Increasing productivity in the workplace is another way of saying working smarter. Whether you implement new technology, reorganize your workspace, manage your time more effectively, or employ other strategies, you should always be looking for ways to improve and become more efficient. These courses introduce a wide variety of approaches for increasing productivity enabling you to work smarter.
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| Aligning Goals and Priorities to Manage Time | In this course, participants will learn about aligning goals with one's employer's expectations, clarifying goals, and prioritizing the most important work. Participants will also learn how to ask questions to clarify goals, and how to establish and schedule priorities based on these goals. | 25 minutes |
| Beyond Change: Working with Agility | Organizational change and other roadblocks can be an unpleasant fact of life, but being nimble and graceful in everyday practice can make those roadblocks less daunting. This Impact Series product explores the importance of developing organizational agility and the effect it can have when organizational change does happen. | 6 minutes |
| Coping with Conflicting Priorities | Too little time, too many tasks, and everything needs your immediate attention. Sound familiar? This Challenge Series exercise explores the tools and skills needed to manage your time and cope with conflicting priorities. | 15 minutes |
| Coping with Information Overload | Advancements in communication technology have given us instant access to boundless information, but the gains in efficiency and productivity have come at a cost. This Business Impact explores the causes of information overload and explores some practical ways to cope with it. | 6 minutes |
| Email Management (Brain Bites) | In this course participants will learn goals of an email management strategy; bad email strategies; how to use the built-in email folders, and add their own; how to convert emails into calendar appointments or tasks; and how to use Flags, Stars, Mark Important, Categories, and Delegation in an effective email management strategy. | 23 minutes |
| Get it Done - Managing Emails | In this course participants will learn how to combine email best practices with the tools in Microsoft Outlook in order to effectively manage your email. | 49 minutes |
| Getting Time under Control | There are a limited number of hours in anyone's working day, so how can one manage time effectively? This Challenge Series exercise explores the symptoms of poor time management and looks at the techniques and tools that can be used to handle the problem. The learner plays the role of senior support engineer at a networking product company who needs to address some serious time-management issues. | 15 minutes |
| Make Meetings Work & Tackle Time Management Troubles | Participants will learn how to ensure the right people are in meetings; how to plan an agenda; and how to wrap up a meeting for success. | 29 minutes |
| Make the Time You Need: Get Organized | In this course participants will learn strategies for improving productivity depending on what type of time management personality one has; how to deal with time stealers; create manageable to-do lists; and maintain an organized time management approach. | 28 minutes |
| Managing for Operational Excellence | By achieving operational excellence, a company can not only drastically improve the quality and efficiency of its internal processes, but it can also gain a competitive advantage. But to attain operational excellence, one needs to understand how their organization’s existing processes work and create a plan to fundamentally enhance them. In this course, participants will learn about Lean tools they can use to improve operations management in their organization. They willl also explore strategies that can help make organizational operations more efficient and sustainable over the long term. | 21 minutes |
| Maximize Your Productivity by Managing Time and Tasks | In this course, participants will learn about how to use task management to maximize productivity. They will discover the benefits of using time management and assessing the value of their tasks. They will learn about benefits of setting goals and how productivity is tied to the ability to assess time and set priorities. And participants will also learn about the process of "chunking" time and how to use different types of to-do lists effectively. | 25 minutes |
| Online Meeting Etiquette | If online meetings are run professionally and smoothly they can be a great use of people's time and an essential part of collaborating. If they aren't, they waste everyone's time and can place critical projects in jeopardy. In this course, participants will learn the fundamental skills needed to succeed in online meetings. | 27 minutes |
| Organizing Your E-mail | In this course, participants will learn vital communication techniques for managing and writing emails effectively. The course covers email etiquette tips on how to use folders and filters to organize emails for increased efficiency, as well as guidelines on what emails to delete. Participants will also explore how to recover important information should one lose an email. | 28 minutes |
| Organize Your Physical and Digital Workspace | Organizing one’s physical and digital workspaces is a great way to be more productive. When one’s workspace is decluttered, one can improve many aspects of the workday, including the ability to concentrate, achieve targets, and become more efficient. This course will help increase productivity by showing how to organize and maintain both one’s physical and digital workspaces. | 27 minutes |
| Organizing Your Files (Brain Bites) | On average office workers spend one to two hours per day looking for information. Having an organized, searchable file and folder structure makes everyone more efficient –and this course will show you how to do it. Participants will learn common mistakes people make in naming their electronic files; the role of file names and folder structure in searching and browsing; recommendations on the best use of local, network, and cloud-based storage drives, and the pros and cons of saving to each; rules to help name files appropriately; rules to use folders effectively; how to use the search function on Windows PCs and Macs effectively; and how to customize the Quick Access list on a PC or the Favorites list on a Mac. | 29 minutes |
| Running Meetings in Better Directions | Course participants will learn how to kick-off meetings and how to ensure maximum participation and buy-in; what to do when meetings go off track, when to intervene, and how to deal with productivity problems; and how to close and follow up on a meeting. | 20 minutes |
| Setting and Managing Priorities | Prioritizing is an essential skill for any manager. This challenge considers methods for selecting and setting goals. | 15 minutes |
| Setting Goals | Goals provide a roadmap for performance and development, but setting goals requires consideration of more than one's own objectives. One must keep the company's mission and vision in mind. This Challenge product explores setting appropriate goals. During this exercise, the participant will play the role of a research analyst for a consumer and market research firm. | 15 minutes |
| Taking Charge of Your Workday | Participants viewing this class will learn how to accomplish more by analyzing time usage; create a personal action plan that takes advantage of our natural energy cycle; and create a priority plan that ensures important things get done along with the urgent. | 31 minutes |
| The Invisible Meeting | In this course, participants will learn effective techniques for making conference calls more productive and the “challenges” and the “virtual rules” that both participants and meeting organizers need to know. | 18 minutes |
| Time Management Basics | Participants will learn what are time management challenges; what is a good action plan for managing time; and time management strategies to manage time more effectively. | 94 minutes |
| When Too Many Meetings Are Just Too Much | While meetings are a necessary part of business, their frequency often becomes excessive. This Business Impact details the importance of ensuring that meetings are an effective use of the attendees' time. | 6 minutes |