola.

Comment: New starts are always exciting, motivating and, at times, successful – and, anyway, it will be good to see Alan Samuel active once again in the UK’s e-learning sector.

Reports of the death of the LMS have been greatly exaggerated

Posted on April 9, 2011 by Bob

Not one but two learning management systems (LMS) success stories have just emerged – from the broadcasting as well as the oil and gas industries.

For the last three years, the e-learning consultancy Core Learning Services (CLS) has been working with Global Radio (GR) – the UK’s premier commercial radio company – to host Global Radio’s LMS solution for developing health and safety e-learning materials to its staff.

Jonathan Barker, the Head of Health and Safety at GR – the home of such well known radio brands as Heart, Capital and Classic FM – explained: “We’re a national company and have 21 regional radio stations. These radio stations employ a large number of people to deliver various marketing and promotional services to the radio stations’ listeners – often on behalf of advertisers and sponsors. Many of these people we employ are on ‘casual contracts’ and we tend to experience, in some instances, quite a high ‘turnover’ among these casual workers. Nonetheless – or, perhaps, particularly because of this – we must provide them with immediate and effective job related training, especially in health and safety subjects.

“Moreover, because of the ‘casual’ nature of their employment coupled to the fact that they are nationally dispersed working anywhere in the broadcast region, it’s not always possible to get a group of them together to go on a classroom-delivered training course as soon as they join Global Radio,” he continued.

So, some three years ago, realising that ITV had used a similar training solution for production staff and had overcome these issues by introducing e-learning for its staff, GR did the same thing, asking Course-Source to host the LMS.

Meanwhile, Aberdeen Drilling Consultants Ltd, (ADC Virtual Academy) a training company with facilities in Aberdeen, and which serves the petroleum industry worldwide, is now co-ordinating its supply of training via the Absorb LMS supplied by Omniplex. Omniplex is also providing ADC Virtual Academy with special training not only in how to operate the LMS but also in how ADC staff can train their clients to administer and interrogate the LMS.

ADC Virtual Academy designs and delivers operationally relevant training courses and produces related technical manuals and documentation for the petroleum industry worldwide. Each year, the company trains some 1,000 people all over the world in the theoretical and practical aspects of understanding drilling equipment and well pressure control for drilling to ensuring – through in-house and externally-validated assessment processes – that they are ready for field operations using specific equipment and systems.

“In addition to technical proficiency, trainees need to understand health and safety as well as environment issues associated with their activities,” said Douglas Hay, the Managing Director of ADC Virtual Academy. “This makes it extremely important that we have an able and efficient learning management system (LMS) to not only make these courses available to learners but also to monitor the learners’ usage of the materials and assess their progress.”

Omniplex’s Stephen Miller explained: “We’re finding that Absorb LMS is continuing to gain new clients who’re migrating from legacy systems because of the way in which Absorb LMS evolves to match the client’s unique workflow – rather than forcing the client to adapt to the LMS.”

Comment: ADC Virtual Academy seems to be bucking the trend by not using the cloud but, instead, putting the LMS on its own servers. However, this may be the result of its particular needs – to ensure its clients and their employees comply with industry regulations.

Nonetheless, in addition to LMS vendors and resellers, industry experts keep saying – witness Clive Shepherd, Donald H Taylor and Nigel Paine in Rome recently – that the LMS is very far from being dead.

It’s not just all talk

Posted on April 4, 2011 by Bob

According to a customer satisfaction survey conducted at the end of March, some 80% of executives believe their company delivers superior customer service. Interestingly, only eight per cent of their customers agree. This statistic was revealed by Murray Cox, a consultant with the customer communication consultancy CCL (http://www.customerconsulting.com). Cox was speaking at one of a series of seminars on communications and customer strategy organised by CCL and held in London at the end of March.

Cox went on to reveal that, according to the research firm Forrester, 68% of brands are represented on social media principally so that they can listen to what others – particularly customers – are saying about them.

“There are lots of ways in which social media can affect your business,” continued Cox. “Basically, the best advice is: ignore people and they become vicious; involve people and they’ll participate’. The advantage of social media is that you can use it to establish ‘customer groups’, not just to get others’ ideas but also to test new ideas on customers.”

Comment: For many years, involvement and participation – particular widespread involvement and participation – have been key watchwords in the democratic process in the West. In recent months there have been signs in other countries, not least in the Middle East, that these concepts – perhaps stirred and nurtured via the internet – are also contributing to a desire for greater democracy there.

