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Kate Culligan

Perhaps you're saying, but I'm very happy in my current position and am not in job search mode, but think twice about this. In today's chaotic job market, you need an online presence to enhance your current career and to prepare for your next big jump to a bigger and better position or company. Check out Rich Feller's insightful book, "Knowledge Nomads and the Nervously Employed" http://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Nomads-Nervously-Employed-Courageous/dp/1416400621 to get REAL about this job market.Remember the first thing that recruiters or potential employers do when they're looking at candidates, is Google YOU! It really helps if you've positioned yourself as an expert in your chosen area. So even if you don't want to start a blog, participate in blogs. Get involved in the online discussion on current blogs or comment on posted articles on ASTD.org. Your name will come up along with your brilliant insights!Facebook and Tweeting aren't just for connecting socially. Most successful companies are using these media to connect with young customers and employees, by creating a top of mind presence. Many jobs are discovered exclusively by following a company's Tweets.Post info on the latest conference you attended or an aha you had about employee engagement or great article you read in Fast Company or a Training and Development job your company has posted...just do it now!!!Still overwhelmed? Start with "Linked In", join several groups and take some webinars on Blogging, Tweeting and Facebook. START NOW!

Your Online Presence

Regardless of your industry, you’re likely always searching for a competitive advantage.While nothing remains constant in business, you can achieve that competitive edge by empowering employees and fueling your organization with a culture of continuous learning and improvement.Building a learning culture allows you to keep up with technology changes and innovation, ensures team members excel in current and future roles, and upskills and reskills your workforce to meet industry trends and demands. Discover how to adopt a continuous learning mentality for your organization.What Is Continuous Learning?Continuous learning promotes ongoing opportunities to learn, develop, and enhance skills and knowledge.Ongoing learning can be facilitated in various ways to support different learning styles, including instructor-led training courses, informal learning, peer learning or shadowing, one-on-one training, and more.Why Is Continuous Learning Important in the Workplace?The business world is constantly changing. If you want to stay competitive, you must adapt and evolve. A continuous learning culture in the workplace forestalls complacency and enhances knowledge and skills to help your organization stay competitive.Benefits of Continuous LearningMaintain a skilled, competitive workforce. Prioritizing learning and growth helps employees excel in their current roles and better equips them to advance.Decrease employee turnover and retain engaged workers. Employees want to work for organizations where they have opportunities to learn and develop. Among American workers who quit a job in 2021, 33 percent cited lack of advancement opportunities as a major reason. Providing such opportunities can also save money, as the cost of employee turnover is estimated at one-half to two times an employee’s annual salary.Boost employee engagement. Learning and development (L&D) helps employees feel more satisfied at work. According to a study, 54 percent of respondents said they would leave a job due to a lack of professional development opportunities.How to Use Learning Content to Promote Continuous LearningYou must provide the right resources and materials to ensure team members have ample opportunities to grow and develop.This means they need access to the right learning content when and where they need it.What Is Learning Content?Learning or training content includes instructional materials and resources to help individuals learn new skills or build on their existing skill sets. The most common types of learning content include:Onboarding. Documents and training materials inform employees about role expectations and job responsibilities and help them learn more about an organization and its company culture.Ongoing L&D and professional development. Beyond onboarding, it’s essential to provide ongoing training to help employees develop role-specific, soft, and technical skills to help them advance into more senior roles.Compliance and regulatory training. These outline the rules and regulations employees must understand. It can include HIPAA awareness, sexual harassment prevention, safe work environment routines, and more.How to Build an Effective Learning Content StrategyUnderstanding the specific training content your team members need will ensure that you provide the right resources and opportunities to help them excel. Because individuals have a wide range of learning styles, it’s vital to use different styles of learning content to promote engagement and retention.Incorporate training formats such as:VideoSlides and presentationsE-booksPodcastsSocial learning (interactive activities and role play)ChallengesInteractive contentCertification programsLearning Content Best PracticesWhile using the right format is important to engage various learning styles, training content must be memorable and engaging to boost learner retention.Make it interactive. Kinesthetic learning, or learning by doing, is one of the most common teaching styles. Incorporate interactive elements like scorecards, matching, quizzes, and more.Incorporate social learning. Create opportunities for team members to share what they’re learning; this could be in a face-to-face setting or using communication tools like Slack or Teams. Also, encourage team members to teach each other. According to the Learning Pyramid, individuals retain nearly 90 percent of what they learn when teaching others.Keep it short. The average learner’s attention span is around 15 to 20 minutes. Limit training increments to 10 to 20 minutes to keep learners engaged.Refresh and reinforce. Provide ongoing refresher training sessions and create opportunities to test knowledge and retention.Use a learning platform. A learning platform can help you create engaging training content and organize learning materials in a central location so employees can access resources on demand.Learning Content ChallengesContent Curation. When culling from many different sources, curating learning content can take time and effort. Using an all-in-one learning platform, you can connect to training created by subject matter experts and manage and deliver e-learning from multiple sources.Budget and Resources. Creating custom content for your team requires funding and buy-in from stakeholders. According to some estimates, developing a one-hour training course can take 80 to 280 hours and cost anywhere from $5,850 to $15,000.Keeping Learning Content Up to Date. Most learning content isn’t evergreen, and it can be difficult for learning management system (LMS) administrators and L&D professionals to continually update it to comply with technology or policy changes, industry shifts, and innovation.Using an LMS can help you keep learning content updated and ensure employees are getting the most current training materials. If your LMS integrates with third-party content providers, you can ensure content will be updated as necessary.Leveraging Prebuilt Content to Empower Your TeamYou no longer need a large team of instructional designers to create effective content. With an LMS that has integrated, prebuilt content, L&D professionals can combine internal resources with off-the-shelf content from subject matter experts.Prebuilt templates are customizable, which saves time when creating course content from scratch. But it’s important to ensure your LMS platform integrates seamlessly with prebuilt content.Finding the Right ResourcesCreating and curating the right learning content means your team members have the materials they need to learn and grow. Still, you also need a learning platform to bring everything together.Having the right learning platform saves time when creating and sourcing content and keeps it in one place so users can access materials on demand. This enables employees to learn in the flow of work, which embeds continuous improvement into your workplace culture rather than creating additional work on top of day-to-day responsibilities.An all-in-one learning platform like WorkRamp can help you make the most of learning content with:A fully integrated content experience that combines powerful and easy-to-use course authoring tools, customizable templates, and off-the-shelf content for L&D, compliance, enablement, and moreA single, cohesive learner dashboard that contains prebuilt and custom content in one viewCuration from a catalog of more than 85,000 content resources from industry leading providers in multiple formats, learning styles, and languagesEmbrace Continuous Learning to Future Proof Your TeamsNo matter the type of learning content you use, the importance of ongoing learning cannot be denied. Motivate your employees to continuously learn and improve, and turn learning into a growth engine for your organization.WorkRamp content offers a curated catalog of ready-to-go content from experts on compliance, professional development, sales skills, and more in your learning platform. Enrich your programs with content that aligns with business objectives and expedites and enhances performance without creating content from scratch.Learn more about using WorkRamp content to build effective programs that attract, develop, and retain talent.

