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So you may be asking "Who is The Learning Factor?" Quite simply, we are Asia Pacific's leader in Training Outsourcing. We provide awesome developmental opportunites for people around the world. Each day we aim to deliver an outstanding learning experience to our training participants - services which strengthen skills, enlighten minds and empower the spirits of managers and employees. In turn, we know this will help their employers to prosper and grow and employees will say, "we have great managers in this company and I am going to give 100% to support them and their vision". Make sure you join us on the life-long learning journey. Just click the 'follow' button at the top, right of this page to be kept up with our daily recommendations. Thank you to everyone for the suggestions. We appreciate your support! Want to learn more about what we do? Visit our website.
As part of our commitment to continuously monitor the training marketplace for the best providers and services, we announce the Training Outsourcing Companies Watch Lists. The 2013 Watch List recognizes eight companies from across the globe that provide outsourced learning services.
Selection to the 2013 Training Outsourcing Watch List is based on the following criteria: - Innovative service offerings
- Ability to provide services on a global basis
- Unique and proven approach to Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) solutions
- Quality of client served
Each company who participates undergoes extensive research, including thorough analysis of their capabilities, experience, and expertise. The end result is a list that acknowledges companies poised to capture share in the training outsourcing marketplace.
Forget spreadsheets, swot analysis and risk management, the latest topic on the business school agenda is happiness.
Those academics who research the topic prefer to classify it a bit differently, however. “Meaning” is the term used by Lee Newman, dean of innovation and behaviour at IE Business School in Spain. At Michigan Ross in the US, Jane Dutton, university professor of business administration and psychology, says it is about “human flourishing”. Christie Scollon at Singapore Management University describes it as “subjective wellbeing”.
But however they describe it, they all agree that happiness makes good business sense. Moreover, employers and policy makers need to consider the happiness factor if they are to promote strong economies and profitable companies.
When Jim Keenan, the social sales specialist, describes his work today, he’ll tell you that he’s “ushering salespeople from the old world into the social world” – the cold calling world to the Twitter world, the salespeople who call prospects incessantly to the salespeople who educate their prospects with relevant content. Keenan’s argument in the The Rise of Social Salespeople is that using social media to sell – increases profits.
But up until now, we’ve had no real data. So sensing an opportunity, Keenan’s firm recently released a report on the impact of social media on quota attainment and the results were impressive.
Squeeze your employees, and you’ll pay the price. Seems obvious—but Ernst & Young has actual evidence. For its annual fraud report the firm surveyed 3,000 company board members, managers and their teams in 36 countries across the world, and found that employees feeling the double pinch of increased demands and fewer financial perks are alarmingly likely to respond by doing anything from fudging the numbers to bribing officials and clients.
Practically everyone, it seems, is feeling the pressure to grow their businesses and meet their targets in a tough economic climate, but at the same time, “the vast majority” of people reported that they’re not getting the bonuses, raises and other perks that they used to. Oddly enough, this is true not just in the sputtering engines of Western capitalism but also in hyper-competitive rapid-growth markets “where the battle for talent remains fierce.” In India, for instance, 43% of respondents were witnessing what E&Y delicately describes as “downward pressure on pay and remuneration.”
Love has no borders, of course, which may help explain why it's not just the economy that's gone global. To hear estate and tax planners talk, cross-border marriages are skyrocketing—along with a host of international estate and tax-planning headaches.
The issues can indeed get thorny: Can an Australian deduct any business expenses in his home country if he and his wife live in Texas? Is a will written in Spain executable by a spouse in Greece? And don't even start on the thicket of prenup issues. "This whole area of international cross-border planning is an emerging area," says Suzanne Shier, director of wealth planning and tax strategy at Northern Trust, which manages more than $758 billion in assets.
Co-workers are like family. Most of the time, you don’t get to choose them and there will inevitably be people around with whom you naturally clash. However, at work, how well you relate with others and whether your co-workers like and respect you absolutely affects your ability to get things done.
Fortunately, there’s a new edition of the classic book People Styles at Work by Robert Bolton and Dorothy Grover Bolton that helps us understand the behavioural styles that determine how our co-workers think, make decisions, communicate, manage time and stress, and deal with conflict.
By understanding your own and the people style you’re dealing with, you can establish rapport with someone more easily, become more persuasive, and avoid miscommunication and the possibility of rubbing someone the wrong way.
Organisations remain disciplined in evaluating transactions – placing a premium on thorough analysis of potential risks and exposures. Forward-thinking corporates are recognising data as a strategic asset in the execution of their Capital Agenda and are leveraging it to strengthen their competitive advantage.
