This is the time of year that our team at Training Industry reflects and takes inventory of the ideas that have impacted our industry over the past 12 months. This past year saw a lot of change in the training industry with significant industry consolidation including LinkedIn’s entry into the skills development pool with its $1.5 billion acquisition of Lynda.com, the market dominance of new cloud service offerings across the HR spectrum and a renewed focus on the role of our leaders and their impact on the performance of the organizations we support. The industry lost a few remarkable visionaries and saw the emergence of new voices on the topics that will dominate the attention of our leaders in the years to come.
Additionally, the number of new products and services that were launched into our market this year has provided us with unprecedented choice and the power to affect real change, and drive performance improvement in new and exciting ways. Our ability to track and report on the impact of our programs has never been better, and is not only accepted as part of new initiatives, but expected when we report back on the performance of the programs we launch. We’ve heard a lot about the length of the training programs we provide our learners, how and when various media should be included in our courses, and how to better understand adult learning in the corporate setting.
Our focus in this edition of Training Industry Magazine is to collect a set of viewpoints that learning leaders can use to generate ideas and develop new strategies to improve workplace performance. Everyone reading this magazine will have a different perspective on these viewpoints, so let’s start the discussion. We at Training Industry hope to provide you with the catalyst for these conversations, and will continue to support the discussion through social media, our website and our events throughout 2016.
So, as I suggest every year, take a quick read through the various perspectives outlined in this issue, assemble a group of your team members, or even better, some of your peers and find a collection of reasons why these trends don’t apply to your organization. Through this discussion, take a few notes on the trends most difficult to discount, and consider how they might change the way you are planning to manage one important initiative launching in 2016.
As always, please feel free to reach out and let us know your thoughts.
