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Allison Bell is passionate about helping people excel in their jobs through engaging learning experiences. She leads the development of custom learning programs tailored to each client’s unique needs. Throughout her career, Bell has worn many hats—from instructional designer to performance consultant to learning leader—and her expertise spans multiple industries, government entities, and nonprofit organizations. She has a deep understanding of onboarding, professional skill development, promoting user adoption through learning, and capacity building.

Allison Bell

January 2025 - TD Magazine

These strategies will help project managers smoothly and efficiently develop e-learning initiatives.

Avoid Pitfalls in E-Learning Projects

I admit it. I love when people seek my opinion. That happened a lot in Denver, at ASTD 2012:I am entering the field. What do I do to make a success of it?Let’s pretend that somebody asked me to deliver a commencement speech in response to that question, preferably on a lush, ivy covered campus, near amiable watering holes.Thank you for inviting me to share this wonderful occasion with the workforce learning graduates of 2012....Let me begin by congratulating you on your career choice. I am sure you and your family are delighted—after all you could have chosen to go to law school. After years of clamoring for a seat at the table, C-levels are increasingly intrigued by what we can do for them. Pressure for growth, technology, and a competitive landscape create abundance and opportunity for workplace learning people. Every sector, from higher ed to pharma, is seeking candidates whose heads are screwed on right. What do I mean by right? I am talking about heads with an unrelenting focus on performance and results.Everything I say then is from the vantage point of celebration. I think this is a bountiful time to be in our field. I think you can get in the door. That's not the primary challenge. What's difficult is to make the most of it once you are in place.My advice to you as you commence this tasty career….·        It’s not about how. It’s about why. Several years ago, I served on a committee to review submissions for awards at an international conference. We considered a four-day course for engineers soon to be tasked with serving as instructors. The course devoted itself to teaching them Instructional Design 101, with half of the first day spent writing letter-perfect, four-part objectives. And so on and so forth. My eyes glazed over. The engineers’ eyes would close entirely. Wrong stuff.A more recent example came from online compliance training I was dragooned into taking. The topic was information security. Screen 3 listed the objectives. Only three of the eight had anything to do with my work and life. How would I endure the next 73 screens? Even animated pandas could not make this e-learning successful. Wrong stuff.In our business, we begin with the end in mind. Heaven help us when those ends are wrong-headed.·        It’s not about us. It’s about them. Sounds obvious, I know. But I can’t tell you how often I hear people say they want to put the program in the classroom because they themselves like to learn in the classroom. Or they are going to try out avatars because they are engaging. (Are they?)One twenty-something told me that she intended to do coaching for supervisors and managers. I asked why. She said she thought she would be good at it and that coaching was a good way to help people. While eloquent about her preferences and capabilities, she never mentioned evidence. Would coaching work in this case? Shouldn’t she review the literature on that matter? And what of her lack of experience as a supervisor and manager? The fact that she likes people is good but by no means sufficient.It isn’t what you want to do. It’s what the work, worker and workplace demand. There’s the challenge and the opportunity.·        It’s not any one thing. It’s many things, aligned, in systems. Forget shiny pennies. Mobile learning is an example of just such a penny. ASTD’s chief Tony Bingham loves it. I love it too. I’ve written about it. I see ample potential. But it is no slam dunk in and of itself. No single solution, not mobile or webinars or games or even gamification, is the answer. The value of each emerges within systems. Our goal is strategic benefit, such as making information available on demand, tracking performance, reminding of expectations, enabling tons of practice, or helping new customer service reps communicate with peers or coaches.Take the job of retirement specialist. Consider the stress the topic provokes in customers. Think about how much there is to know to do this job, and then extend your vision to the attention that regulators pay to it. If you are tasked with developing and supporting these professionals, best not throw a single solution at it, no matter how nifty that solution is. Your program must involve intense and graduated lessons, lots of practice with diverse cases, coaching and feedback, assessments and self-assessment—and that’s the development part of it. Surely you would want to provide human and automated resources available on demand to deal with infrequent questions, lengthy procedures and updates.Mobile? Games? Perhaps. Why not? What’s for sure is that there must be a concerted system. There’s the challenge and the opportunity.·        The soft stuff is the hard stuff. A few weeks ago I visited Deloitte University with 75 learning leaders. Our focus was leader development. Eric Paul from Dell said to nods all around, "The soft stuff is the hard stuff."And not just for leader development. The retirement specialist can’t just know about retirement, she must want to help. Same for the USPS. My postal deliverers know their job and then they do it with gusto. They stop back, wait a moment or two to get a signature, or brighten my day with a howdy. It’s knowing and doing and caring to exert effort. How do we influence that through training and development?How will you systematize the development of minds AND hearts and bellies? There’s the challenge and the opportunity.·         No matter how much you know today, success depends on your ability to learn continuously, forever . In the opening keynote at ASTD 2012, Jim Collins reminded us of the importance of humility.Now, as you launch your career, it’s time to weigh the value of humility. If you are humble, you know that you do not know it all. Your humility opens you up to lessons, messages, ideas and surprises. You seek them.Don’t just nod at me, graduates. What are you going to do to systematically assess and develop? How will you push yourself beyond your comfort zone? For starters, let me suggest that you join a local professional association, and an international too. ASTD is a great choice, but not the only one. Consider ISPI and eLearning Guild. Find one I don’t know about.Take advantage of the idea of a personal learning network. Tour regularly in domains with which you are not familiar, where you will encounter approaches that are not old hat to you. I did it yesterday. This morning I contemplated all that went into the development and mobile support that enabled a British tree surgeon to save a tiny finch.As you refresh your skills and perspectives, you will also inoculate yourself against burn out. There’s the challenge and the opportunity.I think commencement addresses are supposed to conclude with an inspirational quote from someone like John Kennedy or Martin Luther King.   Instead, I’ll turn to baseball. First, Pete Rose: “You owe it to yourself to be the best you can possible be—in baseball and in life.” Then there’s the speedy Lou Brock: “No one wants to hear about the labor pains, they just want to see the baby.” And finally, Yogi Berra, “I wish I had an answer to that because I'm tired of answering that question.”  Actually, I’m glad I got to answer a question about advice for new grads-- and I hope my thoughts will also be useful for the old grads who stumble upon these words. That’s what I hope you will be in your career—useful. Just a word, and within it is both the challenge and the opportunity.

