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Encouraged by Watson Sr. and his executive team, employees often formed their own study groups. One, known as the Owl Club, allowed employees to study any subject they wanted at company expense. Such programs evolved into adult learning classes, and eventually into grants for employees to pursue college credits and degrees

Today, industry specialists around the world in IBM Global Business Services use an array of e-learning tools—including podcasts and Twitter—customer on-site classes, and IBM conferences and classrooms to educate customers on everything from the use of social media and cloud computing, to how to build a smarter rail system. And IBM employees worldwide take advantage of their networked community to draw upon each other’s skills day and night to solve customer problems and develop the capabilities clients value most.

Keeping Your Skill Set Current Can Be Key to Keeping Your Job Small and midsize companies can’t afford to not keep up with technology, and neither can enterprise-level companies. This past fall, IBM notified employees, who it had determined needed additional training, they were required to step up their technological game, and that they would receive only 90% of their salary while embarking upon this additional training. Talk about an incentive to stay on top of changes in technology ! According to the article in the New York Times covering this move, some IBM workers received an email letting them know that an assessment had determined certain members of the team had “not kept pace with acquiring the skills and expertise needed to address changing client needs, technology and market requirements.” While some criticized the move, the reality is that employees can no longer be complacent when it comes to their grasp of technology and how to use it to help their businesses grow. That’s something to keep in mind, for sure, whether you’re just embarking on a career or whether you’re already in the workforce and want to make sure you have the skills you need to stay marketable.

The Modern Worker Needs to Be Constantly Learning

Dr. Rohini Anand, Chief Diversity Officer, Sodexo Ron Glover, Chief Diversity Officer, IBM Kathy Hannan, National Managing Partner, Diversity & Corporate Responsibility, KPMG LLP

Make it Real or Lose Your Authenticity

Executives are Still Short-Sided

In Axonify’s platform, assessment and training are directly tied together. Because many employees use Axonify regularly, the platform is able to constantly track employee knowledge and intelligently provide the information needed to close an employee’s individual knowledge gap, says Leaman. The app also leverages learning research to optimize retention by repeating the questions in specific time intervals. Even after an employee “graduates” out of a specific topic, the questions will still be revisited about seven months later to help lock in the knowledge.

Tin Can, on the other hand allows companies and employees to record more common learning events: attending a session at a conference, say, or researching and writing a company blog post. “Companies are starting to recognize how employees actually learn and allowing them to do it the way they wish to, rather than forcing them into a draconian system,” Martin says.

more open environments.

experimenting with bringing social media into the workplace for years.

company-wide social network called Beehive, w

"enterprise social media" system called WaterCooler.