Congratulations to all of the companies named to T&D Magazine’s 2008 list of Best Learning Organizations. It’s great to see that of the 40 companies recognized, many are well known and respected corporate brands. As measured by the number of employees, the companies range in size by a large spread; the smallest being 300 (Forum Credit Union), the largest 427,700 (UPS). Only 4 companies had less than 1000 employees, with the average at 29,000. I don’t think this shows that only large companies with very large budgets can be ‘best’ at learning, but my experience has found they do have larger budgets per employee to work with.
Only 3 companies made the list this year from last year. Does this mean that the best learning organizations are only able to sustain this level of effort or accomplishment for a short period of time? It seems to me that excellent learning organizations are able to sustain excellence for longer periods than one year. Not sure what to make of this?
Of the companies selected, only 5 companies are headquartered outside of the U.S., with four from India, and one from China. So where are the companies from Europe? I would think that European organizations are committed to learning. But we do know that many of these companies have employee bases all over the world. The mix of companies by industry segment was also interesting. Two-thirds of the companies (27 of 40) are professional and technology based companies, whereby 13 of the companies came from industry’s represented predominantly by lower skilled, or trade workers from the hospitality, retail, construction, and food services industries. Is this representative of the overall make-up of companies from all industry segments, saying that companies who are most committed to learning are those whose employees are more educated and trained?
If this is the case, I think it is indicative of what we would expect from industry’s that do not hire as high of proportion of skilled and educated workers. Shouldn’t they be the companies that are more focused on learning? Or is it more about the expectations of the worker? Lower skilled jobs require less training.
Overall, I think the list is excellent and good for our industry. It brings visibility and recognition to companies and executives who are successful in the business of learning! My only issue is that someone who wishes to learn from these organizations must buy a membership to ASTD.