My Commencement Address for the Workforce Learning Class of 2012

Capturing the heart of talent recruitment means creating a truly diverse talent search portfolio—one that attracts strong candidates and understands how a sense of belonging within an organization is a critical component to successful candidate recruitment. Employees often state that a sense of belonging is evidenced more in the organization’s culture than in programs and infrastructure. Organizations need to make a determined effort to create a truly inclusive culture where all employees feel they matter, and where they are valued both for what they bring professionally as well as for who they are as individuals with unique lived experiences. Innovative applied academic programs, such as Fielding Graduate University’s master’s in organization development and leadership, are designed to educate current and future leaders in organization and talent development, ensuring they are equipped to lead in this area and create positive change.Belonging and mattering can have different meanings to the employer and the employee. Too often organizations focus on recruitment as a means to an end—the successful hiring of a particular candidate to a new position. Employers often state that belonging and mattering in their organization should be self-evident because a) underrepresented employees were hired, which demonstrates the organization’s values, b) an employee resource group exists, and c) the organization’s diversity statement asserts their commitment. Although all of these are important and necessary for creating an infrastructure of support, they are insufficient if not properly resourced and integrated system-wide throughout the organization.Onboarding is the portal to the organizational culture, norms, and values. A sense of mattering and belonging should be the first thing a new employee experiences as part of a truly inclusive organization. Onboarding practices need to address the individual human dimensions of diverse employees and exemplify an ethic of care that leads to a sense of belonging and mattering. As an example, leaders can ensure that the onboarding process provides underrepresented new employees access to an active employee resource group, as well as information and introductions to key individuals about childcare, K–12 schools, dual-career opportunities in the organization or local area, safe and adequate housing, and medical practitioners who understand and value diverse demographics and health needs.Organization leaders can create partnerships with external diversity-oriented, community-based organizations that not only provide support but serve as an anchor for greater networking opportunities and portals to ideas, partnerships, and community building. Creating an environment of belonging and mattering for all employees encourages better productivity, morale, and professional growth for individuals and the organization.Positions in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) have risen 123 percent since May 2021. A senior leadership representative from Indeed stated that these positions now range from entry-level programmatic roles up to C-suite executives, with companies making historic moves to meet the moment. This moment is actually a movement, which will continue to gain momentum as workplaces shift to meet new demands and new audiences and build an even more tightly integrated ecosystem of global connectivity. Making sure that everyone is valued and heard as part of that ecosystem is critical for its survival.As we move boldly into a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world, the diversity imperative will continue. However, we must ensure that diversity is not perceived in isolation; it must be rooted and anchored in an ethic of care by creating a strong organizational commitment to belonging and mattering. After all, we secure talented candidates by ensuring they feel welcome, valued, and a sense of belonging in our organizations.

