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Bruce Marks

By K.C. Blonski and Bruce MarksWe’ve all seen or heard various statistics related to employee loyalty in today’s employment market:85 percent of the global workforce is not engaged at work (Gallup)50 percent of HR managers have current openings for which they can’t find qualified candidates (CareerBuilder)37 percent of all North American employees are searching actively or casually for their next job (Ceridian)Acquiring and retaining employees, especially Millennials, continues to be a challenge for all organizations. Many use various strategies to lure new talent, retain existing employees, and keep all focused and engaged. According to Saba’s recent State of Employee Engagement report, 86 percent of Millennials surveyed said they are more inclined to stay at their current company if they’re given access to quality training and development. Let’s think about that for a minute. The “Internet generation” of self-discovery and research is asking organizations to provide them with quality training and development to help secure the skills and behaviors needed to accomplish their current and future tasks.As many learning organizations source and secure licensed content to provide the right skill sets to support such requirements for engagement and productivity, many struggle with transferring knowledge acquisition to installed behaviors. Many licenses provide content for only one component of learning transfer and aren’t flexible enough to give learning organizations the capability to support the various initiatives needed to sustain engagement and implementation strategies.Learning organizations must be savvy in determining which license will provide the level of flexibility needed to help them achieve their objectives. Here are some questions to ask when determining if a license will support the various priorities of learning:Ability to customize and make derivatives. Will this license allow for self-customization and provide the opportunity for us to embed certain models and content from licensed programs into our own programs?Organization versus select population. Will the license allow us to cover the learning objectives of the entire employee population or just a subset as our needs evolve?Inclusive of all modalities. Does the license provide access to all available modalities?Transfer of delivery. Does the license allow us to facilitate any and all content?Unnecessary services. Does the license include services that aren’t pertinent to my needs?In today’s organizations, it’s not enough to just acquire the use of content to support the various needs of learning departments. The need is to identify a partner who will provide and transfer all necessary support to help the organization achieve its goals. Content is no longer king; it’s about identifying a partner that’s willing to support various initiatives and learning paths to help your organization be successful. These include individualized learning paths, microlearning, and the transfer of their knowledge and expertise in developing successful engagements and implementations. Any license should provide you with the tools and relevant services necessary to help drive long-lasting employee engagement, loyalty, and behavior change.K.C. Blonski is vice president of sales, corporate learning solutions for American Management Association.Bruce Marks is senior vice president of sales and business development for American Management Association.

Learning Content Licenses: How to Determine the Right Fit

By K.C. Blonski and Bruce MarksIn today’s fast-paced society, time has become a precious commodity. Because of this, the want and need for immediacy has grown exponentially. This lack of patience has also spread into the business environment, where we all are struggling with competing priorities and tight deadlines. For example, learning organizations face multiple and immediate needs: onboarding new personnel, upskilling of existing talent, creating or sourcing content aligned to various business initiatives, developing engagement plans for headquarter staff and regional offices, and accelerating high-performing talent. They also have to ensure successful learning transfer to on-the-job application and take the global implications of training into consideration, with no increase in budget or even diminished budgets, resulting in reduced resources.To effectively address these varied and continually changing priorities, learning organizations are seeking intellectual property (IP) that addresses not only the content necessary to support their strategies but the modalities that allow for diverse learning environments. Learning organizations require maximum flexibility to incorporate acquired IP into long-standing internally built programs, as well as the opportunity to customize this IP with organization-specific examples and vocabulary. They also need to provide varied modalities that allow for learning paths for individual, departmental and organizational learning and sustainability. To meet these needs, learning departments are looking to license this IP from various sources; to do so, they must conduct the proper due diligence when seeking out licenses marketed as “all access” or “unlocked access.” Many providers utilize these terms while offering their IP to companies; however, like purchasing a new car, buyers need to understand what’s standard and what’s optional.To purchase a license that has everything an organization needs for its learning strategy, buyers should ask some key questions, including:What content is included and how recently has it been updated?Why was this content selected as part of the license?What pre- and post-training assets are included in the license?What flexibility is there to create derivatives or customize the content?What modalities are included in the license?Can the IP be utilized for the entire employee population?Is your facilitator certification universal or by program?Which services are included in the license and which are not?Too often customers purchase licenses as a quick fix without realizing what’s truly included and what is in the optional/additional-cost bucket. Many find that there are certain restrictions placed upon the license that prohibit the realization of a successful training engagement. Buyers must understand all facets of a license before purchasing, to ensure that it provides the depth and flexibility necessary to support the value they seek, and, most importantly, the organizational impact their senior leadership expects.As mentioned previously, we live in a constant state of change that is forcing all employees to acquire new or enhanced levels of skills to remain competitive. Learning organizations must adapt quickly and have at their ready the proper tools necessary to support these priorities. Ensuring that the license they’ve purchased enables them to support their organizational needs is critical to achieving the success they seek.K.C. Blonski is vice president of sales, corporate learning solutions for American Management Association.Bruce Marks is senior vice president of sales and business development for American Management Association.

