Calendar of Events

Session Description: Typically social media has been seen as something to be handled strictly by the marketing or public relations/communications departments, but the reality is that social media is so pervasive in today’s society that human resources can no longer afford to turn a blind eye. In a world of constant connection, HR must become more forward-thinking and recognize the opportunity and power presented by social media, from social recruiting to employee development and engagement. However, with great power comes great responsibility and like anything, social media presents risks to an employer that may, at times, appear to outweigh the benefits. It is ultimately the responsibility of HR to draw a line in the social media sandbox. Make yourself aware of how to lock down any errant messaging and communicate proper practices to your employees to avoid the power of the negative tweet/post. Participate in this webinar to learn: • How HR can utilize social media; • How to manage the risks for your workforce; and • The essentials for developing policies that will minimize your liability. 30-second elevator speech about the program: Webinars by HRdownloads are developed to provide HR professionals not only a knowledgeable and engaging presentation to learn new concepts and understand industry best practices, but also to provide practical tools, templates and documents to help execute the concept into their organization. Learning Objectives (Participant Take-Aways): • Discover how HR can utilize social media • Learn how to manage the risks for your workforce • Essentials for policy development that will minimize employer liability • Downloadable Toolkit: Social Media Toolkit • Social Media Personal Use Policy • Corporate Social Media Policy

Session Description: Your professional career is all about continuous learning and development. While it is well known that networking is often fundamental to the career development and growth, it is also important to your current organization to branch out and expand your professional network. Why is it so important? Networking not only allows you to gain leads for new business, but it can also help you hire good employees, sell products, improve your business practices as well as accomplish any number of professional and organizational goals. In this webinar, we are going to provide you with information on the importance of building professional connections and relationships. We are also going to discuss the benefits that collaborating and sharing information can have, not only for you personally, but for your organization as a whole. This webinar will go into detail on how to begin the process of networking, including beneficial tools to help you effectively network, and tips to identify and utilize networking opportunities. We will also address the do’s and don’ts of networking, including specific examples of common pitfalls of networking, and the common mistakes HR professionals can make when attempting to network successfully. 30-second elevator speech about the program: Webinars by HRdownloads are developed to provide HR professionals not only a knowledgeable and engaging presentation to learn new concepts and understand industry best practices, but also to provide practical tools, templates and documents to help execute the concept into their organization. Learning Objectives (Participant Take-aways): • The relevance of building professional connections and relationships • How collaborating and sharing information can benefit social and business skills • Networking and HR – where to start and what to do • Downloadable Toolkit: Networking Toolkit • Do’s and Don’ts of Business Cards • How to Network: Tips for Professional Networking • Networking Policy

Session Description: Beginning at a new company, in a new position can be very stressful for employees. An employee’s impression of an organization is formed rapidly and the effects of the first three months may be lasting. Often organizations are so eager to have a new employee start in their role that they do not take the time and effort required to complete a full onboarding process. Organizations may feel that a standard orientation program is enough support and guidance for an employee to be successful, and that the costs of onboarding over traditional orientation programs may not be worthwhile. However, the cost of bringing in a new hire, regardless of the onboarding process is high. Furthermore retention rates can have a direct result on company costs and miss-hire can be expensive. In this webinar we are going to discuss the difference between orientation and onboarding, as well as the benefits that comprehensive onboarding programs have to the successful transition for employee. It will go into detail on how to integrate and expand your current orientation initiative into a full onboarding process, how these processes actually transitions your employees more quickly and effectively into their roles, and in turn, positively affect the overall retention rates of your organization. 30-second elevator speech about the program: Webinars by HRdownloads are developed to provide HR professionals not only a knowledgeable and engaging presentation to learn new concepts and understand industry best practices, but also to provide practical tools, templates and documents to help execute the concept into their organization. Learning Objectives (Participant Take-aways): • Best practice of transitioning orientation to onboarding for an optimal experience • The value of an onboarding program that aligns with their organization’s mission • How to use proven methods to engage employees and impart desired behaviour from the onset • Downloadable Toolkit: • Onboarding Policy • Onboarding Checklist • Pre-Start Letter

