Wrong month? Check out our latest list of free L&D webinars.

“Brussels sprouts before roasting” by John Sullivan is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

We’ve never been so happy to see rain here in BC! The wet stuff was a refreshing relief after weeks of hazy smoke in the air — and a reminder to resume our fall routines. Not that anything is routine this year! It’s been a year full of surprises and challenges, and L&D professionals everywhere have had to respond quickly to changing demand. If you’re worried about keeping up, why not check out a free webinar? October’s crop of events is full of information and tips to stay productive, even in uncertain times.

Thursday, Oct. 1, 2020, 8 a.m.–9 a.m. PT: Top 20 Tips and Tricks to be Productive with Adobe Captivate
Tried and tested workflows, tips and shortcuts always come in handy when you want to be more productive. Join Dr. Pooja Jaisingh, Lead Elearning Evangelist, to learn about 20 of her favourite tips and tricks to create elearning courses using Adobe Captivate. These tips also include shortcuts and workarounds to make the elearning creation workflow simple for you, yet more effective for your learners. Be prepared to learn and also share some of your own tips and shortcuts with your fellow elearning professionals.

Friday, Oct. 2, 2020, 11 a.m.–12 p.m. PT: A Futurist's Guide to Complexity (Free for ATD members)
The pervasive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted how ill-prepared our organizations and leaders are for the increased systemic risk of our globally connected world. Conventional thinking suggests we simplify complexity, but that’s impossible and problematic. Approaching leadership through the lens of simplification flies in the face of research that points to complexity being a sign of maturity in natural systems. What if, instead of fearing complexity, we danced with it? Whether you are an adaptive, resilient or transformative leader, join Yvette Montero Salvatico, Principal of Kedge, LLC, to learn how you can leverage the tools of a futurist to develop a complex problem-solving mindset, a requirement for success in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2020, 9 a.m.–10 a.m. PT: Six Simple Elearning Success Strategies
As instructional designers, we know the difference between presenting information and providing learning experiences. But creating quality learning experiences that meet the challenge of being meaningful, memorable and motivational isn’t a job for the unprepared. If you study all the research, guidelines and methods promoted, you can become overwhelmed quickly and fall back to content presentations that usually achieve little. Happily, what you really need to do can be boiled down to a small number of sure-fire approaches that are guaranteed to work. In this session, Dr. Michael Allen, Chairman and CEO of Allen Interactions, will present six simplifying strategies to achieve powerful results, win greater support and make your work easier, all at the same time.

Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2020, 11 a.m.–12 p.m. PT: Emotional Intelligence: Connecting Training, Education and Medicine (Free for ATD members)
The growing problem of physician burnout is linked to low emotional intelligence (EI), depression, anxiety and poor performance outcomes. Research suggests burnout takes root in medical school, providing an opportunity to alter its course throughout training and education. Leveraging frameworks from the EQ-i 2.0 and a holistic lens to clinical education, learn how measuring and developing empathy, self-regard, and independence in osteopathic medical students can help predict and mitigate burnout. During this webinar, hosted by Gail Singer-Chang, Psy.D., MA, MS, PPS, Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at Western University of Health Sciences, and Natalie A. Nevins, D.O., MSHPE, Assistant Dean of Clinical Education at Western University of Health Sciences, you’ll learn how to:

Explore EI trends in osteopathic medical students and opportunities for structural changes to medical school curricula.
Identify EI risk factors linked to physician burnout.
Develop strategies to improve resiliency and increase physician autonomy.

Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2020, 9 a.m.–10 a.m. PT: Coaching to Successful Conflict
One of the major challenge’s organizations face in the workplace are people's ability to handle conflict. There are two sides of conflict when people are confronting one another: somebody who’s delivering the conflict and somebody who’s receiving it. During this webinar, Tim Hagen, Chief Coaching Officer at Progress Coaching, will teach specific coaching strategies to not only change the relationship people have with conflict, but ultimately view it as a successful part of the organization.

Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2020, 10 a.m.–11 a.m. PT: Getting the Right Digital Blend to Accelerate Your Organization’s Leadership Capacities (And More!)
Organizations are facing a rapidly increasing need to develop of higher order human-centred capabilities, and capacities like leadership and managerial abilities, interpersonal skills, problem solving, creative, and innovative aptitudes. The evidence points to the importance of a skillful blending of learning modalities to develop these higher order capabilities. MDA Leadership has been experimenting for a while now and they have a master blend to share.