Where world politics is leading, can the world of business be far behind? Social media could be bringing about not just a democratic revolution in politics but also a revolution in business, based on such revolutionary concepts as transparency, customer consultation, involvement and so on. The problem with any revolution is that its benefits tend to be felt in the longer term while, in the short term, its effects can be painful.

Social media advice for organisations

Posted on April 2, 2011 by Bob

‘Social media – we know it’s going on but we’re not in control’. That – according to communication strategy consultant Martin Hill-Wilson – is a typical response from businesses to today’s social media phenomenon. Hill-Wilson was speaking at one of a series of seminars on communications and customer strategy organised by the management consultancy CCL (http://www.customerconsulting.com) and held in London at the end of March.

His view is that ‘social media’ stops communities getting trapped in ‘silos’ and only works because of cloud computing. And, in social media as with other forms of communication, listening is at least as important as talking.

“Social media has introduced new patterns of behaviour – especially commercial behaviour,” he said, “and social media-influenced commerce is dynamically linked to what you and your friends have liked. All of this is causing businesses some concerns – not least because, traditionally, business has been done in secret. Using social media is much more transparent and is more likely to ‘reveal all’.”

Hill-Wilson sees the rewards of social media engagement as:

It can build engagement and trust (although it does the opposite of this if you’re not responsive)
It provides accelerated learning opportunities
Small can look big and big can look small
It globalises brands cheaply
Social media and cloud computing offer ubiquitous access, enlarging markets

The risks, he defines as:

It exposes opaque (ie not transparent) behaviour
The viral carries both bad and good news
It stresses existing organisational norms
It puts brands that don’t ‘get’ social media onto a dangerous downward spiral

Hill-Wilson suggested that there are three approaches to an organisational social media policy:

Organic – a non-coordinated approach (eg Sun)
Centralised – one department controls all social media efforts (eg Ford)
Coordinated – one hub sets the rules, outlines best practices and policies, leaving individual departments to operate within these parameters (eg HP)

“There are a number of organisations’ social media policy documents online, so you can easily get a pre-developed structure for your own organisation’s policy,” he said. “One of the key aspects of this is that you must let your employees know that you’re listening to them via social media – and to let them know that ‘just because they can doesn’t mean that they should’.

“From an organisation’s point of view, social media is about feedback loops and using cross-functional teams to resolve issues,” he said. “And you also need to know when ‘enough is enough’ in terms of a response.”

Hill-Wilson’s advice to organisations wanting to take full advantage of social media is to:

Use social media consistently within functions
Unify tools and tactics (bring together those around your organisation who ‘do’ social media to work out a strategy for everyone)
Plan ahead for the next iteration of social media

Comment: Thanks to the advent – and continued development – of social media, we might be at the beginning of a new era in doing business, where transparency and honesty rather than secrecy and duplicity are the guiding principles. It all sounds a bit ‘religious’ – like a prophetic view of a new utopian, golden age. Such sentiments are not new: look at the gospel of Luke chapter 12 verses one to three, for example. Yet, finally, social media seems to have given us the ability to make a difference in this regard and to make those who dismiss its power appear as Canute-like cynics.

Hope springs eternal – but time could be running out for HR

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Bob

In his keynote speech at Plateau Insights, Plateau Systems’ European user conference, held in Rome and the end of March, Thomas Otter, Research Vice President at the market analyst firm Gartner, Inc, revealed that he and his team receive a wide range of queries about ‘talent management’, ranging from the extremely general to the highly specific.

“The latest enquiries tend to be about consolidation – where people are looking for one cloud-based vendor to supply both their talent management and learning management system (LMS) needs,” he said. “Traditionally, vendors talk about something; then buyers ignore it for two to three years and then they look to buy. By that time, the vendors can deliver what the buyers are looking for.”

Otter added, however, that despite the seeming attraction of cloud-based applications, people like silos. He said: “HR specialists buy software to deal with different bits of HR operations: learning software, performance software and so on. Then they have all sorts of frustrations trying to tie these systems together, getting information from each of the systems to the other systems and so on.

“It’s important to examine the cost of integration,” he advised. “And when you connect ‘A’ and ‘B’, you have to be sure that both bring value. Otherwise, don’t bring them together!”

He also observed that, when HR departments are evaluating software, they often don’t consult the users. Otter continued: “HR people decide what information they want and then wonder about the low levels of adoption from users. In order to get that information, they need to involve users at the evaluation stage.”

Moving on to consider talent management, he revealed that ‘full talent management usage from a single vendor’ is still rare. According to Gartner’s figures, only 3.7% of organisations using talent management systems have the ‘full suite’ of products. Those with four modules comprise 21.3%; those with three modules comprise 55.6% and those with just two modules comprise 86.1%.