Session Description: Stress and wellness are two of the most talked about topics today in the business and HR worlds. In a recent study conducted by Sun Life, work-related stress was one of the topics most on employers’ minds. In fact, 75% of organizations were not confident that they had the tools necessary to support the mental health needs of their employees. However, studies have shown that stress and wellness programs are inextricably linked. Those companies that have instituted wellness programs have seen decreases in absenteeism, increases in productivity and fewer mental health claims. So what does that mean for HR professionals? Well, since it’s mostly up to us to ensure that there are enough qualified employees to complete job duties, we need to take action on this. How can we do this? By putting more time and resources into ensuring that employees have the appropriate outlets and supports for work-related stress. One way to do this is to convince our senior leadership to invest in a wellness program that entices employees to participate and garners positive results. HR needs to strive for a program that can be tailored to suit their employees’ needs and can show a measurable ROI. In this webinar, participants will learn how personal and work-related stressors can negatively impact an organization’s culture, productivity and morale. A workplace wellness program can help to reduce stress and may be the missing link between an organization that is getting by and one that thrives. 30-second elevator speech about the program: Webinars by HRdownloads are developed to provide HR professionals not only a knowledgeable and engaging presentation to learn new concepts and understand industry best practices, but also to provide practical tools, templates and documents to help execute the concept into their organization. Learning Objectives (Participant Takeaways): • Overview of stress, the dangers it poses and coping mechanisms; • Discovering the cost/benefits of promoting health through wellness programs; • Improve the physical, mental and emotional wellbeing of employees. • Downloadable Toolkit: Stress Management and Wellness Toolkit • Health and Wellness Policy • Health and Wellness Survey • Workplace Mental Health Assistance Policy

Session Description: Making the right hiring decision can be a tough one. The financial cost and organizational burden of making a bad hire wastes company resources and can also decrease employee morale. The first step in avoiding a bad hiring decision is knowing how to make a good one in the first place. An effective recruitment and selection process allows companies to eliminate the danger of a bad hire before they have a chance to cause serious damage to workplace productivity and the bottom line. However, there are times when a bad hire is made and the only thing to do is roll with the punches. When this happens there a number of things you can do to correct the situation. Join us for our webinar on the impact and prevention of bad hiring choices and learn: • Recruitment and selection tips and techniques for making good hires; • How to make sure that a candidate will fit your organization; and • How to manage and minimize the damage of a bad hire. 30-second elevator speech about the program: Webinars by HRdownloads are developed to provide HR professionals not only a knowledgeable and engaging presentation to learn new concepts and understand industry best practices, but also to provide practical tools, templates and documents to help execute the concept into their organization. Learning Objectives (Participant Take-aways): • Recruitment and selection tips and techniques for making good hires. • How to make sure that a candidate will fit your organization. • How to manage and minimize the damage of a bad hire. • Downloadable Toolkit: Bad Hiring Choices Toolkit • Recruitment and Selection Policy • Recruitment Checklist • Interviewing Best Practice Guide

Session Description: In order to build its story, HR must become a main game player in the development of organizational corporate strategies. To become a true partner in developing corporate strategies, HR professionals must develop metrics and analytics to determine the successes of their practices. How do you do this? You need to be able to obtain quantifiable data. Calculating HR efficiency, HR effectiveness and the costs to administer HR as a whole are all vital in solidifying strategic partnership. If an HR department really wants to know how well it is doing, it needs to determine workforce productivity. To quantifiably calculate its success, HR must analyze the cost of its inputs (looking at such things as employee salaries, benefits and HR department costs) and compare these to the output values of the department (i.e. production output value, revenue, profit, and return on investments). But what do you do with the data that is collected? It is essential to analyze, interpret and understand what you have measured. This webinar will look at various HR metrics, dashboards, scorecards and the importance of benchmarking. By calculating HR metrics, you will understand the importance of measuring HR. We will look at how you can take collected data and build your HR business case, thus making HR an essential partner in corporate strategy development. 30-second elevator speech about the program: Webinars by HRdownloads are developed to provide HR professionals not only a knowledgeable and engaging presentation to learn new concepts and understand industry best practices, but also to provide practical tools, templates and documents to help execute the concept into their organization. Learning Objectives (Participant Take-aways): • Integrating Data into business decision making and action • Learn how to create dashboards and scorecards • Taking data and building business cases • Downloadable Toolkit: HR Metrics Toolkit • Human Capital Guide • HR Metrics Template • Turnover Cost Calculator

