February 2009

In addition to the modules on various business topics published on this site, a regular update on corporate e-learning issues will be posted monthly; review . Readers should be aware of and read the associated before acting on this update. Your commentator is Bob Little, click for .

Blended learning company REDTRAY, has merged with Academy Internet, the custom e-learning division of AI Digital Ltd. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed but the Academy Internet team will continue to operate from its existing base in Brighton, while AI Digital Ltd will now focus on the development of its search engine marketing business known as SiteVisibility. Bob Woodland, CEO of REDTRAY said, “It’s a challenging market and we are always on the lookout for dynamic and innovative companies that can become part of our successful portfolio.”

Comment: REDTRAY should be congratulated because, for some time, it has been trying to simplify the e-learning market through growing by acquisition. However, as to Woodland’s - accurate - comment about a ‘challenging’ market you could add the word ‘consolidating’, which is also a synonym for ‘contracting’. Hmm… Anyone want to buy another e-learning company then?

Clive Shepherd, chairman of the eLearning Network (eLN) - a non-profit organisation run by the e-learning community for the e-learning community – has revealed ten things to do to prosper during the economic downturn. HIs advice – based on a presentation at the recent Learning Technologies event in London – is freely available on the organisation’s website (http://www.elearningnetwork.org/content/ten-ways-thrive-downturn-part-1). Shepherd recommends that you:

1. Engage with the technology because technology: • Reduces travel, saving tons of money and the planet as well • Connects people with ideas and other people • Increases accessibility and flexibility • Is what ‘Generation Y’ wants and expects

2. Use the language of business because employers interested in performance, not learning.

3. Promote your brand inside and outside your organisation. You can: • Add credibility to your professional status by touting your membership of associations and professional bodies. • Upgrade your qualifications. • Start a blog.

4. Be proactive in devising solutions to help your organisation get through the current crisis. If you leave it to senior management, they’ll make daft decisions because they’re not the experts on learning and development: you are.

5. Learn from others – watching out for good ideas that you can adapt to your own interventions.

6. Take advantage of bargains – notably the increasingly impressive array of free and open source tools.

7. Become more efficient - doing more for less. The best way to do this is to budget from the bottom-up. Start with nothing and build up, focusing on the value that each learning intervention brings to the organisation.

8. Maintain quality – but remember that quality is about fitness for purpose. As long as a learning intervention is relevant, timely and does the job, then ‘good enough’ is a reasonable level at which to aim.

9. Harness people power - There have always been informal learning processes in place to meet organisational learning and development needs. Now, however, we have software – such as social networks, wikis and forums - that makes it easier for expertise to be shared within an organisation.

10. Get networked - Networking gets you in touch with trusted sources of information that you can call upon when you need it, whether those sources are human or digital.

Comment: That sounds like pretty good advice, especially for those associated with the HR function.

A recent press release – from talent management specialists at Dynamic Transitions – said: ‘Baby boomers facing the choice of either early retirement on good pension plans or struggling through a recession where they are not appreciated or valued by their younger bosses are likely to take the initiative and leave employment now, leaving a huge skills gap in an already unstable market.’ According to Dynamic Transitions’ managing director, Judith Germain, organisations are realising that younger managers lack the experience and skills to guide their staff through a recession, causing disgruntled baby boomers to leave the workforce completely. Germain warns that this will leave a glaring hole in key positions across core business functions and predicts that many companies will now be facing the prospect of suddenly losing expertise and strategic direction at a time when it is needed most. She argues that the need for effective talent management (TM) is becoming the most critical requirement for companies that wish to remain in business during the recession.

Comment: Germain makes some good points – not least about the need for TM strategies, no doubt backed by TM software from one of the world’s leading providers: OutStart or Cornerstone OnDemand. However, the first sentence of her argument cannot be correct. Any baby boomer still working (and the youngest would be about 50 now – so s/he would have up to 15 years or so of working life ahead) will not have access to a ‘good pension’ at the moment. Not with stock markets the way they are. The ‘take the pension and run’ option may look better in a couple of years’ time but, for the moment, there can’t be anyone who’s volunteering to stop work and live off a shrinking pension pot. Of course any number of baby boomers are being taken out of the workforce involuntarily – through redundancy and/or their organisations failing. In these circumstances, Germain’s argument – of not enough people with the right skills in work – holds good, although you might also want to suggest that their skills can’t have been that good or their former employers would still be in business, even in a recession.