TOP

AN EBOOK Brought to you by:

TRAINING

TOPICS

A SIMPLE GUIDE TO DEVELOPING TARGETED TRAINING PROGRAMS.

Communication. Leadership. Management. Customer Service. Compliance. Computer Skills.

EMPLOYEE TRAINING USED TO BE SO EASY.

Employee training used to be so easy. We could a design a classroom session, design the content, call the necessary employees to the session, and everyone was happy. Or were they? Or was it really EVER that easy?

The truth is that employee training has always been challenging. Given the way we see the business environment evolving, we believe employee training and development is

more challenging than ever. But employee learning still occurs. Sometimes employees learn because organizations do a great job building programs, establishing a learning culture and providing leadership. But sometimes employees learn out of necessity and expedience. The challenge for learning professionals is deciding which direction we would rather go.

In this eBook, we will outline a five step process to design a compelling curriculum and how to apply this process to the top six important competencies or training areas we see the majority of our clients emphasizing:

1. Communication Skills2. Leadership3. Management4. Customer Service

5. Compliance6. Computer Skills

Each of these topics resonate in today’s complex and rapidly changing marketplace for a variety of reasons. Each of these topics are also multi-layered and can be nuanced, so they provide great ways to illustrate how to develop a curriculum for organizations determined to avoid many of the common mistakes that derail many well-intentioned employee development efforts.

Overall spending on employee

training in U.S. organizations was

$164 billion.

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STATE OF

THE

INDUSTRY

COST PER EMPLOYEE$1,195

LEARNING HOURS USED PER

EMPLOYEE

30.3

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THE FIVE STEP PROCESS

The five steps to follow to deliver effective employee training are:

To optimize the chances for a successful program, each step should be completed, in order. Each step builds upon the one or ones before. By the time you’ve gotten through the entire process, you will have established a clear plan for improving the performance of specific

employees in skills and competencies that will work to actually improve bottom-line results.

It’s also important to recognize that your employee development efforts should not be limited to traditional, formal delivery of content. As you begin to make the important decisions required to deliver effective and meaningful employee development, work to expand your thinking about how to deliver learning content to employees.

1. Build a business case linking the training objectives (and by extension, the content) to improved bottom-line results.

2. Gain front-line manager support.

3. Outline the critical competencies and levels of mastery required for success.

4. Identify performance gaps.

5. Identify target areas for performance improvement.

The Top Four Learning Solutions for

2014 include:

1. Off-the-shelf content

2. Video training

3. Learning management systems

4. Mobile learning

according to Cox eLearning

Consultants, Learning Solutions

Forecast: 2014 Edition

THE FIVE STEP PROCESS

Here are each of the five steps and why each is so important.

1. Build a business case. One of the hardest things Learning and Development (L&D), Training, and HR professionals must do is shift from a focus on the processes associated with employee development and training, to the outcomes businesses require. However, we all have to make this shift.

It is imperative to connect the objectives of employee training initiatives to organizational objectives and goals. These connections cannot be implied. The connections must be direct,

clear, and stated as measureable attainable goals. We should also be prepared to make adjustments to employee development initiatives and programs as we move forward and after we “go live.” The days of delivering a classroom session, collecting feedback forms and creating reports on attendance and feedback are over.

Building a business case requires a foundational commitment to the strategic objectives of the organization, which in turn, requires goals to which we are accountable. To achieve our goals, we have to accept a duty to evaluate, assess and reinvent learning as we go forward. But this constant feedback and improvement process must be fully framed and informed by the

strategic goals of the organization.

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Here’s a short video from Chris Osborn, VP of Marketing at BizLibrary, about how to present

Bonus Resource: How to Build a Business Case for Online Employee Training. Download the eBook here.

Want to get your employees started with online training? When presenting a proposed training program to senior leadership, don’t make the mistake of getting caught only discussing the return on investment. In this eBook, you’ll learn the five steps to building a business case and best practices for delivering impact through training and development.

your business case to C-Level executives in your organization.

Click the image or click here to view the video on YouTube.

81% of learning leaders rate strategic alignment as critical for exceptional training organizations.

According to a 2013 study by Training Industry, Inc.

THE FIVE STEP PROCESS

2. Manager support. Involving managers long before you design one element of a program is important to the success of employee development. Your managers are closer to the performance problems than anyone else. Your managers can provide the best guidance and direction on the challenges you can help them meet.

The issue for many L&D professionals is that not every problem can be solved with training, so make sure you delve into the root cause of the problem before committing to developing a training solution. It’s the old, “If you carry a hammer, every problem looks like a nail” syndrome.

Every challenge our managers confront cannot be fixed or solved by employee training and development. But the only way to know for sure is to be highly engaged with managers at every step along the way as you evaluate problems, develop solutions, and begin designing employee development programs.

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TIPS FOR MANAGER SUPPORT:

• Work with managers before the

event to emphasize the

importance of their support.