In Otter’s view, the key issues in this sector are:

The shift from exclusively classroom based learning to e-learning and a blended approach has happened. There is now a continuing move to embrace more flexible social learning too. Of course, social learning has been around for ever but, now, it is available through the use of technology too.
LMSs are less ‘trendy’ but are far from dead. As long as government departments require proof of regulatory compliance, the LMS has a healthy future.
There is a growing need to track, or get insights into, social learning.
Recruitment is being heavily affected by social learning via LinkedIn or Zing for example. Organisations are reporting a fall in ‘job board’ spend of some 33% and a fall in spending on recruitment agency services of 25% and, instead, are using social media sites.
LinkedIn is an indictment on HR technology over the last 30 to 40 years. Over that time, HR specialists have been trying to get people to volunteer information to go on their systems. LinkedIn comes along and 100m people happily volunteer this information. In future, HR systems will need to be connected closely with LinkedIn and similar systems. He added: “ERP systems are designed for the compulsory user but they should focus less on how they can force people to give them data. As people become more open with sharing, they will share more.”
HR needs to get involved in social media/ social learning as soon as possible because (a) the use of social media in organisations is going to happen and (b) someone else in your organisation will be thinking of how to use social media and, if they get their ideas in first, HR’s voice will not be heard.
We’ve been through the hype of e-learning followed by the disappointment and we’ve now emerged at a ‘plateau of productivity’.
The mobile consumption of content is increasing and the creation of content for mobile consumption is also increasing. This means that ‘mobile’ needs to be integrated into HR strategy.
HR specialists want to be seen as ‘people people’ and yet they want their organisations to spend more on the HR function. HR specialists should learn the lessons of brand analysis from the marketing function and should, therefore, learn to be happier with numbers. Otter added: “Organisations need to make decisions about their people with the same rigour, logic and confidence as their decisions about finance, clients, policy and technology. HR people often have the necessary data but they don’t do a good job of finding and producing it.”

He concluded: “There is increasing acceptance and adoption of the cloud and, thus, software as a service (SaaS). SaaS is now well established and it works.

“HR specialists need to focus on unified learning and performance solutions for creating a performance driven culture. Within this, we’ll see informal social learning with increased user-generated content – especially video. In addition, we’ll see increasing importance being given to leadership development and succession management.”

Comment: Otter presented some valuable insights into the contemporary HR and HR technology scenes. His advice – find two or three vendors you want to bank on, including one in talent management and one in learning software, and commit to these to reduce your interface costs and risks – seems sound. Moreover, it is dispensed with the authority of a world-renowned market analyst firm.

Technology, data and numbers are all areas in which Otter advises HR specialists to invest and develop their expertise. It’s something that others with the best interests of HR at heart have said for many years. Unfortunately, history records that few HR specialists have, so far, heeded that advice. However, one of the great characteristics of any ‘people person’ is the ability to have hope. So, hopefully, the HR profession will take heed of Otter’s – and others’ – advice before it’s too late.

Learning and talent development survey: no surprises but some disappointments

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Bob

Funding for learning and development has continued to fall as employer budgets feel the squeeze, according to the Chartered Institute of Learning and Development (CIPD)’s recently published annual Learning and Talent Development survey. According to the survey, some 40% of organisations have either decreased funding for learning and development this year or anticipate doing so, while only one in ten anticipates an increased investment in training in the next 12 months.

Some 54% of organisations report that their economic circumstances have declined in the past 12 months, with 33% reducing the use of external suppliers and moving to in-house provision as a result. According to the CIPD, the survey also found that companies have increased their use of lower-cost development practices such as e-learning (54%), coaching by line managers (47%), in-house development programmes (45%) and internal knowledge-sharing events (37%).

Meanwhile, public sector cuts are having a significant impact on learning and development, with public sector employers three times as likely as those in the private sector to report that the funding of learning and talent development will decrease in the next 12 months (three-quarters (76% compared with 26%). This compares with last year’s figures of 19% of public sector and more than half of private sector respondents reporting that they expected cuts.

Comment: None of these figures, nor the trends they illustrate, can have come as a surprise.

It is, of course, disappointing to see that e-learning is rated as a ‘lower cost’ learning and development option compared – presumably – with instructor-led training. For one thing, e-learning is not a direct competitor with, not complete substitute for, instructor-led training and, for another, e-learning should be judged on its quality and fitness for purpose rather than purely on its cost. However, the e-learning lobby can be pleased that, for whatever reason, e-learning appears to be receiving a boost in popularity in these challenging economic times. It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, as the old saying goes.

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Monthly Archives: April 2011