How Continuous Learning Can Help Your Organization Thrive

Freedom From Business as Usual E-mail Can Send Sales Soaring or Delete OpportunitiesE-mail is great as a sales tool.E-mail isn’t great as a sales tool.The e-mailer determines whether e-mail is or isn’t effective. E-mail can be a sales person’s friend or foe – depending on how it is used.  To maximize sales results with e-mail, remember to:Say thank you.State what you need.Develop an e-follow-up system.When I worked outside sales for a drug company, we sales people always fought for prospect attention.  To differentiate myself from competitors I went back to a sales basic – say thank you.  After each sales call, I pulled out my stationery for a quick thank-you note.  I mailed it the same day.Today, use e-mail and your stationery to say thanks.  Many of you have a Blackberry; use it to your advantage.jim Golds at File Vault says, “I recently closed an account with a ‘triple-barrel post-call thank you.’”  Sent the e-mail and mailed the card before leaving the building so the client had a touch within minutes and another in the mail the next day.  When I phoned the day after that to set a meeting to review my proposal, it was the third touch within three days.”One of my bank clients is a power e-mail user, averaging more than 250 daily messages.  Each e-mail competes for consideration.  If you want her attention, the e-mail must have a clear title.  Subject lines that contain “re:re:fwd,” say “Old news here.”  Blank subject lines seem evasive and unhelpful.Make e-mail subject lines to-the-point.  For example, “Thank You – Proposal Attached,” or, “Confirmed Meeting 4/18.”To improve your communication more, say what you need in the first sentence of the e-mail.  Example: “The revised price schedule we discussed Thursday is attached and I can provide the 15 percent sales rate on orders before April 20.”An attorney client of mine mastered these first two steps of e-mail as a sales tool.  Follow-up was the next hurdle.  He sent e-mails and tried to remember if he ever heard back from the prospect. Our minds are not effective to-do lists.  So we devised an automated tracking system for outstanding e-mailed items.  Outlook users can write custom rules.  We wrote a rule called “Waiting For.”  Each time he sends a prospect e-mail that needs a response, he “cc’s” himself and a copy of the message automatically hits his “Waiting For” folder.  (Want the “Waiting For” instructions?  E-mail me.)Once a week he checks this “Waiting For” folder for outstanding items.  Why does he set aside one time a week?  Well, I’m out of column space this week and I’ll discuss that in my next column. If you'd like more, please consider attending ASTD 2012 where you can hear Jeannie Sullivan & Carson Tate at their session in Denver.

Kate Culligan

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