Are All Licenses Equal?

By K.C. Blonski and Bruce MarksHow do you replace a faucet? What about putting together a barbecue grill or baking a souffle? Finding answers to such questions is as easy as looking it up on the Internet. In today’s world, there is an overarching desire for immediacy and a push to get an answer and apply it “just in time.” Let’s face it, time is precious and we want answers now. That’s no different in our work lives. Given this reality, we find ourselves with a talent development dilemma in our learning and development landscape. Endless skill and knowledge acquisition and development options are available. Videos, mobile apps, online and in-person networks, and live and virtual classroom options are just a fraction of what’s out there.With all these options, learning and development teams are challenged to balance the learner’s need for immediacy with providing the appropriate direction and resources aligned to the organization’s business objectives and goals to drive long-term, sustainable behavior change. And, as talent and learning departments look to pursue the appropriate content and resources to support their organization’s initiatives, they need to take advantage of innovation in the L&D space to get the job done quickly and successfully. That is why many are turning to IP licensing opportunities to access learning content and services. The challenge is to identify which license provides the appropriate content and supports learner centricity in a way that will drive skills and behaviors aligned to organizational outcomes.In a recent study, Matthew Fisher and his colleagues at Yale University conducted research to determine if accessing information online affects how we assess our own knowledge. What they uncovered was:Those who accessed information from the Internet assessed themselves as having a higher level of mastery than those who did not access their information from the Internet.The Internet adds an artificial boost in confidence about one’s knowledge.We tend to believe we have mastery over a subject because we have access to it.In our personal lives we are used to seeking knowledge via searches on the Internet. That activity is spilling over into our work lives as well. Employees are taking it upon themselves to identify educational opportunities. As the Yale study found, just because we seek and have access to education doesn’t mean that employees have mastery over a subject. Without identified learning paths that support the ongoing reinforcement, sustainment, and installation of required skills and behaviors, employees who seek education for themselves or have access to broad-based digital libraries will not gain mastery of skills, as discovered in the study.With that, L&D organizations must ensure they have the ability to curate the necessary content. The newest way is to acquire IP licenses that encompass multiple modalities of learning and offer maximum flexibility to support formal and informal learning. Licenses that supply only digital libraries of content do not impact the dynamics of today’s learning paths that support skill attainment and eventually mastery. Instead, the outcome they support is the artificial boost in confidence about one’s knowledge that was identified in the Yale study.Learning and development organizations need to seek out training partners that provide access to their researched and proven content as well as also offer it in multiple modalities with flexible customization and integration that allow for alignment in today's learning and work environments. Without that the level of support, organizations will develop “jacks of all trades and masters of none.”K.C. Blonski is vice president of sales, corporate learning solutions for American Management Association (AMA).Bruce Marks is senior vice president of sales and business development for AMA.

Bruce Marks

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