Building a Better Future in an Economic Downturn

Without a doubt the US is experiencing some its toughest economic times in decades.  One thing that seems to be overlooked when the economy is in a squeeze is the ability to build a stronger foundation for your organization's long term goals.  How?  By continuing to educate your core personnel. 

On a daily basis we read about more and more organizations reducing their workforce.  Although this is not a situation anyone wants to see; it is a fantastic time for these same organizations to build a more complete talent base internally.  Four areas that can help accomplish this goal are e-learning, virtual learning, mentoring, and outsourced administration.

 eLearning
When budgets seem to vanish one of the most cost-effective solutions available is e-learning.  Most e-learning programs are sold on a subscription basis that offer learners access to ten times the amount of training for one-third of the price.  This allows individuals the opportunity to access much needed information as well as peripheral topics that can help them in other key areas that would be beneficial to the organization as whole.  When an e-learning program is implemented and marketed properly this can prove to be an extremely valuable learning tool.

Virtual Learning
The demand for real-time virtual training continues to rise as the economy continues to decline.  Virtual Learning has taken a tremendous move forward with new virtual tools and learning environments that give students access to the same tools that one would find in a traditional classroom setting (live instructor and student interaction, breakout sessions, and hands-on lab work).  The key differentiators are the convenient scheduling which eliminates time out of office and the biggest benefit is eliminating the need to travel for critical training needs.        

Mentoring
This is also an ideal to explore the opportunity to build a formal mentoring program.  This can begin with an internal Skills Gap Analysis project.  Now more than ever it is important to understand what skills and talents your organization already possesses and identifying areas that prove to be a critical need.  A formal Skills Gap Analysis and Inventory can help your organization to verify that the proper resources are being used in key areas of your business, create the opportunity to cross train personnel, and identify learning and career development plans for your staff as a whole.          

Outsourced Administration
With any downturn the elimination of key support personnel is often a necessity.  Knowledge United offers organization the ability to expand their learning and development staff with little to no administrative fees.  With unlimited resources in Development, Delivery, Evaluation, and Administration of education we align as a business partner with our clients to help create customized learning solutions from and individual to enterprise perspective.