Looking for Diverse Talent? Think Belonging

I recently heard the following sentiment from a client, “We’ve got Yammer, but nobody uses it.” It was the third time someone had lamented to me about their organization’s inability to make the social learning tool work for them.So, just how do you find success with a new internal Yammer community? In order to answer that question, I spent some time interviewing Allison Michels, manager of Learning and Development for Yammer Education Services at Microsoft. She delivers education programs to customers and engages in the people side of change, and her focus is training and coaching the C-suite_._According to Michels, successful use of Yammer results in a network that is organized to share and work faster and more effectively than before. But “it takes four things to have a successful enterprise social network,” she says. These include:clarity of visionexecutive sponsorship and participationintegrations (like apps and daily workflow)community management.“They aren’t easy, and it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s really all of these elements working together, a bit messy at first, but orchestrated none the less,” advises Michels.  “A tactical approach can be found in a post from Kathleen Rouse, who provides insight on making your network a success.”Here’s a little bit more from our Q&A.Q: In my own experience, many wannabe Yammer-adopters just jump on the “social media and sharing bandwagon” without much thought. You mention “clarity of vision” as the first key to success. What does this mean? What kind of vision are we talking about? What are the good reasons to start with Yammer?A: Sometimes you go in first with the idea of just using Yammer, and sometimes you are talking business change and transformation and the output is Yammer. But I think the overall key is to not limit yourself to a product. Think first about what you are really trying to achieve, with or without a tool like Yammer.To help define this vision, you should review some of the templates available via the Social Journey section of Yammer’s “Success Centre.”The key point is to get everyone aligned to that bigger vision. I was working with one executive team, when after three hours of a visioning workshop, the COO slammed his hands down and said “It’s about the people, it’s about the people.” It’s always been about the people. Specific tools just help them to rethink and change the way people work.A notable example comes from the Belgian Government community “Club 35.” Recognizing the need for civil servants to come together and innovate, share ideas, and define the skills, Elke Wambacq of Kind en Gezin and Thomas De Spiegelaere of the Federal Department of Mobility launched a Yammer group. “Club 35” found that cutting across hierarchies, harnessing collective wisdom, and working together to shape the future of the civil service was easier with Yammer. And what started out as a small core team of dedicated individuals continues to grow in to a vibrant, geographically dispersed, democratic, and highly efficient community that is actively changing government for the better. For more success stories, you can check out Yammer’s customer story archives online.Q: But changing the way people work takes time. As you say, “It doesn’t happen overnight.” Just how long does the average successful company need to make Yammer work?Yammer typically works with companies to launch a few specific use cases. They might take four to six weeks to get rolling, or sometimes even three months. It depends on the level of complexity, culture, and readiness of the organization.To get some ideas about successfully launching a community, I suggest reading what Yammer proposes for the first 31 days.But don’t assume it will all go as planned. Recently, I worked with a customer and our “use case” looked great, so we rolled out the community. Unfortunately, it didn’t work—it didn’t stick. So the team went back to see what could be adapted the next time around. You need to see development and launch as a journey.Overall, I would say it takes about one year before Yammer becomes natural. By then, you should have teams of people diving in to the tool to figure out new use cases and adapting existing ones.Here are some other interesting posts that might help mangers get started:Online Community Management Tips and Best PracticesStoke the Fire for Social Learning Success.Good luck!

