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,…

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…

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…