ASTD announced today that applications for ASTD’s annual BEST Awards are due March 31.

The ASTD BEST Awards recognize organizations that demonstrate enterprise-wide success as a result of employee learning and development.  Winning organizations use the learning function as a strategic business tool to get results. Award winners show that they are BEST at Building talent, Enterprise-wide, Supported by the organization’s leaders, fostering a Thorough learning culture.

Companies who win a BEST Award will:
• Be honored for their contributions and identified as among the BEST in the world
• Establish the organization as a leader recognizing learning has an enterprise-wide role
• Share innovative ideas with peers in the industry at the Learn from the BEST conference
• Teach others to embrace learning and development as a strategic initiative.

The top five recent BEST Award winners include: Sun Microsystems, MTR Corporation, SCC Soft Computer, DPR Construction, Inc., and BB&T.

More information about the BEST Awards, and an application due March 31, 2010, can be found at www.astd.org/best. 

Tags: ASTD, BEST Awards, workplace learning and development

Categories: ASTD in the News | Chapters | Government | International | Membership | Public Policy | T+D

In a post last week, I mentioned that the winter 2010 issue of The Public Manager was ginning up some excellent media coverage, including a nice article in the Washington Post. Today I'm sharing the link to an interview on FedNews Radio with one of the contributors, Alan Balutis.

Click here to listen to the interview.

The winter issue of The Public Manager spotlights the personnel and performance management agenda of the Obama administration. Eleven articles in the Forum series examine a broad range of topics and are written by a team of experts who contributed to the journal in late 2007 and early 2008 analyzing the wide array of challenges that awaited the incoming president.

Topics covered in the current issue of The Public Manager include: a review of what is currently happening in the reform efforts; human capital; telework; management implications of the future workforce; the emerging technology agenda; the debate within the acquisition community; government direction on performance management; intergovernmental cooperation; a review of how the administration’s team is trying to reshape the way government works; and recommendations to achieve transformation.

Tags: the public manager, personnel, performance, fed news radio, alan balutis, washington post, obama administration

Categories: ASTD in the News | Government | Public Policy

ASTD surveyed 1,179 companies and found that 79 percent of them say they face a skills gap. 79 percent! 

Communities, states, regions, and entire nations pay a heavy price when workers lack the right skills for critical jobs. While the skills gap has always been a concern for organizations, the global recession complicates an already perplexing issue. Recognizing the extraordinary circumstances, ASTD conducted new research and the results are published in a new white paper that features skills gap survey findings and includes impact of the recession, Web 2.0, and the surge of millennials in the workplace.

The paper is titled Bridging the Skills Gap: New Factors Compound the Growing Skills Shortage. It can be accessed for free at www.astd.org/publicpolicy.

The new paper analyzes the multi-layered dimensions of the skills gap in today’s economic climate including the impact of the global recession, the retirement of Baby Boomers in the workforce, Web 2.0 technologies, and the surge of the millennial cohort into the workforce. It includes the results of ASTD’s 2009 Skills Gap Poll taken by 1,179 organizations. Case studies from eight leading companies are also included. 

Bridging the Skills Gap: New Factors Compound the Growing Skills Shortage outlines a six-step action plan to help organizations and individuals deal proactively with the skills gap.

“Recent economic challenges have forced public- and private-sector organizations to execute their strategies with more precision than ever before, and do it with fewer resources, especially people,” says Tony Bingham, ASTD President and CEO. “Many senior executives are struggling to close skills gaps within their organizations. The Action Plan identified in this white paper provides a process for leaders, managers, and learning professionals to use to successfully manage this challenge.”

Learning professionals are strategically positioned to identify the skills and competencies their organizations possess and those needed for the future. The white paper includes eight case studies from Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, EMC Corporation, IBM, McCain Foods Limited, NVR Inc., Steelcase, and the Tennessee Valley Authority. These organizations’ case studies provide best practices to address skills gaps.

Tags: astd, skills gap, research, public policy, computer sciences corporation, csc, deloitte touche tohmatsu, emc corporation, ibm, mccian foods limited, nvr inc., steelcase, tennessee valley authoriy, tva, tony bingham

Categories: ASTD in the News | Chapters | Government | Membership | Public Policy | Research

In today's issue of The Washington Post, Federal Diary writer Joe Davidson calls out some content from the forthcoming issue of The Public Manager in his reporting abou the Obama administration's personnel efforts.

The article "Obama personnel policies draw generally high marks" contains the following quote:

"It's about that time when performance evaluations of Barack Obama's first year as boss-in-chief begin coming in.

It helps when the evaluators are a nonpartisan group of experts who know something about the area on which they judge the president. Fortunately, that's the case with several articles on Obama's management agenda -- written by a team of analysts, including industry and former government executives -- that appear in the winter 2010 issue of the Public Manager, which will be available Friday at http://www.thepublicmanager.org. This quarterly journal is published by the (sic) Bureaucrat Inc., which describes itself as "a not-for-profit organization chartered and devoted to furthering knowledge and best practice at all levels of government."

"The authors don't have a dog -- or a donkey or an elephant -- in the fight over Obama's reputation. They're Democrats and Republicans who push a good-government agenda."

The winter issue of The Public Manager will be released tomorrow, January 15. An Interview on Federal News Radio's show "In Depth with Francis Rose" will tomorrow.

For more information on The Public Manager, go to the website www.thepublicmanager.org.

