"Office Hours" by Tanel Teemusk is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

It’s that time of year when summer starts to feel … finite. September brings new routines, perhaps even new resolutions for many. It’s a great time to take stock, assess knowledge gaps, and focus on new learning. Why not try one of the free one-hour webinars being offered this month?

Tuesday, September 5, 2017, 11AM – 12PM PT: Using Team Coaching to Maximize Performance (Free for ATD members)

As executive coaching develops into a mature practice, the transfer and use of coaching skills with entire teams is a necessary area of growth. What are the steps and ingredients of team coaching? What are the similarities and differences between team coaching and team building?

This webcast covers the theory, tools, and techniques for conducting team coaching. Participants will learn how to:

Determine when team coaching is beneficial
Develop basic and sustained team coaching approaches
Utilize the best tools and techniques for team coaching
Measure the results of team coaching

Take part in this webcast to dig deeper into the benefits and challenges of team coaching and how to make this practice an important part of your toolkit.

Wednesday, September 6, 2017, 9AM – 10AM PT: Simple Steps to Create Stunning Interactions in Adobe Captivate

The best way to beat the boredom in eLearning courses is to make them engaging and interactive. But adding learner interactivity in the courses can be time-consuming, and to some extent, challenging as well. These interactions also need to be relevant to the learning goals as well as help make the learning experience interesting.

During this session, you’ll learn simple ways to add interactivity to your eLearning courses using interactive objects, multi-state objects, drag-and-drops, effects, and actions in Adobe Captivate. You’ll also learn about the best practices to quickly convert drab and boring content to vibrant interactive eLearning.

Wednesday, September 6, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: Activating Talent to Drive Innovation and Performance

To get to that elite and most effective level of engagement, organizations must go beyond disconnected “engagement moments” to fully activate employees to business goals through a rich continuum of personalized experiences—from recruitment to onboarding, from skill and performance improvement to career transition and development—all enabled and enhanced by a technology infrastructure that reaches employees where and how they like to work.

In this webinar you’ll learn:

The key engagement gaps and the research-based strategies to reduce them
How HR organizations can lead in creating this personalized talent journey
How HCM technologies empower talent activation and deliver better business outcomes, such as faster time-to-productivity

Wednesday, September 6, 2017, 11AM – 12PM PT: The Skillsoft Effect: 3 Metrics and 3 Practices for Showing the Business Value of E-Learning (Free for ATD members)

Sometimes it feels like the hardest part of the e-learning journey is getting a talent project funded so you have the tools you need to help the workforce grow. Once you make the investment, how do you know that it’s paying off so you can continue your excellent work?

In this webcast, Laura Rexford, director of value engineering at Skillsoft, will share three practices that have helped clients around the world get and maintain funding for e-learning projects. Additionally, she will discuss three types of metrics recommended when telling the learning value story to stakeholders.

Participants will take away:

Three practices for getting and maintaining funding for e-learning projects and programs
Three types of metrics recommended when telling the e-learning value story to stakeholders
A value chain worksheet for connecting use cases to organizational goals to business impact

Thursday, September 7, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: HCM Excellence Awards 2017 Announcements

Join Brandon Hall Group executives as they announce the winners of the coveted 2017 HCM Excellence Awards in a live web event!

Learn the winners of the prestigious Excellence in HCM awards. Brandon Hall Group presenters will be Chief Operating Officer Rachel Cooke, the head of the awards program; Chief Executive Officer Mike Cooke, and VP/Research Operations and Principal HCM Analyst, Claude Werder.

Thursday, September 7, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: Increase Performance and Productivity with Emotional Connectedness (Free for ATD members)

The way to become a truly extraordinary company that is loved by your employees and attractive to candidates is by fostering employees’ emotional connectedness to your company. Presenter Louis Carter’s team at Best Practice Institute has proven that emotional connectedness is the strongest self-reported indicator of retention and productivity. The key to becoming loved is creating a culture of psychological safety, consistent positive messaging and communication, and effective group dynamics.

