I’m honored to be part of this fantastic panel on HR.com a week from today (December 7th) where we will be discussing how to evolve your learning strategy into a positive employee-centric experience!

This is not a typical presentation-focused webinar, but rather a dynamic and well-moderated discussion amongst experienced professionals in Learning & Development, Leadership, Talent Management, and more.

Do join us, won’t you?

Here’s the writeup:

The time is now to evolve your learning strategy into a positive employee centric experience.

Learning has been evolving alongside business for the past 2 decades. Skills training has shifted to individual development and in-person live multi-day workshops have gone to virtual and on-demand formats. While the “what and how” of learning has kept up with the demands of the business, the “why and who” seem to be lagging. An effective learning strategy focused on the employee experience might just be the magic wand needed to improve engagement and retention.

Much of what drives course content and offerings from the Learning and Development team are business needs and training requirements, which often change throughout the year. That leaves L&D to select content and formats that deliver expectations to the business in the most efficient way possible and in a timely manner. But other than checking-a-box to meet legal or mandatory requirements, how does learning help employees from the lens of the employee? No one is arguing that mandatory compliance training or required skills courses do not help employees, however the challenge with only having an HR owned learning strategy is that employees lose sight of what they need as individuals to be the best version of themselves.

We invite you to join us for a live discussion with a panel of L&D and Engagement experts who will share their experiences and recommendations on how to adopt a positive employee experience and employee centric approach to learning. In this session we will answer the following questions:

1. What prevents L&D from putting learning decisions into the hands of the employee?
2. How can we predict what development is needed for each employee to create a one size fits one strategy?
3. What is the role of a leader in employee development?
4. How can companies support new learning models with minimal costs and maximum impact?
5. What is the best way to measure the impact of learning on engagement and retention?

In this session you will learn:

• The critical elements of an effective and holistic learning strategy
• Which types of learning content are most helpful in creating a positive employee experience
• Ways to shift development responsibilities from HR to leaders and employees
• The best way to measure employee engagement
• Methods for creating just-in-time learning opportunities when and where they’re needed

Register yourself at: https://www.hr.com/en/webcasts_events/webcasts/upcoming_webcasts/when-will-we-learn-how-to-do-learning_kv9llf9d.html

On Tuesday, 8/31 I’ll be speaking at this year’s ATD21 conference and there’s a few things I’d like to say about this.

1. I’m excited to be speaking in-person anywhere after the last 18-months!
2. I’m co-presenting with my boss, whom I’ve never met in person even though we’ve been working together for over a year. See above.
3. Last year I wrote about how I would no longer speak at conference unless certain conditions were met. Namely that someone pay me more than it costs me and I still mean that. This year’s ATD being very unexpectedly hosted in Salt Lake City strangely meets my conditions, as it doesn’t cost me anything really. I’ll drive the 2hrs or so then stay with friends, so…sure!
4. I didn’t apply to speak. ATD asked me to apply to speak, and I declined. They’ve asked me for next year too, and I’ve declined that already. This opportunity came in through a side door of one of our vendor partners (Go1) asking me & Rachel to speak in their slot. I like Go1 and have already spoken at one of their internal sales events, which was very well-received. I’m happy to do them proud in a more public space, they’re a good company.
5. It’s weird out there still. This audience will be masked, socially-distanced, and I’m prohibited from asking anyone to interact with each other unless that’s digitally. I can’t even open with making music like usual, as beatboxing is about as un-COVID-friendly as it gets! So I’m trying to get creative here, and differently than ever before. It’s not bad exactly, it’s just, y’know, weird.

Anyway, I’m speaking and I’m glad. It’s been a while. It’s about time.

Tomorrow night (Thursday, June 17th) I’ll be making an appearance online for the monthly meeting of the Hampton Roads chapter of the International Society for Performance Improvement. It’s my first time presenting in front of an ISPI audience, and my first time doing a webinar like this in…gee, I guess it’s been a year now?

The topic is “Helping Deciders Decide” — which is basically how to do what we do well, even when stakeholders may have entirely different motivations or don’t really get what we’re up to. It’s free to join if you are interested in such things, just register here

Here’s the description:

We have all this data and a ton of opinions, but…what do our Clients and Stakeholders actually care about? How can we supply them with enough of what they need to move forward, without overwhelming them with information or asking for a little more trust than they care to grant us? Is it right to assume our interests & motivations overlap with the other people determining the success or failure of our performance improvement? In this session, Sam Rogers will share his approach to assessing desired outcomes and baking in surprise stakeholder delights as a way of getting just enough of what’s needed to decide on anything. Together in this interactive webinar, we’ll surface strategies for practical approaches to helping determine what motivates The Most Important People in our project to make their best choice between testing, launching, continuing, or canceling any given program or performance intervention.

Sam Rogers is a frequent speaker and facilitator at Learning & Development events, and has delivered hundreds of interactive webinars and engaging livestreams for fellow L&D Professionals. Through his company Snap Synapse, he served as a Video eLearning Expert, Performance Consultant, Sr. Instructional Designer, LMS Integrations Specialist, and Learning Strategist for clients such as such as Google, Deloitte, Robert Half International, ADP, and AAA. Now he is the Global Learning Technologies & Analytics Manager for ConvaTec, and happy to be presenting to an ISPI audience for the first time.

Does this guy know how to party or what? …Okay, don’t answer that ;)

There’s more info on their website if you want to join hrispi.org

Here are a few pieces of advice and examples of how to get better at MUSICAL live looping and performance. Hope you like!

This is the fifth and final video in my 5-part LoopItUp video series

Loops are great, but the same one over and over with nothing else changing will drive you crazy. And it will probably drive your audience away even faster. So how can you create variation with just one loop? Yes, it can be done ;)

This is video #4 in my 5-part LoopItUp video series