I had a very interesting conversation with a friend who is the CEO of a medium sized company last night. His company is really hot on training, and they expect their employees to work out a yearly skills audit and training schedule with the human resources department. He says that the HR department gave him some new statistics whereby online training programs have increased by some 48% during the last financial year. They are now around 27% of the training budget, but 35% of the training courses that are taken.
He says that online courses are really cost effective for his company, because, although employees are given time to do the training within the worktime, they need less time to complete a course - no travel downtime. The courses themselves are cost effective as well, because there are few extra expenses for the courses - no travel allowance, no hotel and accommodation costs.
His conclusions were that providing the training produces the skills that his company needs, the company is happier with online training, and he thinks that his employees are too - less disruption to their lives. We discussed what feed back he needs to be sure of these facts, and one of the things he's going to put in place is a survey of employees on training methods. He promised to give me information when this had taken place, and was happy for me to discuss these findings on this blog - so some time soon I'll share this with you.
At last I've decided to stop my Turkish online lessons. If you've read any earlier entries in this blog, you will know that among other things, I've been slaving away at an online course in Turkish. I originally started this as I thought that I'd be living and working in Turkish Cyprus, but my plans changed and at the moment I'm working in New Zealand - where Turkish is not among the top ten languages.
However, for the good of my soul, I decided to carry on with the package. Now foreign languages are not one of my strong points, and I have really struggled with this online course. I've spent nights talking to the computer, flipping backwards and forwards to try to remember the (very different) pronunciation of the Turkish alphabet, and to strain to absorb the convoluted grammar that is so different from English grammar. I have made some progress, and I can now speak some very simple phrases in Turkish, almost understandably. I can even understand some very simple phrases when they are spoken to me, one word at a time.
I've reached the end of the online course I purchased, and today I was faced with the decision as to whether to carry on to the "intermediate" course. I stopped, paused for around 600 nanoseconds, and then shouted "NO. NO NO NO. I'm not going to do it. I don't have to, so I'm not going to".
It is a wonderful feeling when you stop hitting your head against a brick wall. I wonder what I should study next?
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