Join David Wentworth, Principal Learning Analyst at Brandon Hall Group, and Erik Williams of MDA Leadership as they go over a playbook of best practices for blended learning that will take your organization into and through the uncertain present and future effectively. Organizations need to balance a learning design strategy that’s both bite-sized and relevant; individualized yet rooted in community and collaboration; asynchronous and synchronous while coherent and engaging.

Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2020, 11 a.m.–12 p.m. PT: Hiring and Retaining Top Talent
A high-performance sales culture is built strategically by building a high-performance team. At the core is building a sales talent pipeline that ultimately leads to building a strong team of A players who achieve revenue results — essentially, your company's competitive advantage. If you’re looking for a powerful strategic approach to sales talent that has powerful long-term impacts, you must invest in a sales talent pipeline, just as you would a sales revenue pipeline. In this webinar, you’ll hear Jamie Crosbie, Founder and CEO of ProActivate, talk of actionable steps on how to build a strategic sales talent plan to proactively protect and propel revenue.

Thursday, Oct. 8, 2020, 9 a.m.–10 a.m. PT: Learn How to Create a Multi-Module Branched Course Using Adobe Captivate
In this session, Kirsten Rourke, Elearning Production Manager, Instructional Designer and Certified Technical Trainer, will introduce two examples of branching content. She’ll cover a simple way to make basic branching and how to use Adobe Captivate's advanced features to create custom experiences. The webinar will also include course planning, resources and best practices for designing branching content with user-driven navigation.

Thursday, Oct. 8, 2020, 10 a.m.–11 a.m. PT: Learning: Your Secret Weapon to Skyrocketing Sales Performance
L&D programs can be a challenge for sales teams. Sales pros can’t be spending large amounts of time attending classes or taking courses, but they do need to always be informed on the latest product news and sales tips. Rethinking learning technology with an eye on sales enablement can help organizations develop agile, highly effective sales teams. Join David Wentworth, Principal Analyst with Brandon Hall Group, and Nick Thomas, Sales Enablement Manager at Docebo, as they examine how learning tech can deliver experiences tailored to sales professionals and designed for performance.

Thursday, Oct. 8, 2020, 11 a.m.–12 p.m. PT: How to Overcome the Eight Challenges of Virtual Selling
Are you ready for the new normal? Virtual selling — working a deal remotely when you can’t be there in person — is how to close B2B deals today. With business uncertainty at an all-time high, any vendor that’s not on board will get trounced by their competition. But being a great virtual salesperson doesn’t just mean long days of video-conference calls. It means moving from outdated sales and enablement tactics to a modern approach: robust tools, agile content and video technology that will help move a prospect through the pipeline, even when you can’t meet in person. Join Jake Miller, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Allego, and learn how to overcome the most common virtual selling challenges and stay ahead of your competition, long after the pandemic has run its course.

Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2020, 9 a.m.–10 a.m. PT: A Beginner’s Guide to Interactive Virtual Training
Ever tried to turn on someone else’s TV only to be stumped by their four remote controls? You know exactly what you want, but get slowed down by the technology. Virtual training can feel intimidating for someone who’s used to face-to-face settings. Becky Pike Pluth, President and CEO of The Bob Pike Group, is here to help you get a grip and gain confidence so your content can shine just as brightly online as it does in person. In this webinar, you’ll:

See how easy it is to use chat, whiteboards, polling, breakout rooms and games effectively.
Experience best practices and techniques as they’re modelled to you.
Tips to make your first or next virtual session more interactive (and easier for you).

Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2020, 9 a.m.–10 a.m. PT: Repurposing Your Training Presentations for Video, Print, PDFs, Online Access, Handouts, Checklists and Summaries
In this webinar, Ellen Finkelstein, President of Ellen Finkelstein Inc., will show you how to turn your presentation files into seven different assets: video, printed documents, PDFs, online training, handouts, checklists and summaries. You don’t have to create assets from scratch. Save time and give your trainees better access to the material, before, during and after the training. These tips are always useful, but especially valuable during the current pandemic, when so much training’s being done online.

Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2020, 11 a.m.–12 p.m. PT: Ask Better Questions to Build a Better Learning Ecosystem (Free for ATD members)
When it comes to evaluating the technologies that will comprise your learning ecosystem, a few guiding questions should be asked about your learning technologies. The right questions will be different for every organization, but during this session, eThink Education’s VP of Business Development & Strategy, Randy Jones, and Director of Customer Solutions, Jeremy Schweitzer, will identify some considerations that will help you assess your specific training needs so you can maximize your learning investment. You’ll explore how to develop an efficient technology checklist that will determine the gaps and strengths of your current systems and identify which tools can help address your particular goals and pain points to create an effective, well-rounded learning ecosystem.

Thursday, Oct. 15, 2020, 9 a.m.–10 a.m. PT: A Beginner's Guide to Learning Management and the LMS
Whether you are new to elearning or just new to tracking the data from learning, the mysterious and often awkward world of the Learning Management System (LMS) can seem daunting and impossible to navigate. Join Allen Partridge, Ph.D., Head of Evangelism at Adobe Digital Learning Solutions, for this gentle introduction to Learning Management concepts and uses. Dr. Partridge will give you a simple but comprehensive guide to Learning Management. He’ll explain the purpose of the technology and provide you with some basic guidelines to help you know what to expect as you start working to better understand how to get more information about the skills people in your organization are mastering.

Thursday, Oct. 15, 2020, 10 a.m.–11 a.m. PT: Everything Has Changed. Has Your Learning Strategy?
A decade’s worth of change has taken place in the past six months, radically changing how teams learn, train and collaborate — and the landscape will continue to shift in the year to come. As you plan your learning and enablement solutions for 2021, what are the major new challenges you need to account for and how will you ensure you have the right tools in place to achieve success? Join David Wentworth, Principal Learning Analyst at Brandon Hall Group, and Jake Miller, Sr., Product Marketing Manager at Allego, as they look discuss how and why the approach that may have worked before won’t work now, and look at examples of companies that have made the transition.

Thurday, Oct. 15, 2020, 12 p.m. – 1 p.m. PT: PPT Charts and Excel: Data Visualizations That Stand Out from the Crowd
Bar charts and pie charts have their place, but they only take you so far. In this webinar, Nolan Haims, Principal of Nolan Haims Creative, will show you the secret ins and outs of Microsoft Office to create unique and highly visual charts such as Proportional Shapes, Panel Charts, Bullet Graphs, Unit Charts and more in PowerPoint and Excel. You’ll learn best practices for data visualization, including direct labelling, limiting colour and removal of chart junk, as well as seven alternatives to pie charts that look and communicate better.

Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2020, 9 a.m.–10 a.m. PT: Six Ways to Avoid Making Training Videos That Suck
Almost overnight, video has become today’s go-to medium for everything from communication and knowledge sharing to delivering remote training. However, while working with video has traditionally been complex, expensive and time-consuming, recent advances have dramatically simplified the process of capturing, managing and sharing it. In this webinar, join Panopto’s Mark Lagemann to learn six ways you can easily enhance your videos today as well as a few things you may be doing “the old way” with video, and how updating your approach will enable you to maximize its value.

Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2020, 10 a.m.–11 a.m. PT: Upskilling in Times of Change
As a result of coronavirus, many organizations are looking to get more creative with their upskilling and learning experiences, but simply putting training online isn’t the answer. The most successful companies are delivering many options in the flow of work. Providing learning in the flow of work means personalization, performance support and more engaged employees which leads to improved productivity. But how do you deliver on these promises and what does that look like at a large organization? Join David Wentworth, Principal Learning Analyst at Brandon Hall Group, and Cristina Rivera, OD Manager at PepsiCo, as they explore strategies around bringing learning into the flow of work and showcase how PepsiCo is providing a modern, personalized learning experience.

Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2020, 11 a.m.–12 p.m. PT: How to Create a Referral Program that Gets Results
Want to find more leads with less competition? Your happy clients have the key — their referrals. Create a referral program for your business, then get your whole company using it. Referrals are one of the quickest ways to fill your pipeline and close faster than any other lead, but how do you reward people who refer you? Join prospect attraction authority and author Kendra Lee, President of KLA Group, and establish a successful referral program. You’ll leave with answers to questions that stop most businesses before they start.

Thursday, Oct. 22, 2020, 7 a.m.–8 a.m. PT: Learning Supplier Management: Controlling Rogue Spend
In times of rapid change and economic uncertainly, learning leaders are eager to control unmanaged spending anywhere they can. One area where financial pressure is being felt the hardest is uncontrolled and unmanaged rogue spending, also known as tail spending of frequent and low-value purchases. In this webinar, learn how to move your company quickly to reduce unmanaged rogue spending and increase ROI through supplier management strategic sourcing tools that optimize and manage economies of scale to drive rigorous quality and cost control.

