Adobe has increased the amount of e-learning training it offers to managers to prepare them for the economic upturn, according to its HR director.
The software giant has run more than 450 online training sessions over the past four months in an attempt to give its senior employees a management refresher course by the end of the year, in time for an upturn in the economy.
Courses range from “how to give constructive feedback” to “handling change management”, and are provided using video conferences and purpose-built social networking sites to share best practice and discuss new strategies. They take a maximum of two hours and can be done during work time.
Zoe Spicer, Adobe’s HR director EMEA, said she hoped the support given to managers would trickle down to the 1,000 staff across the region.
“We can’t have programmes that meet all 1,000 employees’ requirements, so this is a very targeted enablement strategy that will encourage our managers to remember the basics,” she told Personnel Today.
“While we have a very low attrition rate now, we need to ensure our managers are truly engaged for when the market picks up so that we don’t end up losing somebody to an external market or because of a personal change that they weren’t anticipating.”
More than half of all training at Adobe is done online, Spicer added, although she said the training budget for the year ahead had not been affected by the recession.
In March, Microsoft revealed it used “dating agency” software to set up mentoring partnerships for its skilled staff and managers.