Session Description: The consistent identification and effective management of problematic absenteeism is crucial to supporting strategic HR and corporate objectives. Failure to appropriately manage absenteeism has measurable costs, both direct (productivity and replacement) and indirect (morale and job satisfaction), which threaten the long-term sustainability of your organization. The ability to recognize trends in absenteeism and to successfully establish and administer a progressive attendance management program will serve to increase workplace morale and will establish reasonable and consistent expectations for legitimate and authorized absences. To arrive at acceptable standards, your organization will need to understand current and past practice, how each manager has handled attendance issues in the past and what the current rates of absenteeism are in your organization. This webinar will: • Offer methods to better identify attendance issues that may exist in your organization; • Provide reasons for why these issues arise; and • Offer techniques to address these issues. Learning Objectives: 1. The various reasons for absenteeism and workplace culprits 2. Developing an attendance management program 3. Recognizing trends in absenteeism and how to address attendance issues Downloadable Toolkit: 1. Attendance Improvement Plan Template 2. Attendance Policy 3. Company Absenteeism Rate Calculator

Session Description: Ending the employment relationship is always unpleasant but occasionally must be done. When making the hard decision to terminate it is important to comply with human rights legislation and to ensure that the employee is treated fairly and without discrimination. As terminations can be messy, expensive and create a negative impact on morale and company image, it is important to ensure that terminations are handled appropriately, consistently and in compliance with employment legislation. Terminations may occur for a variety of reasons, but all of which must be handled with care. Establishing basic HR practices and procedures and appropriately planning and preparing for termination meetings are essential to ensuring that the terminations are handled effectively and that negative consequences and repercussions are avoided or limited. One of the best ways to do this is to utilize a system of progressive discipline to validate termination decisions and manage employee reactions. Join us for our webinar on terminating mishandled terminations and learn: • How to properly approach terminations in your organization and the importance of preparation, including progressive discipline and documentation; • How to conduct successful terminations meetings; and • How to minimize negative organizational impact. Learning Objectives: 1. How to properly approach terminations in your organization and the importance of preparation, including progressive discipline and documentation; 2. How to conduct successful terminations meetings; and 3. How to minimize negative organizational impact. Downloadable Toolkit: 1. Termination of Employment Policy 2. Provincial Termination Guide 3. Termination Checklist

Session Description: One of the main challenges for human resources professionals over the past few years is changing the nature of the HR role from transactional to transformational. This webinar will review the differences between transactional and transformational HR and outline why HR should transform. Traditionally, HR departments have held an administrative position in organizations; ensuring that day-to-day HR tasks are accomplished efficiently. Although these regular, “transactional” tasks are crucial to the operations of any business, they are often conducted with little or no attention paid to how they impact the strategic direction of the organization as a whole. Transformational HR seeks to bring HR professionals past the functional, day-to-day aspects of HR so that they can become strategic partners in developing, implementing and executing organizational goals. By embracing a transformational HR approach, human resources professionals can strategically examine all HR components in order to maximize the value HR can bring to achieving organizational goals and objectives. Learning Objectives: 1. Review the differences between transactional and transformational HR 2. Why HR should transform, how to manage the transaction side while expanding the scope of HR 3. How to maintain and grow the role Downloadable Toolkit: 1. HR Budget Template 2. HR Metrics Template 3. Human Resources Business Planning Template

Session Description: What is Organizational Culture and why bother paying attention to it? Business leaders today know just how important it is to have a positive, strong organizational culture. Every organization wants to be better and achieve greater results. A thorough business strategy is the key to this but how do you ensure that your business strategy is successful? In order for a successful execution of your business strategy, the structure from within your organization, the roles of your employees, the capabilities of your company, the leadership strategies present, your people management systems and your organizational culture must all be aligned. Without a strong organizational culture, your business strategy will not succeed. Organizational culture is the system of shared values and beliefs about what is important within your organization. The values and beliefs of your organization is widely spread throughout and reflected in the daily practices of your company. In this webinar you will discover the importance of developing an organizational culture that encourages positivity and embraces change. We will look at why culture is so important and discover ways to evaluate your current culture. Looking to change your current culture? In this webinar we will look at ways to make changes to the current culture of your organization while mitigating negativity and sustaining a positive environment. Learning Objectives: 1. Why culture is important and its effect on engagement and performance 2. How to evaluate current culture, mitigating negativity and embracing change 3. How to change corporate culture and sustain a positive environment Downloadable Toolkit: 1. Assessing Organizational Culture Tool 2. Evaluating Organizational Culture: How Does Your Workplace Stack Up on Culture? 3. Changing Organizational Culture Checklist

