While upbeat lingo abounds about ‘complementing strategic objectives’ and ‘driving productivity’, the fact is that most training does not make a significant enough impact on business results, and when it does, training professionals fail to make a convincing case about the value added to the bottom line.

We’ve been conditioned to think that the best way to motivate ourselves and others is through external rewards like money or fame, or by the fear of punishment – the carrot-and-stick approach. That’s a mistake, Daniel H. Pink says in his transformative new book. The key to high performance and satisfaction is intrinsic, internal motivation: the desire to follow your own interests and understand the benefits in them for you.

The report looked at first-year bachelors-degree students at universities, who had all achieved the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 3 and attained the University Entrance standard.

While academic achievement at school was the strongest predictor of first-year university success for these students, not all higher-achieving school students performed equally well at university, and some who had lower school achievement out-performed students with higher school achievement. The report looks at the factors that might explain these differences.

This analytical report from the New Zealand Ministry of Education examines the economic and social benefits of tertiary certificates and diplomas and provides new evidence of the value of a significant part of the tertiary education system. It makes use of a range of data to look at the association of tertiary certificates and diplomas to economic outcomes (employment and income) and social outcomes (well-being, social participation and inter-generational benefits).

From the “Upside Learning Solutions” blog, a good summary of outsourcing benefits – some focus on outsourcing to India, but many of the key points apply equally to contracting providers closer to home.