"Poppies Squared" by Anne Worner IS LICENSED UNDER CC BY-SA 2.0.

The year is hurtling along, and for many of us, the rush is on to year end. November can be a hectic month as businesses turn on the gas so they can get as much done as possible before the holidays. This kind of momentum can make it hard to find the time to keep up with learning, and that’s what makes an hour-long webinar such an effective tool. November offers plenty of great webinars to help you leverage your time and build your skills. We hope you can make time for a few!

Tuesday, November 3, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PST: Debunking the Myth: Creating Fun and Engaging Technical and Compliance eLearning

Wait, what? Engaging compliance training? Compliance and technical learning is traditionally seen as a laborious, boring, and painful process that learners must endure. But it doesn’t have to be!

It’s time to shift your learning strategy to focus less on the technical side and instead consider the learner’s perspective. Join us to discover tips, tricks, and strategies to make compliance training interesting and fun, including:

Locating “context-driven content” that adds usefulness to procedures, policies, software, guides, etc.
Shifting the style and delivery of content with trickles and snippets, cases, scenarios, and applications.
Utilizing your LMS to deliver timely, engaging eLearning content.
Case studies and examples of engaging technical and compliance programs from successful companies.

Tuesday, November 3, 2015, 11AM – 12PM PST: The Zen of Physician Engagement (Free for ATD members)

Companies spend about $20 billion a year on various forms of sales training. Yet many sales leaders report low return on investment from their sales training initiatives. So how can you ensure that your investment in sales training is producing great results?

Join us for this complimentary webcast as Norman Behar and Ray Makela of Sales Readiness Group discuss five essential factors that can help you achieve sustainable success from your investment in sales training programs.

You will learn to:

Motivate your team for training success.
Reinforce training to make new skills lasting habits.
Hold reps accountable for applying new skills.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015, 11AM – 12PM PST: Training Design Basics: The Platinum, Silver, and Bronze Approaches to Instructional Design (Free for ATD members)

One of the most basic design issues trainers need to consider when designing a course is how much effort to invest. Some instructional design assignments are for new, high-impact, high-visibility projects, while others are minor revisions to long-standing programs, and the level of instructional design effort needs to be adjusted accordingly. In this webcast—inspired by the all-new second edition of ATD's bestselling book Training Design Basics, author Saul Carliner introduces a three-tier framework and suggests how to adjust instructional design efforts to the needs of the assignment.

In this webcast, you’ll learn to:

Differentiate among platinum, silver, and bronze projects.
Adjust the effort planned for a project to the level needed by the class you’re teaching.

Thursday, November 5, 2015, 9AM – 10AM PST: Develop an Actionable Competency Model in Weeks! (Free for ATD members)

Think you don't have time to create competency models for the jobs you support? We'll show you an Agile methodology for getting them built in a way most likely to be embraced and made actionable.

Competency models provide a baseline that tells you what skill gaps exist and what development activities are needed. They intrinsically drive achievement motivation. They provide each person with a road map for how to be great. With the increased pace of change, fewer years of tenure in a job, employee desire for self-directed improvement and career development, and knowledge drain from retiring baby boomers, competency models are more necessary than ever to provide your organization or association with a competitive advantage.

In this webcast, you'll learn:

Steps to create the competency model, along with templates we’ll provide to help you do it.
How this process can help you protect the knowledge and best practices of those set to retire.
How to make your competency models actionable and strategic.

Thursday, November 5, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PST: Are Your Reps Ready? Insights for Better Sales Conversations

Today’s digitally educated buyers require more value from their interactions with sales. Are your reps ready? Not many are. In fact, studies show that nearly 9 out of 10 sales meetings fail to meet the expectations of executive buyers.

This online panel will share insights and ideas on the problem of sales readiness, its impact on sales productivity, and what companies can do to put reps in the best position for success.

Join Mike Kunkle, Sharon Little, and Walter Rogers to learn:

Why now more than ever, sales readiness is a critical issue for B2B sales organizations.
The common problems with sales onboarding, training, and coaching.
The critical role content plays in keeping reps effective and prepared.
What the future looks like for sales readiness and enablement technology.

Thursday, November 5, 2015, 11AM – 12PM PST: Conference Sneak Peek - Dancing with Change: Why Resist and What to Do About It (Free for members of The Institute)

Dancing with change is tough—especially when multiple changes are occurring simultaneously and everyone is responding differently. Keep your change initiatives on track through an easy way to make the complexities of your current changing environment simple with strategies to address the overall approach to change as well as tactics to address individual resistance behaviours.

In this session, we will discuss the four quadrants of a change framework—conservation, exploration, testing, and creative destruction—and the corresponding diverse reactions staff may have and what to do about them. Through these strategies, training professionals will be able to design and deliver more robust sessions that turn conversations about change from one of resistance and frustration to one of excitement and curiosity.