Making Your Yammer Community Work: Tips from Allison Michels

Allison Horn leads Accenture’s global talent strategy and development consulting practice, partnering with clients to craft talent strategies and talent practices that serve both current and future organizational needs.Prior to her current role, Horn served as Accenture’s global head of talent and the company’s chief learning officer. She led teams around the world that drove recruiting and onboarding of 150,000-plus new joiners, and she provided best-in-class L&D experiences for the company’s 700,000+ people. Horn oversaw an annual training investment of more than $1 billion and was responsible for the continuous evolution of Accenture’s performance culture model.

Allison Horn

   Articulate products have useful player and menu features built in, which makes developing e-learning a little easier. But sometimes your course needs something different from the standard option. Does this complicate things? Fortunately, the answer is no. Customizing the Course Player There are several ways to customize the look and functionality of your course navigation, both globally and for individual slides. Using the course player, you can modify the appearance and function of the menu and the Previous and Next buttons (along with other elements that I won’t elaborate on in this post). Let’s go through each of these now. Menu. The menu can be used as a navigational tool, and you can give it a look and feel to match your project. For example, if you want to change how learners access the menu or tweak its colors or give it a different name, simply open the Player Properties editor and adjust the Player Tabs, Colors & Effects, or Text Labels as you see fit (see figure below).You can also change the order and hierarchy of items in the menu, as well as restrict or lock navigation (see figure below).Previous and Next buttons. From the Player Properties editor, you can change the colors of every element in the player, including the Previous and Next buttons (see figure below). As with the menu, you can change the text on each of those buttons. If you want your Next button to say “Continue” or “Sail On,” you can do that (see figure below).Customizing Navigation for Individual Slides Let’s look at how you can change the navigation options for particular slides. For Storyline, you want to be in Story View. For Presenter, just click the Slide Properties button in the toolbar. Within each of these, you can easily turn the Previous and Next buttons on or off for each slide (see figure below).In addition, you can turn on or off other player features, such as the menu. This might come in handy in a course where learners could navigate from the menu but you want to stop them from navigating away from a quiz question. Creating Your Own Navigation Let’s say you want Previous and Next buttons that are circles, or in the shape of a tiny compass rose. With the information above, this is easy as pie. Here’s how (see figure below): Turn off the Previous and Next buttons for all of your slides. In Storyline, you can do this for all slides in one fell swoop by selecting any scene or slide and pressing CTRL+A twice to select all slides. Then, use your Slide panel to deselect Previous and Next. Create a custom button using any of Storyline’s built-in buttons, markers, or shapes, or an image you import into the project. Create a trigger for your custom button that jumps to the next slide when clicked. You can also create triggers that automatically advance when a slide ends, an activity is complete, or a user hovers over an object. With all of these options, you can really let your learners explore your e-learning world!

