August 26th, 2010 by Robin Green

Annual performance review time is often an unpleasant and dreaded date on the calendar. Why is this the case? Oftentimes, it has to do with training.

If you know your annual performance review is approaching, it might be a good time to review your LMS training experience with your employer, point out any extra courses you’ve taken to enhance your professional skills, or discuss plans to enroll in outside training courses.  

After all, a performance review is meant to provide a space not only for your manager to give you feedback on your performance, but for you to reflect on the year of work and get to the root of the reasons you might not be working to the best of your ability. Your manager will appreciate your proactive plans and your desire to improve your skills.

Furthermore, he or she may empathize when you relate the challenges you’ve faced in your job and during training. Management training, after all, is one area with a serious deficit.

From the highest executives and downward, one of the most common complaints about job training is its inadequacy or even the lack thereof. According to the 2010 IRS Line Manager Training Survey, areas like staff development, absence management, recruiting and retention, and grievance handling are just a few in which management training is reported as inadequate.

One hundred and twenty-three HR professionals were surveyed. Nearly two-thirds (60%) of those polled reported that their management training was encumbered by poor organizational backing (53%), financial limitations (50%), and poor attendance (45%). Eight in 10 of the managers polled advocated training and believed it should be compulsory.

Author of the report Charlotte Wolff said: “Line managers are increasingly expected to take on more responsibility in some crucial areas of people management, yet it appears that the training is not evolving at the same pace.”

With higher quality and greater accessibility of job training offered online, as well as increasingly internet-savvy employees in the business world, more and more companies are opting to include cost-effective and customizable LMS instruction in their training. However, you yourself may or may not have had a robust training experience.

Perhaps your training course was dry and uninteresting, non-compulsory, or maybe it was too fast or rushed through. Any of these factors are bound to have an enormous impact on employee performance long-term. As Wolff noted, “In areas such as absence management, where good practice can directly help the organization save on costs, I would have thought that investment in the relevant training would be clearly worthwhile.”

Even if effective training was lacking as part of the introduction to your current job, and perhaps this lack is reflected in your performance review, this is a good time to show your employer that you are proactive and search for LMS training that will enhance your professional skills.

Coggno is now offering a free trial for management training program creators on its learning management system. Create an online course for free, whether it be for internal use, for inclusion in Coggno’s E-learning Marketplace, or for outside syndication on hundreds of websites.

August 24th, 2010 by Robin Green

In difficult economic times, often the only time when an employee can expect to receive a change in wages or pay scale is at a performance review. Usually once or twice a year, when management sits down with staff and discusses milestones, successes, achievements as well as gaps in performance throughout the previous year.  A good review is a reflection of success, and can mean more responsibility and money for an employee. A substandard or poor review can be indicative of many things, and most importantly can result in no raise or increase in pay scale.

It’s important for both participants in the review process to come prepared, and be able to offer suggestions to address any gaps identified.

Injecting the notion of training, its benefits, and their effect on outcomes, is an important career enhancer in an employee’s job that can be identified and quantified. If you are sitting in your performance review meeting and your manager identifies gaps and failures, you may want to consider delicately referring to the training, or lack thereof, you received. This can be a great way to counter management expectations and enable you to answer negatives with a constructive point. Being prepared to mention courses you’ve identified as being useful, and that can assist in the strengthening of your job performance is an effective and constructive way to offset any negativity around gaps that are mentioned.

Successes in the workplace are often a function of a properly deployed and measured training initiative; and failures are can be the result of just the opposite, a poorly delivered and carelessly evaluated training plan.

A Learning Management System that is easily deployed goes a long way to bridge any gaps in a training initiative, and www.Coggno.com is a perfect solution for this. Filled with robust tools to distribute private training, and a marketplace filled with relevant courses, Coggno’s learning management system can be a great partner in advancing your career, navigating a prickly performance review, and prepare you to meet the challenges at work.

August 19th, 2010 by Robin Green

Are you in the process of implementing change in your company? Change management training could save you a massive amount of time, money, and hassle. A Learning Management System (LMS) is the most effective and prevalent method of providing change management training to your management team.

Change management skills are critical for any company undergoing changes, small or large. Company changes may include processes, policies, or environment. Without strong change management, whatever initiative you you are implementing is likelier to fail. Employees won’t accept the change and and the desired results will either not happen or take ten times longer than they should to occur.

An LMS course in change management can train managers to manage and implement change, which includes educating and guiding employees during the transition period. A good LMS course will teach managers that the first tenet of change management is selling the idea of change to employees.

In order to manage and implement change, some basic marketing skills should be learned.

