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Innovation Award Information and Resources 

Innovation Award

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Criteria

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Submission Process

Become an Expert AI User and Strategy LeaderArtificial intelligence (AI) and performance expert Josh Cavalier shares his in-depth knowledge and skills to help L&D professionals master learning experience design by using generative AI in their employee learning and development efforts. More than just a technical manual on generative AI or a collection of best prompt practices, this book explores how AI is reshaping jobs, skill development, and human performance. Josh provides his L&D AI Ecosystem framework as a practical road map for integrating AI into your day-to-day work and your organization.Discover how to seamlessly incorporate AI into your existing L&D processes and broader L&D ecosystem, optimizing workflows and driving measurable results. Explore how AI-enabled L&D platforms can facilitate personalized learning paths, automated performance support, and real-time skills gap analysis. Learn how to craft effective prompts for learning design and use chatbots and AI assistants for help in the moment of need. And importantly, dive deep into the ethical considerations, from maintaining data privacy and security to mitigating bias in AI-powered learning solutions.No matter how advanced artificial intelligence becomes, L&D professionals must remain focused on performance—of humans and now machines. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just starting your AI journey, this book is your essential resource to unleash the power of AI in L&D.

Applying AI in Learning and Development

The ATD SELL conference focuses on bringing together the best practices and strategies across sales training, tools and technology, and processes needed to drive incremental sales performance. 

ATD SELL Registration

ATD OrgDev will provide you with the skills needed to develop employee programs at all levels and throughout their employment lifecycle. You’ll learn innovative methods at all levels to manage the ever-increasing rate of change in today’s workplace.

ATD OrgDev Registration

Make Learning Stick Through Reflection ActivitiesEmployees today crave development, growth, and skill building. They also want more meaning and connection at work. When they learn to reflect on training experiences intentionally, they get all that and more. Pausing to reflect makes it easier to retain and transfer the knowledge and skills we need on the job.L&D expert Katrina Kennedy shares more than 45 reflective learning activities that instructional designers, facilitators, and trainers can use in face-to-face and online classrooms to create more meaningful learning experiences for a variety of contexts and audiences. Each activity is designed to help participants develop critical thinking skills and improve future performance by analyzing what they’ve learned and how far they’ve come.Built around eight essential outcomes, this book will show you how to strengthen learners’ motivation, social connection, memory, and critical thinking skills through targeted reflection activities—all of which are adaptable for in-person or remote training situations.Start achieving your organization’s business goals and building learners’ capacities with this comprehensive reflection toolkit.

Learning That Lasts

Make Employee Skills the Currency Within Your OrganizationIn today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, organizations are increasingly recognizing the critical importance of employees’ skills as a means of building the organization. This is a fundamental change from focusing solely on specific job titles, position credentials, org charts, and reporting hierarchies when considering organizational growth. Meanwhile, workers and job seekers desire better opportunities to showcase their unique abilities and greater career mobility. Now, organizations have the opportunity to meet their organizational and employees’ needs by focusing more on how to tap into the existing skills of their workforce and develop the skills they need to remain agile and competitive.While the transformation process to a skills-based organization is complex and may seem overwhelming, skills expert and visionary Koreen Pagano offers you a blueprint for making the shift and achieving success. She shows you how to get started and build over time, emphasizing that you do not have to overhaul every HR, learning and development, and management process and program at once. Start small and wherever it makes the most sense for your organization.In this book, explore the different components of a skills-based organization—hiring and recruitment, organizational culture, performance management, and career development—as well as strategies for continuous improvement at the people, process, and system levels. Learn to understand the current potential for skills, what is needed to overcome resistance to the change, and how to secure buy-in from your organization’s decision makers. Examine how to plan for the collection, analysis, and governance of your skills data.This book is perfect for HR and talent strategists who want to go beyond the theoretical and see real results, regardless of where they may be on their path to building a skills-based organization. Case studies of companies at different stages in the journey prove this isn’t just an aspirational goal, but one that actual companies are achieving.

Building the Skills-Based Organization

This three-day event features sessions from our best and most popular speakers on the most essential topics for all learning and development professionals: Instructional Design, Training Delivery, Measurement & Evaluation, and Learning Technologies.

ATD Core4 Registration

Strengthen Your Acquisition and Retention Efforts Through EverboardingTraditional onboarding is a relic of the past. That frantic sprint to get new hires “up to speed,” followed by a deafening silence, often falls short. What if, instead, you could create a seamless, ongoing journey of growth and development from the day an employee starts and throughout their tenure—an everboarding experience? Employees say they need to develop new skills to be successful at their job, and many will look for another job if not offered development opportunities. In this book, leading HR talent strategy and everboarding expert Amber Watts offers solutions to help you shift your organization’s mindset that onboarding has an “exit day” and embrace a culture of continuous learning. It guides you through building a dynamic everboarding strategy that fosters long-term employee engagement, accelerates performance, and strengthens your talent acquisition and retention efforts. Inside, you’ll discover how to personalize and elevate the onboarding experience to move beyond generic checklists and create customized journeys that resonate with individual needs, jobs, and roles. Smooth the transition from onboarding to manager by defining clear expectations and creating a seamless handoff process to ensure ongoing support and development. Equip managers to be continuous development partners and provide them with the tools and resources they need to effectively coach, mentor, and guide their employees throughout their careers. And cultivate a growth mindset, encouraging new hires and existing employees to embrace lifelong learning and growth. This book also includes three case studies that capture the different stages of everboarding and offer ideas for how to implement an everboarding strategy yourself, no matter your company’s industry or size.Perfect for HR and L&D leaders seeking to transform their onboarding and employee development programs, this book provides actionable strategies and practical advice you can implement immediately. Stop treating onboarding like a sprint and start building a marathon of growth and success.

From Onboarding to Everboarding

Transform Your L&D Team Into Your Organization’s Trusted Business PartnersMost L&D pros dream of the day when stakeholders will stop viewing them as mere order takers and consider them critical, strategic partners in shaping the future of the organization. But how do you get there? In this book, veteran talent development leader Jess Almlie introduces her formula for becoming the valued strategic business partner (SBP) stakeholders need and want.Partnering effectively with stakeholders requires a new mindset and behavior, a keen understanding of the business, and targeted tools. Jess provides detailed guidance on how to succeed in each of these areas and invites you to start by taking an in-depth assessment of your strengths and gaps in working as an SBP. She shares her own wins and failures along with wisdom from three dozen other L&D pros who work in small, medium, and large organizations.This step-by-step guide will help current and aspiring L&D leaders understand business basics, create a playbook for their teams, work productively with stakeholders, and teach others to work in harmony with L&D. The final chapter offers practical advice for those who need to take small steps toward becoming SBPs because their organizations resist big changes.This book includes questionnaires, worksheets, and other tools that will help L&D leaders understand business terminology and needs, their stakeholders’ points of view, strategies for creating effective partnerships and measuring impact, and a plan for developing a support team.

 L&D Order Taker No More!

Transition from K-12 teaching to training with hands-on guidance, skill mapping, and career planning to build your brand and start applying with confidence. 

Teaching to Training Workshop

Combine in-person, virtual, and self-paced training for flexible, cost-effective, and engaging learning. Learn how to design impactful blended programs. 

Nominations will be evaluated on the following:

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