Best Practice Institute has launched a new Social Learning and Benchmarking site on BestPracticeInstitute.org, an online destination where the organization’s thousands of subscribing members access a wealth of social learning, benchmarking and networking resources.

BPI’s new online learning community is the culmination of four years of developing live and on-demand resources and tools for BPI members. BPI has more than 42,000 subscribers, and its corporate and individual members include executives and employees of more than half of the Fortune 500.

For several years, BPI has offered its subscribers an abundance of resources on its main website, bestpracticeinstitute.org. Now those resources have been expanded and a new social networking, learning, and media site has been custom created by Best Practice Institute on its main website: www.bestpracticeinstitute.org.

Member resources on Best Practice Institute include:

Fast Cycle Learning Circles: Short bursts of cutting-edge information followed by intense discussion in an hour or less. Learning Circles also become springboards for follow-up discussion threads, as BPI members help each other apply the information to their real-world workplace challenges.

– Ask-It Benchmarking Sessions: For many years, BPI’s premium members have enjoyed sharpening each other with thoughtful questions and practical answers, which often took the form of extremely long email threads. Those discussions are now taking place on “Ask-It,” BPI’s benchmarking tool of the future.

Members pose their benchmarking questions and fellow members weigh in. Ask-It threads are preserved online, are searchable and include attachments members upload. Detailed member profiles make it easy to evaluate each commenter’s credentials, and participants rate each other’s comments.

– Member-generated Case Studies: Members are invited to share their success stories with each other. Who has the time to write a case study? BPI makes it easy with a simple case study form that leads the contributor through a few short questions that take just a minutes answer, resulting in an invaluable archive of practical information for BPI members.

Online Learning (webinars): More than 350 learning sessions are available on-demand. The sessions are led by BPI faculty members and guest presenters, who are world-famous thought leaders and Fortune 500 executives. All learning sessions are free of sponsorships and advertising.

BPI Resource Library: In addition to the hundreds of webinars, BPI has a vast library of additional online materials, including articles, books, research, case studies and videos.

Access to the experts: BPI members interact with each other and the experts in lively online discussions and benchmarking sessions. Premium members gain access through chat and email with the organization’s roster of more than 200 experts, to obtain their counsel on real-time, real-world situations.

– Certification and accreditation: BPI offers certification in many areas of expertise. HR Certification Institute credits toward PHR, SPHR or GPHR certification are available for BPI’s live and on-demand sessions.

BPI offers three levels of paid membership.

BPI Professional Plan (single user; $349/year): To professional members, BPI is an online learning portal as well as a social network for business leaders. Professional members gain full access to all online resources, including participation in the BPI community.

Professional members may introduce themselves and create their personal brand image before thousands of other members by posting their profiles, including bio, company affiliation, social media links and areas of expertise. A member may develop one’s own online personal development plan by stating company goals, personal learning goals and by tracking of one’s progress as one works through BPI resources.

– BPI Enterprise Plan (multiple users; $999/year). The Enterprise Plan is for corporate members that want to provide BPI access to multiple users. Enterprise members receive all the features of Professional membership for unlimited members who have emails tied to the company’s domain.

To Enterprise members, BPI is especially a leadership development program. Best Practice Institute is renowned for its leadership development consultation to some of the world’s largest corporations. In 2012, Leadership Excellence magazine named BPI to its “Best in Leadership Development” ranking.

Best Practice Institute is a robust platform for a company’s leadership development and networking. Corporate leaders can use the platform to share company goals, ask critical benchmarking questions, conduct online discussions among team members and identify BPI learning resources that team members should review. BPI’s Transfer of Learning Evaluation tool measures how effectively employees are translating what they are learning back into their jobs.

Is your company not in the Fortune 500 — yet? Enterprise members may gain recognition by creating a BPI company profile, including company description, logo, social media links and company news.

Members may also apply to the coveted Best Practices Awards in various categories of leadership and management. Past best practices award winners include Shannon Banks, HR Director at Microsoft and Richard Olivier, Artistic Director of Olivier MythoDrama Best Practices Company Founders Award in 2013.

The Senior Executive Board, BPI’s most unique and exclusive service, is the highest level of BPI membership. The SEB is composed of some of the top executives of some of the world’s largest corporations. SEB members are hand-selected to form groups of 20 peer leaders in such fields as talent management, learning and leadership development, and workforce planning and analytics.

SEB members are polled to identify their most pressing corporate issues. Then BPI conducts extensive real-world research and consults with top thought leaders and professors. These findings are shared with members at SEB gatherings and web conferences, which include the participation of top leaders and experts.

This unique upper-echelon networking takes place under the direction of BPI founder and CEO, Louis Carter, author of the best-selling best practices book series published by John Wiley and Sons. Throughout the year, Carter and BPI staff provide consultation to SEB members and their top teams, including customized research through BPI’s “Benchmark-It” process.

Senior Executive Board membership also includes full access to BPI online features for all employees throughout one’s corporation.