An LMS course will teach managers to educate all employees who will be affected by the initiative in a way that creates a desire for the change. The towel initiative of hotels across the globe is a good example of this strategy.

The signs in hotel bathrooms provide a short description of a problem (water scarcity) and a way to help mitigate it. The signs ask guests to save water by throwing the dirty towels in the bathtub, and leaving the rest untouched. The effect is that the guests feel a desire to respond positively to the iniative. Everyone wins; the hotel saves money and the guest leaves knowing that they have taken an environmentally friendly action. In the same way, managers must learn how to sell the idea of change to employees by first educating and then explaining the end objectives and ultimate rewards that employees can look forward to.

It’s a well-known fact that human beings are resistant to change. We resist all kinds of change, but obviously the kinds of negative change that affect us directly or indirectly are the most fought against. The way a manager handles change and educates employees about it can make or break the initiative. People still may not like the change but at least they will understand it and why it is happening, and perhaps be able to deal with it in a more constructive way. Furthermore, even though the short-term situation may seem difficult, the end result which benefits the company should also benefit them in some way.

Coggno is now offering a free trial for management training program creators on its learning management system. Create an online course for free, whether it be for internal use, for inclusion in Coggno’s E-learning Marketplace, or for outside syndication on hundreds of websites.

August 13th, 2010 by Robin Green

“ I walked into the conference room,  there were 8 team members sitting there waiting for me. I didn’t know who knew what, who was supposed to be doing what, and worst of all, hardly knew their names”.

When managing a team, particularly a team that is new to you one critical factor is evaluating their capabilities. Often, when taking over a group or a project, there is not much data or documentation that tells you about the capabilities of its members, and this can lead to serious problems when you begin to try and delegate responsibilities in an effective manner.

Often the previous manager, team lead, or director, was quickly moved, and left little or no notes pertaining t team members. So its left to you, the team lead to sort out how to effectively transfer knowledge, who has what strengths, and how to best capitalize on them.  Getting the soft skills evaluated can be easier; a group session by an intuitive manager can lead to some significant insights about his or her team. You can quickly become familiar with personalities and communication styles.  It’s the hard skills, the operational, or technical, performance abilities that are difficult to evaluate. This can be particularly critical when a group has been together for a long period of time.  Often team members will compensate for one and others strengths and weaknesses leading to a scrum of activity that makes it particularly difficult to evaluate who is doing, and responsible for what exactly.

An excellent way to avoid situations, and quickly and transparently asses and measure what everyone knows and what their strengths are is to deploy a pre meeting assessment on a hosted Learning Management System like Coggno.com .  By using an online learning platform, you can quickly and easily upload and deploy the quiz or test, and because you are not present while they are completing it, you don’t have the awkwardness inherent in an instructor lead evaluation, your audience won’t  feel judged. The evaluations also go a long o set a sense of inherent expectations, and project a measure of management discipline that you may be seeking when taking on a new team.

Using the Learning Management System at www.Coggno.com is a great cost effective way to facilitate this. The tools are intuitive and easy to use, there is no set-up fee, and best of all, the per-use system make it extremely cost effective.

The evaluations you create will go a long way to setting up a sense of inherent expectations, and project a measure of management discipline that you will be seeking when taking on a new team.

August 4th, 2010 by Robin Green

Simple and effective LMS training on both managerial roles and staff mentoring strategies are a huge asset to organizations. Mentoring helps to naturalize the kind of staff communication and dialogue which will ultimately benefit your organization’s bottom line.

The Kaizen philosophy of continuous improvement relates not only to your entire organization and relations between managers and staff, but it also applies to your employees themselves. One important managerial duty is to aid in the professional development of your staff. As a manager and/or LMS training administrator, how can you aid staff development?

One idea is to match your staff with senior staff members, and create a time and space for dialogue. Call a meeting or simply send an email letting staff know that mentoring is being offered. Inform them that they will be matched with an in-house mentor who will meet with them to help them plan to reach their career goals. Encourage employees to consider what they would like to develop, and remind senior staff members that they can also benefit from the mentoring relationship from the introduction to new ideas which are often stimulated by a junior colleague’s fresh outlook and approach.

The meetings can be informal dialogues over lunch or coffee. These provide a space for senior and junior staff members to exchange past experiences and future goals, generating the flow of a fresh exchange of ideas. It doesn’t matter how long or often the meetings take place, but that both parties learn something from the other and dialogue is opened up.

LMS training on mentoring practices may be a great asset to your organization. Senior staff mentoring can strengthen communication, generate new ideas, and promote a more satisfying and positive work environment.