Join this webcast and to learn about this exciting new research. You’ll learn:

What the “best lists” don’t measure and why they need to change
What workplace connectedness is, and how it affects company outcomes such as attrition and productivity
How increasing positive interactions, endorsement, and focusing on future advice can shift thinking
Steps you can take to create a culture of psychological safety and emotional connectedness

Friday, September 8, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: Designing Learning with Canvas, a Tool to Facilitate Healthcare SME Jobs (Free for ATD members)

In this webcast you’ll learn Trahentem, an innovative tool for learning design in a healthcare context where we are asked to do more with less, better and faster.

The Trahentem Methodology for Learning Design Using Canvas is a learning-solutions design tool that uses three Canvas models to facilitate the process of diagnosis, the selection of knowledge and content, and the design of solutions focused on how people learn and how they perform.

After this webcast, participants will be able to:

Explain what Trahentem is, what it is used for, and how to use it
Define Canvas, distinguish the three models presented, and describe their application
Design learning solutions with the use of Trahentem, using handouts and instruction cards

Tuesday, September 12, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: Rock Solid Assessments Lead to Rock Solid Decisions

Most organizations use assessments as part of talent development initiatives, promotion, onboarding or recruitment. They also need to assess their employees as part of regulatory compliance and to ensure the health and safety of the workforce. The stakes of these assessments are substantial: decisions made based on the results can impact both the reputation and financial well-being of the organization, as well as life, limb, and livelihood.

Key learning points of this webinar will focus on:

The techniques and tools for ensuring valid, reliable, and defensible assessment results
The role of assessment as part of a credible compliance strategy
Assessing abilities in simulated and actual performance environments

Tuesday, September 12, 2017, 12PM – 1PM PT: Removing “Killers and Roadblocks” to Engaging and Useful Compliance Training

Both learners and trainers do compliance training because it is “legally” mandated. Sadly, what’s being missed is that this is supposed to be learning and training, not just adhering to compliance requirements.

What are the killers and roadblocks to a “true learning” outcome from compliance training? What do we do with them?

How do you quickly spot the fundamental killers and roadblocks to “true learning”?
How do you convert legalese and technical jargon into relatable content?
How do you make compliance training engaging and still comply with the completion checks?
How do you persuade your Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to help get rid of killers and roadblocks?

Wednesday, September 13, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: 3 LMS Features That Increase Engagement

Monday morning, the alarm goes off. Are you confident that your team members jump out of bed, ready to start the work week; or do they hit snooze, avoiding going to a job that does not excite them? If you suspect the latter, then you may have an issue with employee engagement.

Increasing employee engagement is a top priority for most organizations. Disengaged employees cause productivity loss which hurts morale and your bottom line. Adopting an open-source Learning Management System (LMS) like Moodle or Totara helps you manage your team’s learning and reduces the time you spend creating and maintaining the learning program. Investing in employee learning and training creates a culture of growth, fuels energy, and turns apathy into passion.

Wednesday, September 13, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: Best Practices for Developing Your Organization's Soft Skills

As the learning technology landscape continues to evolve and change, one key factor about delivering training stays constant—the course content. The slickest platform in the world won't be used if you don't deliver engaging and informative material to learners looking to develop soft skills and grow at your company. But organizations continue to struggle to figure out how to get the best content in front of increasingly dispersed learning audiences and develop learners when and where they need it. Pulling together a myriad of different technologies is only compounding the problem.

Best practices to be discussed will include:

LMS and other technology integration
Meeting the needs of a dispersed workforce
Content strategies for soft skills development

Wednesday, September 13, 2017, 12PM – 1PM PT: IDs Are Going Crazy for These Serious Learning Game Techniques

Everyone wants a learning game, but few stand ready with a big budget and game-creation wizards. We all want fun, engaging, skill-building games, and there are many types of game frameworks to employ, yet not all are appropriate to every type of content. This webinar has two parts:

Part 1 — Matching content with the right type of game.
Part 2 — Converting instructional objectives into serious learning games.

It helps those investing in learning games be sure they’re not just getting a game with minimal learning impact, and it helps instructional designers use the skills they already have to design meaningful, memorable, and motivational games.

