STLE gets personal
Edward P. Salek, CAE, Executive Director | TLT Headquarters Report August 2021
Enhance your career with the new Member Benefits Guide.
Membership engagement is one of the hot topics in association management. Put simply, the concept refers to an interaction between an organization like STLE and a member in which the individual receives meaningful value.
While the idea is simple, achieving it is not. An association management thought leader, Jeroen van Liempd with MCI Consulting, explains it this way: “Associations are not exempt from the consequences of today’s consumer age, when innumerable organizations offer an overwhelming choice of products and services through multiple channels,” he says.
To battle back, STLE has released a new digital tool to cut through that clutter and show tribology and lubricants professionals how they can find relevance through engagement with our organization. The Member Benefits Guide is a 16-page compilation of ideas and opportunities tied to STLE’s value proposition: Connect. Learn. Achieve. It demonstrates the many ways people can use the organization to connect with peers, learn valuable technical skills and get recognized for achievement.
Release of the new guide comes at a time when the reasons for supporting an organization are much more focused on one key factor. According to research by Community Brands, a provider of association software and other services, training and certifications that provide a return on investment in the form of career advancement benefits are of increasing importance to members.
The Community Brands study also found the following:
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Members no longer look to annual conferences as the primary or only source of continuing education. They now learn anytime, anywhere and in a variety of ways (five on average)—in-person, digital, time-intensive, condensed and micro-focused.
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The next generation of members is continuing this trend. Seventy-six percent of Generation Z (people born between 1997 and 2015) learners believe knowledge is the key to a successful career.
STLE’s 2020-2023 Strategic Plan addresses this trend and establishes a goal of being recognized as the go-to resource for knowledge in lubrication and tribology as well as world-class certification.
Plan objectives cover expanding professional education content for professionals at all career stages, maintaining and expanding professional certification programs and diversifying delivery options for professional development content.
During STLE’s most recent fiscal year, which covered mid-2020 to mid-2021, we made significant progress toward this professional development goal. STLE recorded 6,715 educational impressions. This included more than 6,000 people who attended one or more STLE Webinars, 300 people who attended online education courses and 350 who attended courses associated with the 2021 STLE Annual Meeting.
TLT magazine provided another form of learning and professional development during that same period. It averaged 80 pages and six technical articles per issue. In total for the year, TLT published 1,152 pages and 71 technical articles.
To get more information about these programs and others, go to
www.stle.org and download the new Member Benefits Guide for free. Then start exploring how STLE can help you acquire the knowledge and credentials needed to advance your career.
You can reach Certified Association Executive Ed Salek at esalek@stle.org.