For organisations to compete successfully on analytics they need to drive a strategic approach which is applied right across the organisation — impacting how they invest, optimise, raise and preserve their capital.
Now that I’m not the CEO of Brazen Careerist, I don’t have to be the national cheerleader for Generation Y. I fantasized about this moment for years: the moment when I’d write the post titled, 10 Things I Hate about Generation Y.
But it’s hard to hate people you hang out with all the time, and the truth is, I’ve spent the last ten years being a Gen Xer surrounded by Gen Yers. The pinnacle, I thought, was me spending my days fighting with Ryan Healy about work. But in fact, it turns out the pinnacle of my education on Gen Y is my arguments with Melissa about her peers that end in snippy impasse. Sometimes, I think Gen Y is lame and she won’t admit to it.
Most executives take managing risk quite seriously, the better to avoid the kinds of crises that can destroy value, ruin reputations, and even bring a company down. Especially in the wake of the global financial crisis, many have strived to put in place more thorough risk-related processes and oversight structures in order to detect and correct fraud, safety breaches, operational errors, and overleveraging long before they become full-blown disasters.
Yet processes and oversight structures, albeit essential, are only part of the story. Some organizations have found that crises can continue to emerge when they neglect to manage the frontline attitudes and behaviors that are their first line of defense against risk. This so-called risk culture1 is the milieu within which the human decisions that govern the day-to-day activities of every organization are made; even decisions that are small and seemingly innocuous can be critical. Having a strong risk culture does not necessarily mean taking less risk. Companies with the most effective risk cultures might, in fact, take a lot of risk, acquiring new businesses, entering new markets, and investing in organic growth. Those with an ineffective risk culture might be taking too little.
The very term “mental illness” carries such a stigma that even acknowledging this headline out loud was a risk. The euphemistic or politically correct term for a mood or personality disorder might be “carries a diagnosis.” But any way you look at it, the issues of mental illness in the workplace are real and the number of people who are affected is great.
From depression, anxiety, ADHD and dyslexia to OCD and bipolar disorder—a great many of the individuals we work with – possibly even ourselves—are dealing with at least one of these issues, and due to “co-morbidity” – the conditions that tend to occur in pairs or multiples—there are many individuals dealing with more.
In the past fortnight, CIPD released their Learning and Talent Development Survey 2013. The survey results show that 74% of organisations in the UK currently use eLearning, but only 15% report that it is one of the most effective training methods available to them. I suspect the numbers are similar around the globe.
So how much of an organisation’s training budget is spent on the development of eLearning? Recent IBIS research shows that $26 billion is spent globally on eLearning or 13% of all training expenditure. Why are so many organisations continuing to invest in eLearning modules if it is not the most effective way to train their people? The same CIPD study also found that only 31% of organisations reported that most employees completed an eLearning course. Immediately the true cost of that “cost-effective” eLearning module exploded. How can the ROI be justified to any CEO or CFO?
Maureen McCarthy should have been dead 15 years ago. Doctors gave her just a few months to live after diagnosing McCarthy, an international leadership consultant and executive coach, with a rare fatal lung disease.
McCarthy’s still very much alive, even though her pulmonologist tells her frequently that she only has the next six months to live. She, like the rest of us, really doesn’t know how long she’s got. Her hearty laugh (even on just 10% lung capacity) underscores her assertion that she’s stress-free and healthy for now. For much of this, she credits creating and using a collaboration document called the “Blueprint of We.”
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The Australian Human Rights Commission has released a toolkit which has been developed to address the problem of too few women entering male-dominated industries. The toolkit – Women in male-dominated industries: A toolkit of strategies – was launched by Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick in Sydney today. Broderick said the underrepresentation of women in industries considered to be male-dominated – such as mining, utilities and construction – was an issue that is not only undermining gender equality in Australia, but is having negative effects on industry performance and our economy. “This is not merely a report, but an interactive website developed to encourage dialogue, engagement and sharing of approaches about increasing women’s representation in male-dominated industries,” Commissioner Broderick said.
No matter where your customers, employees, partners or channels are in the world, Bare Brilliance can improve the performance of your business by deploying a global next-generation training solution. All without the traditional costs associated with face-to-face training.
Don’t believe us? Watch a short video of a training session for one of our clients who trained their global team – all for a fraction of the cost associated with normal training.
Employees at semiconductor-chip-maker Intel recently devised a new chemistry process that reduced chemical waste by 900,000 gallons, saving $45 million annually. Another team developed a plan to reuse and optimize networking systems in offices, which cut energy costs by $22 million.
The projects produced financial and environmental benefits, of course. But just as valuable is the company's ability to energize and empower front-line employees. New data shows that sustainability is an increasingly important factor in attracting and managing talent.