Coggno is now offering a free trial for management training program creators on its learning management system. Create an online course for free, whether it be for internal use, for inclusion in Coggno’s E-learning Marketplace, or for outside syndication on hundreds of websites.

July 29th, 2010 by Robin Green

How can training work to benefit your organization’s bottom line? Powerful LMS managerial training for new managers, whether they are new to your staff or not, could be the force that jump starts not only your manager’s new role but also your organization as a whole.

New managerial blood in an organization is a good time to inject fresh ideas into projects, develop better ways to guide leaders using LMS tools, and boost staff satisfaction in the workplace.

However, one common problem with those who are new to an organization in a managerial position is that they may feel the need to impress. The result is that they talk more than they listen. If this trend goes unchecked, it almost always causes problems within an organization. An LMS course on skills for new managers can prevent these problems from arising in the first place.

Nurturing a healthy relationship between all staff–especially between employees and their manager–is all about sincere and open ears on the managerial end. It’s related to the Kaizen Japanese business practice I’ve written about before: a philosophy that includes all employees, from the CEO down. It involves a company-wide practice of making changes and monitoring results, which allows adaptations in the company’s policies and processes as new improvements are suggested.

A simple rule of thumb for new managers: Listen more, talk less. With a little bit of training and practice, a new manager can learn to become someone that employees can approach comfortable, admire and respect. Listening builds trust and conveys openness to employees’ concerns and new ideas. Good listeners are viewed not only as being caring, but also wise.

Coggno is now offering a free trial for management training program creators on its learning management system. Create an online course for free, whether it be for internal use, for inclusion in Coggno’s E-learning Marketplace, or for outside syndication on hundreds of websites.

July 22nd, 2010 by Robin Green

Are you a new manager? Starting your new position may prove more difficult than you imagined. Suddenly you have new responsibilities to the people around you, and you must learn how to strike critical balances in your work policies and interpersonal relations. An LMS course can help, but so can some simple practices.

Practice tolerance and think outside the box. One mistake that new managers often make is to try to change everything. Remember, just because the way someone does something isn’t the way you’d do it, doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Decide what is worth changing and what is just different.

This leads into a second good practice for new managers; avoid showing everyone who is in charge. If you may have just been promoted to manager, you might feel that you know everything there is to know about your area. However, you still must learn how to manage other people, so be sure to listen to those in your group and ask for the input when you need it.

Third, take time to get to know the people you are managing. Even if you have worked beside these people for years, that doesn’t necessarily mean you really know them. Find out what’s exciting or interesting for them, how to motivate them, and what concerns they may have. If you get to know them as individuals, you will be able to more effectively manage them.

One recent poll showed that over half of new managers received absolutely no formal training before beginning the job. If you’re a new manager, be proactive in your own training and transition process. Pick up a course on an online learning platform like Coggno. Free courses include a Sample Negotiation Presentation, Conflict in Workplaces, and L19-Influence. For new managers there are courses such as 6 Steps to a Successful Start as a New Manager, which offers practical tips and strategies to help new managers successfully move into their new leadership role.

Coggno’s LMS combines state-of-the-art tools with quality content to provide managers and all students a memorable and effective learning experience. Coggno is now offering a free trial for management training program creators on its learning management system. Create an online course for free, whether it be for internal use, for inclusion in Coggno’s E-learning Marketplace, or for outside syndication on hundreds of websites.

July 15th, 2010 by Robin Green

In the long run, the experience of training for a new job is critical for brand new staff. Many elements will later be heavily influenced by staff’s training experience, including staff morale and general attitude in the workplace, confidence in the company and its managing skills, pride and contentment in being a part of the company, and efficient work habits.

Engaging and effective training can make all the difference in the world in relation to these elements. That’s why it’s so important to design strong learning management system training; so that you get it right the first time. How can you get it right the first time using LMS tools?

In the words of Edward Bulwer-Lytton: “The best teacher is the one that suggests rather than dogmatizes and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.” If your training is created and conducted online, you have all the tools you need to let your training inspire its learners. In the training, when you’re introducing a new topic, use this model. Organize and construct your learning material in a way that doesn’t simply feed information to your learner, but presents a problem and provides the tools to help the learner solve it himself. Learning is doing.

Provide practical training through simulated real-life situations. Training for a role in a service team, for example, is something easily designated to your learning management system, with video tools, simulations, and audio tools like those used by Coggno, to create situations where an employee must deal with a customer. Some learning management systems are even bilingual or multi-lingual, providing a variety of built-in languages to personalize each employee’s training.

Coggno is now offering a free trial for training program creators on its learning management system. Create an online course for free, either for internal use,  for inclusion in Coggno’s E-learning Marketplace, or for outside syndication on hundreds of websites.