Dear Readers,

Thanks to all who participated in our survey last month. We are still compiling results and analyzing the feedback. I will let you know results when they are finalized.

Trainers in every setting, be it corporate, government or non-profit, have to first address the "people issues" that are central to any workforce or learning environment. Many of our readers have made it clear that articles on important topics like coaching, communication techniques, new approaches to learning would be valuable. We trust the articles we selected this month provide you with new tools and perspectives. Enjoy!

How Do You Communicate When You're Having Trouble Communicating? Try Dialogue. It Works! 
By Robert Rosell 

Ethnicity, race, gender, job function, generation - Having trouble communicating across differences?  If you're like most training and HR professionals, you've been dealing with the changing demographics in your organization and the resultant challenges to effective collaboration and communication. These workplace transitions raise important questions that HR and training departments are tasked with answering.  How should we communicate in a world where differences in perspective, experience, job function, culture, gender, age, and a myriad of other factors often lead to distrust, misunderstanding and reduced productivity? How can we build bridges across our differences to make our organizations more effective (and better places to work)? (LEARN MORE)



Coaching - A Nine-Step Model
By Jim Scalise

Coaching does not have to be as complex as could be inferred from the wealth of coaching books out there. This Nine-Step Model tries to simplify the mystique of coaching, getting first-time coaches up and running quickly and effectively. Coaching relies first and simply on interpersonal skills. However a few definite guidelines are also needed to achieve coaching's goal of helping to empower those for whom we are responsible, to change their behavioral patterns. (LEARN MORE)



E-Learning Needs Analysis
By John Sloan

Here's an idea. Instead of having everybody gathering in one place at regular intervals for training sessions, what if we were to offer training online or via distributed disks. That would save a lot of time, and time is money. Let's get the IT department working on that one right away. More than a few e-learning initiatives have started with a sentiment much like the one stated above. The benefits of e-learning are often seen more narrowly as a cost saver than more broadly, and positively, as a business advancer. It is important to establish right at the beginning that e-learning technology is not a total solution. (LEARN MORE)



15 Trends that Will Transform the Workforce

The U.S. labor force will dramatically change in the next decade, experts predict, which means that human resource managers must brace themselves for many major upheavals. Indeed, the workforce will not only be rocked by demographic shifts-such as an aging population-but paradigm changes as well-concepts such as "staff development" may not receive as much emphasis in the future. Here are 15 major trends that experts say will significantly change the workforce and how it's managed. (LEARN MORE)



Accelerated Learning: Can it Benefit Your Employees?
By Edward E. Gordon

Almost from the first day I began training, working adults have contacted me looking for personal accelerated learning programs. By far the greatest number call because they lack essential job skills. These range from basic literacy skills to advanced personal communication skills for executives.

Often, these adults are seeking a private trainer for confidentiality reasons. They want no one - their co-workers, their manager, their employer, even their own spouse - to know about their education gaps. (LEARN MORE)



What's New?

The results from the  2003 United States Training Industry Study, published by Training magazine are available. U.S. employers spent nearly $3 billion, or 6 percent, less than last year on developing their employees, according to Training magazine's 22nd Annual Industry Report. This year marks only the fourth time in 22 years that the total amount of dollars spent by U.S. organizations has dropped, and it is the first time since 1982 to record a back-to-back drop in total training expenditures.

Online Learning is as good as being there according to results from
Sizing the Opportunity: The Quality and Extent of Online Education in the United States, 2002 and 2003. The 2003 Sloan Survey of Online Learning polled academic leaders and was weighted to allow for inferences about all degree-granting institutions open to the public. The study was supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and conducted by the Sloan Center for Online Education and Babson College. It can be read online by clicking here.

VNU Learning's Online Learning Conference and Expo 2003 is over, but they have made a number of the session handouts from that event available to download. To see what speaker handouts and presentations are available, click here.