Executives increasingly recognize the need to create a learning culture within organizations, and many have come around to believing that people are a company's key assets. Because HRD professionals have typically been viewed as the people who take care of employee learning needs, they're getting growing attention from the corner-office contingent. If the increase in spending on online training is staggering, the proliferation of the Internet is nothing short of astonishing. While world population is growing at 6.6 percent annually, the number of Web users is increasing by 370 percent annually, and the number of URLs is growing by 2,000 percent each year. That incredible URL growth suggests that there will be more than 8 billion homepages by 2002.
HRD professionals have a poor history of applying technology to their craft.
Each new technology, it was thought, would make training more efficient, more effective, and more motivating to the learner. Eventually, it was believed, training wouldn't need classrooms. However, failed projects and misapplications of technology soon dampened enthusiasm for each new technology, and eventually they were viewed as just another tool, not a revolution. That scenario should resonate with anyone who has worked in a training department. Just as a gawky teenager wrestles to get a handle on romance, the training department, it appears, is still in the adolescent phase when it comes to understanding its relationship with technology.