“The statistics show that the average American will work for 5 or 6 companies in their lifetime,” says Jefferson Flanders, President and CEO of MindEdge, a Boston-based provider of corporate, continuing and higher education. “It’s vital that employees continue to learn, and certainly for those under age 40 with the number of employers and potentially the number of different industries they will work in, the ability to adapt and learn is one of the most important factors in long-term career success.”

A recent Louis Harris and Associates poll reports among employees with poor training opportunities, 41 percent planned to leave within a year. Only 12 percent planned to leave among those who considered their company’s training opportunities to be excellent, resulting in a retention rate more than two-thirds higher. Many people assume that once employees are trained, they are more likely to leave the company for greener pastures, but actually, the opposite is true: trained staff are happier and more likely to stay put. Additionally, notes Sharon Jordan-Evans, a leading authority on career issues in the workplace and author of Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em: Getting Good People to Stay, career development is still the No. 1 factor in employee retention.

But how can you make sure your company is doing it right? This guide will cover how best to implement a continuing education program, from the creation of corporate universities to partnering with local colleges and the benefits of tuition reimbursement.

How to Implement a Continuing Education Program: Corporate Universities

The 1990s and early years of the 2000s saw the rise of in-house, corporate-sponsored universities using a formal curriculum to develop and re-skill a global workforce. Corporate universities enable firms to customize management development to address the unique challenges of their business and industry. As Jeanne Meister reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education in 2001, of the 100 most successful corporate universities, 60 percent outsource course design to higher education. The literature is full of examples of partnerships that created mutually beneficial education programs. And when partnering works, corporations gain educated workers and higher education fulfills its mission and maintains academic integrity.

A corporate university, according to Wikipedia, “is any educational entity that is a strategic tool designed to assist its parent organization in achieving its goals by conducting activities that foster individual and organizational learning and knowledge.” But don’t confuse a corporate university with a training department. Training departments are often reactionary and fragmented, created to serve a larger audience with an array of open enrollment programs. A corporate university, on the other hand, pulls together all learning in an organization by managing education as a business project.

Dig Deeper: Corporate Universities for Small Companies

How to Implement a Continuing Education Program: Local University Continuing Education Departments

Local universities have long offered continuing education programs, with the University of Wisconsin-Madison starting the first such track in 1907. Typically, they offer a variety of personal and professional education opportunities in a variety of formats for adult learners, while also providing career and educational advising for adults considering a career change or going back to school. There is often an overarching academic focus on “practical” or professional and career-focused study, responsiveness to changing educational needs arising within regional economies, and a commitment to broad access. Higher education and employers can benefit from working with each other to maximize human capital, but it is a collaboration that requires flexibility and goodwill on everyone’s part.

There are plenty of options when it comes to local universities and how you as a business can partner with them. While full-time programs will take less time, recent years have seen a rise in night courses and online-only learning. This provides employers with a chance to promote their employees receiving higher education and new learning while also maintaining a fairly normal work schedule. The key though, is showing support and understanding for your employees as they seek this additional training.

“Online training allows the ability for learners to access the coursework at their own convenience and their own pace, allowing for 24/7 access and a higher level of accountability” says Flanders. “Because unlike face-to-face training where a learner can be present physically but perhaps not mentally, most effective online training or education will have built-in assessments to challenge the learner to demonstrate understanding of the content as they progress.”

If you don’t necessarily see the need for your employees to receive a traditional MBA or secondary degree, you can opt for programs that include issuance of a certificate or continuing education units (CEU) to document attendance at a particular course. Typically, CEUs will be awarded at one unit for every 10 hours of coursework, providing employers with documentation of completion for employees who are enrolled in non-credit training courses.

Dig Deeper: How to Start an Online Training Program

How to Implement a Continuing Education Program: Certification Instructors

Rather than investing in a full-blown corporate education program, you can look more at gaining individualized certification for your employees, based on their specific areas of expertise.

“I think the most important thing is to start with the outcomes,” says Flanders. “What is it you’re trying to accomplish? If you’re talking about project managers, and you’re looking to ensure that there is a common language and methodology in the way that projects are run, you might very well turn to the project management institute and get professional certification for your project managers.”

