Lori Reed | A Passion for Learning

January 16, 2009 By Lori Reed Leave a Comment

Virtual Town Hall: Focus on Staff Training

Hosted by the great team at WebJunction:

Virtual Town Hall: Focus on Staff Training

Training budgets are shrinking while patron traffic is increasing in these economic tough times. What new or improved skills do library staff need to meet the demand? How do we think innovatively about our learning strategies? Join your learning professional community in the new “Virtual Town Hall” format. Engage your colleagues in a lively session of questions, brainstorms, stories, and practical strategies.

Date: Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Time: 2-3pm EST

Filed under: Learning

January 14, 2009 By Lori Reed 2 Comments

3 Trainer's Tips to Start the New Year

This wonderful little reminder came to me via a newsletter today from Guila Muir.

Remember that the learning objectives (outcomes) are what you’re driving for.
Strive for a 70/30 ratio: 70% learner “doing,” 30% trainer “doing.”
Avoid fluff. Use only activities that help to achieve the learning outcomes.

So simple, yet it sums up what we need to strive for. All of the training I have been through over the past year to improve my own training skills has taught, and more importantly, followed the same principles.

I think I might print this out, frame, and hang in my office.

Filed under: Learning, Training for Trainers

January 10, 2009 By Lori Reed 3 Comments

State of Learning at PLCMC

The following is an email I sent out to PLCMC employees at the beginning of January. I thought it might be of interest to other trainers who are interested in metrics and benchmarking.

We at PLCMC have been very busy learning in 2008

In 2008, PLCMC employees attended a total of nearly 13,000 hours of training–and that’s only the hours we track through myHR. This figure does not count on-the-job-training, public computer classes that staff attend, or training outside the library or Mecklenburg County that our staff attend (such as conferences).

This averages out to approximately 26 hours of training per year per employee. This figure is well above the 17 hour average per employee of most organizations, as reported in the American Society of Training and Development’s 2008 State of the Industry Report.

As you can see, PLCMC is devoted to providing learning and development opportunities to all of our employees.

We provide opportunities such as:

Professional membership reimbursement
Tuition reimbursement
Scholarships such as Carla Dupuy Scholarship and Friends of the Library David Howe Scholarship
Job related and personal development through sessions listed on myHR
Staff exchange program (In 2008 we sent two employees to Australia to live and work for a month)
Opportunities to attend conferences, training, e-learning, and webinars provided by other libraries and organizations

We will continue to be busy learning in 2009

We are in the planning stages of creating a Learning Advisory Council in 2009 with staff representatives from each of the C.O.R.E. areas. The Council will recommend and help develop training and learning solutions. There will be more opportunities for staff to help train other staff.

In 2009 there will be onsite training at every location to prepare staff for Unified Services.

As you can see PLCMC is dedicated to developing staff including our front line staff who assist our customers each and every day and those who work behind-the-scenes as well. In the coming year, look for more opportunities to learn and develop. If you have a suggestion for training or a specific need please contact me by phone or by email.

Have a safe and happy holiday and make a resolution to learn something new in the new year!

Filed under: Learning

December 23, 2008 By Lori Reed Leave a Comment

Wrapping up Employee Learning Week(s)

For the past few weeks I’ve disappeared from my virtual worlds–blogs, RSS, Facebook, twitter, FriendFeed–as I’ve been immersed in Employee Learning Week–which turned into weeks.

This year I had an ambitious goal at PLCMC. To celebrate Employee Learning Week I wanted to start with the basics of learning…learning styles. In my email to staff announcing ELW I included a link to a survey I created which would administer Kolb’s Learning Styles Inventory.

Over 200 staff completed the survey–about a third of our employees, and even though I had macros and mail merges set up to make tabulating the results easy it still took a while to create individual reports for each of the 211 employees who completed the survey.

Here is a copy of the email I sent out wrapping up the survey.

Curious how PLCMC employees learn?

As part of Employee Learning Week, over 200 PLCMC staff completed a Learning Styles Inventory.

The results are in!

When you look at the dominant learning style for those who took the survey:

35% have a dominant learning style of Applier (Finding the practical application of ideas.)

29% have a dominant learning style of Actor (Action and getting things done.

27% have a dominant learning style of Thinker (Creating concepts and models.)

9% have a dominant learning style of Innovator (Offering ideas, alternatives and examples.)

This breakdown is illustrated in the following pie chart:

The bigger picture – we’re fairly balanced at PLCMC.

Although our indivudual learning styles vary, when you look at PLCMC as a whole, our preferences for learning are very balanced. Many staff were dominant in several areas and one person was completely balanced with 25% in each quadrant. If you total all of the submissions and plot the results as one unit, our overall learning style looks like this:

What can I do with this information?

As individuals, we each have our own unique learning styles and preferences. Each of the people you work with has a unique learning style as well. When we combine that diversity among our employees great things can happen. The key is to remember that not everyone learns the same way. Simply by being aware of our similarities and differences, we can make an effort to reach out to those who are different from ourselves.

Filed under: Learning

December 3, 2008 By Lori Reed Leave a Comment

Next Week is Employee Learning Week – ELW2008

Next week is Employee Learning Week 2008. On the WebJunction message board, Betha Gutsche has offered a challenge:

I’d love to see more libraries in the 2008 Champions of Learning roster. Last year, there was one—PLCMC. They got a proclamation from the Mayor of Charlotte to declare a city-wide Employee Learning Week. Putting it in words that “workforce development is everyone’s business” is a step in the right direction.

It’s not too late to participate. It can be as simple as what we did at PLCMC last year–sending out emails to employees highlighting benefits we offer to our staff in learning. You can read copies of the emails we sent out last year here.

ALA-APA has partnered with ASTD as well and offers a library toolkit and poster for Employee Learning Week.

So let’s hear it. How are you celebrating learning this year? Don’t forget to submit your celebration to ASTD so you can be recognized as a champion of learning!

Filed under: Learning