Page 185 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

164 � mAnAgIng the moBIle workForCe

employees choose to pursue, engage, and collaborate in. The informa-
tion available to employees on their mobile devices will be as vast as
what the Internet provides on any day. This is going to become a big-
ger training portal than most people think today. It is predicted that
by 2020, the mobile device and the networks that drive it will be the
solution to instant global communications in every sense of the word.
7
Trainers have an ever-increasing need to reach the wide array of
employees, contractors, partners, and strategic customers who touch
every department and business unit. Whether you are the vice presi-
dent of corporate training and education or the one person who makes
up the training department, you serve the needs of a disparate set

of offices and individual road warriors, corridor mobile workers, and
home-based mobile workers, many of whom will be located in inter-
national settings. Your work has to be coordinated across sprawling
corporate campuses, language barriers, and time zones. Your audience
of trainees often has far less face time with peers and managers than
virtual time. They have an ever-increasing directive to do more with
less. Their training must be designed around their mobility to give them
the best choices of learning opportunities, and to take them when and
where they can. With the right people, training this workforce can
become a source of competitive advantage.