Whether you are looking to upgrade skills in your staff’s current field or for training in a whole new area, professional certificates can help employees take that next step on their career track. Programs are often designed with the needs of working adults in mind, with evening and weekend class sessions and at a moderate cost. A good resource for training is found on the American Society of Training and Development’s website while a thorough list of some of the standard certification certificates you can obtain through a local university or in-house is provided by Duke University. Providing training opportunities communicates that your work force is valuable and that your organization is willing to invest in them.

For example, a Certified Management Accountant or CMA is often an indication to an employer that their employee will provide a higher level of analysis as they approach accounting tasks. In the information technology field, there are a lot of certifications you can request employees to obtain, but it truly depends upon the organization.

Dig Deeper: Creating Your Own Company University

How to Implement a Continuing Education Program: Tuition Reimbursement

Perhaps the most well-discussed part of any continuing education program, tuition reimbursement has been around for years and shows a clear financial commitment to your employees. If the area of study includes essential skills of your job, the employer will often cover part if not all of the cost. In recent years as the economy has taken a hit, many tuition reimbursement plans have been cut back, but as a company it remains a major key to have those options available to your employees.

Tuition reimbursement programs are generally offered to employees with at least one year of service, are usually considered a fringe benefit by the IRS and are usually taxable income for the employee. Before implementing a program at your company, the best things to consider are these questions, as noted best by Sharon Anne Waldrop in The Everything Human Resource Management Book:

Do the classes have to be job related?How many classes are eligible for reimbursement each semester?Does the employee need to receive a specific grade to qualify?Will reimbursement be at 100 percent?Will paid time off to attend classes be offered?Is there a cap on how many semesters an employee may participate?Will the benefit be offered to employees earning higher than a bachelors degree?

Tuition assistance is a powerful benefit. And sometimes the benefit is completely at the discretion of the manager; so even if you don’t have a hard policy in place, listen to your employees. Even companies that don’t offer college tuition assistance may permit other kinds of learning. Other companies have strict policies that outline how much they’ll pay and how they’ll pay it (e.g., 75 percent for degree and certificate programs, up to $3,000 per associate per calendar year, or 50 percent for personal growth and development coursework, up to $1,000 per associate per calendar year), using the institution’s tuition deferral policy as the preferred method. It really is up to you as a business owner.

Regardless of how you plan to make continued education a part of your business growth, you need to do it. Investing in your employees is one of the best ways to show you care about them personally. As Ben Franklin once said, “an investment in education always pays the highest returns.”

Dig Deeper: Tuition Assistance Programs

Education – Business – Higher education – Duke University – Employment

Today, Pandigital announced it will begin shipping the Pandigital Novel 7” Color Multimedia eReader. The touchscreen device, which runs on the Android operating system, has built-in WiFi and access to the Barnes & Noble eBookstore. You can also use it to surf the Web, check e-mail, watch movies, and listen to music. The eReader weighs 11.8 ounces and has a 7-inch color LCD display. It has 2 GB of internal memory , an SD/SDHC card reader for adding up to 32 GB of memory, and a battery that lasts up to six hours in reading mode. The eReader will be available at several national retailers next month and has a one-year limited warranty. Stay tuned for a hands-on review in the coming weeks. Cost: $199 MSRP

Barnes & Noble – Android – Wi-Fi – Liquid crystal display – Touchscreen

Web entrepreneurs get a hip new makeover. Making Internet entrepreneurs – a group not exactly known for their fashion savvy – look cool is no small challenge. Today’s New York Times has the story of one designer who is giving start-up fashion a shot. Fashion designer Kristen Slowe has created Saboteur, a fashion line sold online that’s targeting Silicon Valley-types. The collection is composed of an assortment of sharp shirts and blazers that can be worn to the office or out on the town – some are even waterproof. As Slowe explains, “After going to tech meet-ups and tech events and seeing the same items again and again, we realized there was a real void in the menswear market.” So Slowe created such items as the “Founder Jacket” and the “Banker Shirt.” There’s also the “Sea Captain Shirt” or “Vice Shirt” for when you’re feeling more devious. The fashion line already has one tech entrepreneur as a fan: Justin Kan, founder of Justin.tv, (which incidentally hosts our Inc.Live chats), has invested “tens of thousands” in the company.

