Kickstarting Your Business with Crowdsourcing
Today’s fast-paced marketplace demands that businesses think fast. Crowdsourcing can help all types of businesses keep on top of trends and stay competitive. This one-day course will show you how to leverage all types of crowdsourcing (including microwork, macrowork, crowdvoting, crowdcontests, crowdwisdom, and crowdfunding) to kickstart your business’ growth.
Knowledge Management
Understanding how to manage the knowledge within your organization is the key to business success. Mismanagement of organizational knowledge comes with a price: frustrated employees, angry customers, and decreased productivity. All of these things can affect a business’ bottom line. The purpose behind knowledge management is to help us bridge organizational gaps and to use our greatest asset (our knowledge) to take our business performance to the next level.
The theory of knowledge management has emerged to help us harness and enhance both the individual and collective brain power of our businesses. This workshop will introduce participants to knowledge management tips, techniques, and proven processes.
Leadership Skills for Supervisors: Communication, Coaching, and Conflict
Supervisors represent an important force in the economy. You have the power to turn on or turn off the productivity of the people who report to you. You are the crucial interface between the employee on the shop floor or the service desk and the managers of the organization. Although you usually have more technical experience than the employees you supervise, you may not have had a lot of leadership experience. This one-day course will give you the skills in communication, coaching, and conflict that you need to be successful.
Lean Process Improvement
Lean principles have come a long way over the past 300 years. From Benjamin Franklin’s early ideas, to Henry Ford’s work in the 1920’s and the Toyoda precepts in the 1930’s, to Jeffery Liker’s publication of The Toyota Way in 2004, Lean processes have evolved from a simple concept to a set of widely used best practices.
This two-day course will give participants the foundation to begin implementing Lean process improvement tools in their workplace. The first day will explore the foundations of Lean through the Toyota precepts and the five critical improvement concepts (value, waste, variation, complexity, and continuous improvement). The second day will give participants tools to perform continuous improvement in their organization, including 5S, 5W-2H, PDSA, DMAIC, Kaizen, Genchi Genbutsu, and various Lean data mapping methods.
Logistics and Supply Chain Management
The supply chain is a crucial part of any business’ success. Optimizing the flow of products and services as they are planned, sourced, made, delivered, and returned can give your business an extra competitive edge.
This two-day course will introduce you to the basic concepts of supply chain management, including the basic flow, core models, supply chain drivers, key metrics, benchmarking techniques, and ideas for taking your supply chain to the next level.
Making Training Stick
We have all participated in training courses or workshops. Some of these have been helpful and useful in our everyday lives and others have seemed redundant and a waste of time. How often have we cheered or grumbled at being asked to participate in a training day?
The good news is that all training can be useful and applicable if the trainer keeps some simple tips in mind when developing and applying training. We all learn differently, but there are some truths about learning that can be applicable to most groups and can be tweaked to fit any training session.
Making Your Business Better
Starting and building a business begins with a great idea. At this moment, there are millions of ‘great ideas’ seeking attention and success. Some of those ‘great ideas’ may be very much like your own. To make your idea not only stand out, but to take root and grow a sustainable, successful business, you need the right team, tools, and expertise. This one-day course will highlight the essentials of business acumen, from relationship selling to and team building, through to planning and marketing, that will position your company to grow and thrive today and in the future.
Managing Across Cultures
Our culture defines many aspects of how we think, feel, and act. It can be challenging for managers to bridge cultural differences and bring employees together into a functioning team. This course will give supervisors and managers easy-to-use techniques for communicating across cultures, building teams, promoting multiculturalism in the organization, and leveraging the global talent pool.
Managing Customer Service
Managing Difficult Conversations
We have so many interactions in the run of a day, it’s reasonable to expect that some of them are going to be difficult. Whether these are conversations that you have in person, or you manage a virtual team and need to speak with someone in another city, there are things that you can do to make these conversations go smoothly. This one-day workshop will give you the tools to manage difficult conversations and get the best results possible out of them.
Managing Pressure and Maintaining Balance
When things are extremely busy at work and you have your hands full with many tasks and dealing with difficult people, having skills you can draw on are essential for peace of mind and growth. This one-day course will help participants understand the causes and costs of workplace pressure, the benefits of creating balance, and how to identify pressure points. They will also learn how to apply emotional intelligence, increase optimism and resilience, and develop strategies for getting ahead.
