Came across this great story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune that talks about the value of belonging to associations. The article is targeted at healthcare workers, but the reporter states that professional associations outside your given industry add value to your career too. Laura French's story "Associate with Success" states:

"Training and education is another career track of interest to healthcare professionals. The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) has more than 130 chapters in the U.S. as well as members in more than 100 countries. ASTD offers the only certification in the training and development field: Certified Professional in Learning and Performance (CPLP). Visit www.astd.org for additional information."

Nice to see a reporter making the connection that professional associations add real value! And the reference to the CPLP credential by a reporter indicates that certification is growing in prominence and recognition.

Tags: astd, cplp, training, development, chapters

Categories: ASTD in the News | Chapters

(From Anchorage Daily News) "If you want to become a hero in your workplace, you need to give more than you're getting and willingly travel beyond your job description. This means swimming against the tide of entitlement present in many of your co-workers. According to attorney turned HR consultant Andy Brown, 'employees in the 1980s and '90s have accustomed themselves to getting more and giving less. If we want to fix our damaged economy, we need to reverse this.'"

Read the entire article.

Tags: productivity, workplace, development

Categories: News

The chief executive of New York-based Deloitte L.L.P., one of the nation’s largest accounting and consulting firms, said Wednesday that following through with plans to build a $300 million training facility during the worst recession in 50 years is actually "a bullish and smart move."

"Make no mistake, when this recession ends the war for talent will resume, and when it does, Deloitte University will be a big differentiator and powerful draw," CEO Barry Salzberg told the group at the groundbreaking for the firm’s training and conference facility in Westlake.

"It’s almost the perfect time for us to do this," he said. "The whole philosophy of building a learning and development facility like we’re doing is to make sure it’s embedded in our culture in good times or bad."

Read the full release.

Tags: training, recession, new economy, learning, development

Categories: News | The Economy

(From AllAfrica.com) Accra — Mining giant AngloGold Ashanti has admitted first time since its operation in Ghana that it had not been good listeners with respect to its business culture, traditions and way of doing business in the country.

"We have previously made the mistake of underestimating local skills, while not looking to support our high level skills with the appropriate global operating and technical skills.

The net impact is we have too many expatriate working in areas where local Ghanaians should have the requisite skills and we are short where we see very specific global technical skill requirements," said Group Chief Executive of AngloGold, Mark Cutifani.

Cutifani was delivering the first in the series of annual AngloGold Ashanti Lectures on Business in Africa at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon.

In an interview with The Chronicle, Cutifani noted that it was imperative for governments and its local partners to consider as a priority area, an investment in local needs and allocate capital to help support the infrastructural development in those areas of investments.

"When governments look to partnering us in investments we must first understand what the local needs are, and allocate capital to help support the infrastructural development within those areas and also do more for the development of new industries that can live beyond mining."

Read more.

Tags: ghana, africa, skills, development, public sector

Categories: International | News

I love this quote: "Today we examine one of the foremost organizations for learning professionals - ASTD. "It's found in an article from Examiner.com titled "Organizations for learning professionals - ASTD". My handy-dandy PR service, VOCUS, puts the Examiner's circulation figure at 140,000 -- which is great. That's a lot of folks seeing a story about the value - and leadership - of ASTD in the training and development field.

Tags: astd, workplace learning and performance, training, development, professional development, conferences, research, networking, membership

Categories: ASTD in the News

Businesses large and small have incorporated talent management to some degree. But before a human resources professional can leverage talent management initiatives within any organization, it must be quite clear how these initiatives impact the bottom line. Without recognizing the challenges and potential issues, without creating solutions and action plans, talent management could fail tremendously, wasting organizational dollars and precious time that human resources managers may not have.

Bouvier Williams, Vice President of Talent Management for MTV Networks, shares how he has leveraged talent management across an array of brands while linking the initiatives to the organizational needs?and showing the true impact it has on the bottom line.

Read the full article.

Tags: talent management, business acumen, performance, development

Categories: News

Highlands Ranch, Colo. (PRWEB) June 25, 2009 -- Emotional intelligence is critical for workplace effectiveness and improved business performance. However, there are few guides that offer practical ways to learn and apply emotional intelligence for enhanced effectiveness in the workplace.

The TRACOM Group released "Enhancing Emotional Intelligence with Style," a guide that provides specific advice for improving emotional intelligence. "Enhancing Emotional Intelligence with Style" is the fourth guide in TRACOM's Working With Style series and presents a framework for understanding how people of different working styles both display and interpret emotional intelligence skills.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive, control and evaluate emotions to improve work and personal life. TRACOM's SOCIAL STYLE is the world's best-known model for improving interpersonal effectiveness and closely parallels the steps to understanding and improving emotional intelligence.

(Read more here.)

Tags: emotional intelligence, business strategy, development

Categories: News

Steve Spiegel writes a very fun series for the Seattle Examiner called "Workplace Profiles." These sketches of behaviors and office archetypes are interesting overall, and you might even recognize yourself or others in your organization in a few of them.

The most recent profile takes a look at "Sylvester Slide." He is the worker who rests on his laurels, but does not take any initiative moving forward.

Spiegel's advice is to avoid this character at all costs. But should workplace development professionals take a different tack? Maybe Sylvester needs to be better engaged, and confronted, not only by management, but by peers as well. What is your organization's policy for addressing "Sylvesters"?

(Read the entire article.)

Tags: workplace, behaviors, productivity, training, development

Categories: News

(LA Times, Carol J. Williams, April 6, 2009) Emeka Orjiakor spent his first six months as a real estate lawyer in a sleek glass-and-steel downtown high-rise. Now he's feeling more down to earth in the humble offices of a public-service practice, helping the poor fight foreclosure and eviction.

Orjiakor, an associate at Sidley Austin LLP since September, is on loan -- at a substantial pay cut -- to the Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice through a program designed to retain young talent whose jobs are disappearing in the recession.

Across the country, the junior end of the law firm hierarchy has been taking the brunt of layoffs, pay freezes and furloughs as business shrinks and firms trim their payrolls. Summer associate programs are being scrapped or reduced, and many spring graduates who were promised positions for the fall are being asked to delay their start for as long as a year.

But one silver lining is the altruistic use to which some firms are putting their surplus lawyers, seconding them to defend the poor, champion worthy causes or provide full-time pro bono lawyering.

Orjiakor says giving back to society was a strong motivation for going to law school, but student-loan debt and interesting commercial work distracted him from those goals when he graduated from USC's Gould School of Law in May.

(Read the entire article.)

Tags: training, skills, development, law

Categories: News