Many of you are facing this issue…your training budget has been cut, however, positions are still turning over and your current employees will continue to need training. In fact, ongoing training is even more important now that you may have three people to do the job that five used to do. How do you make sure your ongoing training makes the most of your training program, your employees skills and your company budget? There are several things you can do…
Empower your employees to take on more: Many employees can handle more responsibility, if you let them take it on. Training mentors can make your life easier, if you know you have several employees who can model your proper training methods. This will help fill gaps if your resources, budget and even trainers are cut.
Get creative: Find out what motivates employees, and use that to your advantage. Oftentimes, for the opportunity for a lunch with the company CEO (or something that is nominal in cost) employees will work on their own time to improve in their jobs.
Prove training makes your company money, not just costs money: Many companies see training as a cost, and not an opportunity to increase profits. To find out the ROI on your training program, take the benefits of training, including retention, increased productivity and improvement of company brand, and assign them a dollar value. This may be difficult at first, but you should be able to break it down. Divide that number by the cost of training, including training time, materials, travel expenses, time away from work, hours of pay for trainers, etc. If your program doesn’t prove to make money, then some re-structuring is necessary.
Need more help figuring out ways to keep your training program afloat in this economy? Email sales@surespeak.com, and one of our account managers can help you assess your needs and suggest a solution.
When was the last time you analyzed all of the costs related to your training program. I mean…really analyzed them. For the costs that are impossible to do without, did you research alternatives? How about taking into account costs such as employee turnover, time away from market and additional productivity lost from your monthly training session by having your entire staff meeting in one room? Here is a checklist that will help you analyze these costs, and perhaps look at things a bit differently.
1) How much does a productive employee make for your company in terms of revenue over the course of one year? 2) How many employees must you recruit and ramp-up in order to find one productive employee? 3) How many of those lost could have converted to productive employees with more time/better resources? 4) What are those resources? 5) What is holding you back from those resources? 6) How much training time is each employee receiving before practicing on customers? 7) Aside from one-way training (i.e. listening to a trainer talk, shadowing another employee) how much interactive training time is each employee getting before going live with customers? 8) After an initial training push, how much training does each employee receive in terms of hours per year? 9) Do you find this number sufficient or insufficient? 10) What’s holding you back from increasing ongoing training if it is insufficient? 11) Do your employees ever travel for training? If so, what costs are involved? 12) After sending an employee to a training session, what is done on your part to make sure the content is not only maintained, but used in practice?
These are a few questions we’ve asked a number of companies we’re working with. After unearthing costs they didn’t realize they were incurring, they were able to think of alternatives that before SureSpeak were believed to be unavoidable. Training related travel is a big expense for a number of companies. SureSpeak decreased that expense for our clients. A great number of companies had no way to ensure the training they were enabling was being used in practice—which was costing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. SureSpeak changed that for our clients as well by enabling employees to practice and share company best practices with training managers who may have never otherwise checked up on employee training maintenance.
Could you benefit from some training-cost analysis? 95% of the time this answer is “Absolutely.” Hard and soft costs can hide a number of places…in turnover, ramp-up time, travel, admission to training sessions and retention of content… just to name a few. We’re working to help you cut your training costs with a breakthrough technology in training delivery.
All of these areas can be affected by SureSpeak. Send us an email to find out how you can run an inexpensive pilot program. Unlike other training platforms, we like to prove what we claim. You’ll see better results at less cost. We guarantee it.
Email sales@surespeak.com to find out more.
If you’re a training manager of a Customer Service organization, how much time do you spend training customer service? Anyone else hear crickets creaking? Exactly. The basis of your business isn’t even what you’re focusing on training employees. You’re training on specific products, on answers to inquiries, and how to “handle” difficult callers, guests or clients. But shouldn’t you be training how to service clients in a manner to prevent them becoming “difficult”?
Our culture is much more re-active than proactive. Hey, if it weren’t, Reagan wouldn’t have pulled the solar panels off the White House when he got into office. But if you want to provide the best service to your clients, like so many companies say they do, you need to provide better customer service training.
According to a report by the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA), just 27 percent of service and support staff spends more than five days on annual ongoing learning. Another study completed by Professors Bill Withers and Patrick Langan, both of Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, determined that 78 percent of employers said they provided some customer service training, but 65 percent of those said they would provide more if it were available (Chief Learning Officer Magazine, September 2007)
How do you provide this training? It seems 65% of you reading this are seeking the answer, which is a simple one. Role-play. Your employees know better than you the situations that need to be practiced. Let them record freestyle videos in SureSpeak. Have them send the videos to other employees. Every time a new customer service employee encounters a new or challenging situation, create a training module based on the situation. Want some help? With our Rapid Results™ program, our implementation team can help you create these customer service scenarios. We’ll even promise that your customer service employees will be better equipped to handle tough situations in as little as a month. Find out more by emailing sales@surespeak.com.