Toolbox Tip: Custom Course Navigation

”Always do what you are afraid to do.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.It might make us uncomfortable, but the reality is that social learning isn’t really new. What is the “shiny new object” are the tools that help enable learning to happen without boundaries. So, why is this important? What role should L&D practitioners have in it? When thinking through the design of training programs, learning and development (L&D) teams should not overlook the power of the community, but embrace it. Organizations should try to achieve specific aspects of community when designing programs:a community that depends on each other to accomplish work and support customersa community that isn’t afraid to speak up and say, “I don’t know this, but who can help?”a community of learners who guide their own needs as you support them, not the other way arounda community that learns from peers through technologya community that that L&D should not fear.L&D professionals embracing these aspects of social learning and community into their programs and designs have the opportunity to help change their workforce for the better.The first step in moving past the fear of social learning is to remember why you took a role in learning and development.  The vast majority of L&D professionals do what we do because we want to help.  We want to help people learn better and more efficient ways of working and help them grow and develop professionally and personally.  Adding social options into our learning toolbox gives us the capabilities to do all of those things with more agility, speed, and productivity.But why are there so many in L&D opposed to using social tools? When we talked with L&D professionals resisting adding social into learning and their professional lives, it boils down to one word: control.There is a need for control that stems from well-intended motives. When you start to dig a little deeper, you’ll find there are two distinct sides to the control factor, with fear lying in the middle.  Fear is the uncertainty and lack of control when it comes to social.Helping others vs. controlling informationRemember, you are in this profession to help others.  It’s not about you, it’s about the learners. Controlling the information someone else needs in order to learn is not of value; knowing how to help someone get to the information they need to learn is valuable.Indeed, a valuable and highly regarded L&D professional doesn’t have all of the answers and doesn’t control access to information. Instead, they know how to connect the right people with the right resources. A community of networked employees using a social platform in the learning toolbox makes the job of connecting easier and faster than ever before. This tool provides a connection to the network and access to information from every single employee in the organization.Providing open access to information across the organization helps to alleviate the bottleneck that has become the L&D function. We do ourselves a disservice if we think that the purpose of L&D is to control all the learning happening in an organization.A social platform working with the community of experts makes it easier to support subject matter experts in creating and developing learning. If you are afraid to let a SME take on this task, think about the role that you as a learning professional could play. Within a community on a social platforms , L&D pros can encourage, participate in, and monitor conversations while pointing people in the right direction from anywhere at any time.With the L&D mindset, you will be able to bring in your expertise and knowledge if you know others are working on similar initiatives. As you help to deliver learning “moments” faster through the community having unlimited access, you’re helping to develop SME’s into trainers.Keep in mind that learner’s don’t necessarily care where they get the information they need to do their jobs. They care that they get the right information they need to do their jobs in the most effective way at the time they need it.  L&D teams that resist this shift of control will find their organizations viewing them as a necessary expense instead of a valuable strategic part of the organization.Knowledge is power vs. the power of the networkFor years we have been told that knowledge is power. But today, the acquisition of knowledge is easily accessible by almost everyone on any subject with an Internet connection. The application of knowledge and the context in which we add value to our customers is what makes us unique.When you add a community through a social platform into your learning toolbox, it helps to extract and make available knowledge held by individuals within the organization highlighting their expertise and best practices.  The power and strength of any organization comes from individuals within the organization sharing what they know with the community at large.  There truly is power in numbers.A social learning platform is new and evolving network of people building a community. These pockets of people and network already exist somehow within your organization. Tapping into that networked community and bringing it to our organizations, we have to understand the needs and desires from the learners.Three avenues of fearThe trainer. Some trainers have a fear of being open and participants of a social platform. In one organization, we asked how being part of a community was different than standing up in front of a room facilitating the conversation. On the surface, they felt in control of the classroom environment. They could stomp-out chatter.A trainer in front of the room becomes the expert and builds trust with the learners through the class. So, how can we replicate that online?  