 

Tags: the public manager, president obama, personnel, government, the bureaucrat inc., federal news radio, washington post, joe davidson, federal diary

Categories: ASTD in the News | Government | Public Policy

I have heard from a few folks already about the plans they have to celebrate Employee Learning Week in their companies, organizations, and ASTD chapters. It is so exciting to see folks getting psyched about promoting the value of learning! Remember there are lots of tools on the Employee Learning Week website - including downloadable logos, public service announcements to send to your local radio stations, and press release templates to announce your activities to your local press. You'll find everything at www.employeelearningweek.org. Remeber to send me an email, letting me know what you've done to celebrate ELW and we will send you a Champion of Learning certificate to recognize your efforts! You can email me at kfyfe@astd.org.

Tags: employee learning week, chapters, champion of learning, astd, elw

Categories: ASTD in the News | Chapters | Government | International | Membership

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

President’s Chief Performance Officer to Speak at TPM-ASPA Conference (Alexandria, VA) October 21, 2009 – The Public Manager and the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) announce that Jeffrey Zients, Deputy Director for Management, US Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the nation’s first Chief Performance Officer, appointed by President Obama, will speak on Strengthening Trust in Government at their upcoming conference in Washington, D.C. The conference, entitled “Strengthening Trust in Government: Opening Dialogues, Building Collaborations,” will be held November 2-3, 2009 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.  

Zients will be speaking about President Obama’s Management Agenda, a topic first covered in the winter 2008 issue of The Public Manager that addressed issues the next administration would face. Zients’ remarks will be included in an updated forum on the President’s Management Agenda, which will be featured in the winter 2009 issue of the journal to be published in mid-January 2010. 

Happy Learning!

Tags: jeffrey zients, president obama, omb

Categories: Government

Hot off the presses! It is confirmed that Jeffrey Zients, the nation's first Chief Performance Officer, will be speaking at the upcoming conference hosted by The Public Manager and the American Society for Public Administration. The conference will be held November 2-3 in Washington, D.C. For more information on Zients, see the press release. To HEAR him speak, go to the conference. Register at www.thepublicmanager.org/2009conference. Early bird registration has been extended until October 30!

Tags: the public manager, conference, chief performance officer, government, public sector, barack obama, jeffrey zients

Categories: ASTD in the News | Conferences | Government | Public Policy

Please join us for a lively and informative discussion on the topic of accelerated learning and its varied applications in the federal workplace.

Our panel of subject matter expert presenters includes Ethan Saunders, Fellow in Human Capital Strategies at ICF International, Jason Nelson, Program Training Manager, Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, and Courtney Vital Kriebs, Senior Project Manager in Education at ASTD.   
When: Wednesday, October 28, 11:45 a.m. to 1:15 p.m.  Where: The Bureau of Labor Statistics, Postal Square Building, First Street entrance, lower level, conference facility.   Use First Street exit at Union Station red line metro station and walk across the street to the building.  Leave enough time to go through building security.   RSVP:  Please RSVP to Jack Malgeri, jrmalgeri@aim.com.  Please also provide your organization’s name and office telephone number for building security entrance purposes. We expect an excellent turnout for this event so reserve a space as soon as possible.   

Happy Learning!

Tags: rapid learning, training, federal government, learning

Categories: Government

By Jill Aitoro at GovExec.com

Leading government into the land of wikis, blogs and social media isn't easy.

Even Sean Dennehy, whose title is evangelist for the intelligence community's widely lauded collaboration Web site Intellipedia, was initially skeptical.

"Cal Andrus spoke to a technology advisory group that I was a part of about wikis and blogs, and we all said, 'This guy is crazy,' " Dennehy recalls. Andrus, who worked in the application services office at the CIA, had won the intelligence community's Galileo Award in 2004 for his white paper on using the Internet to boost information sharing.

Despite a preconceived notion that Web 2.0 technologies had little place in the intelligence community, Dennehy fiddled online with the build-as-you-go encyclopedia, Wikipedia, to see where Andrus was coming from. Sifting through the discussion and history tabs for each entry, he quickly saw similarities in the online community's style of collaboration and the way he and his colleagues at the CIA worked as intelligence analysts. Both approaches involved a lot of dialogue and building on the ideas of others. The big difference, though, was information sharing on the Web required only a few mouse clicks.

"Everyone has a light bulb moment," Dennehy says. "That was mine." He went back to Andrus to ask how the intelligence community could get this sort of wiki up and running. In 2006, Intellipedia officially launched. Three years later, the application boasts about 5,000 contributions and 15,000 edits per day.

But getting there hasn't been easy.

"It's bloody hard, because every inclination in government is to close these types of things down," says Don Burke, officially known as the Intellipedia doyen, who spearheaded the initiative with Dennehy. "People want some magical formula to innovation, but it's not that predictable. They just need to fight like hell."

Caught in the Middle

The Obama campaign built an election platform on Web 2.0 technologies using social media sites, streaming video and blogs to gain support from the country's digitally savvy populace. Building upon that success, President Obama now is driving those initiatives into the federal government. The White House has launched a number of collaborative tools and Web sites to better serve citizens, including Recovery.gov, which tracks how economic stimulus funds are allocated and spent. The president also leveraged the popularity of the video-sharing service YouTube to provide live online access to his speeches.

Click Here to read the entire article.

Happy Learning!

Tags: web 2.0, technology, federal government, social media sites

Categories: Government