You’ve mostly heard of twitter being used by celebrities and athletes to give their fans insight into what they are doing. Twitter has also got a lot of celebrities in trouble, most recently Gilbert Arenas tweeting about his gun possession issues.

Microblogging can also be a valuable way to capture and share knowledge and information from experts within or outside of your organization. Microblogging can provide ready access to insights and perspectives that are not normally shared with traditional corporate communication tools.

For example, if I am an expert in SAP Business warehouse, I’m not going to sit down and write a formal e mail on what problem I am working on for today, I’ve got no time for that…and that knowledge will remain locked up inside me.

However, posting a quick tweet from my cell phone on a problem I solved, including a link to my case notes, is easy to do and only takes a few seconds. Now, if someone else in the organization is trying to solve the same problem, they can search the microblog and read about the problem I solved and read the online notes that I posted as a link.

Sounds great right……there is one small problem. This is all very valuable and also very proprietary corporate information. Posting it on a public site like twitter will share it with the world, including all of your competitors.

How do we Resolve this Dilemma?

Recently, CIO magazine featured case studies on companies, including Motorola and Avaya, that are using microblogging “withing the firewall” alternatives to twitter.

I thought this was an excellent article on how enterprises can use microblogging in their organizations.

Next up…We’ll discuss the results of a survey that SAP did on microblogging in the enterprise.

 They all face a common challenge….. How do you keep your employees, who are spreadout all over the world and constantly in a whirlwind,  up to date, in compliance, and armed with the right information to share with customers?

For many years, this industry relied almost exclusively on traditional classroom training…and lots of it.  Given the time pressures that are endemic to this industry, how can employees do their jobs and be available for all of this training?  I read an interesting article from ASTD  the other day that spoke to how one firm, Capital One, addressed these challenges.

Capital One first  decided to undertake a series of  surveys and focus groups to find out how their employees likes to learn.  What did they find?

According to Michael Walker, Manager of Learning Services, “it was a consensus that our associates are so busy that they just didn’t have time during the average workday to get to the classroom.”

So…what did Capital One do?  ( The didn’t say NO!)

They bought ipods for their learners and created a suite of podcasts for learners across their entire company. 

For example, their finance group, offers a classroom training program on Earning Calls, with a collaborative twist.  As part of this program, Capital One created several podcasts with sample earnings calls that attendees had to listen to before the training session as part of their preparation. During the classroom session, they were expected to discuss and analyze the information they learned from their podcasts.  This allowed trainees to arrive at the session better prepared.  Also, they found that retention increased as the podcasts allowed each learner to absorb the information at their own pace. 

Podcasts can also be quickly created and deployed to accommodate the changing regulations and fast paced environment in the financial services industry. You don’t have to wait for the next training course to take place to get updated. Plug in your ipod, synchronize and away you go.

Matt Schuyler, executive Vice President of Human Resources, had this to say about those who participated in Capital One’s podcast program:

“Their productivity is up, so literally, we’re making more revenue and income with fewer employees. Their learning is increasing as measured by their ability to take on stretch assignments, new roles, broader responsibilities, and so forth. And, I guess people vote with their feet. We have waiting lists for this program. We can’t distribute the courses and tools fast enough.”

If you’re in the financial services industry, maybe you should consider adopting some of these collaborative learning strategies to enhance and improve your traditional training offerings.

Technorati Tags: podcast, ASTD,  Collaborative Learning, Capital One, Financial Services, Training 2.0, Instructional Design

 At IBM, they have completely embraced using new social media, with:

• 5,000 podcasts
• 3,400 blogs
• 70,000 people using wikis
• 2,000,000 podcast downloads

They estimate their annual savings to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

To see an example of this blog pages, click here. 

For an example of some of IBM Podcasts, click here.

EMC has adopted podcasting as the way to train their global sales force and customers. At EMC, they produce 5 – 10 new audio / video podcasts every week.  Many are extremely entertaining.  To see more , click here.

 James Hunsiker, Manager of Sales at EMC says ” I’ve never seen the field organization so enthusiastic about learning.”

If you’re interested in seeing if some of these best practices in innovative and collaborative learning can benefit your organization, please feel to contact us by:

• If we’re online, send us an instant message by using the Candeos IM widget on the right.
• Give us a call anytime at 781-953-4510

Technorati Tags: podcast, ASTD, Training, Candeos, IBM, EMC, Collaborative Learning, Instructional Design, Emerging Leaders