Thursday, September 14, 2017, 8:30AM – 9:30AM PT: 5 Ways to Benchmark Your Programs with DataNow

In this webinar, you’ll see practical uses of how you can use Brandon Hall Group’s research to benchmark your companies’ human capital management programs.

Michael Rochelle, Chief Strategy Officer and Principal HCM Analyst, will show how you can benchmark using DataNow, and five ways to effectively present the data to your organization.

Now you can benchmark your programs and more confidently present results to management, or find data-driven ways to right your course.

Thursday, September 14, 2017, 9AM – 10AM PT: Informal Learning: How to Measure a Moving Target

Recent technology changes have created a generation of digital natives who are impatient, networked, and self-guided.

As a result, formal learning is giving way to informal learning as a method of choice. The needs of learners and the content to fill learning needs are ever in flux, making it difficult for learning leaders to throw a metaphorical dart and land on one set of content or one approach that will meet the needs of learners. It is still harder to measure the learning that occurs and determine whether it’s helping the organization achieve business goals.

The purpose of this webinar is twofold. First it will examine research that explains the pervasive changes occurring in the learning landscape driven primarily by new technology. Second it will share a framework for evaluating informal learning that focuses on defining content, determining the right time to measure learning, and using the right tool for each learning type.

Thursday, September 14, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: The Game Plan for Solving Sales Methodology Adoption (Free for ATD members)

New research provides powerful insight to finally solve the field-adoption problem. Elevate your sales-enablement efforts and drive greater rep performance with a new approach for sales process, training, and messaging. Cross-industry data and emerging academic research point to the importance of building greater rep situational adaptiveness. Your best reps intuitively understand this, but the trick is building an organizational capability around adaptiveness.

This webcast will explore:

The pitfalls of a one-size-fits-all approach to sales methodology
Ways to address the increasing complexity of today’s buyers and selling situations
How leading sales-enablement teams are helping their reps apply the right sales tactics in the right situations
What it takes to build an organization-wide capability for adapting to dynamic selling situations
Simple steps to create a more strategic sales enablement system that goes beyond “yet another program”

Thursday, September 14, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: The HCM Symphony: Blending Engagement, Recognition and Rewards, and Continuous Performance Management

Today’s high-performing organizations understand that culture and values impact business outcomes.

Join Daria Friedman, Principal Analyst for Talent Acquisition at Brandon Hall Group; Claude Werder, VP/Research Operations and HCM Principal Analyst at Brandon Hall Group; Anna Burke, Vice President, Marketing and Communications at HighGround; and Patrick Kelly, Program Manager, Talent Management from Patagonia, as they discuss how practices around performance management, employee engagement, and rewards and recognition can work in concert with each other through technology to strengthen organizational performance.

Topics will include:

Practices and trends in employee engagement, and recognition and rewards
Practices and trends in continuous performance management
How those practices can work in concert with each other through technology to drive optimal organizational health and help employees bring their best to work

Thursday, September 14, 2017, 11AM – 12PM PT: High-Persuasion Presentation Secrets

Persuasive presentations are the foundation of many sales teams. Yet most sales presentations are boring!

Ellen Finkelstein will show you how you can be persuasive without being salesy! Discover simple techniques that everyone can learn, based on solid research.

Discover the three reasons most persuasive presentations fail, and how to correct them
Learn the four-point method to choose the right image for your slides
Hear the frightening research that convinced a mock jury—and you'll never create sales presentations the same way again!

She’ll show you great before-and-after examples that you can use as models. You’ll hear how one financial adviser used these techniques to increase his conversion rate from 50 per cent to 70 per cent.

Friday, September 15, 2017, 9AM – 10AM PT: Emotionally Smart Healthcare (Free for ATD members)

Emotional intelligence is the link that connects healthcare providers to patients. It serves as the intra- and interpersonal skill that improves connection, quality, satisfaction, and patient outcomes. Communication, relationships, and patient experience demand high-quality, dynamic human interaction. Emotional intelligence allows leadership at all levels to optimize results.