Within the use of social tools, you can encourage these conversations to happen throughout the day to facilitate learning beyond the static content or presentations.The learner. George Washington is quoted to have said, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” Washington’s quote illustrates why people are “fearful” to use social tools; the doubt and fear of looking like a fool. Learners might say to themselves, “I don’t want to look like I don’t know the answer, so I just won’t ask.”A few months ago, we hosted training for non-for-profit marketing team focusing on how to speak up and be heard rather than keeping secrets. The team consisted of experts in their field with many novices to social tools and had a desire to learn more specifically about Twitter and how it could help their community. As we dug into their story, we asked questions like: What were they proud of within their organization? What events were happening? Why the community should care?The ideas, stories, and information that they shared were honest, caring, colorful, and perfect content for the team to start sharing on social media. We had the team write down these answers on post it notes. Then we started with the basics like writing a bio and updating your profile, hashtags, following experts and other not-for-profits, and participating in tweet chats.We used the motto: “If you won’t say it about your organization, don’t tweet it.” The post it notes became actual things the group could use to tweet about. When we broke it down and used a method these learners were comfortable with they could overcome their fear of tweeting easier. Months later, the team is still tweeting and learning more by expanding their reach on social networks thru their community. Allowing the learners to try without fear, helps provide an easier transition. Practice before you leap.The message. We (Yammer) designed a global training program. It included e-learning, community participation, webinars, and even face-to-face meetings. Well, that’s where the issue rose.We were in Japan facilitating the workshop and the participants were nodding their heads agreeing with us as if they understood. When we analyzed the audience prior to the trip, we were told that English was not a problem for these participants. However, as we later found out, a brave trainee said that she was having a hard time understanding what we were saying.  The message had been distorted.The next day we took a course of action, instead of having fear that we had lost a whole day of training “message.” My colleagues started to “Live-Yam,” which is when someone is talking while someone else is posting key points to Yammer within the group used for training. Within the tool, you can translate the user interface, as well as any message that’s not in your local language.Because our participants had the ability to translate each message, they were easily able to share and respond in Japanese to the trainers who posted in English. They could ask questions in their native tongue that could be answered in Yammer and searchable for the next group of workshop trainees.From a social aspect beyond social media, we learned from one of the participants that it wasn’t working, so we used our social tools to help use still convey the message. With tools to help us convey the message in the language that literally the group could understand, we were able to get the key points across.Now, a few months after the training sessions, the group still posts in Japanese, and they get replies from trainees around the world in Spanish, Portuguese, and English.Moving forwardSo, how do you get started to identify areas of fear? Below is a checklist of our recommendations to navigate these three areas.The trainer can:Start conversations within the community about learning, training, and education in general.  Some conversation starter ideas include: Is mandatory training positive or negative?  How can we add “fun” to our virtual/e-learning courses?  Would anyone like to volunteer to pilot our ABC Course?Post your own thoughts of what you are working on, and with whom.Communicate about the actual training events –leading up to, during, and after.Understand the tools and try them out for yourself. Trying to tie a tool to a project might work, or use experiments for different tools. This is helpful as you consider your audience for the training needs.The learner can:Encourage learners to share about their experience with the learning events.Connect and engage company experts to follow on your social platform internally, or externally find industry experts to follow. For example, as you read online articles and blogs, note the authors twitter name.  You can then follow them.  Also, learn about Tweet Chats or YamJams and join in. A great one as an example to begin with is #LRNCHAT.The message can:Deliver knowledge by use # hashtags to create topics that you and others can search/follow around the topic you are communicating.Finally, ask to see your organization’s social media guidelines. If they don’t have them, ask to be involved with the decisions around them. A good best practice is that that you are responsible for your behavior and that if you wouldn’t speak it don’t tweet it. We should be involved with the social strategy within the organization sharing the knowledge that we have of learning and development to our leaders and employees. Don’ be fearful, jump in!