The Catch-22 of landing new clients. When sales aren’t exactly pouring in, when budgets are tight, small businesses need to find new customers to pick up the pace. But to get more customers, you need to market and advertise, right? Laying out the cash for that – especially amid the economic downturn – is just too risky for many small businesses. A study of entrepreneurs, which is referenced in the Wall Street Journal, says nearly half of small business owners are struggling to “find efficient or innovative ways to market their products or services.” But fret not, entrepreneur: there are ways. And the Wall Street Journal has compiled a dozen of them, from using targeted online referrals to staging a publicity stunt.

The great business-collapse quiz. In 2000, the Web portal and search engine Lycos sold for $12.5 billion; recently, it fetched a puny $36 million. So in its honor, our Fast Company brethren have put together a little pop quiz that serves as a cautionary tale to acquiring companies everywhere. (For another tale of a business gone awry, check out this classic on Jonathan Abrams of Friendster.)

When shareholders revolt. Dell’s investors are unhappy with founder and CEO Michael Dell, and in a recent vote, a whopping one-fourth of them voted against keeping Dell on the company’s board. According to the New York Times, the issues could stem from the recent charges of accounting fraud filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Though Dell never fessed up to the charges, the company forked over $100 million to settle the case. Stanford law professor Joseph A. Grundfest tells the Times: “It is extremely rare to have that amount of shareholder disaffection directed toward an executive who is so central to the company’s past, present and future.” Still, the story points out Yahoo’s similar situation when, in 2008, 33.7 percent of the board voted against the re-election of co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang.

The local charm offensive. If you’ve ever traveled abroad on a business trip you’ve probably noticed when you’re in a city or country where the food franchises you know from home seem like they haven’t set up shop yet. Whether that fills you with nostalgia for a Big Mac or you revel in the experience of visiting mom-and-pop local businesses there’s a notable new trend in the United States of towns banning formula restaurants which could change the small business landscape (via USAToday). Here are 5 tips for franchisees to make their ventures successful.

John Byrne launches a website for MBAs. Last year, Byrne, a former editor of Inc.’s sister magazine Fast Company, quit his job at BusinessWeek, where he’d been the editor of the website, to strike out on his own. Now his new company, C-Change Media, has launched its first product, a website aimed at business school students called, charmingly, Poets and Quants. He plans to make money by selling advertising to business schools and white papers to applicants looking for the inside track. Byrne tells BayNewser that he’s funding the site himself for now. “Luckily, I didn’t waste too much of my time [shopping for money],” he says. “It’s a sinkhole. If you want to do it, you have to do it. You have to put your money up and make it happen. Running around asking people for money wastes time that’s too precious.”

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Small business – Business – United States – Facebook – New York Times

The asset class known as venture capital has been swirling around the drain since the dot-com bubble burst ten years ago. Like all forms of private equity the nature of these funds require decade long investment horizons and their investors demand opacity. Now, a decade after the bubble burst, the carnage is becoming apparent as the results slowly see the light of day.

There have been two recent articles articulating the details that make the point really well. The first is John Jannarone’s WSJ Heard on the Street article “Venture Capital Should Shrivel Away” and the other Steve Blank’s “Welcome to the Lost Decade (for Entrepreneurs, IPO’s and VC’s).”

The real question is can the asset class survive? Note by the nature of the question I’m taking the view of the limited partner investor in the funds, not the typical entrepreneur looking to secure an investment. The world is rife with urban legends on how venture capital works, and all of them come from the entrepreneur’s view versus the fund investor’s perspective.

Explaining the industry and what’s going on takes the form of several audiences; one being the overly-optimistic entrepreneur who still has aspirations of raising capital to get their company to a liquidity event, another being the up and coming venture capitalist in training (think decades long training cycles) who recently finds themselves a free agent as the asset class shrinks and wants to start their own fund, and the final being ambitious MBA’s switching careers and see venture capital as the preferred destination.