For Immediate Release
SureSpeak Wins CLO Magazine Excellence in Social Networks Award Surespeak Recognized as Distinguished Technology Provider Among Learning Industry Leaders
CHICAGO, Sept. 26, 2008 — SureSpeak, the online, webcam-based training and networking solution, is pleased to announce it has received industry recognition in eLearning by winning a Chief Learning Officer Special Provider Award. SureSpeak was presented with the silver “Excellence in Social Networks Award” during the Fall 2008 CLO Magazine Symposium’s special awards ceremony held Thursday at the legendary Hotel del Coronado in Coronado, Calif. From a pool of 500 applicants, 40 awards were presented to the learning industry’s most respected leaders.
“The winners are the industry leaders who truly champion innovation and transform it into learning and value for their organizations,” said Norm Kamikow, President and Editor-in-Chief of Chief Learning Officer magazine.
"We are honored to have received the prestigious Special Provider Award. This recognition as a distinguished technology provider emphasizes our continued commitment to providing our customers with a cost-effective, performance improvement training tool," said Darren Schwartz, CEO, SureSpeak, LLC. "We are proud that our technology is gaining traction in the marketplace at a time when organizations are desperately seeking training solutions that maximize results, while reducing travel and training expense."
SureSpeak is a web-based video training tool for sales and customer service people to build their skills using off-the-shelf webcams. The scalable platform offers asynchronous training through the site’s networking. Using SureSpeak, companies can create a curriculum that trains new hires, enhances skills of current employees, and offers online training without integrating new systems.
Darren was recently interviewed by MidwestBusiness.com. Here is an excerpt:
"One year from now, we see the company positioned as a major competitor in the SaaS e-learning market. Our customers are all trying to cut costs and improve the value of their training investment. We’ve demonstrated we can do both of these things."
Click here to read the entire interview. Enjoy!
Heads up, SureSpeakers. Adobe has released a new flash player, which you will need to install to record in SureSpeak. When you go to record, and you click "Allow" so Flash can recognize your webcam, you will get an hourglass that won't go away. To get the right version of Flash, click here. Need help? We would be honored... help@surespeak.com
http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/
Hey Guys,
We have made some exciting changes to SureSpeak, some of which we’re sure you’ve noticed. These changes not only improve the look of the site, but should make it run a little more slick also:
· An exciting new homepage, with new site design and structure
· New Coaching Box, with expanding folder systems
· Improved security system, to further encrypt videos ensuring no one can view them unless invited
· The ability to attach additional materials—such as Power Point Presentations, .pdf’s, and Microsoft Word Documents to a course or lesson.
· iRole, which is a back and forth recording feature, allowing you to simulate a conversation
Want more info on how to access these features, and maximize their use? Email us at info@surespeak.com.
We've received a prestigious award from Chief Learning Officer Magazine. Read the press release below. Interesting in becoming part of the SureSpeak family? Email sales@surespeak.com to find out more.
MediaTec Publishing
Chicago, Aug. 28 — The editors of Chief Learning Officer magazine, the award-winning publication from MediaTec Publishing Inc., have announced the finalists for this year’s Chief Learning Officer Learning In Practice Awards.
The awards will be presented during a special ceremony at the Fall 2008 Chief Learning Officer Symposium, being held Sept. 24-26 at the legendary Hotel Del Coronado in Coronado, Calif. Kevin Wilde, vice president and CLO of General Mills Inc. and Chief Learning Officer magazine’s 2007 CLO of the Year, will deliver the keynote address at the ceremony.
In addition to the announcement of the 2008 Chief Learning Officer of the Year, gold and silver awards will be given to learning practitioners and providers.
2008 Provider Finalists are:
For more information on the 2008 Chief Learning Officer Symposium, visit www.clomedia.com/events.
Tomorrow through Friday, Darren will be in San Diego accepting an award from Chief Learning Officer magazine. While out there, he is meeting with some great companies to talk about incorporating SureSpeak in their training programs. He still has a few time slots available:
Wednesday: 6:00pm-8:00pm
Thursday: 6:00pm-7:00pm
If you're interested in speaking with Darren about how SureSpeak can improve your training effectiveness and cut costs while at the CLO Symposium, email info@surespeak.com, and we can set a time to talk.
Take a look at a recent article where Darren Schwartz was interviewed as an expert. This article was sent out in the Illinois Association of Technology newsletter.
Darren was quoted as saying
"While the technology itself is important, what our customers are really buying is improved productivity - more time to manage, more time to capture, distribute and archive best practices, more time to coach and mentor the most promising employees."
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