It seems that the days in which employers look down on job candidates who earn their degrees through accredited online universities is coming to an end. According to a recent SHrM poll, “76 percent of human resources professionals said online degrees are viewed more favorably than five years ago.”

A major reason for this is due to the proliferation of the web in our ever day lives. In the past 10 years, the business world has changed before our very eyes (can you imagine an office setting without email?). It should come as no surprise that there is a direct positive correlation between the growth of the web and the acceptance of online learning.

Another reason employers are looking more favorably at online degrees is because of the use of online learning in the corporate environment. Companies have been investing heavily in custom Learning Management Systems and Learning Content Management Systems for some time now.

We here at Aspen Organization Development Consulting have seen the power the web can bring to a multitude of areas in business, not least of is employee training and development and organizational development. That’s why we launched Learning @…

Till now, small, emerging companies that do not have the budgets of their larger counterparts have forgone the benefits online learning tools can bring to the party. However, with a tool like Learning @… even the smallest company can do things such as:

• Deliver key messages from management
• Provide employee performance information
• Share company policies and procedures
• Host an online learning resources library
• Publicize company learning events and seminars
• And, probably most importantly, deliver online training courses

If you haven’t taken a look at our landing pages yet, I encourage you to do so. Check them out here: www.learning-at.com. And be sure to sign-up for our complimentary newsletter to see how Learning @… can benefit you employees and organization.

A current article on SHrM.org details the necessity for companies to invest in their employees and lists some worrying trends in financial industry.

The article notes that many banks and financial organizations who have been hit hard by the current economic recession are cutting corners by not investing in their current employees. When I use the word “investing,” I am specifically referring to employee training and development. As the economy begins to improve, employees will begin to feel restless and ready to emerge from this economic winter and spread their proverbial wings other organization;s that is, unless companies take the time and money to provide training opportunities so that they may develop their business acumen skill sets and transition into higher roles within the company.

Theresa Minton-Eversole, author of the article Retention’s Business Case for Banking Industry Training, Study Shows, states, “U.S. banks spend an average of just $650 per employee on training, while successful companies in other industries spend an average of $1,100 per employee, according to a recently released talent management study conducted by the American Bankers Association (ABA) and the Corporate Executive Board (CEB). A survey of more than 3,500 bank CEOs asked about their organization’s talent management practices revealed that while banks fill 60 percent of their openings from within, 40 percent of responding bank CEOs believe that they are not doing enough to help their employees grow. Respondents said they believe that this is hurting succession planning.” These are worrying statistics.

As an organizational leader and/or a Human Resources manager, it is important to balance the company’s need to develop its employees while also being mindful of financial cost; after all, we’re not totally out of the economic woods yet. This is where a tool like Learning @… can help: not only is it a robust online employee learning application that can deliver customized training and development modules, it is a cost-effective system that employees can access 24/7, over and over again—all it requires is a user name and password.

A recent article, Desperate Job Seekers Push Relocation Rate to Three-Year High, on the SHrM website reveals that 18.2 percent of people polled would be willing to “pack-up-shop” and move some where else for a job opportunity.

According to John A. Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, the group who conducted the survey, “Job seekers had been extremely reluctant to relocate up until this most recent quarter…The reluctance was almost certainly related to the inability to sell one’s current home without incurring significant losses. There was also the fear that, with the job market so unstable, it was too risky to relocate for a job that might not last.”

As the article explains, though we have not climbed back to our pre-recession economic stability, workers who have been out of the office for such an extended period of time are willing to take the risk of relocating for distant job opportunities.

This obviously has a huge impact on the the lives and families of the employees. But what about the organizations onboarding these new workers? With an influx of new employees from different geographical locations, companies must ensure that they can successfully integrate many new people from different cultures and backgrounds into an established organizational culture.

A great approach to ensure success is to use a tool like Learning @… Here are three 4 ways in which a Learning @… package can significantly ease the integration process of new employees into a company:

1. Easily deliver the mission, vision, values, and goals of the organizations so that all new employees can be on the same page as established employees. As a new employee, it’s difficult to know what to work for and how to go about doing it if nobody tells you. In addition to having a centralized place that employees can read this information—a human resources executive or the president of the company can record a welcome message to employees in which he/she can detail what is expected of new employees.
2. Host an online orientation session. Why conduct multiple orientation sessions if you have multiple groups of new employees joining the organization. With Learning @… you can host an online training orientation session which new hires can visit multiple times—a sure fire way to help them absorb important new hire information.
3. Host an online policies and procedures section that allows new employees to access the rules and regulations of the organization. It’s hard to expect new hires to abide by the “law of the land” if they ignorant of it.
4. Host a cultural awareness online training module for your current employees. If a new employee is coming from a distant area, their cultural background and values may differ from those of a more homogeneous cultural atmosphere. Giving current employees the opportunity to learn and develop skills for cultural sensitivity in the workplace will ultimately allow for a more cohesive office environment.

Helping to integrate new employees into a distant organization is just one more example of Learning @…’s powerful, cost-effective functionality.

Sexual harassment, or any form of harassment, in the workplace is not laughing matter.  Most organizations have done a great job of developing and instituting sexual harassment policies in the office and often send their employees to sexual harassment prevention training seminars.

