Implementing the Workplace Skills Initiative

You have the knowledge to assess current work/life balance and overcome internal and external obstacles to achieving balance. You know where you are and where you want to be, but now what? How do you achieve and maintain that balance? How will it be affected by external factors and behaviors?

This course will focus on techniques for maintaining work/life balance. It includes recognizing the behaviors of passiveness, aggressiveness, and assertiveness and how those affect a person's ability to find balance in life. Techniques that can be used to achieve and preserve balance are also discussed. Materials designed to support blended learning activities aligned with this course are available from the Resources Page.

People who have no problem communicating clearly when they speak sometimes struggle to make themselves understood when they write. That's because the ability to write clearly and concisely is a skill that requires effort to master. Acquiring this skill gives you the tools to create effective business documents for readers who lack the time or the patience to search for essential information buried in long, rambling e-mails or reports.

Writing clearly also entails organizing content logically and appropriately for the subject and reader. Clear and concise sentences get you part of the way. But you need to organize these into coherent paragraphs that convey the relevant information in the most effective way.

This course describes ways to make your writing more clear. Specifically, it covers the importance of using short, familiar words, appropriate connotations, concrete and specific language, and transitional words and phrases. The course also discusses ways to be more concise and explains some best practices for organizing content logically and appropriately.  

Communicating effectively across cultures can be very difficult. Not only must you pay attention to the cultural distinctions of your audience and adjust your style to them, but you also need to adjust your style to different forms of communication.

This course offers guidelines and best practices for speaking and writing across cultures. The course also highlights the importance of keeping your audience's cultural expectations in mind when creating presentations and how to make your presentations effective in a variety of cross-cultural settings. Finally, the course provides a chance to practice communicating effectively through scenarios involving high- and low-context cultures.

Effective communication is essential to the success of any customer-oriented business. Each customer will have their own style of communication as well as an emotional response to contacting a support center. In order to effectively communicate, the Customer Service Representative (CSR) must understand how to adapt to these different styles and emotions before the customer's problems can be dealt with. This course explains how to adapt to the different communication types and identifies the common emotions that customers experience when contacting the support center. It also explains how to adapt your writing skills to communicate through e-mail and to document incidents. This course helps to prepare learners to work in a customer support center or help desk environment.

Today people rely more and more on mobile devices and 'one-way' communication tools that they often use under the guise of being 'social.' Although it's possible to learn to communicate interpersonally using only technology, it's not always the best or most efficient way to achieve your intended communication outcomes, which are most typically to inform, give feedback, or influence. Interpersonal communication is just that – personal. So the further you stray from communication methods that are rich in personal attributes (you can hear someone, see someone, use body language, interact with others) versus light in personal attributes (impersonal, one-way, static), the more apt you are to have a one-way, 'telling' type of communication. In this course, you'll learn how to select the best communication methods to convey your intention and target your audience. By doing so, you improve the odds of getting your message across, making your point, and leaving your audience feeling informed, enlightened, and engaged.

Oftentimes your success or failure depends not only on the situation you are in, but how you react to that situation. Your reaction to the situations you encounter is significantly influenced by your attitude. Having a positive attitude involves looking for the best in a situation, being realistic about possibilities and consequences, and having the courage to believe that you can succeed. It isn't always easy to be positive. You may feel that the odds are stacked against you, or you may find it hard to cope with the difficult and challenging situations that you find yourself in. Taking action to develop a positive attitude involves examining how you perceive your situation, and how you deal with your perception of the situation. This course will show you that it is possible to change your perspective from negative to positive, and provide you with skills for overcoming the challenges that you face at work. Being successful starts and ends with you, and having a positive attitude will help you achieve your desired success.

In 'Occupational Stress,' Stephen Palmer wrote 'Stress is the psychological, physiological and behavioral response by an individual when they perceive a lack of equilibrium between the demands placed upon them and their ability to meet those demands, which, over a period of time, leads to ill-health.' Are you constantly adding items to your to-do list and it seems like your list never shrinks? Are you feeling overwhelmed at work and at home? Are you afraid that stress is starting to negatively impact your health and relationships? Stress is produced by your own feelings and reactions to certain external events, rather than by the events themselves. And while you may not always be able to control the external events that are causing you stress, you can control your reactions to them and how you handle them.

This course will explain how the signs and symptoms of stress could be of physiological, behavioral, and psychological nature and where these stresses can come from. This course reviews strategies for coping with stress and avoiding burnout. The course also covers how you can positively change your responses to stress once you are able to recognize how you respond to stressful situations. Relaxation techniques such as breathing and mediation are also covered. Materials designed to support blended learning activities aligned with this course are available from the Resources Page.

Communicating persuasively is key when you want to get results in situations where you don't have direct authority. To communicate persuasively, it's important to think from the other person's perspective. How and what you ask, and the sincerity of your concern for addressing the other person's interests, will help smooth the way to getting the results you need.

This course presents strategies for communicating persuasively when you don't have direct authority. It also describes ways to remain persuasive even when you face resistance from the person you are addressing.

Effective speech delivery is crucial to public speaking, as it allows you to showcase your work and communicate with confidence. No matter how much time you've spent perfecting your message, no one will hear it if you are unable to engage your audience, handle on-the-spot challenges, and avoid being disrupted by nerves.

This course looks at the methods you can employ to deliver an effective speech, such as making a good first impression and building rapport with your audience. The course also provides effective techniques for handling challenges that may arise while you are delivering a speech, such as regaining an inattentive audience's focus and handling difficult questions or hecklers. Finally, this course introduces strategies you can use to overcome public speaking anxiety.

Clearly articulating a problem requires asking the right people the right questions. Having all that information will make finding the root cause easier than if you tried to solve the problem in isolation. Framing the problem accurately requires finding out who affects and is impacted by the problem. It also requires identifying the reason(s) the problem exists. In this course, you'll learn how to identify stakeholders and effectively elicit their input. You'll find out how the causes of problems can lie at different levels of the organization, and you'll learn techniques to uncover the root cause.

Understanding how to communicate effectively with senior executives is a valuable skill for any professional. How else will you pitch your great idea to your CEO or report on key successes or failures? What if you've got only a few minutes to get your message across? This course provides direction on how to carry out executive-level communications in both formal and informal settings. It also explores different communications media and how they might be used to convey your message to senior executives. Finally, the course recognizes the different reasons why you might communicate with the "C" Level. It offers specific guidance on furnishing reports, making proposals, and requesting additional resources.

With the trend toward telecommuting on the rise in many sectors, employees are faced with the growing challenges of working and communicating in virtual offices. Virtual offices can span countries and continents, and effective communication skills are not only important, but are the very key to telecommuters' success and their ability to move forward in their careers.

This course provides you with an understanding of the importance of communication skills when working as a telecommuter and also covers how career advancement can be achieved while working in a remote environment. You will be introduced to key strategies that should be used for communications. The course demonstrates methods of maintaining presence in the office when not physically there and also deals with why trust is especially important between telecommuters and their colleagues and managers. You will discover how applying the principles of effective listening can improve the way you communicate.

When you are dealing with workplace conflict, emotions get stirred up, and many people want conflict to 'go away.' But in most cases it won't go away on its own, so you need to choose a course of action. Sometimes it just means making peace with yourself or a situation. Other times, you may need to make trade-offs. If your choice is to deal with it straight on, you need a process. In this course, you'll learn how to work through conflicts smoothly by using a structured conflict resolution process. You'll also learn about techniques for getting the process back on track if difficulties arise.