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Aligning your training to learning and matching your business goals is the ideal way to increase your business wealth. In 2004, 50 billion dollars were invested in training in the United States. It's clear that smart companies invest in their people in an effective way to broaden an individual's human capacity, thus enabling the successful support of overall company goals.

This year's ASTD BEST Award winners represent organizations that dem-onstrate enterprise-wide achievement as a result of employee learning and development (ASTD.org).

Last year's winners outperformed the S&P 2005 index by 2 to 1! That's an impressive indication that training and offering more skills to support your team has an excellent ROI (return on investment).

What kind of training is most effective? The kind that is matched to your business culture and supports your goals. Simply said, not so easy to accomplish. With the many different perceptions, interpretations and beliefs people have or may formulate, an organization needs to be very clear in their objectives in order to have all employees motivated to company goals.

The BEST award winners understand how to apply learning as a strategic goal and champion learning culture. Every company has different objectives but by being innovative, designing the learning to fit the culture through blended utilization of all applicable training methods. For example, specific programs enhance customer service with a simulator web application allowing learners to practice a particular task without risks involved in helping live customers, or the discipline to follow up on sales calls with a win/lose review and lesson, allowing employees to learn safely from mistakes utilizing a globally accessible database. These are examples of learning innovations which can lead to greater company performance (outperform the S&P).

The key is committing to a learning process that matches your business culture and goals, delivering the appropriate blend of training tools, giving your people an edge over your competitors, outperforming in your industry.