TrendWatcher

Sunday, 28 February 2010
Serious About Sustainability in 2010 Written by Mark Vickers from i4cp Mark Vickers A funny thing happened on the way to 2010. Amid blistering debates over health care, arguments over how to deal with double digit unemployment, and a general sense of conflict and gridlock on many other socioeconomic issues, one area of virtual consensus has emerged in the business world: the rise of "green" initiatives. That's one finding from i4cp's 2010 Major Issues Study conducted in December 2009. Over three quarters (78%) of 515 responding business professionals projected there would be more "green" business initiatives in companies this year. Among many future-looking statements about what would happen in 2010, this one showed the greatest amount of agreement. Okay, so this probably isn't a surprise to anyone who watches even a modicum of television these days. Commercial after commercial plays up the environmentally friendly missions and programs at many of today's major corporations. No company wants to be tarred with the ugly brush of environmental irresponsibility. But just how serious are companies about this? Is it mostly public relations or is there something truly significant going on? Write comment (0 Comments)
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Training and ROI Kevin Oakes, i4cp

Thursday, 18 February 2010

Reviving Training's DOA ROI

Written by Kevin Oakes from i4cp

"ROI is a funny thing. Why is it that no one directs the IT department to "get us the return-on-investment on our e-mail system," yet corporations think nothing of forcing the training department to project ROI on every learning program and technology deployed? And a down economy only intensifies the scrutiny."

Kevin Oakes

It's to be expected that the CEO of a large company that's spending millions on training and developing employees might wonder what he or she is getting in return, especially when the pressure is on to cut expenses in order to meet analyst's quarterly estimates. However, as with most "soft" issues, it can be difficult to show tangible results from such intangible processes. Although employee training has been an integral part of the corporate environment a heck of a lot longer than e-mail, it hasn't reached the "we don't need to measure it - we know it's invaluable" status in most organizations.

The perception among many senior leaders that training isn't "mission-critical" is often the reason why the training budget is the first on the chopping block when companies look to reduce expenses. But as previous ASTD/i4cp studies have shown, cutting the training budget is a practice most associated with low-performing organizations; high performers generally keep it intact. If that's the case, why is training ROI all too often dead-on-arrival in companies today?

Stay tuned....

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Employee Retention Strategies

Saturday, 06 February 2010
Are You Wasting Time and Money on the Wrong Retention Strategies? Written by Carol Morrison from i4cp Here's a late-breaking bulletin: employees leave their jobs because they're dissatisfied with their compensation. Are you shocked? We weren't either. But when results of i4cp's latest survey on Retention Strategy and Execution confirmed the top reason workers bail, we decided to take a closer look. Mean responses from all participants found non-work-related events/issues (spouse relocation, health, etc.) in second place, with poor work/life balance ranking third among departure drivers across all company sizes and industries. Because i4cp's mission is to empower organizations to become high performers, we dissect our research results with great care, digging deep to find the strategies and behaviors that separate top firms from the also-rans. And we do this across the five domains that influence organizational performance: strategy, leadership, talent, culture and market. This recent survey points out that key retention questions for leaders within the talent domain are these: Do people leave high-performing and lower-performing organizations for different reasons? Do companies wait until it's too late to ask why workers abandon ship? Are companies' retention strategies accurately targeting the turnover drivers at work in their particular situations? When it comes to the number-one turnover motivator in high-performing firms, our results revealed that unhappiness with compensation also was the primary culprit. However, respondents indicated that workers depart lower-performing companies because they have poor relationships with their managers: Two very different situations requiring diverse interventions. Write comment (0 Comments)
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