Practical tips. Prompts to get you thinking. The odd rant.

As the end of the year gets ever nearer, many a Learning & Development professional finds themselves trying to establish the value of their efforts. Yes, they got feedback at the time (before anyone left the actual / virtual room if they were smart) but they know that was just the initial reaction. How to… Read more

A major variable in whether or not training sticks is the role of the participant’s manager. Some would say the manager is the biggest ROI variable, so great is their influence on the participant’s state of mind as they embark on training and afterwards attempt to apply what they’re learned. Newstrom (1986) identified three significant… Read more

  Full disclosure: I have a vested interest in Learning and Development (L&D) budgets staying secure. Designing and delivering programmes is how I earn a living. It’s not just me who groans at the thieving though: L&D budget holders find burglary frustrating and annoying. Having to cancel programmes and break the news to employees isn’t… Read more

Ever been on a training course of some kind, loved it, learned lots – yet can’t remember it later? You’re not alone. If the emphasis is mostly on the event itself, along with a focus on your immediate reaction to it, identifying the impact afterwards will be a challenge. Ideally, the difference that your sponsors… Read more

First, please allow me to declare an interest: when professional development of any kind shows a return on investment, finance directors take a more benign view of that particular line on the spreadsheet when seeking ways to save money. This keeps providers like Zoomly in business. It shouldn’t be so hard to demonstrate ROI on… Read more

Live virtual* training courses / workshops have been around for a little while now (and yes, Zoomly offers them). At time of writing, demand has soared, as more employees work from home. People still want and need to learn, develop and grow their skills. Obviously, there are differences between face-to-face and virtual training – yet… Read more

You’ve completed a training course of some kind – what action do you take to ensure that new learning sticks? It’s great when people tell me how they’re using what they learned from some Zoomly training and how it’s benefitting them – and that’s because they’ve made it stick. When I ask people in organisations… Read more

‘Happy sheets’ are so named because, by the end of a training session (if it’s been done right), participants are feeling good about things. When people have been asked to comment on what they enjoyed about the event, just before they leave the room, it’s no surprise to see praise and enthusiastic comments. ‘Great!’ ‘I… Read more

  1. Announce the end’s in sight At what point do you do this? I suggest allowing roughly 10% of the total time to draw proceedings to a close. So in Zoomly’s bite-sized workshops this can be as brief as 9 minutes. In a day-long bespoke event it could be 40 minutes. Whenever this is,… Read more