This course is designed for business owners and entrepreneurs who are ready to create a business plan. All the essential steps are covered, including drafting the original document; identifying the audience; gathering information; researching; describing product plans; and marketing, sales, and accounting terms. Students will come away from the course energized and prepared to write their business plan. This will help you know how to:

Regardless of the type of organisation you are running, your industry or your company size, at some point, your staff members are going to have to deal with confidential information. Knowing how to handle this information is a crucial part of running a successful organisation. In most cases, it is your human resources department that handles most of your confidential information, such as the contents of employee files.

In today’s fast-moving world, many managers and supervisors are expected to deal with some human resource issues. They may be asked to take part in developing job descriptions, take part in interviews, or take responsibility for discipline. This course will introduce those managers to human resource concepts. We will walk you through the hiring process, from performing a skills inventory to conducting the interview; discuss orientation; and cover some issues that arise after the hiring (such as diversity issues, compensation, and discipline).

This will help you know how to:

When we talk about influence and persuasion, we often talk about marketing and sales. However, we influence in many ways and with great frequency. If you want a raise, sometimes you need to persuade your boss. If you want to convince your team to adopt a change, help your staff make choices, or choose the best place for lunch, there is often influencing taking place. Learn how to influence and persuade in a variety of areas.

This will help you know how to:

No business can survive very long without an effective program of controls over the parts and materials that are used in producing or distributing goods and services of the firm. Like many other things that depend on human interpretation, “control” means different things to different individuals. This is an introductory course for you, the warehouse or stockroom manager, the person in charge of what comes in and goes out of your company. You want a smooth and cost-effective operation, with enough products on hand to satisfy needs without stockpiling too much.

Understanding how to manage the knowledge within your organization is the key to business success. Mismanagement of organizational knowledge comes with a price: frustrated employees, angry customers, and decreased productivity. All of these things can affect a business’ bottom line. The purpose behind knowledge management is to help us bridge organizational gaps and to use our greatest asset (our knowledge) to take our business performance to the next level.

Supervisors represent an important force in the economy. You have the power to turn on or turn off the productivity of the people who report to you. You are the crucial interface between the employee on the shop floor or the service desk and the managers of the organization. Although you usually have more technical experience than the employees you supervise, you may not have had a lot of leadership experience. This course will give you the skills in communication, coaching, and conflict that you need to be successful.

This will help you know how to:

Meetings are often viewed as an unfortunate reality of working life. While they are unavoidable, they do not need to be unpleasant. When carried out correctly, any type of meeting can be a valuable tool to motivate your team.

In particular, one-to-one meetings are a great way in which to ensure that all your team members feel more motivated and valued while at work. When held in conjunction with both company-wide and departmental meetings, you can be sure that your whole organisation is running well.

Lean principles have come a long way over the past 300 years. From Benjamin Franklin’s early ideas, to Henry Ford’s work in the 1920’s and the Toyoda precepts in the 1930’s, to Jeffery Liker’s publication of The Toyota Way in 2004, Lean processes have evolved from a simple concept to a set of widely used best practices. This course provides the foundation to begin implementing Lean process improvement tools in your workplace.

Business process management helps organizations leverage processes to achieve their goals and be successful. Once processes are implemented, they must be monitored, evaluated, and optimized to make sure they are still meeting the goals that they were designed to accomplish. A business that can successfully manage its processes is able to maintain a competitive edge, while increasing productivity and efficiency and decreasing costs. This course will introduce you to business process management.

Meetings are lifelines for any business as they help people to exchange ideas and information, solve problems, plan for growth and make decisions. Productive meetings are associated with a flow of energy that cannot be replicated in online communication such as emails. However, unplanned and unstructured meetings can be a waste of time and result in loss of valuable time and effort.

This course on Leading Team Meetings trains you to conduct meetings in a way that gets more done in shorter time spans.

The supply chain is a crucial part of any business’ success. Optimizing the flow of products and services as they are planned, sourced, made, delivered, and returned can give your business an extra competitive edge. Logistics and Supply Chain Management will introduce you to the basic concepts of supply chain management, including the basic flow, core models, supply chain drivers, key metrics, benchmarking techniques, and ideas for taking your supply chain to the next level.

This will help you know how to:

Productive meetings are those that produce some sort of meaningful change – in ideas, behaviours, decisions or actions. By looking at some key items when planning, preparing for, conducting and concluding meetings, you’ll be able to make the most of your meeting time and hold meetings that matter to all.

This course will be looking at how to create meetings that matter using the five P’s of productive meetings, it will then go on to discuss planning and preparing for, conducting and concluding meaningful meetings in turn.

As a manager or team leader, you have a seemingly endless number of tasks that you need to complete. In addition to keeping on top of your projects and budget, you also need to manage the individual members of your team. In fact, despite popular belief, learning how to work with your team members is the most important part of your job. A well-run team that works well together is happy at work and productive; aspects you can clearly see reflected in your bottom line.

Effective delegation is one of the most valuable skills you can master. It reduces your workload and develops employee skills. Delegating prepares employees who work for you to be able to handle your responsibilities and simultaneously allows you to advance to other career opportunities within your organization. Delegation is often one of the hardest skills for a manager to master. However, the skill can be learned. This will explore many of the facets of delegation, including when to delegate and whom to delegate to.