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Choosing Professional Development Opportunities - Information For Staff
Do you want to build a certain skill or solve a specific problem? Are you a supervisor wishing to resolve departmental issues? The list of questions below addresses many issues Rutgers employees bring to our attention and can help you decide which learning opportunities may be most appropriate for you personally and/or for your department. All programming is available at no charge to the employee or to the department.
To learn more about a specific course listed, view our workshop page.
- My educational credentials are a bit weak. Is there a program aimed at building basic work skills available for operations, secretarial, and clerical employees?
- I’d like to look for a promotional opportunity, but I’m not sure how to present my experience and background. Is there anything to help me?
- I know that building good interpersonal relationships is important to getting along on the job. What courses can you recommend that would make me a stronger team member?
- My boss just promoted me and now I’ll be doing much of the writing she used to do. How can I tweak my skills?
- There are so many policies and procedures in our department, but many of them aren’t actually written down. We’re not always sure of the “right” way to do things and when someone leaves, he or she takes the knowledge of that job away.
- Our department provides quite a number of services for Rutgers employees and students. We’d like to do a better job of letting people know what we do. Any ideas?
- We’ve got so much work to do and have new projects; we’re quickly getting overwhelmed. Help!
- There are a number of different kinds of conflicts in my department. I’m not sure which program would address our issues.
- I supervise student and part-time employees. What courses can help me build my supervision skills?
My educational credentials are a bit weak. Is there a program aimed at building basic work skills available for operations, secretarial, and clerical employees?
You may find The Professional Work Skills Program of interest. This series of four two-hour workshops discusses building interpersonal skills, communication techniques, tips on providing quality service, conflict management tools. If you attend all four workshops, you will earn a Certificate of Completion, which may be a nice addition to your credentials. Because solid speaking and writing skills are also important, you may also wish to attend Power English: A Grammar Review and Business Writing with Impact.
I’d like to look for a promotional opportunity, but I’m not sure how to present my experience and background. Is there anything to help me ?
The Blueprint for Your Career workshop guides you through the many steps of seeking a new position including identifying your strengths and weaknesses, resume development, and writing a cover letter. Interviewing Skills for Candidates will help you tackle the interview process. Highly-qualified employees are good candidates for promotion. Taking the Improve Your Performance program will help you develop an action plan for improvement that will let you shine in your current and future positions. The Targeted Topic: Personal Goal Setting will assist you even further in reaching your professional objectives.
I know that building good interpersonal relationships is important to getting along on the job. What courses can help make me a stronger team member?
A great way to start building relationships is finding out more about you. The workshop Who are You? Discover Your True Colors will assist you in determining your preferences in communication and work styles. Building Terrific Teams will let you discover the benefits of team membership, traits the most effective teams and team members have, and ways to improve team communications and conflicts. To improve day-to-day interactions you have to give and get good information. Effective Communication Techniques enhances your skills in both of these areas and in using body language effectively in a multicultural environment. To handle delicate relationships, you may also be interested in attending the Dealing with Difficult Situations and People workshop that looks at how to handle touchy interactions in positive ways.
My boss just promoted me and now I’ll be doing much of the writing she used to do. How can I tweak my skills?
Good basics are the groundwork for all good writing. The classroom or online session in Power English: A Grammar Review offers intense drilling in basic grammar including parts of speech, sentence composition, and punctuation. You can further refine your skills with Business Writing with Impact. Further practice in making your writing dynamic is available through the short course Proofreading and Editing that provides a large number of hands-on exercises. If much of your writing will be in an electronic medium, Effective Email will provide tips for making your email professional and effective in soliciting action from readers. Writing and Design for the Web may also be of interest, if your writing will become part of your departmental website information.
There are so many policies and procedures in our department, but many of them aren’t actually written down. We’re not always sure of the “right” way to do things and when someone leaves, he or she takes the knowledge of that job away.
The workshop Managing the Knowledge in Your Department guides you step-by-step through a process for developing desk manuals for individual jobs. This is a great course to attend with others in your work unit so that everyone in the unit can participate in documenting work processes. Writing Policies and Procedures will assist you in determining which policies and procedures to document and how to write procedures that are clear and concise. Our Business Writing with Impact workshop provides a solid background to all writing activities.
Our department provides quite a number of services for Rutgers employees and students. We’d like to do a better job of letting people know what we do.
The workshop Marketing and Public Relations for Your Department guides you step-by-step through the development of a simple but comprehensive marketing plan to promote your services. Once you have your plan set, the course The Basics of Quality Design can assist you in creating dynamic publications that support departmental services and appeal to specific audiences. Our Writing and Design for the Web session can be an asset in making your web-based informational and marketing resources interesting and user friendly.
We’ve got so much work to do and have new projects; we’re quickly getting overwhelmed. Help!
Project Management Basics will introduce you to project management concepts as you discover tools that address project planning and help you introduce new initiatives into existing schedules. Daily workloads can be streamlined through the use of tools and techniques presented in the Managing Your Time and Multiple Priorities workshop. Clarifying legitimate goals, developing “to do” lists, and learning to prioritize will help you maximize scarce resources. To control building tension, you may also find the identification and coping strategies in the Coping with Stress course helpful.
There are a number of different kinds of conflicts in my department. I’m not sure which program would address our issues.
Our workshop Managing Conflict focuses on inter and intra-team conflicts that are the result of different approaches to work, varying perspectives and value systems, or different goals. This course helps you solve these kinds of conflicts with win-win solutions. The workshop Dealing with Difficult Situations and People focuses on managing “sticky situations” and positively handling difficult behaviors that are patterns and/or can be anticipated. If you want to be better at handling unexpected, one-time emotional outbursts, the course Handling Emotional Behavior will provide a model for dealing with behaviors from screaming to the “silent treatment”. Video examples are used to illustrate the correct way to calm someone and resolve issues positively.
I supervise student and part-time employees. What courses can help me build my supervision skills?
The workshop Supervising Student Staff focuses on ways to motivate and reward student staff, create educational opportunities, and develop effective communication among all staff. You may also be interested in attending Supervisory Leadership which addresses strategies for establishing yourself as an effective supervisor, exercising leadership, and using effective communication techniques in the workplace. Other more specific supervisory topics that may interest you are our two Team Building workshops, Scheduling and Assigning Work, Setting and Communicating Performance Standards, and The Millennials – Who Are They?