Managing The Virtual Workplace
Virtual workers and virtual teams are an essential part of today’s workforce. More than ever, people are using technology to work anywhere, anytime.
There are big benefits to today’s virtual workplace, but there can be big challenges, too. This one-day course will teach managers and supervisors how to prepare employees for the virtual workplace, create telework programs, build virtual teams, leverage technology, and overcome cultural barriers.
Marketing and Sales
A small marketing budget doesn’t mean you can’t meet your goals and business objectives. You just have to be more creative in your marketing tactics. This workshop will show you how to get maximum exposure at minimum cost. You will learn effective, low-cost, and non-cost strategies to improve sales, develop your company’s image, and build your bottom line.
Marketing for Small Businesses
Marketing is about getting your business known and building your position within the marketplace. Small businesses don`t always have a big budget for marketing, so they have to do things a little differently than big business in order to grow their presence, increase results, and meet business goals. This two-day workshop will help small business owners and managers develop their marketing message, create a marketing plan, and apply the right strategies.
Marketing with Social Media
Social media remains an evolving aspect of our daily lives in addition to being a part of our businesses. This two-day course is designed for people who have some familiarity with social media already. Participants will learn to develop a social media marketing plan as a part of their overall marketing strategy, determine who should be on their team, and choose how they will measure what is taking place. In addition, we will explore some of the major social media sites and look at how specialty sites and social media management tools can take their social media marketing to the next level.
Mastering The Interview
The interview is one of the key elements of the job search process. As with any skill, we can get better at it with preparation and practice. In this workshop, participants will explore how to prepare for an interview and become familiar with the types of questions to expect, as well as the questions they should think about asking. They will learn how to prepare for second interviews, testing, and shadowing, as well as how to follow up on their interview sessions.
Measuring Training Results
There are lots of good reasons to offer training, and even more reasons to participate and take training. But there is also an accountability element, where we ask ourselves:
- What was the value of that training?
- Did we meet the objectives that were set out?
- Did the training bring about some kind of lasting change in behavior?
Meeting Management: The Art of Making Meetings Work
Meetings come in all shapes and sizes, from the convention to a quick huddle in an office hallway. This one-day workshop will be concerned with small working meetings; with groups that have a job to do requiring the energy, commitment, and talents of those who participate.
Members of such a group want to get some kind of result out of their time together: solving problems, brainstorming, or simply sharing information. At its best, such a group knows what it is about, and knows and utilizes the strengths of individual members.
Motivation Training: Motivating Your Workforce and Team
It’s no secret that employees who feel they are valued and recognized for the work they do are more motivated, responsible, and productive. This one-day workshop will help supervisors and managers create a more dynamic, loyal, and energized workplace. It is designed specifically to help busy managers and supervisors understand what employees want, and to give them a starting point for creating champions.
Negotiating For Results
Negotiating is about resolving differences. People who can master the process of negotiation find they can save time and money, develop a higher degree of satisfaction with outcomes at home and at work, and earn greater respect in their communities when they understand how to negotiate well.
Negotiating is a fundamental fact of life. Whether you are working on a project or fulfilling support duties, this workshop will provide you with a basic comfort level to negotiate in any situation. This interactive workshop includes techniques to promote effective communication and gives you techniques for turning face-to-face confrontation into side-by-side problem solving.
Networking For Success
Business networking is an effective and efficient way for business people to connect, develop meaningful relationships, and grow their businesses. These achievements don’t come through a direct sales approach, however. They come from being interested in helping others, in listening, and in purposefully meeting and introducing people to one another. In this two-day course, participants will learn the essential ingredients for business networking, including in-person, people-centered connections and online spaces such as LinkedIn.
NLP Tools for Real Life
Neuro linguistic programming (NLP for short) is all about bringing your unconscious thoughts to the surface, so that you can have real choice over how you interact with and respond to the world.
Once you have a grasp on NLP's basic principles, you might be interested in learning about some tools that can help you do more with NLP. This one-day workshop will give you some hands-on experience with important NLP techniques, including anchoring, establishing congruency, developing rapport, creating outcomes, interpreting and presenting information efficiently, and even some self-hypnosis techniques.
To get the most out of this workshop, participants should first complete An Introduction to Neuro Linguistic Programming.
Onboarding: The Essential Rules for a Successful Onboarding Program
Did you know that most employees decide to leave a job within their first 18 months with an organization? When an employee does leave, it usually costs about three times their salary to replace them.
You can greatly increase the likelihood that a new employee will stay with you by implementing a well-designed onboarding program that will guide the employee through their first months with the company.
Orientation Handbook: Getting Employees Off to a Good Start
An effective human resource professional knows that managing employee performance is more than responding to problems, conducting performance reviews, or hiring staff. Performance management begins with an orientation to the organization and the job and continues on a daily basis as employees are trained and coached.
A thoughtful new employee orientation program, coupled with an employee handbook (or website) that communicates workplace policies, can reduce turnover and those reductions save your organization money. Whether your company has two employees or a thousand employees, don’t leave employee retention to chance. Engage them from the moment they are hired; give them what they need to feel welcome and let them impress you with what they bring to your company. This two-day workshop is just the start that you need!
Overcoming Objections to Nail the Sale
If you are like most sales professionals, you are always looking for ways to overcome customer objections and close the sale. This one-day course will help you to work through objectives effectively. We will help you plan and prepare for objections so that you can address customer concerns, reduce the number of objections you encounter, and improve your averages at
closing sales.
Performance Management: Managing Employee Performance
Personal Brand: Maximizing Personal Impact
Abigail Van Buren, the writer of Dear Abby, once said, “There are two kinds of people: those who come into a room with the attitude, ‘Here I am!’ and those who have the attitude, ‘There you are!’”
This course is a two-day exploration about the type of impact we want to have in life and work. Participants will consider and define the influence that they can have on their life and work. They will also learn skills for success and how to create those circumstances.
Planning for Workplace Safety
Beginning with the Organizational Safety Policy, the company’s Safety Plan shows that Senior Management takes the commitment to worker health and safety seriously. The safety plan provides a system of policies, procedures and practices to help prevent accidents/incidents, gives workers the knowledge to help them create a safe working environment and outlines a consistent methodology for the company’s approach to Health and Safety. It is one of the more important safety documents that a company can produce.
This workshop will give you the foundation to develop your Organizational Safety Plan and take the next step in building your safety culture.
Problem Solving & Decision Making
We make decisions and solve problems continually. We start making decisions before we even get out of bed (shall I get up now or not?). Sometimes, we will have made as many as 50 decisions by the time we leave for work. Despite all the natural decision making that goes on and the problem solving we do, some people are very uncomfortable with having to make decisions. You may know someone who has a hard time making decisions about what to eat, never mind the internal wrestling they go through in order to take on major decisions at work.
Likewise, we’ve probably all looked at a solution to something and said, “I could have thought of that.” The key to finding creative solutions is not just creativity, although that will certainly help. The answer rests in our ability to identify options, research them, and then put things together in a way that works. Having a process to work through can take the anxiety out of problem solving and make decisions easier. That’s what this two-day workshop is all about.
Process Improvement with Gap Analysis
Charles Kettering, an inventor for General Motors, once said, “A problem well-stated is half-solved.” The gap analysis tool can help you define problems and identify areas for process improvement in clear, specific, achievable terms. It can also help you define where you want to go and how you are going to get there.
This one-day course will give you the skills that you need to perform an effective gap analysis that will solve problems, improve processes, and take your project, department, or organization to the next level.
Project Management Fundamentals
Project management isn’t just for construction engineers and military logistics experts anymore. Today, in addition to the regular duties of your job, you are often expected to take on extra assignments, and to get that additional job done well, done under budget, and done on time.
This one-day workshop is not intended to take you from a supervisory or administrative position to that of a project manager. However, these topics will familiarize you with the most common terms and practices in terms of working on projects.
Project Management Training: Understanding Project Management
Project management isn’t just for construction engineers and military logistics experts anymore. Today, in addition to regular job duties, people are often expected to take on extra assignments and to get that additional job done well, done under budget, and done on time.
This workshop is not intended to take participants from a supervisory or administrative position to that of a project manager. However, these three days will familiarize them with the most common terms and the most current thinking about projects.
In this workshop, you will walk participants through the nuts and bolts of project management, from setting priorities to controlling expenses and reporting on the results. They may still have to cope with the unexpected, but they’ll be better prepared.
Project Management: All You Need to Know
Project management is no longer only for mega projects worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Small projects can benefit from project management tools. These time tested tools can help you to get that small project done well, done under budget, and done on time. This workshop is not intended for those looking to be certified as project managers but rather for those who complete projects at work from time to time.
In this course, you will gain experience using the most common project management execution tools from Project Tracking Forms, Risk Monitoring Tables to Communications Plans, Change Request Forms, Issues Logs and Lessons Learned Forms. Your small projects will be more successful than ever!
Project Planning: All You Need to Know
Project management is no longer only for mega projects worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Small projects can benefit from project management tools. Statements of Work, Work and Resource Breakdown Structures and Project Planning documents can help you to get that small project done well, under budget, and on time. This workshop is not intended for those looking to be certified as project managers but rather for those who complete projects at work from time to time.
In this course, we will gain experience using the most common project management planning tools and will completely plan a case study project from Statement of Work through Work and Resource Breakdown, Scheduling and end up with a completed Project Planning Worksheet. Your small projects will be more successful than ever!
Prospecting for Leads Like a Pro
Prospecting is one of the keys to your sales success. Keeping your pipeline full ensures that you will continue to attract new business, and so your success today is a result of the prospecting you did six months ago.
In this workshop, participants will become skilled at prospecting and learn the 80/20 rule. They will learn to target and how to target them, and commit to do some prospecting every day through warming up cold calls, following up on leads, or networking. Participants will also build their personal prospecting plan and learn how to ensure their future by planting seeds daily.
Public Relations Boot Camp
The field of public relations has changed with the evolution of computers and the speed with which information can spread. However, the need for public relations to be clear, concise, and accurate while being completely appropriate for the situation has not changed however. In this comprehensive course, learn how to determine the type of information required, to approach PR strategically, create compelling releases, and manage your media relations.
Public Speaking: Presentation Survival School
A great presenter has two notable qualities: appropriate skills and personal confidence. Confidence comes from knowing what you want to say and being comfortable with your communication skills. In this two-day workshop, participants will master the skills that will make them a better speaker and presenter.
Public Speaking: Speaking Under Pressure
This workshop has been designed for those in positions where they must speak in front of audiences that are hostile or demanding. This material is also suitable for those who are relatively new speakers who want some encouragement to speak up in meetings or who want some training before they begin making presentations on behalf of the organization.
Speaking under pressure, or thinking on your feet, means being able to quickly organize your thoughts and ideas, and then being able to convey them meaningfully to your audience to modify their attitudes or behaviour. It applies to formal speeches as well as everyday business situations.
It requires presence of mind, goal orientation, adaptation, and judgment. It also requires differentiating between oral and written communications.
This course is aimed at improving your skills and learning some new techniques which will give you the persuasive edge when you are making a presentation, fielding difficult questions, or presenting complex information.
Purchasing and Procurement Basics
Purchasing and procurement functions are about much more than bringing goods and services into an organization. They are the foundation of strong, collaborative relationships with suppliers. Since many companies source products from around the globe more frequently than ever, a procurement manager needs strong capabilities. These skills cannot just be learned on the job: they need to be taught. As well, the value of procurement is now recognized as an integral part of cost control within the organization.
In this course, you’ll learn the basics of procurement, including what a supply chain looks like, the purchasing cycle, essential tools and strategies for making the best purchasing relationships work, managing bids, and more.
Research Skills
In this age of information overload, it can be hard to know where to find good information that you can trust. If you’re doing research for an important project, report, or proposal, how do you find information that you can count on?
This one-day workshop will teach you how to research any topic using a number of different tools. We will start with basic techniques, such as reading, memory recall, note-taking, and planning. We will also talk about creating different kinds of outlines for different stages of your project, and how to move from the outline to actual writing, editing, and polishing. Most importantly, we will talk about how to use all kinds of sources, such as journals, print media, and reliable online sources.
