While there, I met up with colleagues Larry Mohl and Terry Barber, of Performance Inspired, who were operating an on-site BlogTalk Radio station. I was invited to record a short interview with Larry Mohl to talk about inspiration at work. Have a listen: 

I'd love to know your answer to one of the questions Larry asked me:

What drives you - what inspires you?

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PS - have you subscribed to my blog yet? If not - I invite you to subscribe today! It's free and easy - just enter your email address in the field provided in the right-hand column here. Thanks! ------------>

Halelly Azulay: Social Learning and Employee Development from C7group on Vimeo.

What do you think about this employee development method? Have you tried it? What were your experiences?

This case features the personal volunteer experience stories of two of the three PricewaterhouseCoopers employees I interviewed and wrote about in my book - it describes the ways in which they developed multiple competencies by volunteering to teach and build playgrounds in poor schools in Belize.

I've written about the value of volunteering as an employee development approach previously here, here, and here.

What has been your experience with learning by volunteering? I would love to hear your thoughts!

 Photo by Alan Cleaver via Flickr Creative Commons

What is Social Learning?

Social learning, or Learning 2.0, is a general name given to multiple collaborative online tools for sharing knowledge, building relationships, and interacting with content and with other members of the online community. These tools allow learners to learn independently, more quickly, and more efficiently, and to be more productive and effective as a result. Most of the content in these systems is user generated and user rated for interest, relevance, and helpfulness. The tools most commonly used by organizations for social learning purposes are wikis and social networking tools such as discussion boards, blogs, video uploading platforms, and podcasting.

I hope you read more about how social learning works, the benefits it offers to both learners and their organization, and 8 implementation tips by reading my post on the C7 Group blog.  

Make sure to join me and share your thoughts, experiences, and questions on Tuesday, March 6^th at 9 a.m. PST/12 p.m. EST for a webcast that delves into the realities of employee development and how leveraging social networking and media can create learner-driven, learner-generated employee education opportunities.

Source: Employee Development on a Shoestring by Halelly Azulay, ASTD Press, 2012

Photo credit: arvindgrover via Flickr Creative Commons

Well one of my goals this year was to venture into the wonderful world of video blogging. And I've decided to just leap into the deep end. So - here is my first 'vlog'. I hope you like it - and please give me suggestions and feedback. Thanks! 

Well, I don’t think Employee Development on a Shoestring will put the training industry out of business. Far from it. I wrote this book because I am passionate about learning and development. I wrote this book because I am passionate about supporting leaders in their efforts to become more effective. And I wrote this book because often, training is simply not the answer.

It is estimated that 70 percent of all leadership development takes place via on-the-job experiences rather than formal learning events. The “70-20-10 rule,” as this idea has become known, says that development happens in three ways: 70 percent on-the-job experience, 20 percent through relationships and feedback, and 10 percent from formal training opportunities.

All over the world, supervisors and professionals like you are faced with a challenging task of helping their staff members grow and develop within limited budgets and timelines and ever-increasing pressures to perform more with less. Supervisors and employees desperately need alternatives and complements to the usual approach, because it is not enough. And so many of you are so overwhelmed with a growing workload that you simply don’t have the time or the requisite knowledge to come up with creative ideas for developing skills within the parameters that are presented to you.

Well, this book is here to help.

You don’t have to spend any time searching for ideas, because they’re right here in this book. You don’t have to spend time thinking up possible obstacles to each method—I’ve done that for you. And you don’t have to spend lots of time designing implementation plans because I’ve created the tools and supports that can help you quickly ensure that your employee development methods are successful and sustainable.

Who Can Benefit From Reading This Book?

Employee Development on a Shoestring is written primarily to address the needs of those in a position to help employees develop in their current jobs. Whether you are a supervisor, a manager, a director, or an executive, a key part of your role (“Job 1” as Elaine Biech puts it in her foreword to the book) is to ensure that employees are growing and learning. If you are a talent management, human resource, personnel, talent development, training, organization development, or workplace learning professional, your job is to ensure that supervisors throughout your organization are tending to this “Job 1.” Perhaps you are a mentor or career counselor or coach, and you are using this book to help your protégé or client make career development plans. And if you are a self-motivated, self-starting employee, you may enjoy reading this book to get ideas about how to take your development into your own hands rather than waiting for others to suggest strategies to you. Anyone who wants to ensure that employees are developing new skills and knowledge and who realizes that sending them to a training class cannot be, and should not be, the only path to achieve that outcome, should read and benefit from the ideas presented in this book.

Modified excerpt from the Introduction to Employee Development on a Shoestring by Halelly Azulay (ASTD Press, 2012)

Headphones image by Kevin_Morris via Flickr Creative Commons