• Reach a shared understanding

among all of the stakeholders

about what a successful

training event will look like 30, 60

and 90 days after the event.

• Develop resources to help your

managers support your training

efforts.

Here’s a short video from Chris Osborn, VP of Marketing at BizLibrary, about how to engage managers in training.

Click the image or click here to view the video on YouTube.

THE FIVE STEP PROCESS

3. Outline the critical competencies and levels of mastery needed for success. Each of the topic areas we will cover in this eBook are deliberately broad. The reason is that these are the sorts of training requests we frequently get from managers, teams, or departments. For example, the term "communications skills" does not really describe anything. Does this mean verbal or written communications? Does this mean negotiations, persuasion, or informative communications?

We could build a great program to improve verbal communications skills in a cross-cultural environment. But if that’s not the actual communications skills and competencies that we need

to focus on to improve crucial areas of performance, what does it matter? We might feel good, but we will fail to deliver business results. This is exactly the outcome this five-step process is designed to avoid.

You have to work closely with your managers to identify the actual skills, behaviors, and competencies required for success in those areas where you need to improve performance. A great way to figure out exactly what can serve as a starting point is to benchmark top performers. Learn what they do to deliver results, and identify only those critical few competencies and behaviors that help them perform at a peak level. Those are the

competencies and behaviors that can serve as a guide for the development of other members of the team. The next step is to identify the level of mastery required for each employee in these areas.

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Core Competencies

Cultural or organizational

Job-Family Competencies

Sales, operations, administrative functions, customer service

Job-Specific Competencies

Perform a particular job at a successful level

Not sure if a competency-based training program will work in your organization

because of your mix of employees –office staff, employees in the field, manufacturing environment?

Here’s a short video from Chris Osborn, VP of Marketing at BizLibrary, about how to start competency-based training with a diverse workforce.

Click the image or click here to view the video on YouTube.

THE FIVE STEP PROCESS

4. Identify performance gaps. We've built a business case, and through our hard work with managers, have their full support. We've also clearly identified the needed competencies for success through observation and by talking to and benchmarking our top performers.

Now we have to assess the differences between the current state of performance (which we know is not acceptable or optimal) and the desired state of performance. We should make this assessment for each employee. This is the time to heavily engage the employees themselves. Ask THEM what they believe they need to improve to deliver the results you need. If they tell you the same basic things you've learned and established, you have a great situation and are

ready to proceed. But if the employees tell you something substantially different, you need to step back and find out why there is a disconnect between what the employees say they need and what the manager has described.

It's likely everyone is more closely aligned on the problems indicated and it's a difference in perspective, but you have to slow things down and get everyone to agree on BOTH the needs and the gaps to be targeted for improvement. Once we've accomplished this important work, we are ready to provide each employee with a plan for their own development and performance improvement.

5. Identify the key target areas for performance improvement. This is the final step, and where the individual development plans, employees, managers and the work of the training professionals all come together. In step four, we identified the performance gaps, but keep an important point in mind. Not all performance gaps are equal. Remember our suggestion to benchmark top performers to learn how they deliver exceptional results? A key reason for this is to gain an insight into exactly WHICH competencies and skills these employees apply on a day-to-day basis to deliver results. What are their actual behaviors that you believe can be taught in others?

We've also identified a numbers of competencies we need within the department for the department or team to achieve its goals. It is not reasonable to expect every employee in every department to master every competency their department or team requires. You have to focus - or target - three or four critical areas for improvement that will yield the best results. Thisfocus will help every stakeholder from the employee to the manager understand what is expected and what can be gained from participating in the program.

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Ever hear the quote “the only constant is change?” For many of us this a new way of approaching employee training and development. Here’s a short video preview “Embracing Change – Managing Change.”

Click the image or click here to view the video on YouTube.

This video is included in the BizLibrary Collection. To take a look at any of the learning resources available- start a free – no obligation – trial here.

THE FIVE STEP PROCESS

The five-step process we've outlined places Learning and Development squarely in a traditional employee development role- with a few best practices tips for good measure. Once this work is finished, the hard work begins - actually improving performance. And improved performance cannot occur by applying a traditional employee training model in today's workplace. Employees live in a world that is interconnected 24/7 where they have instant access to information they want, when and where they want it. We have to recognize this reality and adapt. We have to learn to facilitate employee learning and provide access to critical content in different ways - through social sharing, social networks, on mobile devices, through ready access to answers, etc. In other words, we need to learn how to reproduce an environment AT

work that is as rich in important and critical information for employees as there is their world outside of work.

Now let’s tackle six common and important training areas illustrating how this five-step process might work in an organization.

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To preview online courses on these

topics and more, go to

www.bizlibrary.com/topics or click

the image below.

39% of formal learning hours

available are technology-based

delivery methods.

According to the ASTD State of

the Industry report 2013.

1. Communication Skills

2. Leadership

3. Management

4. Customer Service

5. Compliance

6. Computer Skills

In many organizations, here's how a typical conversation might go related to communication skills and training.

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Manager: My team doesn't communicate. They need training.

Training Manager: We can help. We've delivered communications classes to three different teams already this year, and we have access to 50-60 online courses on communications skills.

Manager: Great. When can we start?

Manager: My team doesn't communicate. They need training.

Training Manager: Ok. We can help you, but please help me understand a little more about exactly what's wrong. What are the results or business goals you are trying to improve by help your team communicate better? Or looking at it another way, what are the business goals you cannot attain that are directly linked to the communication issues you observe?

Manager: Wow. I didn't really think it through that deeply until you asked that question. Let me see. My team is charged with managing our supply chain, so we have to make sure we are accurately informing all of our stakeholders - both inside and outside the company - about conditions, delivery expectations and needs. Sometimes we aren't good at delivering bad news to people, so we end up disappointing clients with delivery or service that does not meet their expectations. So our customer satisfaction scores are dropping, and that's a strategic goal of the department - to raise customer satisfaction scores.

Training Manager: Do you see this as a training problem? What I mean - is this a challenge improved skills and performance will solve?

Manager: Yes.

Training Manager. So you think you have the right people, systems and policies in place, but what you need is to work on improved performance through enhanced skill and knowledge? Is that correct?

Manager: Yes - that's it exactly. We can do it. We just don't quite know how.

COMMUNICATION

SKILLS

The problem with this conversation and approach is . . . just about everything.

Let's apply the five step process to this manager's

problem, and see if we can do a little better.

The problem with this approach is . . . just about nothing - so far! We've established a business benefit for the training the manager wants to conduct. We're getting a sense about how we will measure the program's success - improved customer satisfaction scores. And in this process, we're laying the foundation for strong manager support. In the brief scenario above, it's the MANAGER that actually describes the performance issues. By getting your managers to help you like this, you have a much better chance of having their full and unconditional support, because they identify the areas for performance support.

Communications skills training is so broad that, standing alone, doesn’t helps us solve business problems.

In our two scenarios, when the manager explained the basis of the issues and what the team needed to improve, she helped clarify the training challenges. So instead of offering a generic “communications” set of classes or online courses, the team will gain improved skills and knowledge in a specific type of communications that will improve performance, and, as a result, promote a strategic business goal – improved customer satisfaction.

When we think about communications skills, make sure to narrow the scope of the request by asking questions about the objectives of the communications skills to be improved. This is how you identify the performance gaps you have to help fill. Do employees need to

communicate better to:

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COMMUNICATION

SKILLS

Comedy Makes Learning Fun!

The Cutting Edge Communication

Video Series, included in the

BizLibrary Collection, follows ten

individuals that work together

through a landscape of typical

situations encountered in office

environments. This candid and

funny series includes the socially

questionable comments, insults

and embarrassments that can be

part of dialogues in offices. Perfect

for use as a quick training session

starter,

Watch a preview video here.

• Solve problems

• Inform others

• Persuade clients or prospects

• Close sales

• Motivate employees or staff

• Interpersonal

• Presentation skills

Once you narrowed your focus through these first four steps, the final step should come into pretty sharp focus. You are now ready to identify your specific targets for each of the communications skills or competencies you need to work to improve. Now you are ready to build an employee development program to improve “communications skills” that has a good chance of success, because it won’t be generic. It will be focused, targeted, and clearly linked to specific business objectives developed with the support and guidance of your managers.

Effective communications are the cornerstone of most important business results, functions and

needs. There are some foundational skills that everyone should posses that promote effective communications such as listening skills, business writing and e-mail. Beyond basic, foundational requirements, however, you need to delve much further into the actual cause of the difference between the current state of performance and the desired state of performance to gain a clear understanding of exactly how the targeted employees need to improve their ability to communicate.

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COMMUNICATION

SKILLS

According to IDC, knowledge

workers spend approximately 10

hours a week searching for data

to bridge knowledge and skill

gaps.

In an organization with 300

employees making an average of

$60,000 the lost productivity could

exceed $2 million – or the

equivalent of 33 full-time

employees’ productivity!

BizLibrary’s award-winning collection includes more than 3,000 core business and professional training resources that will meet your communication skills training needs. Check out some of the videos here.

Leadership skills are another broad set of skills and competencies that can easily lead to disconnects between learning and development initiatives and actual needs. Leadership is also frequently (maybe even usually) anchored or rooted in an organization’s culture.

Most organizations need two fundamental things from leaders. Leaders need to be able to tell people where the organization is going (vision), and how the organization plans to get there (strategy).

There are many facets to these foundational requirements, but reduced to its least common denominators, those are really the two most vital things leaders do for organizations. How leaders perform to accomplish these two critical things is where the fun begins and the vast differences in approach and competencies step forward. So how do you sort out what your leaders need?

In step one, building a business case for leadership development does not have to be complex. Keep it simple. There are a wide variety of leadership models you can use for your organization. Any number of them will probably work, but ultimately, the key to a successful leadership

development program lies in your ability to answer some basic questions that are specific to your organization. Here are three questions to get you started .

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LEADERSHIP

What are the business challenges facing our organization? Understanding the broader business environment facing your organization is crucial to understand what your organization needs your leaders to do. For instance, leaders in small, emerging companies in a rapidly changing, high-tech industry likely need a different skill set and competencies than leaders in large organizations in well-established industries.

What are the future leadership needs of our organization? This is a question far too many L&D professionals and training organizations never adequately address. That’s unfortunate, because the answers to this question may be even more important than the answers to the first question! We need to have a leadership team (at multiple levels) ready for success today. But what about next year? Or what will we need in two years? You don’t have to have EVERY leader prepared for every challenge you anticipate. But you will need to have SOME leaders with the ability to learn new skills and the ability to adapt to rapidly changing conditions.

The last question has two parts. Ask yourself what will successful leadership look like, and how will we know it? Once you can clearly, succinctly and directly articulate what successful leadership looks like, then you need to make sure you can measure it (that’s the reason you ask, “How will I know?”).

13.6 Billion was spent in 2012 by US

companies for leadership

development. A Bersin study

showed that was 14% more than

2011, and will only continue to rise.

The next four steps in developing leadership training content flow logically from step one. Once you understand the current and future needs of the organization, you have to narrow the focus of your development efforts.

There are probably ten or more specific things we need leaders to do, but it’s nearly impossible

for any person to effectively improve skills in more than two or three areas at a time. Narrowing the scope of your development efforts begins with the people charged with leading the leaders or at the very top of the organization – senior leadership.

Once again, developing manager support, or in this case, leadership support, for your development efforts is vital to success. Work closely with senior leadership to understand and define the challenges EACH member of your leadership team faces. This includes leaders in different areas of your organization-from HR to Sales.

For instance, your senior leaders in human resources will have different development needs than your senior sales leaders. This is true even though both leadership teams may be charged with helping the organization reach the same strategic goals. It’s just that each functional department owns different aspects of those goals, and each functional department has its own set of functional skills and competencies that require various levels of mastery for successful performance. The leaders in each area will be in the best position to answer questions that can lay the foundation for success.

LEADERSHIP

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A 2010 study by IBM surveyed

1,500 executives revealed that

preparing businesses for an

unpredictable future is imperative.

The economic downturn in 2009

served as a “wake-up call” to

business that previously turned a

blind eye to challenges of a

global marketplace where

change is constant and

adaptation is vital.

Capitalizing on Complexity:

Insights from the Chief Executive

Officer Study, IBM Institute for

Business Value, 2010.

Our leaders must be able to adapt to rapidly changing business and market conditions, and they need on-demand access to resources at the moment of need. BizLibrary's

online leadership training provides these types of resources. With award-winning programs and focused collections, we have the leadership training content you need. Check out some of the videos here.

LEADERSHIPLet’s set up another scenario to illustrate how the final three steps might work to set up a effective leadership skills training program.

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Vice President of Human Resources: Our team is charged with some big challenges this year, and we need to improve the skills of our HR leaders.

Training Manager: I understand. So, help me understand a little more about these challenges and what you see as the most pressing needs for development.

Vice President of Human Resources: Do you remember that employee engagement survey? Well – the results were great, and the HR team is going to take the lead in trying to improve the overall level of employee engagement around here. We have to reduce turnover and raise the level of overall productivity and we know employee engagement is directly linked to both important strategic objectives.

Training Manager: You’re right. So how do you see HR leaders contributing to the desired improvement? What I’m trying to understand is what competencies and skills do we need to work on improving? And as we improve these areas, how much improvement is required?

Vice President of Human Resources: Now you’re making me work! Okay – I love my HR leaders. They are really good people, but as a group they have a difficult time coaching our management level employees. The HR leaders know what needs to be done at the management level. They understand what to say, and they know successful management when they see it. But I don’t have a single HR leader that has the coaching skills mastered at the right level to help our managers really engage their employees. That’s the key competency that’s missing.

Training Manager: Wow. So you’ve been thinking about this, and it sounds like you have a good handle on what is needed. …

With each generation entering the

workplace, a greater emphasis is

placed on continual development

as these new employees know

that they are unlikely to stay more

than a few years;

it’s about what they can develop

and acquire to take to the next

stop in the career journey. We

know that effective leaders are

one of the most important

influences on levels of

engagement.

Rebecca Ray, Employee Engagement in

a VUCA World, The Conference Board,

2011.

In this simulated conversation, our high-performing training manager did a great job guiding the VP of Human Resources through identifying the actual competencies needed for improvement and the required mastery levels (step three).

The VP also identified the performance gaps that are impacting a key organizational goal, and together the parties agreed to put together individual development plans for each HR leader that will target improved coaching skills. (steps four and five ).

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LEADERSHIP

Vice President of Human Resources: Yes, I do. The challenge for training and development is that while the whole team needs improved coaching skills, not everyone needs the same level of development. Out of the eight leaders we need to train, two of them are a little more advanced. The rest I’d say are at the beginner level. Can you handle that? Or will it be a one-size fits all thing?

Training Manager: No. One-size-fits-all isn’t going to work. That’s the whole point of our work together. I need your support to make sure all of the leaders know improving their

coaching skills is important and what you need them to do. But we will develop a program that is specific to each leader so each one gets to build their skills and competencies based upon where they are now and where you need each one to be in terms of the mastery level required to perform effectively.

Vice President of Human Resources: That sounds great. So we’ll have individual develop plans. Perfect. You have my complete support. What do you need me to do next?

…FIVE LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

BEST PRACTICES:

1. Strong executive involvement –

not just support.

2. Use of tailored leadership

competencies.

3. Alignment with the business

strategy.

4. A “leaders at all levels”

approach.

5. Learn by doing.

The manager/employee relationship is the most important relationship in every organization. It’s a relationship that is repeated many times in most organizations, so it’s something organizations will pay a dear price for if they get it wrong. That’s why investments in manager training are so important, and that’s they sometimes yield the highest return of any type of employee training initiatives. But, just like communications and leadership, “management training” encompasses a broad set of competencies, skills and knowledge. Complicating this specific area of employee development is the fact that every organization will have multiple levels of management mastery required for success. So this is one employee development topic that requires us to adhere to our five-step process to help us increase the chances of delivering learning content that actually drives business results.

Let’s go through each of the five steps, and provide a framework you can apply to set an effective manager training program in your organization.

Build a business case for the training. For some employee training topics, building a business case for the training can be difficult. Fortunately, this is not the case with manager training. There are some excellent resources that link effective front-line manager performance to a host of important and strategic bottom-line business results. What you need to do is identify the specific objectives of your organization, and link the research to that objective as a starting point for making your business case.

Manager support. Since the target of the development is the management level of the organization, it would be logical to assume you start with their support. That assumption would probably be a mistake. One of the most difficult things all of us struggle with professionally is self-awareness. It’s hard to see where we need to develop our own skills. So, start with the assumption that the managers you are working to help, might not yet see the need for their own development. Help your managers at every level or your organization make the clear and direct link between the learning content you are making available to them and improved performance for each individual manager. In other words, show them how participating in the learning program will make them better managers.

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MANAGEMENT

THE TOP THREE LEARNING AND

DEVELOPMENT CONTENT AREAS IN

2012:

1. Managerial and supervisory

2. Mandatory compliance

3. Processes, procedures and

business practices

According to the ASTD State of

the Industry report 2013.

Outline the critical competencies and levels of mastery needed for success. This is the part of every management development program that is most complex. Each level of management has unique needs, and to further complicate things, each function area likely has development needs unique to their professional development. Your management development program MUST account for different department needs and different managerial level needs.

Newly promoted managers and supervisors. New managers will likely need development in basic supervisory and management skills, business acumen, emotional intelligence, delegation, and foundational leadership skills as appropriate for your

organization.

Mid-level managers. Managers that lead well-established teams or who might manage other managers will need a different development approach. These managers may require more in-depth problem solving and collaboration skills development, team leadership skills and technology training.

Senior managers and executives. At this level, professionals may benefit greatly from an outside coach. These are also likely to be individuals who have been outstanding

performers but who may not be strong collaborators. Among the competencies many senior leaders could benefit from developing are: emotional intelligence, decision-making, strategic thinking, delegation, listening skills, and competencies specific to your organization and industry.

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MANAGEMENT

MAJOR MANAGERIAL SKILL GAPS

IN MID-LEVEL LEADERS:

1. Coaching

2. Performance appraisals

3. Developing others

4. Managing change

5. Communications

6. Business acumen

According to a study by Bersin by

Deloitte, Current Capabilities by

Role, December 2011.

Great managers need tools and support in order to perform their

best day-in and day-out, and BizLibrary is the perfect company to help with their training. Our online manager training and performance support solutions can be used stand-alone or as part of a blended program. Check out some of the videos here.

Identify performance gaps. This step is not usually complicated manager by manager. What’s difficult is actually conducting such an analysis for every manager in your organization. But, this is an important step in this process. You must develop a clear understanding of where your managers are doing well. In those areas where your managers perform at the desired level of mastery in critical areas, don’t waste time, energy and effort on development. But don’t limit your analysis to CURRENT performance gaps. Make sure your are evaluating your managers based upon what you anticipate they will need to know and be able to do in 6, 12 and even 24 months in the future. By preparing your managers for future success, your are helping the organization lay a strategic foundation for future success by ensuring you have the skills in-house for a changing market.

Identify the key target areas for performance improvement. As you can tell, management training and manager performance is critically linked to the strategic success of every organization. So there is never going to be a shortage of key areas to target. Additionally, the future is so unclear for most organizations. There is a real need to develop leaders who are ready to adapt, learn and change with a rapidly changing, complex and ambiguous world. So how do we limit or target our development efforts? Here are a few tips to help focus your development efforts for your managers:

Individualize development plans. Make sure each manager has a learning plan that targets each manager’s specific learning, development and professional needs.

Keep the plans simple. It’s easy, and truthfully a bit of a cop out to tell managers, “Here are 12 things you need to master.” That’s not fair, and that’s not possible. We can do a great job of

learning and developing in three or maybe four areas. Figure out what is really crucial for success RIGHT NOW for each manager.

If you have a manager who demonstrates the ability to learn new things, then this manager is a great candidate to target for a future need. But make sure to limit the number of development targets. Focusing effort like this will make success not only possible, but something everyone can achieve. It also helps you focus your budget, time, and effort.

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MANAGEMENT

TIPS FOR INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT PLANNING:

Use technology.

Make content relevant and

meaningful.

Make learning content available to employees WHEN and WHERE they need it.

Use the current state of learning technology to deliver learning content to employees on mobile

devices PLUS laptops and desktops.

Customers are the life blood of every organization. Without customers, no organization can survive. Even not-for-profit organizations have customers such as donors, volunteers and beneficiaries. So customer service is a core competency every organization must master. The challenge we face is the way in which customers expect to interact with organization in today’s 24/7, interconnected marketplace.

The business case for customer service excellence will vary from organization to organization. However, some core principles will likely apply. It’s usually much less expensive to retain customers than acquire new ones. Smooth customer service relationships are more profitable than difficult or contentious relationships. Disgruntled customers can much more easily disrupt the market today by accessing social media tools and broadcasting issues to the whole world.

Lastly, product and company reviews can be quickly and easily found online, so it’s important to work hard to motivate customers to provide positive online feedback.

Building manager support for customer service training and development usually flows directly from the business case. In many organizations, the old “what’s in it for me” message is pretty direct for the customer service managers. They frequently have financial incentives when customer service metrics and reporting indicators are good. So there can be some simple ways to enlist the support of managers for improved customer service skills. Another important element that usually helps with manager support is the level of turnover among customer

service professionals. In many organizations, the customer service employees turnover faster than any other group of employees, so that means there is an ongoing need for training, development and education. Managers are nearly forced to support these efforts out of pure necessity.

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CUSTOMER SERVICE

Most of us work in highly

competitive industries. Everyone is

out there trying to innovate,

implement and improve their

products and services quicker

than ours. Here are six keys to

great client service from Eve Ash.

1. Solving problems before they

happen.

2. Manage expectations through

transparency.

3. Surprise them.

4. Responsiveness

5. Reliability

6. Understand what your

customers want.

Click here to read the article.

Training your customer service team can have a very big impact on your bottom line, and it does not have to cost a fortune. BizLibrary has a collection of over 2,000 customer service courses on various issues dealt with in customer service training. Check

out some of the videos here.

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The more challenging aspects of customer service training, education, and development come in the next three steps. Additionally, customer service or customer facing employees have a unique need for immediate, on demand information. They are on the front lines with customers, and customers expect immediate answers to questions – especially support questions.

In step three of the process of setting up an effective customer service training and development program, you will need to consider one additional element. In addition to the critical competencies your customer service employees need for success, you need to evaluate carefully what information they need to access to assist customers in real time. You also need to sort out HOW your customer service employees will gain access to this information.

Depending upon the specific needs of your organization, you may have multiple groups of customer service employees such as:

• Technical support• Product support• Billing, delivery and shipping• Retail sales clerks

Then you need to evaluate how the interaction with customers looks. Is the interaction in person

and face-to-face? Do your customers call on the phone? Do your customers inquire by e-mail? Depending upon the way your organization interacts with customers you may need some or some combinations of the following competencies:

This is just a small sample of many possible customer service competencies your organization may require. The specific competencies you will need to address will depend completely on the business challenges you face in your customer service function. But these are some of the questions you will need to address as you evaluate the competencies you can develop and improve among your customer facing employees.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

• Telephone skills

• Problem solving

• Writing skills and email specific writing

• Emotional intelligence

CASE STUDY: Nationwide Dental Insurance ProviderTarget: Call Center Employees

The biggest challenge with providing training to call center employees is that they are constantly taking incoming calls and it’s close to impossible to do training on the clock.

This client came up with the idea of “Tag Training.” One call center employee is off the phone for 5-10 minutes to do a short training video. Once they complete their course, they “tag” their cube neighbor, and it is their turn to take the same training course, while the first employee gets back on the phones. They carry the

tag game through until all call center employees have gone through the course. It’s something that employees get excited about, because it gives them a development opportunity and the courses are entertaining.

In steps four and five, identifying the performance gaps and the target areas for improvement, you’ve laid the foundation by:• Building your business case for customer service training (i.e., less expensive to retain than

acquire customers, or we can improve customer retention by improving the time to respond by 30 seconds per support call)

• Gaining manager support due to the managers in customer service having teams with high turnover and they need new hires up to speed as quickly as possible

• Clearly understanding the ways in which customers interact with your organization so you and your managers can articulate the key competencies your customer service employees need for successful interactions

Now we’re ready to identify the performance gaps and find the areas we need to target for development.

Two of the most critical questions you have to ask and answer as you evaluate the performance gaps in customer service is time and access to information. How quickly can your customer service employees access accurate information they need to help customers? Because you can training and develop their skills perfectly, but if your employees cannot answer questions in real time about your products and services, your training efforts will likely not yield the results you want. You might consider providing access – true anytime, anywhere

access – to video based information to your employees who have to answer customer questions.

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CUSTOMER SERVICE

The telephone is your theatre, your

stage. Your receiver is your curtain.

When it goes up, make yourself a

star.

Nancy Friedman, The Telephone

Doctor and Customer Service Expert

employee training tool. So, this training professional physically went to the customer service floor to observe employees in

action as they answered customer service calls. The customer service reps were working smoothly and efficiently,

answering questions in real time, and answering questions about company products. And they were referring to YouTube for help. None

of the videos the customer service team was using was developed by the company, these videos were of unknown origin. But – the

customers were being helped, and the employees were using video they could access on demand, right in the moment of need.

In a study published by Aberdeen Research Group about the impact of video on employee training programs, one of the

study’s participants was skeptical about one of the study’s key findings – that short form video is a powerful and effective

Which gets to the next piece of important development challenges. Very few organizations can afford to pull customer service employees away from their jobs for extended training classes. So, it might be wise to look into the delivery of content using technology tools that helps fill the competency and skills gaps without disrupting the flow of work. Access to content on mobile devices and online video is a far more effective delivery platform for most organizations.

As for the competency and skills gaps, and target areas, these will vary depending on exactly what your organization needs to improve and how employees interact with customers. Here are three examples:

Retail, face-to-face: basic sales training, problem solving, and listening skills might be great foundational skills to boost location sales.

Help desk: telephone skills – verbal communications and listening skills, attention to detail and problem solving may help move calls quickly from answer to resolution.

Product information – e-mail: e-mail writing and etiquette may help with clarity of communication to prevent long e-mail strings and quick resolution of customer inquiries.

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CUSTOMER SERVICE

Here’s a short video “What to Say When – You’re New on the Job.” It presents a four point plan to gather information so you're

equipped for any task at your new job.

Click the image or click here to view the video on YouTube.

Customer Service directly impacts our organization’s bottom line.

Here’s a short video preview “Excellence in Customer Service.”

Click the image or click here to view the video on YouTube.

This video is included in the BizLibrary Collection. To take a look at any of the learning resources available- start a free – no obligation – trial here.

Compliance training is one of those topics most organizations approach like a “check box” to be completed. Most employees find the training boring and repetitive. Few of the stakeholders involved get much actual employee development value out of the vast majority of compliance training. But there isn’t any reason to settle for compliance training that does not deliver real development value to employee who participate. Here how you can improve the overall business impact of compliance training by apply this five-step process.

Build a business case for compliance training that goes beyond litigation avoidance or risk management. Every compliance training area carries actual benefits to the business – if you look for the benefits, and if you step back and think strategically a little bit.

Harassment prevention: improved manager skills can help diffuse situations and increase employee engagement, improved employee problem solving skills can apply to a wide range of additional business challenges. Finally, effective harassment prevention training can work to improve overall workplace environment.

Safety training: a safer workplace can improve the work environment and trust level among employees. Safe workplaces usually require high degrees of collaboration and communication, and employees have to demonstrate teamwork to execute a safety rules for everyone.

Financial compliance: Given the financial market issues of the last few years, financial regulatory training could be a competitive advantage for organizations that can explain the value of the learning to employees. For employees, these regulations are likely going to be a required body of knowledge for career development in the industry.

Manager support can be compelled for regulatory compliance training. In fact, participation for the whole organization is legally required. So the training will occur with or without manager support. But the fact the training is required does not serve as an excuse for building a business

case for employee development, nor does it serve as an excuse for building manager support for improving manager and employee performance.

For the compliance area at issue, find the underlying business benefit to the content. Link how improved performance, supporting the business area that can benefit, is important to the managers. Sometimes, these links require some very explicit communications to managers. They may not see the connections on their own.

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COMPLIANCE

ONLINE COMPLIANCE TRAINING

SAVES ORGANIZATIONS

MONEY BY:

• Efficiently satisfying mandatory

training requirements.

• Easily manage, track and report

on completed training.

• Influencing employee behavior

to reduce legal violations.

• Ensuring that a consistent

message is delivered to all

employees.

• Providing a "good faith" defense

in the event of litigation.