It all comes back to the asset class. If returns are low and the risk component high capital stops flowing. In this case index funds, with their objective diversification, minimal management fees, instantaneous liquidity and flat returns over the last decade have trounced venture with its negative returns, narrow diversification, high management fees and illiquidity over the same time period. It’s all about risk-adjusted returns and in the case of venture, the asset class flat out isn’t performing.

Responses to this reasoning point to specific deals that have produced good returns, news of quarterly increases in capital invested, and new funds being formed. The challenge is the consistency is not reliable hence the asset class is not producing. There are and will continue to be death kick strategies and tell-tale signs of life; smaller more narrowly focused funds, deal-by-deal funds, and a focus on trendy categories like life sciences and alternative energy.

Okay, so now that I’ve shot down the current model, let’s look at the new normal for what was venture capital. I call it “in with $5 million, out with $50 million.” Exit events today for venture backed companies are no longer IPO’s and their typically $150 million plus exit values. They are acquisitions with typically a $50 million or less exit. This means the lifetime capital raise for the company must be less than $5 million given the exit value will be under $50 million. This investment math yields a 3-10X return on that individual investment depending on when the investment was made.

This gives the new normal investor the same returns as the old normal institutional venture investor but on a much lower capital outlay. The economics of a venture fund pretty much dictate a $150 million exit to cover the overhead (management fee paybacks, administration, covering bad investments and overall fund return expectations). So the new normal is a similar percentage return on a smaller gross investment.

This naturally pushes early stage investing to smaller investment sources; angels and government sources like SBIR’s, economic development funds, and state focused specific funds for a start-up’s first round of investment. This is typically a one comma capital investment (measured in the hundreds of thousands of dollars) and in many cases, thanks to the way government sources are structured, can be non-dilutive. The new normal requires significant revenue traction on this level of investment, and if that is achieved the two comma capital investments (meaning millions of dollars) will flow from sources that are typically angels and smaller, more focused venture funds that are still scratching out a living.

What’s the evidence that this model works? The most substantive results are eight deals done over the last 5 years that I have been involved with coming out of the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Venture Labs. The formula has been consistent across these deals using the new normal outlined above; all eight companies raised one comma, typically non-dilutive capital, executed well and raised follow on two comma capital. Two have been sold and two more will probably sell in the next year. And for those of you with quizzical looks, I need to point out that in all cases these companies raised capital over the last five years when it’s been scarce, and this was done by freshly minted MBA’s, who in most cases are still at the helm. If someone with 10 years work experience can do this in a tough investment period following this approach, a team with more experience and execution intelligence should be able to readily best them.

So, the new normal is what I’m terming adventure capital or in with 5, out with 50. And you have two options; the first is to hang onto the old model in the vain hopes it will resurrect. The second is embracing the new normal and exploit it before the world catches on.

Your move.

Venture capital – Investment – University of Texas at Austin – Business – Private equity

From cavorting in the company’s factory in his underwear to calling his models “sluts,” American Apparel CEO Dov Charney has been a whiz at making headlines – but that talent is unlikely to save his company.

The bright, breezy (and slightly sleazy) clothing brand could go bankrupt shortly, according to a company press release. The 2007 Inc. 5000 company announced that slumping sales (down 16 percent), huge second quarter losses (somewhere between $5 million and $7 million), and the likelihood that it will breach the terms of its loan agreement with its main lender “raise substantial doubt that the company will be able to continue as a going concern” and that “the company may not have sufficient liquidity necessary to sustain operations for the next twelve months.” The Los Angeles-based retailer – which went public in 2007 — said its debt had risen to $120.3 million.

The troubled company’s auditor, Deloitte, resigned in July in a fight over how to value the stores. A newly appointed auditor, Marcum, is reviewing the accounts, but the New York Stock Exchange was threatening to yank the clothier’s listing if its quarterly reports weren’t filed by August 16. (Were they filed? “I couldn’t tell you,” CEO Dov Charney told Jezebel Tuesday, though the reports were indeed filed.)

Charney, 41, turned to entrepreneurship early, importing Hanes and Fruit of the Loom t-shirts into Montreal as a teenager. He moved to the U.S. to attend Tufts University in 1987, but dropped out to pursue his business full time. He moved to Los Angeles in 1997, and in 2003, he opened his first American Apparel shop, quickly building it into an international chain of 280 stores that employs some 10,000 people. (Read an Inc. profile of Charney.)

