Online Management Courses
Employee & Family Resources offers supervisors and managers a series of online courses that teach leadership and management skills. With over 30 years providing quality solutions, EFR presents these online courses as an innovative way to continue supporting individual and organizational development.
All modules include pre-test, post-tests and skill practices to prepare you with the skills needed to deal with challenges facing businesses today. The online courses offer a convenient, flexible format for learning new skills. Although many trainings provided by EFR blend online courses with in-class sessions, you can enroll in these online programs asynchronously, that is, delivered online without a live classroom component. If your goal is to sharpen your leadership and management performance, the following courses, offered in conjunction with Vital Learning, offer quick access to a source of new knowledge that may help you accomplish this.
Available Courses
Essential Skills of Leadership (Length: 2 hours)
This course is designed to develop key leadership skills and help understand the difference between leadership and management. This course will help you learn how to:
- Maintain and Enhance Team Member Self-Esteem
Dealing with self-esteem issues of team members may be the single most important skill a manager or team leader can have. This skill focuses on the ability to provide direction, evaluate performance, correct work habits, deal with complaints, and resolve conflicts while supporting a team member's sense of self-respect and dignity. - Focus on Behavior
Problems on the job are solved more effectively and less stressfully when managers and team leaders deal with what people do rather than with their attitudes or personal characteristics. - Encourage Team Member Participation Involving team members in decision-making, problem solving, and other non-routine, on-the-job activities are one of the manager's or team leader's key motivational tools.
Essential Skills of Communicating (Length: 2 hours)
Communication is a critical leadership skill that all leaders must learn to do with efficacy. This course will help you learn to:
- Create a Climate of Open Communication
The bedrock of good communication is openness -- the extent to which the organization and its people support the free exchange of open, honest communication. Openness contributes more to a positive communication climate than any other factor. - Design Clear, Concise Messages Messages that are well designed are clear and concise. Managers and team leaders need to organize their thoughts and speak to each team member's level of understanding.
- Manage Nonverbal Behaviors Effectively Voice tone, intonation, facial expressions, gestures, and posture are some of the nonverbal factors that managers and team leaders must understand and learn to use for effective communication.
- Listen to Communicate Effective communication cannot take place without effective listening, which includes the ability to reflect, probe, support, and advise.
Coaching Skills (Length: 90 minutes)
Upon completion of this module, team leaders will have the skills to conduct a successful meeting with a team member on how to perform a job, task or skill. You will also learn how to distinguish between performance problems that require coaching and those that can best be handled by some other means.
Communicating Up (Length: 90 minutes)
Most managers and team leaders realize the importance of upward communication, but few accept the responsibility for the quality and effectiveness of communicating. In the course you will learn how to frame and deliver communication so that your message produces the intended results with your target audience.
Managing Complaints (Length: 90 minutes)
As the leaders on the front line, managers and team leaders are often the first to hear team member complaints. And though sometimes they may seem to be unimportant, each complaint should be addressed and resolved. This module shows how to resolve simple complaints and identify "hidden agendas" that often underlie chronic grievances.
Delegating (Length: 90 minutes)
This module gives valuable insights into and practice of the Three W's of effective delegation: When should team leaders delegate? Whom should they delegate to? What explanation should they give to team members? Delegating also shows how to use delegation as a motivational tool, and improve employees' skills.
Developing Performance Goals and Standards (Length: 90 minutes)
Unless your managers and team leaders are successful in spelling out the organization's specific goals, their employees don't know how to meet those objectives. This module shows trainees how to establish specific, measurable, attainable, result-oriented, and time-framed performance standards. The session illustrates steps to gain team member agreement and commitment to those performance standards.
Effective Discipline (Length: 90 minutes)
Most of us dislike having to discipline employees because feelings are easily hurt and resulting resentment can linger for a long time. The skills managers and team leaders learn in Effective Discipline can preserve team members' self respect and egos while changing unacceptable behavior. This process encourages self-discipline and motivates team members to accomplish organizational goals.
Improving Work Habits (Length: 90 minutes)
Absenteeism . . . Repeated tardiness . . . Conduct . . . Dress code. If you are faced with these or other work habit issues, this module will show them how to address these issues. Merely quoting company regulations to the noncompliant worker will not solve the problem. The truly effective team leader immediately addresses poor work habits in a supportive, non-threatening way.
Providing Performance Feedback (Length: 90 minutes)
This module shows the way evaluation is done by the experts. First, relevant performance standards are established. Then, the team member's own performance evaluation is solicited. This accomplished, the stage is set for a summary evaluation that will be clear and credible to the team member.
Resolving Conflicts (Length: 90 minutes)
The potential for conflict exists in all work situations. Whether it is a simple misunderstanding or a major confrontation, conflicts may reveal subtle, but pervasive, morale problems that threaten to tear the fabric of your organization. This module shows how to explore a conflict and resolve the problem.
Supporting Change (Length: 90 minutes)
As the link between management goals and the frontline labor force, the manager or team leader is critical to the change process. Dealing with the "comfort level" of team members and involving them in detailed discussions facilitates acceptance of new ways of doing business. This module shows managers and team leaders how to introduce change without inducing defensive reactions.
Accessing Online Courses
Here are the steps to access a course:
- Review course offerings and select a course that meets your interests and needs.
- Register for the course by clicking on the registration link under "Register" (see link below).
- Indicate if you would like to pay by check or credit card. You will receive a follow up contact from a Workplace Services staff member to facilitate your payment.
- You will then receive a username and password that provides access to the course for 365-day period.
Program Cost
Cost for each online course is $75.
No refunds are available once you have been given access to the course.
Register
To register for an online course, click here.
Contact Information
Justin Givan
Employee & Family Resources, Inc.505 Fifth Avenue Suite 930
Des Moines, IA 50309
| Phone: | 515-471-2300 | |
| Fax: | 515-244-2938 | |
| Email: | wpsonlinetrainings@efr.org |