After you complete this course, you’ll be ready to find reliable information on any topic, and turn that information into a compelling, accurate piece of writing.
Risk Management
Risk management has long been a key part of project management and it has also become an increasingly important part of organizational best practices. Corporations have realized that effective risk management can not only reduce the negative impact of crises; it can provide real benefits and cost savings.
The risk management framework provided in this workshop is flexible enough for any organization. You can apply it to a single project, a department, or use it as a basis for an enterprise-wide risk management program.
Safety in the Workplace
Workplace accidents and injuries cost corporations millions of dollars and thousands of hours lost every year. They also have a profound, often lifelong impact on workers. Introducing a safety culture into your organization, where safety is valued as an integral part of the business’s operation, not only saves the business time and money, it also builds a committed, loyal, healthy workforce. This one-day workshop will give participants the foundation to start building your safety culture.
Sales and Customer Service Training for Call Center Agents
Whether we choose to embrace them or cannot stand being interrupted by their calls, call centers are a business element that is here to stay. This course will help call center agents learn to make the most of their telephone-based work, including understanding the best ways to listen and be heard. Each phone interaction has elements of sales and customer service skills, which we will explore in detail throughout this energizing and practical three-day workshop.
Self Leadership
Self-leadership puts together taking responsibility for our outcomes, setting direction for our lives, and having tools to manage priorities. Self-leaders work at all levels of an organization. They are front-line workers in every possible role, middle managers, and CEOs. Self-leaders like Walt Disney and Wayne Gretzky worked hard to achieve their dreams without using the term self-leadership. However, they have clearly demonstrated that being in control of their behavior and results, focus, practice, and learning were necessary to achieve their goals.
Self-leadership requires a commitment from individuals to decide what they want from life and to do what’s necessary to get the results they want. This course will help participants internalize the four pillars of self-leadership and to make meaningful, empowered choices while taking action to get where they want to go.
Selling Smarter
It’s no secret that the sales industry continues to change and evolve rapidly. This is an exciting and dynamic profession, although it is often underrated and misunderstood. The back-slapping, high pressure, joke-telling sales person has disappeared. In his place is a new generation of sales professionals: highly trained and well groomed, with the characteristics of honesty, trustworthiness, and competence.
This one-day workshop will help you teach participants how to be one of those smart sales professionals.
Six Sigma: Entering the Dojo
Six Sigma is a set of qualitative and quantitative quality tools that can help a business improve their processes. The efficiency built into the business processes brings about improved profits, confidence and quality. Ultimately this effort is there to ensure customer satisfaction.
The term Six Sigma comes from statistics to indicate that the process outputs fall within three standard deviations from the center (expected value) giving a range of six standard deviations (or 6 sigma- 6 σ). As a result in terms of individual outputs it means you would have 3.4 defects per million items.
This course is designed to introduce students to basic concepts of Six Sigma particularly in continuous process improvement. Various quality tools used in process improvements will be explored as well as the importance of customer relationships. Courses in Lean, quality and teams will provide knowledge on the other aspects of how Six Sigma works. It is a predecessor to studies in Six Sigma Yellow, Green and Black Belt.
Skills for the Administrative Assistant
Work is not the only thing that matters in life, but most of us want to take pride in what we do. While we don’t have to like the people we work with, or report to, at the very least we should be able to interact positively with them. The biggest influence on our job satisfaction is our relationship with others.
Our work should not be a burden to us and our offices shouldn’t be battlefields. We are human beings working with other human beings. This two-day workshop is about working to the best of your abilities, and encouraging the best in those who work with you, or for you.
Social Selling for Small Businesses
Social selling isn’t just a fad or the latest approach to selling that businesses need to adopt. It’s a result of the massive integration of social media in how we conduct our lives. Sales professionals understand they can connect to and leverage these habits. This course is designed for entrepreneurs and sales professionals to learn how to function in that space.
In this one-day workshop, we’re going to explore how social selling is an essential requirement for sales teams, and how the relationships that are created and nurtured within social media will help you grow and sustain your business. We’ll also learn how to apply specific techniques to connect with your audience and potential fans in the social space.