Archive for December, 2008

Should WLP Professionals Blog

Saturday, December 13th, 2008

I know this is a late post, but here it is. Should learning professionals blog? My answer is yes. I am exploring the involvement of WLP professionals in corporate blogs as my dissertation topic. Because blogging is a grass-roots type of practice, WLP professionals may not recognize the need to blog. However, the reasons I have found for blogging in my literature review are: 

  •  To encourage and support collaboration in the workplace.
  •  To encourage a practice that documents the knowledge that occurs in the white spaces of organizations (dare I say double-loop learning, too!)
  •  To model how blogging should be done.
  • To become an early adopter of the practice and technology.
  •  To be able to participate in “best practices” conversations that are currently dominated by the communications and technology fields
  •  To gain confidence in social media, which is how Gen- Net expects to be trained.
  •  To be able to conduct performance analysis and evaluations using the same delivery channels as training.
  •  To recognize the role of WLP professionals as supporters and enablers of collaboration
  •  To be able to answer the call, when it comes, to evaluate whether social media works.

That’s just my two cents worth.  And yes, I l blog at ljdavis.biz/blog

Collaboration in the Workplace

Friday, December 12th, 2008

For a number of years, we were warned about a talent shortage that would occur as baby boomers left the workforce. The challenge for workplace learning professionals was how to keep knowledge in the organization. In our current economic climate, the crisis of keeping knowledge in the organization is here. The crisis is emerging because of massive job cuts. How is your organization responding? Too often organizations eliminate jobs from a financial aspect without considering in depth how the organization will fill the knowledge gaps. You can assume that knowledge remains in the organization, that someone else will pick up the slack, at you own peril.

Here is the dilemma and challenge for training professionals. How do you encourage collaboration? How do you get the remaining workers to play nice in the sandbox and share knowledge? Although it seems like a time when workers would pull together, typical compensation strategies tend to favor individual accomplishments. Think about it? Why should employees share their knowledge when “what they know” may be their only form of job security? Please share your thoughts.