ASTD announces that 39 organizations from Canada, Hong Kong, India, Singapore, and the United States are winners in the 2009 ASTD BEST Awards competition. Sun Microsystems, of Santa Clara, California, holds the first place ranking. The 2009 ASTD BEST Award winners are recognized in a special section of the October issue of Training + Development (T+D), ASTD’s monthly magazine, and were honored during a reception on October 1 in Washington, D.C. Many of the winners participated in the “Learn from the BEST” event on October 2 to share best practices during roundtable presentations and networking time.

The BEST Awards recognize organizations that demonstrate enterprise‐wide success through employee learning and development. According to Tony Bingham, ASTD’s president and CEO, “The ASTD BEST Award winners set the standard of excellence for exceptional learning practices, and demonstrate that a skilled workforce is vital to
achieving results. They use learning as a strategic tool and have the support of senior leaders who champion a learning culture.”

Through an online application, the 2009 BEST Awards received entries from 93 organizations in 10 countries. These organizations submitted quantitative and qualitative information to ASTD about their learning and development practices and programs. Their applications were assessed by members of the BEST Awards advisory committee, a group of experts in the learning and development field.

More information about the 2009 ASTD BEST Award winners may be found in the October 2009 issue of T+D magazine and online: www.astd.org/best. ASTD would like to thank the following sponsors of the 2009 BEST Awards: Platinum Sponsor: Booz Allen Hamilton; Silver Sponsors: General Physics Corporation, Learn.com , and SkillSoft.

The 2009 ASTD BEST Award winners and rankings:

1. Sun Microsystems, Santa Clara, California
2. MTR Corporation, Hong Kong, SAR, China
3. SCC Soft Computer, Clearwater, Florida
4. DPR Construction, Inc., Redwood City, California
5. BB&T, Winston‐Salem, North Carolina
6. VF Asia Limited, Hong Kong, SAR, China
7. Highmark (an independent licensee of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
8. BJC HealthCare, St. Louis, Missouri
9. Datatel, Fairfax, Virginia
10. Trust Company of the West, Los Angeles, California
11. Luxottica Retail North America, Mason, Ohio
12. La Quinta, Irving, Texas
13. Robert W. Baird & Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
14. Gables Residential, Atlanta, Georgia
15. Wipro Limited, Bangalore, India
16. T. Rowe Price, Baltimore, Maryland
17. LarsonAllen, Minneapolis, Minnesota
18. University Health System, San Antonio, Texas
19. CSC, Falls Church, Virginia
20. Reliance Industries Limited, Jamnagar Refinery Division, Mumbai, India
21. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, New York, New York
22. Infosys Technologies Limited, Bangalore, India
23. Reliance Industries Limited, Dahej Manufacturing Division, Mumbai, India
24. CIGNA Corporation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
25. Suzlon Energy, Ltd., Pune, India
26. Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, Mumbai, India
27. Prescription Solutions, Irvine, California
28. Whirlpool Corporation, Saint Joseph, Michigan
29. Barilla America, Inc., Bannockburn, Illinois
30. Fallon Clinic, Worcester, Massachusetts
31. InterContinental Hotels Group, Atlanta, Georgia
32. Mayer Electric Supply Company Inc., Birmingham, Alabama
33. TELUS, Vancouver, British Columbia
34. G4S Wackenhut, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida
35. sanofi‐aventis U.S., Bridgewater, New Jersey
36. Brown‐Forman Corporation, Louisville, Kentucky
37. United Overseas Bank, Singapore
38. Grant Thornton LLP, Chicago, Illinois
39. Cbeyond, Atlanta, Georgia

In addition, nine companies on this list have been BEST ASTD Award winners for three years or more. They are: BB&T, CSC, Gables Residential, Infosys Technologies, MTR Corporation, Reliance Industries, sanofi‐aventis U.S., TELUS, and Wipro Limited.

Tags: astd, best awards, training and development, workplace learning, best practices, learning culture, tony bingham, t+d, skilled workforce

Categories: ASTD in the News | Chapters | Membership

So, this isn't your average media "hit." In cataloging the places ASTD has popped up in the news this week, I ran across a mention in the NY Daily News. It's a story on workplace violence and it cites information from our flagship magazine T+D. Right as I happened across this, Paula Ketter, T+D's awesome editor strolled by my office and I showed her the clip.  She remembers someone blogging on T+D's blog about the study on workplace violence that is mentioned in the NY Daily News article. Here's the relevant paragraph from the story:

"The Workplace Violence Institute says workplace violence is 'any act against an employee that creates a hostile work environment and negatively affects the employees, either physically or psychologically,' according to T D magazine."

While I would never have expected to see T+D in a story about a murdered college student, this does go to show the rising influence of blogs as sources of information for reporters.

 

Tags: astd, workplace, t+d, paula ketter, blogs

Categories: ASTD in the News

Ran across this blog post from Element K talking about how everyone's talking about social media. Tom Stone, the guy who posted this, salutes ASTD's recognition of the game-changing nature of social media for learning professionals. Hat tip to Tom for linking to Tony Bingham's T+D article, "Learning Gets Social" (and the podcast of it) and also to a press release about ASTD's research report on Web 2.0 technologies.

Tags: social media, social learning, web 2.0, t+d, research, tony bingham, element k

Categories: ASTD in the News

It's an ASTD 3-fer in this week's Workforce Training newsletter, put out by Workforce Management.  A feature article on the link between training and investment, titled "A (Weary) Champion for Employee Investment" mentions ASTD several times, quotes ASTD's executive editor Pat Galagan, and mentions our flagship magazine T+D.  The newsletter also pulled some information from our latest study "Learning in Tough Economic Times" and featured two charts: one comparing the effect on training of this economic downturn compared to the last downturn; the other comparing the effectiveness of learning now to two years ago.  If you want to see the full research report, click here.

