Despite the roughest economy in decades, organizations showed a commitment to learning and development, spending $130 billion in 2008 - or roughly $1,068 per employee. That's one of the big findings in the just-released 2009 State of the Industry Report from ASTD. The numbers are down a bit from 2007, but the news is not glum. Read the press release here for more data. Or you can access the full report at www.astd.org if you are a member of ASTD -- and why wouldn't you be with great research like this?

Tags: state of the industry report, learning and development expeditures, training budgets, research

Categories: ASTD in the News | Government

(From abcnews.com) Sigmund Freud thought dreams were a window into our unfulfilled sexual desires. But the dreams of video game players suggest they have a more practical role: helping us to learn new skills.

"It really looks like if you're not dreaming about it, you're not getting better," says Robert Stickgold of Harvard Medical School, who carried out one of the video game studies.

The studies don't prove that dreaming about games makes players better. But they strongly suggest that dreaming and learning are intertwined.

That sleep can help with learning and memory is well established. What's more, the more people dream during the light sleep characterised by rapid eye movements (REM), the better they recall memories. But whether the specific content of dreams plays a role in this sleep-learning process wasn't clear.

Read the entire article.

Tags: learning, cognition, research, psychology, gaming

Categories: News

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) - Indiana University researchers are shedding light on the dynamics of workplace gossip with a new study that captured gossipers in the act on video.

The IU team studied the workplace politics at an elementary school in the midst of an uncomfortable transition after a new principal took over.

As part of their research, they videotaped school staff meetings and captured 25 episodes of gossip. The researchers say the footage shows the subtle ways that people who are targets of gossip are negatively evaluated during formal work meetings.

Read the entire story.

Tags: workplace, behavior, productivity, research

Categories:

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) - Indiana University researchers are shedding light on the dynamics of workplace gossip with a new study that captured gossipers in the act on video.

The IU team studied the workplace politics at an elementary school in the midst of an uncomfortable transition after a new principal took over.

As part of their research, they videotaped school staff meetings and captured 25 episodes of gossip. The researchers say the footage shows the subtle ways that people who are targets of gossip are negatively evaluated during formal work meetings.

Read the entire story.

Tags: workplace, behavior, productivity, research

Categories: News

Just put out a press release noting the continued gain in confidence of learning executives. For the second quarter in a row, LXs are optimistic about continued growth in the learning function. All the info is in the third quarter Learning Executives Confidence Index. You can read the press release here. Or read the full report here.

Tags: learning executives, confidence index, research, learning function

Categories: ASTD in the News

The silver lining in a lousy economy is employee retention, but as economic prospects brighten, most firms are thinking about ways to retain talent, according to the latest study by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) on the subject of organizational turnover and engagement. But that doesn’t necessarily translate into big raises for most employees, who have seen few pay raises of late.

In this down economy, the study, the full results of which are now available to i4cp members in both standard and interactive form, found that higher market performing companies are more than twice as likely to offer pay raises to keep key talent from walking out the door than are lower performers.

The study showed that 18% of high-performing organizations have already taken the step of increasing compensation levels to reduce turnover, compared to 7% of lower performers. Over the next six to 12 months, the same ratio of high performers (18%) plan to implement pay raises, while almost a quarter (24%) of lower performers have plans to do so.

Read the full release.

Tags: new economy, research, employee retention, employee engagement, turnover, performance

Categories: Research | The Economy

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

Results from independent research, published on September 21, show that 67% of graduates surveyed are likely to consider leaving their current employer as the country comes out of recession. Commissioned by the Inspirational Development Group (IDG), provider of bespoke leadership and management programmes, the results offer a snapshot of how graduates are viewed and valued in the workplaces of some of the UK's largest employers, including the NHS, Thomson Reuters and the Lloyds Banking Group.

Focusing on graduates two and a half to three and a half years into their scheme, the report investigates the perceptions and reality of graduate retention, recession impact and valuation issues for graduate programmes, both from the organisation and graduate's perspective.

Read the full release. 

Tags: retention, roi, recession, research

Categories: Research | The Economy

GREENWICH, Conn. (BUSINESS WIRE)--Executive hiring appears to be reemerging at many organizations after being frozen for the last year due to the financial credit crisis based upon the results of the recent Claymore Partners’ Labor Day 2009 Executive Talent Market survey with over 640 executive respondents. “Almost half of employers are now selectively hiring executives and significant reductions are greatly diminished based upon the survey results as well as our own executive search activity and market discussions," according to Mr. Landberg, Managing Director of Claymore Partners.

Health insurance, healthcare/pharmaceuticals, wealth management, investment banking, and consulting/professional services industries appear to be most robust in terms of executive hiring at this time. From a functional perspective, executive hiring increases are most pronounced in sales, consulting, and risk management/compliance. The direct impact of the financial credit crisis for most executives appears to be waning though strong hiring is not expected until mid to year end 2010 by most executives.

Request the full report. 

Tags: new economy, research, hiring, executives

Categories: Research | The Economy

Minneapolis, MN (PRWEB) -- Although economic recovery in the U.S. remains uncertain and is far from complete, Modern Survey's measurement of the U.S. workforce shows that employee engagement has risen steadily during the last twelve months. The level of employee engagement recorded in late August is now back to where it was in August of 2007 (before the recession became apparent), following a precipitous decline from August 2007 to August 2008.

All five components of Modern Survey's Employee Engagement Index show further improvement since the February 2009 measurement, resulting in statistically significant gains on all components since August of 2008. The most dramatic improvement is in the number of employees who say they intend to stay with their company, which rose by 11 percentage points, from a low of 52% in August '08, to 57% by February '09, and now stands at 63%.

Such encouraging figures in the face of continued economic hardship may well indicate a fundamental change in the psychology of the American worker.

Read the full release.

Tags: new economy, research, employee engagement

Categories: Research | The Economy