Chief Learning Officer - December 2007 - (Page 44) productivity Survey fatigue exists because employees are bombarded with surveys. How do you get around it? The key is coordination. For instance, an insurance company recently collected data on a smart sheet, and gathered a little more on a follow-up smart sheet. These asked if the learner would apply the learning and to what degree, and then asked him the same question 60 days later. Each response was tagged to a business unit within the organization. One day, a learning manager was reviewing this data and noticed the finance group had the lowest impact (or, conversely, the highest “scrap”) relative to other groups, such as claims, underwriting, HR and IT. The learning manager went to the CFO with the data. The CFO was embarrassed because finance was supposed to be the poster child of stewardship with company funds, yet it was the biggest source of waste. He was also a datadriven CFO: He viewed the data as being from an objective and reasonable source, and saw the learning manager’s argument not as a complaint but as a legitimate concern. The CFO called a meeting with the controller. The meeting revealed that finance managers were conducting their own training and thus discouraging their team from using training from the corporate university. This was due to the fact that finance managers didn’t think they had enough involvement in content from the corporate university. The meeting fostered a dialogue. The end result was that the CFO and the CLO agreed to work more collaboratively, and also that the corporate university would design and deliver training exclusively. There would no longer be duplication by finance. In the absence of this data, the scrap would have continued to grow. The CFO would have found his own personnel more credible and trustworthy in a war of words. In this example, being armed with timely data gathered through a dayto-day process with internal benchmarks made a world of difference. The key is to have the process in place, create the standard smart sheets and analyze the data regularly to spot the scrap. As with the human capital examples, the learning example is simple, easy and cost effective. It is neither statistically valid nor precise, but it is roughly reasonable. If roughly reasonable is in the budget, doesn’t it make sense to do it? It could save a multimillion dollar program down the road. Further, it evokes a sense of stewardship in the measurement process that any C-level executive would champion in a heartbeat, especially if the cost to do it was less than a rounding error in the overall learning budget, which it is. STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP MANAGEMENT & CIRCULATION (Required by 39 U.S.C.3685) 1. Publication Title: Chief Learning Officer Magazine 2. Publication Number: 0023-9810 3. Filing Date: September 25, 2007 4. Issue Frequency: Monthly 5. Number of Issues Published Annually: 12 6. Annual Subscription Price: $195.00 7. Mailing address of known office of publication: 318 Harrison St., Suite 301, Oakland, CA 94607 8. Mailing address of headquarters of general business offices of the Publisher: Same as above. 9. Name and Complete mailing address of Publisher, Editor, and Managing Editor: John R. Taggart, Publisher, 318 Harrison St., Suite 301, Oakland, CA 94607; Norman B. Kamikow, Editor, 444 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 3530, Chicago, IL 60611; Mike Prokopeak, Managing Editor, 444 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 3530, Chicago, IL 60611. 10. Owner: MediaTec Publishing, Inc. 318 Harrison St., Suite 301, Oakland, CA 94607. Stock holders holding 1% or more of the total amount of stock: John R. Taggart, 318 Harrison St., Suite 301, Oakland, CA 94607; Norman B. Kamikow, 444 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 3530, Chicago, IL 60611 11. Known bondholders, mortgages and other security holders owning or holding 1% or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other securities: none 12. N/A 13. Publication Title: Chief Learning Officer Magazine 14. Issue Date for Circulation Data Below: August, 2007 15. Extent & Nature of Circulation Avg. No. copies each issue during preceding 12 Months 27,628 Actual No. copies of single issue published nearest to filing date 27,000 a. Total # of Copies (Net press run) b. Paid/Requested Circulation Paid: Requested Outside-County Mail subscriptions stated on form 3541 (Including Advertisers’ proof and exchange copies) Paid/Requested In-County Mail subscriptions stated on form 3541 (Including Advertisers’ proof and exchange copies) Sales Through Dealers and Carriers, Street Vendors, Counter Sales and Other Non-USPS Paid Distribution Other Classes Mailed Through the USPS c. Total Paid and/or Requested Circulation d. Nonrequested Distribution (By Mail and Outside the Mail) Outside County Nonrequested Copies Stated on PS Form 3541 e. Total Free Distribution f. Total Distribution (sum of 15c & 15e) g. Copies not Distributed h. Total (Sum of 15f &15g) i. Percent Paid and/or Requested Circulation (15c./15g x 100) Challenges By now, you may be thinking surveys are great. But they do come with their pitfalls, which primarily are survey fatigue, response rates and customization. Survey fatigue exists because employees are bombarded with surveys. How do you get around it? The key is coordination. Know when others are doing surveys and be sensitive to that. Make the surveys optional but highly encouraged with positive reinforcement. Finally, don’t survey the whole population, but instead use a sample. Also, most learning professionals grimace when they go from paper to electronic evaluations because they fear 100 percent response rates will go to 30 percent (or worse). In actu- 22,061 23,362 December 2007 0 0 0 0 22,061 0 0 23,362 I www.clomedia.com I Chief Learning Officer 44 3,936 3,936 25,997 1,631 27,628 85% 2,699 2,699 26,061 939 27,000 90% 16. This Statement of Ownership shall be printed in the December, 2007 issue of this publication. 17. I certify that the statements made by me above are correct and complete: Norman B. Kamikow, Editor http://www.clomedia.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.