Tags: t+d, research, economy, astd, training, investment, learning, effectiveness

Categories: ASTD in the News

 

 

Join T+D on Facebook!

Become a fan of T+D and keep up to date with T+D news, find info on articles in T+D, explore topics we think you'll like, and engage in discussion with other T+D fans.

Click here and fan us!!!

Tags: t+d

Categories: News

ASTD's Training + Development (T+D) magazine continues to keep a finger on the pulse of real issues affecting workplace learning professionals. The April issue contains several articles about surviving the challenging economy and proactively positioning an organization for the eventual recovery. There's a press release about it at www.astd.org/ASTD/aboutus/pressroom. Check out the magazine at www.astd.org/td.

 

Tags: t+d, down economy, research report, human potential, global workforce

Categories: ASTD in the News

The massive $787 billion stimulus legislation, called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (HR 1), includes more than $5 billion in training for a variety of programs across a number of U.S. federal agencies.

The bill invests heavily in new technologies, infrastructure projects, and healthcare. It also calls for investments to help individuals who have been laid off get back to work. An important part of the legislation allocates $3.9 billion to the Department of Labor, and $2.95 billion of that money will be used for training and employment services throughout FY 2009.

As a learning professional, what should you know about this bill, and what can you do to help your organization take advantage of these opportunities? The majority of the training funds will be allocated through the publicly funded workforce system. You can access information about how much of these resources are coming to your states and communities by reaching out to the executive director of your local Workforce Investment Board (WIB) or to the manager of the local One-Stop Career Center in your community. For information about how to contact these agencies, visit www.servicelocator.org/wibcontacts/.

A significant portion of training funding—$750 million—is being devoted to competitive grants for high-growth industries, and $500 million of these funds will be devoted to projects in the new Green Jobs Act. If history repeats itself, the competitive grants will require active private-sector participation with community colleges or higher-education institutions. Additional information about the grants will be available on the Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration website (www.doleta.gov). In the meantime, if your organization is interested in partnering on a future grant opportunity, it is a good idea to reach out to the president of your local community college, technical school, or university.

With billions of dollars devoted to training, it is clear that U.S. lawmakers understand the important connection between learning, job creation, and economic recovery. This increased focus on training means that workplace learning professionals have a huge opportunity to engage in the economic recovery efforts. Let’s work together to help our organizations and communities make the best use of their investments in training and development.

P.S.: A summary of the training investments included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is highlighted here.

Jennifer Homer, Vice President, Communications and Member Relations, ASTD; jhomer@astd.org

C. Michael Ferraro, President and CEO, TRAINING SOLUTIONS, Inc.; ferraro@trainingsolutions.com

Tags: economy, astd, economic crisis, stimulus, t+d

Categories: The Economy

(By Aparna Nancherla) The economic crisis is now common knowledge, even to those who avoid the media in an effort to escape hearing the latest bad news. The latest question on the table is how companies are handling the current situation, and across the globe, the answer is the same—organizations are hastily slashing budgets across a variety of areas.

Sixty-seven percent of European companies are planning to make changes to their budgets, according to Hewitt Associates, a global human resources and outsourcing consulting company. The rest of the world is not far behind, with Latin American companies at 63 percent, the Asia-Pacific region at 58 percent, and U.S. companies at 50 percent.

“What I find the most surprising is how rapidly companies are reacting to the economic downturn,” says Peter Acker, North American leader of global rewards at Hewitt Associates. “Every region around the world is taking action given the economic situation.”

To collect the data, Hewitt conducted surveys across 40 countries between October and December of 2008, covering more than 2,000 companies and 25 million employees.

Results showed that the Asia-Pacific region plans to make the most severe cuts in pay, with reductions to pay raises averaging between 1.7 and 5.2 percent, as compared to projections made earlier in 2008. In Latin America, companies are reducing pay raises by an average of 1 percent, and in Europe and the United States, the figures average, respectively, 0.9 percent and 0.7 percent.

Read more in the upcoming April 2009 T+D Re:Search column!

Tags: economy, astd, t+d, research

Categories: The Economy

(By Andrew Paradise and Jennifer Mosley) Every learning professional knows that the struggling global economy has caused considerable distress in the past year. Organizations have been forced to find ways to cut costs, with more pressure than ever.

Have learning functions been targets or have they developed ways to adapt?

In fact, many organizations are now looking to the learning function for solutions when they face difficult economic conditions.

This finding was confirmed in a new study by ASTD and the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) that examined how organizations manage learning in a down economy. Specifically, the “Organizational Learning in Tough Economic Times” study looks at budget reductions, process improvements, effectiveness of the learning function, efficiency changes, and other lessons learned in reaction to market downturns.

The study found that organizational leaders realize that increased pressure from the economy can actually create a need for learning. The processes and focus of corporate learning may change as leaders navigate through difficult conditions, but if the specific goals for learning programs are in place and the drivers for reorganization or adjustment of content are clear, organizations can still rely heavily on learning.

However, respondents to the study’s survey cited many pressures on learning, with some activities, such as leadership development, in most critical need during a recession.

Read more in the upcoming April 2009 issue of T+D!

Tags: economy, astd, t+d, research

Categories: The Economy

Tags: economy, astd, t+d, infoline, publications

Categories: The Economy