Learning outcomes:

Learn a four-step framework to assess where resistance could occur and why.
Identify corresponding behaviours of resistance to change and specific strategies to address them.
Practice non-threatening and accessible language to talk about reactions to change.
Discover how to include this framework in learning strategies and instructional design and delivery.

Friday, November 6, 2015, 9AM – 10AM PST: Leading Employee Development Conversations (Free for ATD members)

As managers, we are expected to hold career and professional development discussions with our employees, although many of us feel ill-equipped for these conversations. Are you unsure how or where to begin with your employees’ development? Do your employee development meetings produce the desired results?

This webcast, intended for managers and human resource and talent development professionals, will:

Identify steps to having a positive career and development discussion with your employees.
Identify the characteristics of an actionable individual development plan.
Explain how to lead successful development conversations, including addressing common challenges.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PST: Expanding Your Training's Value Through Coaching

This webcast will teach new methods of coaching that literally take no time whatsoever, so managers can apply coaching principles that support training initiatives.

In this webinar you will:

Be provided with design templates showing how to design tools that allow managers to facilitate coaching with their employees and make it easier.
Discuss the number one barrier to managers coaching and what to do about it.
Discuss the real reason managers won't coach and what to do about it.
Learn how to design coaching sessions that make it easy for managers to follow and apply after training,
and much, much more.

There’s no better ROI for training than manager buy-in and enthusiastic support. Don’t miss this chance to trumpet the value of training like never before.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PST: Today's HR: Modern to the Core

Everything you need to know about modern core HR service delivery.

Thursday, November 12, 2015, 11AM – 12PM PST: Action Learning for Federal Agencies—How to Make Action Learning Work for You (Free for ATD members)

Action learning is an innovative problem-solving methodology that promotes the use of reflective questioning and processes in addressing organizational problems while developing individual leadership competencies. By using action learning, agencies harness intellectual power in building integrated teams that put forth carefully conceived, practical action plans for real-time challenges. Action learning teams hone personal leadership skills and build an interconnected fabric of professionalism that enhances the performance and learning culture of the agency.

This webcast will feature three federal executives who have successfully used this tool in their organizations. Attendees will:

Understand the value of the use of action learning for organizational problem solving and personal development.
Identify potential organizational problems that may be addressed using action learning.
Hear from practicing federal executives who have had success utilizing action learning.
Recognize the value of action learning as a tool for organizational culture change.

Thursday, November 12, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PST: Give Them The Opportunity for Their Best Performance

Today’s performance management: less evaluation, more conversation.

Performance Management—every organization’s business performance depends on it. To that point, 88 percent of organizations have performance management in place but 70 percent believe the process drives no or little business value.

The issue—the traditional approach has focused on the evaluation process while today’s approach focuses on the conversations.

So is the new approach working? Does it really make a business difference? Our research says yes. For those who have replaced the “performance appraisal” with “performance conversations,” revenue and engagement increased, key performance indicators were achieved and voluntary turnover decreased.
In this session, you will:

Explore today’s performance management drivers, challenges, and philosophies.
Understand Brandon Hall Group’s proprietary framework for transforming performance management.
Learn the business value of adopting the new approach.
Hear DDI’s point of view on the value of “performance conversations.”
Gain insights around how to implement “performance conversations” and learn the organizational value it brings.

Monday, November 16, 2015, 7PM – 8PM PST: Compliance: Not Just a Training Challenge

Per Brandon Hall Group’s 2014 Compliance Survey, 90 percent of companies say it is important to be able to demonstrate learning compliance to an external agency. About half of those say it is critical to their business; however, there is no real consensus as to who owns compliance. Is it a training function or an HR function? How are Legal and Quality involved? Answers vary greatly across industries and may depend on an organization's own compliance challenges.

Join David Wentworth, Senior Learning Analyst at Brandon Hall Group, and Steve Young, General Manager of NetDimensions Asia Pacific, for a look at the role of compliance in high-consequence industries. We will review results of Brandon Hall Group’s 2014 Compliance Survey, global trends, challenges, and strategies.

Discussion topics include:

Strategic vs. transactional compliance.
Companies where compliance exists outside of training.
Business impact of compliance and non-compliance.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PST: Serious Games + Smart Implementation = Win!

Serious games have the potential to engage and motivate your learners... and to drive long-term retention of business-critical knowledge. But what does it take to make a game successful in your organization? Unfortunately, many game-based learning initiatives fail because they are not implemented or evaluated correctly. Fortunately, successful implementation starts with effective design.

This webinar explores how serious games can be linked to learning science to increase retention of product knowledge, policies, procedures, basic facts, and more. Then, the webinar presenters will explore four case studies from organizations that successfully implemented a serious game that drove business results. The commonalities from these "success stories" will be used to demonstrate seven actionable implementation tips that help make games more effective for learning.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015, 11AM – 12PM PST: Using DiSC as a Training Tool in the Workplace (Free for ATD members)

This webcast will provide an overview of the DiSC assessment tool and provide tips on how to implement DiSC in your organization.