Over the years, Charney’s behavior and speech have often been as colorful as the company’s bright wardrobe staples. He’s appeared on a video on the company’s website in his underwear, and is open about having relationships with women who work for him. “I’m not saying I want to screw all the girls at work,” he was quoted as saying in Jane magazine in 2006. “But if I fall in love at work it’s going to be beautiful and sexual.”

There’s been an outcry over the underage-looking girls that appear in provocative poses in American Apparel’s ads. Charney once referred to his models as “sluts” and then defended himself by declaring “Some of us love sluts.”

Charney blames the company’s current financial woes on a police raid on the American Apparel factory in Los Angeles last year, which revealed that one in three employees was in the U.S. illegally. Replacing them has caused a massive disruption. Charney recently boosted the company’s campaign for amnesty for illegals under the slogan “Legalize LA.”

Charney told Bloomberg BusinessWeek earlier this month: “A lot of assumptions that I grew up with are no longer reality. Those were things that we could rely on: that lenders will always be there, that they’ll behave ethically and they’ll always have money, that you can trust that as the sun comes up the consumer will be healthy, that we’ll always be close to full employment in developed nations. Now there are no certainties.”

American Apparel – Dov Charney – Los Angeles – New York Stock Exchange – Tufts University

A closer look at failing businesses. Call it bad news in a pretty package. The folks at Business Pundit have put together a handy infographic detailing the various aspects of where and why businesses are closing. Nearly 1.5 million businesses shut their doors in 2009 and with the help of maps, charts, and graphs, the feature attempts to explain why. Not surprisingly, big states like California, New York, and Texas lost the most businesses due primarily to such reasons as unaffordable loan payments, bankruptcy, and lack of consumer spending. The infographic also details which industry has been hit the hardest, a state-by-state breakdown of bankruptcy filings, and some notable businesses that are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

The Web is dead. Haven’t you heard? Well, that’s what Wired magazine is positing, based on our evolving use of Internet connectivity to do lots more than just search and read html-coded text. Apps, video, RSS, streaming, and peer-to-peer interaction are taking over, and creating a new paradigm – and it’s no longer a World Wide Web world. Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff explain, with a stunning infographic as evidence.

Rewards for trying on clothes? There’s an app for that. One of the biggest complaints with location-based check-in services like Foursquare is that the app’s users can game the system by checking in when they are merely near a restaurant or store, and not necessarily in it. In those instances, the user is being “rewarded” for a visit that didn’t happen nor help the retailer. A new app called Shopkick aims to close that loophole and reward customers for entering a store, scanning a barcode, and even entering a dressing room, The New York Times reports. An audio transmitter placed in participating stores emits a signal picked up by mobile phone’s microphone, The Times writes. With each action, Shopkick users earn points called “kickbucks” that, when accumulated in large numbers, can be redeemed for gift cards, Facebook credits, and music downloads. Macy’s, Best Buy, and American Eagle Outfitters are some of the first Shopkick partners. As TechCrunch writes, “This is all about foot-traffic.”

If Shopkick doesn’t, will Facebook kill Foursquare? Bloggers everywhere (including our own) are buzzing about tomorrow’s announcement at Facebook’s Palo Alto headquarters. Will what’s been the biggest open secret in social media news actually happen? Check in tomorrow.

Marketing to women; what would grandma get you? It can be tricky getting inside the mind of any consumer but with slim representation by women among the ranks of retail and finance CEOs, marketers understandably end up misconstruing what women want. AdAge interviews Paco Underhill, the CEO and founder of Envirosell a research and consulting firm that studies retail and a service environments and he spoke about the consumer habits of the fairer sex. Advertisers often focus on the 30-and-under crowd but Underhill points out that the majority of discretionary income in the U.S. belongs to women over the age of 50. “For many women over the age of 50, one of the most important considerations in their lives isn’t the things that they are acquiring themselves but the things they are acquiring for other people,” he says. If you’re looking for more insight into the minds of women, find out why they secretly enjoy business travel.

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Facebook – Best Buy – AmericanEagleOutfitters – World Wide Web – Chris Anderson