How has the Human Resources and Training and Development profession changed in the last few years? What are the real motivations and career paths for people in our profession? How do people move from practitioners to leaders to executives? What are the educational backgrounds of people in our profession? What are the typical compensation ranges one can expect? Several months ago we set out to study the demographics, career goals, developmental needs, and challenges of people in our profession. We sent out a large, broad industry survey to our research respondents and received more than 1,300 responses. Those who responded shared their personal backgrounds, their career experiences, their goals and motivations, and what frustrates them most about their jobs. The result is a new research report available at no charge, "The Career Factbook for HR and Learning Professionals. "  You can download this research at no charge.
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This week we met with the head of L&D from a large financial services institution. This company, like many others, has just completed a wrenching reorganization and redesign of its global learning organization to save money. In this particular case the company is also integrating the L&D teams from several acquired companies. (I know this will sound familiar to many of you. )We discussed the organization structure, governance, use of shared services, technology strategy, business alignment, and measurement strategy.
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I just completed a presentation at the ASTD (American Society of Training & Development) on best practices in the globalization of L&D programs.  Brad Samargya, the CLO of CA and Peter Christensen, the Manager of Corporate Learning at Vestas, joined us - presenting their complete solutions for global technical and onboarding programs. The session reminded me how important it is to go back to basics in the development and delivery of a training solution.  Our High Impact Learning Organization research shows that 56% of all companies (of all sizes) now consider globalization a "key to success" for most of their training programs.  The reason, of course, is that organizations of all sizes include employees, contractors, customers, partners, and often resellers in many countries.
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