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

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

Marcus Buckingham's live webcast for new and renewing ASTD members starts and 2 p.m. today and we will be tweeting as it happens. Several hundred folks took advantage of this terrific membership offer and we're looking forward to some great insights and content. If you're interested in some nuggets, follow us on Twitter @ASTDPR starting at 2 p.m.

Tags: astd, membership, marcus buckinham, webcast

Categories: ASTD in the News | Membership

At ASTD, we understand how important it is to demonstrate value. Our goal is to provide you with the best content, networking, tools, and service that will help you succeed in your job and your career.

To provide you with even better access to how-to content and tools, we are starting a new benefit called “ASTD Content To Go.” This package provides quick access to expertise about a hot topic in workplace learning and performance. To get you started, we have collected trends on talent management, e-learning, and leadership development, and posted this content and research all in one place. Each month, we will pull together the best ASTD resources on important trends in the field. Future topics include career development, employee engagement, skills gap, sales training, and more.

And the best part? All of this content is included as part of your membership with ASTD – all you need to do is enter your user ID and password to access everything.

Check out your new benefit and let us know how you like it!

Tags:

Categories: Membership

Several weeks ago we announced the availability of our latest White Paper -- Keep Learning Mission Critical: How to Communicate the Value of Learning in Difficult Economic Times.

The demand for the download overwhelmed the ASTD online store, and left us scrambling for solutions and ways to make good on an unfortunate situation!

For anyone who tried to download the paper could not, we express our sincere apologies! If you are willing to try again -- or haven't yet tried, the paper is available here. 

Tags:

Categories: Membership

As an ASTD member you have a library on your desktop. Simply sign in on www.astd.org, and go to the ASTD Online Library. Within a few keystrokes you will be able to search and read full text articles from more than 3000 of the most respected periodicals, journals, and magazines available through the Business Source Corporate database. And that's not all. The ASTD online library also includes The McClatchy-Tribune Collection with a 90-day archive of nearly 300 newspapers from the McClatchy-Tribune Information Services, and  full text coverage for regional business publications from 75 business journals, newspapers and newswires from all metropolitan and rural areas within the United States. Use Business Book Summaries to take a sneak peek at a collection of 700 (and growing) business titles.

To learn more about the new ASTD Online Library, watch this short introduction.

We've heard from a couple of members already. Let us know if your experience matches theirs!

"I think this is a tremendous resource. It is more than worth the value of membership by itself. I knew many resources were available to members but didn't know the depth."
Michael Sabbag, M.A., SPHR

"I love the ASTD Online Library! It was quick and easy to navigate -- and in less than one minute I had the info that I was looking for!"
Lynn S. Lewis - MBA, PMP, CPLP
Learning Solutions, LLC

Tags:

Categories: Membership

Recently, I was telling my friend a story of how I "cheated" on a crossword puzzle by using the internet to answer a few clues. The consummate kindergarten teacher told me, "That wasn't cheating. You were making good use of your resources."  I've had more than a few opportunities over the past couple of weeks to "use my resources" for things that are a bit more challenging than the crossword in the Washington Post Magazine. These were indeed opportunities for me to cross into the realm of technology -- an area that is more and more pushing into my comfort zone. And now that I have successfully moved music from my mp3 player to a new computer, and synced my new phone with the calendar-not-the-contacts, I'm a bit more confident about "getting under the hood" of some of these devices.

Some of our very best resources are our friends and colleagues. While we might be hesitant to expose a weakness, when we do, everyone learns from the experience. Certainly, we all have knowledge gaps, and learning flows both ways from the teacher to the student and from the student to the teacher.

As the professional organization for workplace learning and performance professionals, the ASTD members should know this well. Your ASTD colleages are ready for any challenge you can give them. Tell us about a time a colleague helped you reach the road to success!

Tags:

Categories: Membership

Summer is one of the most memory inducing seasons. The scents and sounds blend together and seem to be the same every year. A passing breeze carries the smell of suntan (now sunscreen) lotion and immediately pulls you back to truly endless summer days spent pool, beach, lakeside, or summer camp. While endless summer has been replaced with responsibility, we do find that things cool down as the temperature heats up. How do you take advantage of your "break?" Are you preparing for the CPLP? Leading a Second Life? Taking an online course? Catching up on filing, or taking a breather? Tell us how you make the most of the precious downtime that summer brings.

Tags:

Categories: Membership

Search the blogs for "ASTD" this week, and the ASTD International Conference in San Diego rises to the top. Keynote speakers, links to handouts, session discussions, and general disussions make for some great reading.

• E-learning Technology
• Time2MarketBlog.com
• Cromely's World
• Jobing.com
• Adventures in Corporate Education
• Lead 2020
• Coaching Businesses and Life, a view from Long Beach
• enter/TRAINING
• Cup of Good Intentions

 

Tags:

Categories: Membership

In just a little over a week (June 1-4) ASTD will host our International Conference & Exposition in San Diego, California. With over 279 concurrent sessions, exciting general session speakers (Malcom Gladwell, Patrick Lencioni, and Kay Koplovitz to drop a few names), author signings, and networking galore, ASTD members and guests are guaranteed to have a wonderful time and great learning experience.

If you are coming to the conference (you can sign up on site if you haven't yet registered) be sure to stop by and see us at the ASTD Connection Center in the EXPO Hall. Take a few minutes to give us your story, and get your picture taken so you can be featured on the cover of T+D magazine.

We look forward to seeing you there!

 

Tags:

Categories: Membership