This webcast will give participants:

A fundamental understanding of the impact of emotional intelligence on healthcare relationships and experiences
A dynamic, best-practice system for improving emotional intelligence throughout a healthcare climate and culture

Tuesday, September 19, 2017, 11AM – 12PM PT: Harness Neuroscience to Create a Productive Feedback Culture (Free for ATD members)

How we react to feedback is a matter of neuroscience. There is a chemical reason why we tend to remember bad experiences over good ones. It’s no wonder that workplace feedback is often demotivating. At the same time, it is well established that sharing more and better feedback can dramatically boost business performance.

So, how can you prime your organization to embrace a feedback culture and make it a competitive advantage? Join this webcast to find out.

Participants will learn:

The latest research findings on the critical elements for a feedback culture to exist and thrive
How to improve the quality and frequency of conversations among and across teams
Some key action items to help put continuous feedback into practice
Lessons learned and key business outcomes from organizations that have successfully created a feedback culture

Wednesday, September 20, 2017, 9AM – 10AM PT: Text to Speech and Custom Responsive Closed Captions in Adobe Captivate 2017

Join Dr. Allen Partridge for this workshop on using text-to-speech tools in Adobe Captivate 2017 to create computer-generated audio for your courses. Dr. Partridge will provide a step-by-step walk-through of the speech-generation process, and demonstrate several techniques for customizing the output. Learn to overcome mispronunciations, odd emphasis, and pronunciation problems with codes inside your slide-recording notes.

We’ll also provide an overview of the new customizable closed-captions workflow and configuration. You’ll learn how to create responsive closed captions for every project, how to position them anywhere on the screen, and how to provide them with your favorite colours and fonts.

Wednesday, September 20, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: The Impact of Digital Learning on Strategy

The wealth of social and collaborative tools allows companies to encourage the informal and on-the-job learning that was previously taking place by chance. These new tools add significant capability to engage and inform employees in ways that were not possible only a few years ago.

Join Max Meadow, Principal HCM Analyst with Brandon Hall Group, as he looks at the research and presents case studies of organizations going through the journey to a digital learning future.

Discussion topics include:

How social and collaborative tools are being used to improve existing learning
New forms of learning introduced with social and collaborative tools
How these tools impact the ability to build blended learning

Wednesday, September 20, 2017, 11AM – 12PM PT: 6 Disruptive Trends Redefining Virtual Learning (Free for ATD members)

New technology has drastically changed the way we learn, and employers are incorporating it frequently to more effectively engage their learners and reduce the time and costs of training. In the next 12 months, we’ll continue to see companies rapidly adopting new, innovative forms of learning.

Join this webcast to learn the top L&D trends to keep on your radar, including how:

Learning becomes a consumer-like user experience
Gamification crosses the chasm as a training technique
Millennials drive adoption of virtual onboarding

Discussion will be grounded in the implications for your organization today and shy away from pie-in-the-sky predictions that aren’t going to matter for your company in the foreseeable future.

Wednesday, September 20, 2017, 12PM – 1PM PT: Millennials on the Move: Preparing Emerging Leaders for Frontline Management

Organizations that have not developed retention plans for their millennial workforce are already experiencing the cost of churn as these workers leave their first jobs. Seeking continuous learning, as well as the opportunity to lead meaningful projects that make an impact in the world, millennials go where their skills are valued and developed. It can cost $25,000+ to replace a millennial employee, but the retention solution is right in front of any forward-thinking organization: develop the skills of your emerging leaders now and prepare them for increasing responsibility in their first management roles.

After this one-hour webinar, you’ll be able to:

Describe the leadership skills prized by emerging leaders
Harness the values of millennial workers in the service of your organization’s objectives
Ensure that your organization attracts and retains millennial talent
Develop emerging leadership skills in self-development, performance management, team performance, and organizational impact

Who should attend:

Leaders in talent management and leadership development
Directors in human resources, training & development, and organization development
Anyone who is responsible for attracting, retaining, and developing the skills of emerging leaders

Thursday, September 21, 2017, 9AM – 10AM PT: Building a Branching Scenario or Adventure Game in the Authoring Tool of Your Choice!