Attendees will learn:

Improved communication skills using DiSC Assessment.
Learner impact from teams and organizations.
Tips for creating organizational buy-in.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015, 1PM – 2PM PST: Great Tips and Tricks for Captivate 8 and the All-New Captivate 9

Captivate 9 has just been released, and with it come a whole set of new features that will blow you away. In this session, Captivate master Joe Ganci will show you a mix of tips and tricks you can use in both prior Captivate versions along with those you should know in Captivate 9.

Why not learn how the Captivate masters get their work done faster and how they are able to get Captivate to do things that most folks can't? If you use Captivate, you don't want to miss this session.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PST: A New Way of Doing Business: Virtual Teams

Harvard Business Review estimates that by 2015, over 40 percent of the worldwide workforce will be virtual. Contrary to some well-publicized decisions to disallow working from home or remotely, the huge trend is to allow for, accommodate, and encourage working remotely.

Webinar participants will be able to teach the very real and quantifiable benefits of allowing people to work remotely, thereby increasing employee engagement. Participants will learn and apply the four key attributes to look for when hiring the right people for remote positions, thereby avoiding costly turnover and low productivity. In addition, we will cover the Top 10 Employee Engagement Drivers and how to maximize them for virtual workers.

We will cover the following key elements:

Cultivating a remote culture of freedom and autonomy.
Fostering great communication.
Establishing and maintain clear and complementary roles and responsibilities.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015, 11AM – 12PM PST: New Year, New Sales Training Approach: A Self-Assessment Guide to Your Sales Training in 2016 (Free for ATD members)

Sales training should be interactive, accessible, memorable, and measurable. We should look at training as not simply a New Year’s resolution, but as a continuous process with long-lasting results. The New Year is a built-in moment for sales teams to reflect on their training efforts: what worked, what didn’t, and what to push for in 2016.

In this interactive webcast, Inkling’s Jill Clark will walk you through this all-important reflection with a self-assessment guide so you can understand how to best improve your sales training moving forward. You will:

Go through a series of self-assessing questions to evaluate your current sales training.
Pinpoint where you need to improve your sales training programs.
Get valuable tips on how to achieve these changes for the New Year and beyond.

Thursday, November 19, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PST: Activities to Improve Your Positivity

Obviously, being productive makes you feel more positive. The opposite is also true: Being positive makes you more productive. Ample research evidence demonstrates this link.

Rather than ponder on the research, join Sivasailam Thiagarajan to rapidly explore a set of activities that increase your positivity, happiness, gratitude, mindfulness, strengths-focus, and optimism.

Thiagi will reveal how to practice evidence-based activities to improve your positivity.

Monday, November 23, 2015, 11AM – 12PM PST: Is Your Organization Tactical or Strategic? Developing Strategic Thinking Capabilities for Competitive Advantage (Free for ATD members)

Are your managers highly strategic, or are they constantly fighting fires and reacting to problems? Is strategy an annual two-day pilgrimage to an off-site meeting, the result of which sits in a binder collecting dust on a shelf, or does it drive everyone's daily activities? A study of 10,000 senior executives showed that the most important leadership behaviour critical to a company's success is strategic thinking.

But, according to research in Harvard Business Review, only 23 percent of executives are good at strategic thinking. With bad strategy being the cause of more than 80 percent of business failures, having a highly strategic organization can be the difference between continued success and bankruptcy. Just ask Circuit City, Borders, or Blockbuster Video.

This free webcast will provide the opportunity to ensure that your organization is developing the strategic capabilities necessary to thrive in today's highly competitive market. Learn how to:

Apply the three disciplines of strategic thinking framework to develop strategic mindsets and behaviour at all levels of your organization.
Facilitate strategy conversations across functional areas and levels to eliminate silos and foster greater collaboration and sharing of best practices.
Build a common understanding and language for strategy so managers at all levels are able to generate strategic insights that lead to new value.

Wednesday, November 25, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Talent Revolution – New Priorities for a Changing Workforce (Free for members of The Institute)

Today’s workplaces are changing and demands on managers have never been greater. Aging workforce demographics, technology, and a freelance economy are challenging traditional talent wisdom. However, they are also creating new opportunities for organizations that can see the bigger picture, if only there was time to stop and think about these critical issues.

This session presents the latest trends and challenges participants to take action as leaders in the talent revolution.

Learning Objectives:

How key macro trends are related to each other and affect your corporate and learning strategy.
New research from Canadian Enterprise consultations, including a CEO-focused white paper.
Strategies to gain support for new workforce-related learning programs within your organizations.