Session Description: Have you ever been invited to attend a meeting after the planning has been done, or worse, simply been sent an email instructing you to put together a recruitment plan to support the strategy? Most HR professionals can say with confidence that at one point in their career they have watched from the sidelines, only to be included when it’s far too late to make an impact on organizational performance. Let’s face it, HR is rarely at the core of the business and is viewed by many as a cost-centre incapable of adding transformational value. Cost-centre or not, HR needs to begin thinking like a revenue centre, and it all begins by building an understanding of the organization and how it works, from the top down. Support for initiatives from higher up is vital to the reputation and effect that HR can have on an organization however, if you want to be viewed as a partner to senior level management you need to position yourself as a leader. To do this, HR needs to become more strategic, plan ahead and calculate its next steps. Join us in this webinar to learn how to transform your influence and approach to avoid the common mistakes that may be holding you back from gaining a seat at the infamous table. Learning Objectives: 1. Discover common mistakes that may be holding you back 2. Learn how to transform your influence and approach 3. How to maintain and grow the role Downloadable Toolkit: 1. Human Resources Business Planning Template 2. HR Metrics Template 3. Strategic Planning Checklist

Session Description: Dealing with conflict in the workplace is an inherent part of most HR roles. Even the most well run organization will have to deal with conflict on some level, at some point. Although it is something we all must face, dealing with conflict can be a difficult part of the role. Conflict exists everywhere, and can manifest itself in many different ways. Conflict can produce many different emotions which can include anger, anxiety, sadness and fear. Since each person deals with conflict differently, we as HR professionals must adapt our behaviour to ensure we are able to effectively mitigate the results of conflict in the workplace. In this webinar we will identify the different types of conflicts that can occur in an organization. You will learn how to turn conflicts into meaningful resolutions and how to lessen the fear of confrontation. We will explore how to determine the source of the conflict, before the situation escalates. As well, we will discuss how to deliver a complex message clearly and powerfully to either mitigate, or prevent, conflicts from occurring or escalating. Finally, we will touch on negotiation, and how to persuade difficult people to hear the messages you are trying to convey. This webinar will investigate the complex issue of conflict and provide tools and resources so that you, as an HR professional, can feel more prepared for the inevitable conflicts in your workplace. Learning Objectives: 1. How to identify conflicts and the sources of conflict before situations escalate 2. How to deliver complex messages clearly and powerfully 3. How to persuade difficult people and manage emotions Downloadable Toolkit: 1. Conflict Resolution Policy 2. Conflict Resolution Guide 3. Discussion Follow-Up Letter

Session Description: The longevity of an organization depends on how it is planning for the future. Ensuring that you are recruiting the best candidates, and developing your employees within your organization to eventually fill crucial roles within the company, is the key to successful succession planning. Through the succession planning process, you want to recruit superior employees, develop their knowledge, skills and abilities, and prepare them for advancements into more challenging roles. In order to successfully conduct succession planning, you will need to identify critical positions within the organization, classify future vacancies in those positions, recognize the employee’s best suited to fill those vacancies, and ensure the training and development of those potential candidates. The end goal of succession planning is to ultimately fill vacancies in fundamental positions with employees that are qualified, have met all training goals and expectations, and are fully prepared to succeed in the new position, thus ensuring the on-going success of your organization. In this webinar, you will discover the key initiatives and benefits of succession planning. We will provide you with tools to assess your current needs and forecast for future gaps within your organization. The webinar is designed to show you the importance of strategizing for tomorrow through your organizational practices today. Learning Objectives: 1. Assess current needs and forecast for future gaps 2. Develop successful talent management practices through training and development 3. Strategize for tomorrow by recruiting top employees, progressively developing skills and preparing for promotion Downloadable Toolkit: 1. Succession Planning Survey 2. Succession Planning Policy 3. Succession Planning Template