While the concept of a branching scenario is simple, its application can seem daunting. Joe Ganci will cut through the confusion and help you to see the simple steps to take to ensure you’ll be able to create your branching scenarios, and even adventure games, without breaking a sweat!

Joe's many years of experience will be at your service as he helps you to:

Determine the first absolutely crucial step to take first
Apply the output of the first step to your tool quickly
Test the results for bug-free experiences
Maintain and update the source files easily in the future

Whichever tool you use, even if it's just Microsoft PowerPoint, you can apply what you learn during this session to your design and your authoring tool. This will be a fun and informative session! Don't miss it!

Thursday, September 21, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: Ramping up Compliance Training in the Digital Age

Compliance remains a necessary, critical component of learning and needs to be addressed to the same degree companies are exploring new trends in leadership and skills development. A particular point of focus for many companies is on new technologies and services that help transitioning organization with complex compliance related challenges such as process requirements, information management and communication requirements. Yet despite having such a large, immediate impact on the business compliance content still remains outdated and outmoded in this fast-paced digital age.

Join David Wentworth, Principal Learning Analyst with Brandon Hall Group as he explores the results of BHG’s most recent compliance training research.

Discussion points will include:

The impact of compliance on the business
Strategic and transactional compliance
Modernizing content
New technologies and services that streamline compliance related challenges
Examples of how companies address challenges in the digital age

Thursday, September 21, 2017, 11AM – 12PM PT: Creating the Unstoppable Learning Enterprise (Free for ATD members)

Learning is now one of the most important processes in any business. Learning ensures that people’s capabilities match the work challenges, supports quick and fearless recognition of problems and opportunities, and fuels innovation. Learning is also part of what makes work engaging—and thus is vital for attracting and retaining talent. But mindsets, systems, structures, language, incentives, and skills haven’t evolved with the changing world. We need to rethink what it means to be a learning enterprise—and how to get there.

In this webcast, Pat McLagan will describe the concept of Learning 4.0 from her just-released book, Unstoppable You: Adopt the New Learning 4.0 Mindset and Change Your Life. Based on her decades of consulting and research, she will sketch the outline of the Learning 4.0 enterprise. And, she will help you explore what this means for your work as a learning professional and for the people and organizations you serve.

Monday, September 25, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: How to Choose the Right Credential (Free for ATD members)

Looking for a way to give your career a boost? Earning a credential can help solidify your work experience and knowledge into one package that defines who you are as a professional and where you want to go. As Elaine Biech, talent development professional and noted author, has said, “Certification is your ticket to success. It validates your competence, enhances your professional image, and opens doors you never thought possible.” Choosing the right credential is as important as choosing the field of study to match your talents and interests.

During this webcast, you’ll learn about the:

Importance of having a primary career goal
Difference between certifications and credentials
Pros and cons of pursuing a university degree versus an industry credential
Best ways to evaluate your options

This interactive webcast will discuss the various paths of credentialing and help you to sort out which one might be right for you. Be sure to submit a question for the presenters when you register.

Tuesday, September 26, 2017, 9AM – 10AM PT: 7 Questions to Ask Before Beginning Your Search for a Learning Partner

Before you begin a search for a learning partner, we have a list of seven questions to help you understand your internal environment and all the factors that affect the success of your learning program. Do you understand your learning culture? Have you defined your target audience and do you understand their needs? Has your organization defined your core competencies? You may have some homework to do before you make your list of criteria for your learning partner.

Each one of our seven questions could fill an hour-long webinar on its own, so this will be jam-packed!

Tuesday, September 26, 2017, 11AM – 12PM PT: Performance Management and the Employee Experience (Free for ATD members)

Traditional performance management approaches are broken—they are often not effective in today’s environment of restructurings, mergers, new technologies, shifting goals and resources, and new modes of thinking and working.

This webcast will answer the following key questions:

How can firms enable the alignment of personal and organizational goals—a major factor in employee fulfillment, performance, and retention?
What can organizations do to increase employee performance while at the same time increasing employee fulfillment?
What skills and developmental experiences are needed today to equip people to deal with stress in the wake of increasing work and nonwork demands with fewer resources? What role do managers need to play?
Should the approach to managing Millennial performance be different? If so, in what ways?

