Charles Jennings: Why a former Reuters head is now an e-Learning guru

Charles Jennings: Why a former Reuters head is now an e-Learning guru

With the amount of times I have seen the name Charles Jennings pop up in recent news regarding e-Learning and business online, I was surprised to discover that there was not a comprehensive and up-to-date profile that was easy to find (yet, rather confusingly, there was a Wikipedia for another Charles Jennings – journalist and vice-president of CBC). Consequently, I was spurred on to do some research and to write this – in order to try and understand why Charles Jennings has so much to say about e-Learning.
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nIn a profile at trainingzone.co.uk, it is stated that his ‘wide background’, including a professorship at Southampton University and being head of the research centre, led to Jennings’s interest in the relationship between learning and business. “Every organisation is engaged in learning and development…That can be summed up in one word: performance.” After a somewhat small-scale start with the running of the profitable research centre at Southampton University, Jennings soon found a position in a bigger pond as a strategic technology director at Dow Jones
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nHowever, it was Jennings’s role as global head of learning at Thomson Reuters that has earned him his reputation as an expert in education development in business – a role that saw him responsible for 18,000 people worldwide. Yet, it was the statistics he saw from successful staff development schemes that really propelled his interest, he states: “Employees who work for managers who are effective at developing people show a 25% performance increase over people who work for a manager who is ineffective at developing people, and a 39% increased likelihood of staying with their employers.”
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nSince his time at Reuters, Jennings has established himself as a learning and development consultant, and a spokesperson for the integration of e-Learning in the workplace. In a commentary on the publication of a CIPD survey at peoplemanagement.co.uk, he expressed dismay at the findings that there had been a 6 percent decrease in the amount of businesses that were introducing and extending their e-Learning in comparison to last year.
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n”Many may have tried e-learning once,” he reasoned, “but had a poor experience and decided it doesn’t work.” With the development and continually increasing efficiency, he urged anyone in charge of HR to reconsider investment in such learning methods for the benefits of their businesses and staff. Whether it’s the use of Web 2.0 technologies or saving money from visiting training centres, Jennings promotes the idea that innovation is the key to get the most from online learning in the workplace.
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Posted Date: 2009-05-25 06:39:51