Understanding Informal Learning is Vital for Organisational Success
'Informal Learning at Work: How to Boost Performance in Tough Times' - Paul Matthews, already well-established as a speaker and magazine contributor has written a ground-breaking book on ‘Informal Learning’.
Within a week of being published, it achieved the #1 bestseller accolade in two Amazon business categories.
There is a steadily growing awareness that informal learning plays a major role in organisational capability and employee competence. People are waking up to just how pervasive informal learning really is, and how important it is in the workplace. It is the real powerhouse of learning in any organisation.
Couple this awareness with the budget cuts that are unlikely to improve anytime soon with talk of a triple dip recession in the UK. The cuts are forcing people responsible for organisational learning to re-examine how they spend their restricted budgets. They are looking at what really matters and more and more of them are realising that spending on informal learning initiatives often costs less, and gets a better return than continuing to spend on traditional training.
As learning and development professionals look beyond formal training to a wider remit of learning and support at the point of work it is clear that their role is changing, and indeed must change to cater to the new learning needs of the employees.
This book is for anybody involved with workplace learning, enhancing capability and improving performance. It shows you how to build informal learning into an organisational learning strategy, using practical advice from workplace learning experts and examples and case studies from around the world.
Nicki Talbot, Director - Learning & Development at Colt Technology said "Hurrah!! Finally, a book that doesn't just theorise about informal learning, but actually provides real-world, practical advice for making it happen. In the current climate of over-stretched L&D resources and budget, this book really does open the door to creating a true learning culture by harnessing what our employees do naturally. By applying the advice in this book, enhanced employee engagement and increased organisational performance will inevitably follow."
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Further information about "Informal Learning at Work": www.informal-learning-at-work.com
About the Author: Paul's life and work history can only be described as a little unusual. He grew up on a hill country farm in New Zealand and went on to study both Agriculture and Engineering at University. After extensive world travels and adventures, and some success in business, he was headhunted into a NASDAQ-quoted multi-national technology company, where he eventually held the role of Customer Services Director. The constraints of corporate life lost their appeal and Paul started his own company, People Alchemy Ltd, in 1999, working as a consultant, trainer and coach in the areas of management and leadership. He soon recognized the need for more direct performance support and the importance of informal learning in all its guises, rather than the common L&D reliance on classroom training. Paul has a way of engaging people with this changing paradigm so they can grasp it, incorporating it into their own organizational learning and capability strategies.