And though the days of womanizing and chasing secretaries around the desk are more or less gone, subtle forms of unwanted harassment still occur in the workplace. A recent article on MSNBC, “Where ‘omg, u look gr8’ can land you in court”, details the subtler forms of sexual harassment which “include everything from flirtation at a company party to a complimentary text message or an unwelcome invitation to discuss the latest project over dinner or drinks.” As Jay Zweig, an employment lawyer with Bryan Cave, notes in article, “There’s been a new generation of confusion in this area.”

A few month’s ago we posted on another one of our blogs, DailyHRTips.com,an article that detailed 3 ways in which to combat sexual harassment in the workplace. They are:

• Create a zero tolerance sexual harassment policy that is fully supported by upper management and employees alike. Make sure this policy is communicated often (at least annually) throughout the organization.
  
• Provide training (ideally to all employees but certainly to supervisors) on recognizing and understanding the potential harm to themselves and the organization in sexual harassment. Additional training on the best practices of responding to or reporting allegations of sexual harassment may be needed (check if you state requires mandatory sexual harassment training).
• Encourage people who are victims of sexual harassment, both male and female, to come forward and report the incident – the only way to make it stop is to take action.

I want to focus on the two sentences in bold. These are two important elements necessary in the fight against sexual harassment and it is important for employers to provide the appropriate tools for employees to learn about and combat unwanted, inappropriate workplace behavior. Such a tool is Learning @… With Learning @… it is easy to communicate the organization’s policies with regards to harassment of any type (even subtle sexual harassment) as well as provide online training modules to all employees on how to prevent and report it if necessary.

If sexual harassment is a problem within an organization it can make many quality employees feel degraded and they may consider moving on to greener pastures. In addition, the associated legal costs, not to mention the negative publicity, could severely damage a company’s bottom line and public image. For all parties involved, using an online employee learning tool such as Learning @… is a smart investment in combating sexual harassment in the workplace.

According to a recent study by Towers Perrin, many employees feel that the efficiency of their organization’s has plummeted in the past several months.  In an article posted on the SHrM website, Max Caldwell, a managing principal of Towers Perrin, notes, “Companies are easing up on the frequency and intensity of their messages about workplace efficiency; employees might feel underutilized as customers’ deflated purchasing power has caused demand to diminish; and costs and management layers often are cut without aligning the organizational structure or processes accordingly.”

An easy way to avoid these feelings of being underutilized is to foster a culture of corporate and personal efficiency. This process is two-fold. First, the organization must ensure that they are in fact acting in an efficient manner by aligning their business practices to the times (i.e.—if operating during an economic recession, cut costs by allowing employees to work from home or institute a four day work week). Second, consistently and directly communicate with employees about the companies progress, goals, vision, and need for efficiency. The communication aspect is key, both in the short and long term, because it will instill the need for efficiency among the troops.

Of course efficiency is not the only message employers need to deliver to their employees. Communication is king in an organization and the more resources available to a company the better. Learning @… provides such communication power as it is a web based organizational learning application, which employees may access anywhere they have internet access (that includes the web browser on a mobile phone!). An online employee learning tool such as Leaning @… allows organizations to communication their short and long term goals to their workforce and provides everyone with the opportunity to nurture the culture of efficiency.

According to a recent article on MSNBC, more than half of the employers polled in a recent survey said that they will be hiring employees within the next year. This is no doubt great news for those who have been struggling to find a job during the recession. It will however present some “growing pains” for the hiring organizations. For months now, many companies have cut deep into the proverbial bone of their workforce and may not immediately be in the right mind set for onboarding an influx of “fresh blood”.

This is where having a tool like Learning @… Professional in place can really give organizations a helping hand in integrating new employees to the organization. With Learning @… Professional a company can easily provide to all incoming employees important organizational information ranging from the company vision, mission, and goals to the Code of Conduct Policy. Additionally, instead of holding numerous orientation sessions for the new arrivals, the human resources department, or who ever manages the hiring for the company, can host a virtual online orientation module.

The upcoming months will be prove to be interesting times for many organizations—in order to hold their competitive edge at the upturn of the economy and to have their new workforce hit the ground running, it is in a company’s best interest to have an application that can provide the necessary communication and learning tools. That application is Learning @… Professional

So far I have posted a bunch of information on this crazy sounding thing called Learning @… I’ve posted all this info about the product that states that it is a “a customizable, cost-effective online employee learning tool designed to fit your company’s learning and development needs…” and a cost effective alternative to “expensive Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS)”.

But what’s with the name? What does Learning @… mean?

The answer is simple. Think of it this way: An employee, Jane Q. Learner, walks into work one day at an organization called The XYZ Company. She sits down at her computer and logs-on to her company’s online learning portal provided by the best organization development consulting firm around (biased opinion? Maybe a little). Jane begins her day by checking the Learning Seminars Calendar to see if there are any training events she needs to attend for the week and after finding the Business Acumen course she has signed up for she quickly and easily scrolls over to the Online Learning Module section to go through the conflict resolution training module the HR department has asked you to complete. Finally, before she has even completed her morning cup of coffee, Jane looks up The XYZ Company’s Paid Time Off policy in the Policies and Procedures section of the online learning portal so that she can begin planning her next vacation at lunch time.

So what is Jane Q. Learner doing while cruising through the online application? She is:

Learning @ The XYZ Company!!!

Get it?

The spirit behind Learning @… is that it provides employees with all the information they need to LEARN so that they can SUCCEED

With that in mind, i’m going to begin posting quotes from some of history’s most brilliant and not-so-brilliant minds regarding the benefits and joys of learning—hopefully they capture the essence of what Learning @… is all about