Join David Wentworth, Principal Analyst at Brandon Hall Group; David Rivas, Learning Offering Director; and Bogdan Robu, Learning Offering Manager of Conduent Learning Services, as they discuss the spending control innovations and mechanics related to Supplier Management Strategic Sourcing tools. They’ll explore use cases in areas of contracting, vendor onboarding, bill payment and ordering.

Thursday, Oct. 22, 2020, 10 a.m.–11 a.m. PT: Is Certification Right for Me? (Free for ATD members)
With 2020 drawing to a close, you may have started to think about your future career goals. What type of position do you aspire to? How can you prepare yourself to achieve that goal? Certification may be the best way for you to chart a path forward. Join Holly Batts, Associate Director of ATD, and Susan Kaiden, APTD, Senior Project Manager of ATD, to hear more about the ATD Certification Institute's credentialing programs to learn if they’re right for you.

Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020, 11 a.m.–12 p.m. PT: How to Create Top Sales Coaches
The first step in creating top sales coaches is recognizing that most sales managers do not invest enough time coaching their salespeople. And worse, when they do coach their sales team, they often focus on short-term results rather than mid-to-long-term development. In this fast-paced webinar, sales development expert Mike Carroll, Founder and Managing Partner of Intelligent Conversations, will explore some of the common coaching mistakes he sees sales managers make. He’ll then share a time-tested coaching framework that will improve the rigour of your coaching conversations, while creating the focus and discipline required to drive organizational change across your sales team.

Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020, 11 a.m.–12 p.m. PT: Seven Essentials for Virtual Software Training (Free for ATD members)
Are you moving your on-site training to virtual classes? Do you provide hands-on software training? If so, there are seven essential things you need to know before you deliver your class online, including things to do before, during and after class. Joe Schulz, Training Evangelist at OrasiLabs, will describe best practices and provide templates to make your training relevant and effective. Learn from his experience so that your instructors are more efficient and your students are more satisfied.

Thursday, Oct. 29, 2020, 9 a.m.–10 a.m. PT: Conquering the Creatures of the Classroom
In this timely, humourous presentation, Lenn Millbower, President of Offbeat Training LLC and a 25-year Walt Disney World training veteran, shares his list of the ghastliest ghouls that trainers, facilitators and team leaders must confront, and offers his Disney-inspired strategies for preventing the mutilation of your message. These creature-killing techniques include the following:

Identifying disruptive dementors waiting to pounce during presentations.
Staging environments of maximum positivity to extinguish evil thoughts.
Turning scary stories into happy endings that melt monster hearts.
Harnessing interactivity to draw ghosts from the shadows into the light.

Thursday, Oct. 29, 2020, 10 a.m.–11 a.m. PT: A Missed Opportunity in DE&I strategies: Utilizing Your Talent Management Solution
With employees and consumers demanding more from the companies they work for, diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) must become a top priority for organizations across the globe. Those that do not implement proactive and meaningful DE&I policies risk damage to their reputation and loss of key talent, productivity and ultimately revenue.

Join Cornerstone and Claude Werder, SVP and Principal HCM Analyst for Brandon Hall Group, for an eye-opening discussion about how your talent management technology can help narrow the gap between the intent of inclusion and diversity, and the actual impact that initiatives are having now. You’ll leave the webinar with examples of how employers are leveraging their talent management technology to improve the impact of DE&I efforts.

Thursday, Oct. 29, 2020, 11 a.m.–12 p.m. PT: Behind the Sales Persona: Developing the Human Side
To be effective as a salesperson requires preparation, knowledge and skills. In today’s virtual environment, salespeople require these disciplines more than ever. Buyers have become more sophisticated and their expectations of salespeople have increased. Selling itself has become more competitive. A lot of things are changing, but not everything about sales has changed.

Salespeople are keenly aware that trust is the fuel that generates each transaction. It’s the role of salespeople to establish that foundation of trust with the customer. Four basic core attitudes, or postures, seem to be prevalent to varying degrees of successful salespeople. These four postures form the “cornerstones” upon which trust grows. During the webinar, David Yesford, SVP of Wilson Learning Worldwide, and Tom Roth, COO of Wilson Learning Worldwide, will: