Biz Point 1

If I had one piece of advice for future entrepreneurs, it would be to accept immediately that you will have a finite amount of money, people, and time. Concentrate on three to four things, ruthlessly prioritise, and stay focused - By Adrian Letts, Chief Operating Officer at Blinkbox (City AM, January 21, 2013)

Changing Demographics in The Workplace

The last Online Educa e-learning conference in Berlin touched on some interesting issues in relation to the changing demographics in the workplace especially in reference to Generation Y. Before I summarize my learning from this let's look at what all this generation business actually means. Organisations have four generations of workers as outlined below:

• Traditionalists - aged 65 and over
• Baby Boomers - aged 48 to 65
• Generation X - aged 30 to 47
• Generation Y - below 30

Karen Velasco, MD of organisational Development at PeopleSolve presented some research from Ashridge Business School which reveals that Generation Y:

• demand high quality learning that meets their needs (although previous generations had the same needs they just didn't demand it)
• see themselves as more ambitious than others see them
• appear to have greater maturity in terms of their global awareness and the fact that they are more streetwise
• But they have been criticized to be too self focused and lack emotional intelligence

Velasco said, organisations that want to manage Generation Y must understand them. But also Generation Y need to acquire certain workplace skills they are not taught in school if they are to be the successful leaders and thinkers of the future. She also emphasizes that traditional management styles will not appeal to this generation. Generation Y prefers to:

• work collaboratively and don't like being told what to do
• appreciate attentive management where they are given a lot of attention and constant feedback to help highlight their faults and cause them to improve

A well known fact about Generation Y is that they grew up using the internet and are often referred to as digital natives because they are very in tune with technology.They expect the workplace therefore to be up to date in technology. Velasco gave these pointers for creating a flexible workplace that can work with all the different generations at the same time:

• adopting a flexible management approach
• providing regular feedback
• being goal-specific and accurately measure goals
• reward appropriately
• let people get on with their jobs
• encourage mentoring
• embrace diversity
• adopt a management style that enables each generation
• acknowledge what you cannot change
• employ the talents and strengths of each generation.

Source: Training Journal - January 2012

Lesson in Dyslexia

I've always known the importance of providing adjustments during training to accomodate people with dyslexia, but i never did anything about it until yesterday when i attended a course on Dyslexia Awareness. There were two reasons i attended the course. Firstly my manager wanted me to know about the subject in case i needed to support an apprentice i am currently managing in case the apprentice did have dyslexia (my manager suspected this). Secondly each member of the learning and development has to quality check at least two of the training courses we deliver.

Suffice to say I found the course very interesting and from a learning and development perspective I came away with the following learning points.

1. In preparing for classroom training print handouts on coloured paper since people with dyslexia struggle to read black font on white back grounds.
2. If you can't print on coloured paper make available transparent coloured covered sheets which people with dyslexia can overlay on documents they want to read during the training.
3. Break material down into groups of three to prevent information overload. For example, three objectives, three learning points, three bullet points.
4. Prepare slides with lighter coloured backgrounds.
5. Colours that have been recommended for backgrounds are light blue and light yellow although there is another argument that a rainbow of colours is recommended since sensitivity to colours may differ between individuals with dyslexia.

Talking about taking responsibility for my learning. I took one step today. I started learning how to create an elearning course with Udutu (www.udutu.com). Udutu is a web based instructional design tool for creating elearning courses. It is totally web based so you don't need to download or install anything on your computer. My aim is to learn how to design a basic elearning course as I have never done this before. I think it is a great and affordable tool to create and deliver elearning courses and also to teach people how to design elearning courses.

I intend to learn one new learning and development related technology per month so this is the one I am learning in July.

It's time to take responsibility

I've finally decided to take more responsibility for my learning. I believe as a learning and development practitioner i should be a role model of the importance of learning to others. Hence I have started this diary to record what i am learning on a daily basis. Well not quite on a daily basis but at least once a week.