Bain & Company recently surveyed about 750 employees across industries in Brazil, China, India, Germany, the UK, and the U.S. Roughly two-thirds of respondents said they care more about sustainability now than three years ago, with almost that many saying sustainable business is extremely important to them. Interest peaks among employees age 36 to 40 — a young group but not the youngest.
The word “Presentation” for lack of a better term often called “PowerPoint” or “Slidedeck”has become synonomous with a period of long, boring information forced upon the audience by the Presenter. But love it or hate presentations do play an integral part of communication from business to education and everything in between. If used properly a presentation can serve as the medium to externalize your story or idea. Anyone who has ever used PowerPoint knows that they offer boring un-inviting templates that look like they were created a generation ago. And most of us at one time or another didn’t know any better and started with a default template, pasted loads of content and called it a Presentation.
After working five years as a regional director at a large health insurer in Oakland, Calif., Daniel Eddleman felt ready to move up the ladder. So he found a mentor within the company who agreed with Mr. Eddleman that his performance and leadership ability merited the promotion.
But he'd need to work on a few soft skills to clinch the job. "It can be a challenging environment to get noticed in because it's such a big organization," says Mr. Eddleman, who connected with a job coach who helped him identify and work on three weak areas—including the ability to self-assess, manage his emotions and brag.
What do employees really want from company leaders? The answer may surprise you — and, more important, may prompt you to change some of your practices.
“I don’t think the people who work for you want you to be an optimist anymore,” says GE CEO Jeff Immelt. “They want you to be realistic. They don’t want hollow promises, they want action: What’s your plan, and how are you going to solve problems?”
The hallmarks of what Immelt calls “positive leadership” are authenticity, transparent communication, a focus on the future, and the ability to solve problems and take action.
We all know that job seeking can be one of the most frustrating tasks in our career. Compiling a CV and typing up dreadful cover letters can take up all of your free time, with the result of being ignored by over 90% of the perspective employers.
But whose fault is it?
For once, try to switch perspective. Try to think like a recruiter.
One of the longest-running debates in marketing is whether to use a rational or emotional advertising approach in marketing--but cognitive science says that argument is pointless. While emotions overwhelmingly drive behavior, it is misguided to believe that thinking and feeling are somehow mutually exclusive. Emotion and logic are intertwined.
Behavioral science is now telling us that we don’t really have “free will.” We have “free won’t.” We can give in to the visceral impulses that drive us or choose to apply the brakes of rational restraint. While we can’t choose our emotions because they originate unconsciously, we can choose our conscious response to our feelings. This is essentially what consciousness is--a series of critical reflections and interpretations about how we are feeling.
Meetings are often the bane of many a creative’s existence, especially those working for a big outfit. “Death by meeting” is a common complaint, the lament usually being one of frequency, length, or lack of productivity. Despite the many books written on the subject, meetings remain a sore spot for many. There may be a practical solution.
Today, the growth of open-source platforms, cloud computing, social media, and analytics technologies has eroded much of the large-enterprise scale advantage. Even with their investments in third-party data, statisticians and data scientists, and decision-support technology, big companies are facing big challenges from small and mid-sized businesses. With open-source and cloud options that can cost more than 80 percent less than traditional systems,1 advanced analytics solutions are now attainable without extraordinary IT investments, giving smaller companies new and deeper insights into everything from customer preferences to potential new products and markets.
In Thoroughbred racing, only a few pull out ahead and finish in the money; the rest run with the pack. There are winners, and there are also-rans. It’s the same in business. There can only be one biggest or best. A few others might give the leader a run for its money. The rest are left behind.
The Boston Consulting Group has been helping companies outrun the competition for 50 years. One thing we have stressed throughout our history is that there are no permanent victories. You have to run your heart out every day.
America has a work culture that tends to glorify long hours. Many CEOs for instance, set an example that’s difficult to match. People with demanding jobs find themselves cutting back on sleep in order to fit in a bare minimum family time or other activities.
But bad sleep habits are a very real issue. Julia Kirby at the Harvard Business Review has a fantastic chart that makes it clear that our dysfunctional sleep culture has real consequences. Even moderate fatigue can impact performance as much as alcohol impairment. See the charts.
The Target Corporation launched its fall 2012 apparel collection with a bit of romantic comedy. The retailer partnered with ad agency Space150 to create a four-part “shoppable” short film called Falling for You. As consumers watched the story unfold, they could purchase the clothes that the characters wore—along with their accessories and home furnishings—from a side reel in the same window. Each episode became a virtual runway for Target’s collection, complete with social sharing tools to increase buzz. By seamlessly integrating content and advertising with an engaging experience, Target drove both traffic and commerce to its site.
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