Compliance training does not always lend itself to finding performance gaps, specific competencies, and target areas in the same way other as training topics. In order to make these final three steps in the process work, the HR or L&D professionals must link competencies, performance gaps, and learning targets to learning beyond the narrow scope of most compliance training.

Harassment prevention: employees will benefit from learning improved communication and problem solving skills. Improving everyone’s skills in this area will make the work environment more productive and less stressful for every employee.

Safety training: all employees benefit from a safer workplace, and each employee gains

greater knowledge about safety rules and methods.

Financial compliance: given the challenging regulatory environment, every employee working in the industry will benefit personally and professionally from gaining a deeper understanding of the current rules and regulations.

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COMPLIANCE

A BUSINESS CASE FOR

COMPLIANCE TRAINING SHOULD

INCLUDE:

• The cost, including investment of

time and resources.

• The risks of NOT training, including

data about costs of litigation,

potential settlement and judgment

amounts.

• The benefits, covering changes in

behavior to improve morale, and

ultimately, the potential impact on

profitability.

• The timeline: how long will this

training take to deliver

improvements? How long will it

take for these improvements to

pay for the cost?

Compliance and harassment training can be expensive and time consuming, especially for smaller organizations. In fact, smaller organizations spend on average

$2,800 more per employee on compliance than larger organizations. BizLibrary's compliance resources are a cost-effective and flexible solution, saving you time and money.

Check out some of the videos here

How many different applications does the average organization use? How many times do these same applications change? How easy is it for employees to keep up with every “improvement” to everyday applications? Desktop computing is a functional area in which virtually every organization needs some level of mastery. The needs of organizations likely vary from department to department and the skills and needs of employees may vary by wide margins.

The first step in our process is fairly simple. It’s a matter of usage. If your organization uses desktop computers and applications, you have employees who need to master the use of those applications.

The second step is likewise simple. It’s just a matter of identifying the specific applications each

employee needs to use to perform their jobs. Once you’ve sorted out the specific application needs, the managers and employees can help clarify the level of mastery needed for each application.

Steps three, four, and five are each going to be very specific based upon department, employee and job role. For instance, your HR team may need some level of mastery with online applications associated with application tracking and recruiting that nobody else in the organization needs to understand at all. While your web development team may need to understand Google Web analytics and other web development and reporting tools that are

immaterial to the performance of any other employee.

To complete these steps, make sure you understand the following:

• The specific applications each employee needs to use• The level of mastery each employee needs• When and how employees want to access learning content• The availability of mobile enabled job support content appropriate for each employee

For most employees, desktop computing development is largely a “I need it right now” sort of development or learning requirement. For instance, if an employee is working on an Excel project and needs to built a pivot table, the employee may only need to look at a four minute video about pivot tables to finish the project. It’s this sort of performance support that most employees need for their desktop computing. Make sure you differentiate between employees who need support and those who need to actually learn how to use an application as a beginner.

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COMPUTER SKILLS

Few areas in the current business

environment change as rapidly or

as often as technology. BizLibrary's

computer skills catalog will provide

the on-demand resources needed

to keep all of your employees up

to date.

Areas of focus include:

• Microsoft Office

• Adobe Creative Suite

• Mobile Application

Development

• HTML 5

To preview some of these videos

and more click here.

This five-step process is a flexible approach to setting up employee development programs that you can use for any training challenge. Each of the six topics we’ve attempted to illustrate here present somewhat different challenges. Communications, leadership and management are broad topic areas that require some deeper analysis and close work and engagement with managers to narrow the scope of the development initiatives. Customer service and compliance content are important for almost every organization. The business case for these areas are not difficult to make, but both areas get challenging in different ways. Customer service requires the development of content that is specific to the way in which your organization serves customers. Compliance training can be treated as a “must do” sort of thing, but compliance training can be an opportunity to enhance performance if you work to find the business benefit message to the content. Desktop computing is frequently about the delivery of performance support material at the time of need, which is yet another unique employee development challenge.

Which challenge does your organization face? Remember, you have to keep the needs of your employees front and center, use technology as a delivery tool. And – content is king! Great learning programs require getting great content to your employees when and where they need it most.

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BizLibrary is a leading provider of

online employee training and

eLearning solutions. The BizLibrary

Collection is our award-winning

content collection, and contains

thousands of online videos and

eLearning courses covering every

business training topic, including:

business skills (including soft skills),

leadership and management, sales

and customer service, HR

compliance training, IT, software,

industry specific content, workplace

safety and more.

The BizLibrary Collection can be

accessed online through BizLibrary's

Learning Management System (LMS)

or through any third-party LMS.

CLICK HERE

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YOUR FREE

TRIAL!

In a world of learning and development where complexity is

the enemy, BizLibrary has developed a simple and nimble

approach to delivering high quality learning, anywhere, anytime.

Michael Rochelle, Chief Strategy Officer,

Brandon-Hall Group