After participating in this webcast, participants will be able to:

Rethink their firm’s performance-management system in light of new challenges and workplace mandates
Align employee and organizational goals more effectively and holistically
Identify and align employee development to optimize both individual fulfillment and organizational performance
Counsel managers and coaches more effectively in managing performance, especially for a new generation of work and workers

Thursday, September 28, 2017, 9AM – 10AM PT: Finding Usability: What Creates Ease of Use in an LMS?

Usability and "ease of use" get tossed around pretty loosely in the software industry today. This webinar will take a look at a few key things that will help you weed through the marketing and get to just how usable an LMS really is.

Join Jesse Novak, who has been designing for 17 years, with five years spent working on usability for talent management software, to look at how this can be a critical decision-making factor for your success.

You can expect to emerge from this session with these takeaways:

An understanding of the basics of UX design and how it equates to ease of use
How ease of use applies to simple and complex issues
How to critically look at your LMS and see if it just looks easy or if it’s really easy
The who, how, and what of getting things done in your LMS
How this all leads to better engagement

Wednesday, September 27, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: Leadership Skills for the Future of Work (Free for ATD members)

The world of work is rapidly changing due to technology, globalization, and a new generation of workers. In this changing landscape, the ability to identify and develop capable leaders will be key to business success. However, companies are struggling to see what lies ahead and to help potential leaders develop the skills they will need.

This webcast will discuss:

What are soft skills, and which ones are in demand for future leaders?
Where can L&D leaders find corporate learning programs for leadership development?
How do you measure the return on investment of soft skills training?

Thursday, September 28, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: Up Is Not the Only Way: Rethinking Career Mobility (Free for ATD members)

Career mobility today is about flexibility and agility. It is a rich mix of experiences, roles, assignments, and options. Savvy careerists have come to appreciate the ability and willingness to explore multiple opportunities and experiences. To succeed in a rapidly changing environment, employees need to recognize when new opportunities for growth emerge and be ready with options when others fade or change.

After participating in this webcast, learners will be able to:

Apply six mobility options to their own careers and the careers of others
Learn updated research about talent mobility and how it applies to the massive middle
Apply the techniques learned during this session with a partner as a skill practice

Thursday, September 28, 2017, 12PM – 1PM PT: Create Dynamic & Effective eLearning with Three Visualization Techniques

This session looks at three ways to improve your slides visually and get away from Death by PowerPoint and click-through eLearning, so that your content can become more visual, using the right diagram to illustrate and bring your points to life. That means your audience start paying attention, and understand what you want to tell them, even when it’s pretty complicated. Which means that your training is more effective.

Design to Impress – principles from graphic design for better layout and more engaging content.
Visualization Process – a detailed process to transform text-heavy content into compelling visuals, looking at the key ideas, visual frameworks, and how animations can bring the story to life.
Interactive Visuals – how to create visual slides that encourage interactivity and get people actively participating.

There’s also a handy guide to help you create great visuals every time you need to. Plus, once you’ve got your visual ideas, you can also get a free PowerPoint toolkit to kick start your efforts and a series of PowerPoint tutorial videos to bring all your visuals to life.

Friday, September 29, 2017, 9AM – 10AM PT: How to Ask Great Questions (Free for ATD members)

Regardless of your role—as a chief learning officer, an instructional designer conducting a needs assessment, a trainer facilitating content in the classroom, an executive coach working with a leader, a manager supporting her team, or a performance consultant doing a front-end analysis—a critical skill is the ability to ask questions that open up insight.

Telling or lecturing someone rarely builds understanding. Asking wise questions can promote critical awareness and generate the understanding necessary for success. This webcast will look at a range of question roles and scenarios as well as provide examples of powerful questions.

By the end of this webcast, you’ll:

Learn how to use questions to move clients past order-filling requests
Improve your ability to identify questions that provide fresh insight
Identify questions that encourage clients to rethink their problems
Get lots of sample questions you can use right away for specific categories and challenges

Be sure to submit a question when you register for the webcast.