Creating the perfect governing body to power talent development and learning is a balancing act between centralized control and enough delegation to lines of business to keep content relevant. In this article, a handful of 2012 Training Top 125 winners describe how their companies effectively govern talent and learning development.

Employee engagement is not just HR's responsibility. While HR is responsible for the process of measuring and driving engagement, improving it is actually everyone's responsibility. And that means reducing the barriers to productivity to drive business performance. Training departments can play a pivotal role. Their job is to enhance curriculum or…

When hiring starts again after a recession, workers often need a new skill mix. If so, it's the trainer's job to make sure employees--both current and those being hired--have those skills. Now that it's time to consider hiring again, some new complications emerge. After layoffs, remaining workers likely took on more tasks and learned new skills.…

"You're hired!" Those two words are easy to say, but it's not always easy to find the right employee. Success hinges on hiring interviews--and they require quite a bit of training to get right. Much of the work in identifying the best people for open positions falls to line-of-business managers. In this article, Verizon Wireless, Umpqua Bank,…

In this article, "Training" editors recognize innovative and successful learning and development programs and practices submitted in the 2012 Training Top 125 application. Best practices: (1) Edward Jones: Practice Makes Perfect (sales training); (2) Grant Thornton LLP: Senior Manager Development Program (SMDP); (3) MetLife, Inc.: Top Advisor…

Everyone seems to agree the world desperately needs strong leaders who can manage a global workforce and all the inherent challenges that go with it. That's a big part of the raison d'etre for global leadership development programs. But are today's organizations fully utilizing these programs to develop global leaders, and, if so, are they…

Now in its 29th year, The Industry Report is recognized as the training industry's most trusted source of data on budgets, staffing, and programs. This year, the study was conducted by an outside research firm in June-August 2010, when members from the "Training" magazine database were e-mailed an invitation to participate in an online…

For flooring manufacturer Mohawk Industries, it is not enough to teach employees how to be great. The long-time Training Top 125 contender focused last year on helping employees to blaze their own learning paths while meeting organization imperatives. That meant improving the technology that supports employee performance, as well as creating new…

Sometimes it's a relief when a leader leaves. What large organization, after all, doesn't have its "seasoned" corner office dragon who predates everyone, and who no one can figure out how to get rid of? But more often, companies are proud of their leaders, especially the ones they took pains to develop over a decade or two. After years of…

TRAINS (Training, Resource, Assessment, Intervention, and Network System), which can assist trainers in developing programs with transfer elements in them, is described. It enables trainees to do what they were trained to do, when they are supposed to do it, and where they are supposed to do it through generalized training. (CT)

Suggests that measurement of performance is difficult and imprecise. Offers questions for consideration before designing and implementing measurement systems and describes new tools for measuring and managing human capital. (JOW)

Describes the human resources department at West Virginia University. Discusses the training needs assessment project, formation of an advisory committee, targets for training, budget restrictions, department faculty and staff, faculty attitudes about the program, training sites, use of video-based simulation, and how the program is currently…