Social Learning Fear Factor

Digital Writing for Learning and Performance— a one-unit courseAre you up-to-date in the field? Do you read professionally? Do you do it often? Do you do it efficiently? Do you know where to look for tasty morsels? Are you contributing yourself?Just a few more questions…. Do you know who Jane Hart is? How about George Siemens? Donald Taylor? Jane Bozarth? How about Tony Karrer and Juana Llorens? They all influence the field through blogs, content aggregation, tweets, and more. For example, Tony Karrer aggregates content, in addition to blogging himself. Juana has launched a lively instructional design online community that is attracting ASTD members and many others too.About two years ago, I noticed three things.I was not favoring my monthly magazines and journals as I once did. Collecting in a pile, they felt old and flabby when I finally got to them.I had this sense of things going on around and about me. Ideas, programs, and even apps were catapulted into the bloodstream of workplace learning and performance and I wasn’t tuning in to them- not in a dependable way. I wanted to weigh in. I was just as interested in the back and forth comments at the end of blog postings as I was in the original post. I started to add comments and enjoy responses to my comments. I was checking my twitter feed, sending out the occasional resource, and monitoring selected streams as eagerly as I followed the stock market and the San Diego Padres.It was time for me to devote real energy to this new way of being a professional.So I did. And I’m better, happier too, because of it. I blog and tweet. I monitor feeds. I participate in online communities. When I add content to the universe, reactions are immediate and often substantial. That old feeling I had about books and articles I’d written… wondering if they were read, appreciated and applied…. most of that concern is gone. I no longer feel as if I am tossing content into the Grand Canyon.Which brings me to a short, online course I will teach this Spring. It is called Digital Writing for Learning and Performance. Here are the five course outcomes:Review online resources associated with workplace learning and development and discover and share a dozen with meaning for you and your work;Make progress in building your own PLN (personal learning network), a set of resources to help you stay up to date in the field;Engage with others, classmates and others beyond our class, who produce content and host communities devoted to workplace learning and performance;Identify and research a topic that matters to you and offers benefits to others in the field of training and development; andCreate and submit content suitable for distribution online, in a resource we agree has the potential to be influential.The class will happen online. We commence on March 4th at 6 PM Pacific, and will meet online many, but not all, Monday evenings for an hour. The class concludes on May 13th.  Net, net, you will read and write and re-write and submit, supported by me, a teaching assistant, and your classmates. The underlying intention of the class is to increase familiarity and comfort with the delicious online resources that surround us.It costs $400 to register for the one-unit course.  You can enroll in the course here.In process is a 15% discount for ASTD members. Are you an international member? If you are, please complete this form so we can forward registration instructions.Interested? If you have any questions please drop them into the comments below. Thanks!

Digital Writing for Learning and Performance

**The workforce of today has different expectations. They are looking for fair rewards, flexibility, and engaging work. In essence, they are looking to be treated as adults.—Allison Maitland and Peter Thomson, Future Work**By now, almost everyone in business is familiar with Gallup’s stats on engagement:  13 percent of employees are highly engaged, with the remaining 87 percent either not engaged, indifferent, or actively disengaged. However, an organizational survey by Accor Services reports that while 90 percent of respondents believe that employee engagement is critical to success, only 25 percent have a strategy to address this critical human capital issue.Why Is Employee Engagement So Important?Gallup estimates that employee disengagement costs organizations an estimated $450 to $550 billion a year. Meanwhile, Gallup’s survey of 1.4 million employees found that teams scoring in the top 25 percent of respondents for engagement experience several benefits:  lower turnover; 65 percentfewer safety incidents; 48 percentlower absenteeism; 37 percenthigher productivity; 21 percenthigher customer metrics; 10 percent.  More importantly, during difficult times, a highly engaged workforce positions the organization for success. External factors like the recent economic downtown have less impact on organizations with an engaged workforce.  Engagement enables growth and profit in either a positive or negative business climate.What Can Organizations Do to Increase Engagement?To be proactive about increasing employee engagement, organizational leaders must become the driving force—making engagement a business and strategic imperative. Effective leader-employee relationships, regardless of reporting structure or location, will help build a highly satisfied and engaged workforce. Indeed, organizations in the 21st century will need to transition from top-down hierarchies to nimble organizations that can adapt and change quickly with open and transparent communications. This way, every employee is in the know. Think Zappos, Netflix, Pandora, Amazon, Uber, and Facebook, among others.Bottom line: In order to maximize their efforts on employee engagement, successful businesses will need to evolve from an organization-centric to a people-centric mentality. In other words, they must evolve from hierarchical, command-and-control structures to trust-based, open networks and relationships. This paradigm shift will help organizations reinvent themselves and create an engaging workplace. In fact, an interesting positive cycle will occur: proactive, transparent leadership leads to engaged workers, which in turn leads to improved customer service and loyalty, which in turn translates to a positive bottom line. Now, that’s a great place to work.To discuss more human capital trends and challenges, join me at ATD 2015 International Conference & Exposition for my session W304 - The Perfect Storm: Human Capital Challenges and Opportunities in the 21st Century.

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