Day: January 31, 2017

XpertLearning’s Reason to Run.  2017 Standard Chartered Dubai Marathon 

Every year, for the past four years, the Xpert Team joins thousands of runners at the Standard Chartered Dubai Marathon.  This year’s edition was held on the 20^th of January with over 100,000 people who participated, including the crowd that cheered the runners on all the way to the finish line!

The hashtag line for this year’s Marathon was #reasontorun, over 30,000 runners meant that there were a million reasons to run: various charities, causes, loved ones, etc.  Let’s hear the Xperts’ reasons to run:

Kat: “Today, there is much chaos in the world so I decided my #reasontorun was for those who are persecuted across the globe, may it be political or religious persecution.  I dedicated every kilometre praying that these people groups are alleviated from their situations.  I also ran for a special lady, my good friend’s mom, who was battling cancer—she sadly passed away a week later I did the run, but I am grateful for the chance to run for her.”

Krish:  “This was my third year in a row and it was the toughest one! I wasn’t fully fit, but took this as an opportunity and perhaps my #reasontorun was to regain some fitness. The first 3-4 Kms. was easy and the next 5-8 Kms. was tough. But as they say, “finishing a marathon is a state of mind that says anything is possible.”

Jack: “It’s my first run in Dubai and I’m delighted I made it till the end as I challenged myself to lose some weight.”

The team is always happy to do the yearly marathon.  Somehow, we feel it embodies the culture of eLearning we aim for organisations to imbibe: to go the distance and build endurance.

Congratulations to the Xperts who ran for a reason!  We are hoping that the rest of the team will join the run next year!

– Katrina Bituin (Learning Consultant – XpertLearning)

Executive Summary :

It’s always an honor to host the leading HR and Talent development leaders from the best organisations in our region. This year (2016-2017) the participants where as enthusiastic as ever to share their thoughts on how we are going to develop our talent in another challenging upcoming year, where our leaders are asking us to tighten our belts and do more with less. As we unanimously rise to this challenge, we are thoughtful that we cannot simply halt training and development until things get better.  We all agree things don’t get better unless we are all committed to learn, develop and grow.

Overview of Survey :

The survey consisted a total of 15 questions, 2 of which were posed around demographics and 13 questions are seen as part of the research in this report.

Demographics & Survey Results :

The survey was completed by representatives of 85 large companies within different industries in the UAE. All participants were either Training and Learning Development Specialists or senior HR professionals. More than 75% of the participants stated that some form of Online-Learning was being used within their organisations.

Observations and Highlights :

• Around 38% of the organisations surveyed said their L&D budget for 2016 were the same as the previous year, while 8% said it significantly increased.
• Over 42% said online learning had played a significant role in their L&D strategy as 38% said this to be on 50-50 basis.
• 68% agreed that eLearning will exist in the next 5 years.
• Almost all participants had expressed that video based learning was either important or extremely important as a learning modality.
• Only approximately 16% had deployed social networking for learning with 10% of those unable to correlate any success from this.

Survey Results : Click Here to download the complete survey.