Training Magazine Middle East October 2014 | Page 20

media sites to source and recruit candidates for employment.

Currently, 94% of recruiters use, or plan to use social media for recruiting. This number has increased steadily for the last 6 years.

Employers who have used social media to hire found a 49% improvement in candidate quality over candidates sourced only through traditional recruiting channels (JobVite).

Sodexo are a great example of a company attracting talent successfully through social media. In the first year after implementing their social recruiting strategy, their website traffic increased dramatically, 15,000 people downloaded their mobile job app and 107 people were hired.

Technology allows candidates to be chosen more strategically and based on solid evidence. On LinkedIn, potential employees can submit their CV directly to employers. But twitter still remains the most valuable social media platform for Social Recruiting and is the platform of choice in the recruiting process for the majority of technology, media and training companies. Why? The power of community.

Towers Watson estimates that the technology for recruitment market will be worth $8.1 billion by the end of 2015.

Technology for training

In 2011, it was estimated that about $35.6 billion was spent on self-paced eLearning across the globe. Today, eLearning is a $56.2 billion industry, and it's going to double by mid-2015.

Companies are already implementing eLearning in the Middle East successfully; an example of this is Ford’s sales and marketing division who successfully use eLearning to support the non-technical needs of more than 225,000 employees (Politt 2005).

Is your company ready for eLearning? A study by McPherson, Nunes and Zafeirou found that many trainers are inexperienced in methods for implementing technology-based training. In order for eLearning to work as a form of training, first the trainers need to be trained in the implementation of TBT.

Companies must also consider the relevance of eLearning as a training model for their objectives. ELearning does not provide the interactivity which some skills training needs e.g. the training of negotiation skills, team building and cultural training. Before implementing eLearning, you need to check the learning objectives, training and course outcomes are aligned. Ask yourself, is eLearning the most suitable training model for the training objective?

If the answer is yes, the next step is to focus on the training content, the leadership of the course (the trainers) and the workforce. To deliver successful eLearning, organizations need to tailor the eLearning and online courses they are offering to the organizational needs and those of their workforce. Remember that off the shelf courses will not deliver specific organizational outcomes.

The next step is to focus on the learning management. The trainers need to manage the trainees throughout the course and a quality and standard procedure must ALWAYS be implemented from the offset. In larger organizations a project management strategy should be implemented to monitor all the eLearning implementation factors; course development, technological issues, trainer delivery, trainee progress, post-training implementation and course effectiveness.

How do we evaluate the effectiveness of eLearning as a form of training?

E-Learning can result in improved performance, a greater speed of training, increased workforce efficiency, higher employee retention and a more desirable ROI than other training models, but how can we measure the effectiveness of the training?

The predominant model is the Kirkpatrick model which focuses on 4 categories of training outcomes, however, the Kirkpatrick model fails to evaluate training implementation on the job.

Training & Technology Feature