In any economic situation employee development and skills building remain an essential requirement for success. But how can we avoid the inevitable reduction in the training budget being viewed by staff negatively. Does reducing the training budget always mean that lower quality training opportunities are on offer?

In today’s economic climate of huge savings having to be sourced from public sector and the knock on effect that has on the private sector, can any organisation afford to ignore the benefits of e-learning in their training and development strategy?

E-learning has been embraced by thousands of companies in the UK, all hoping to create a blend of options available to staff. Most organisations that are experiencing huge success with e-learning are those who have deployed it as part of the wider business strategy.

After recently returning from my yearly holiday to Spain I began thinking about next year’s holiday and that, yes, I was going to lose more weight for 2011 and yes I was going to learn more Spanish. It seems I make these resolutions annually and I fail miserably year on year!

Is it so difficult to learn the basics of a new language? Maybe we don’t need to be fluent to get by but I am always surprised by how communication improves once you attempt to speak a little of the native tongue.