Tag Archives: Chief Administrative Officer

3-Day Certified Client Services Specialist (CCSS©) Designation Bootcamp

The Certified Client Service Specialist (CCSS©) program offers participants  the tools, techniques, and effective customer service skills required in today’s demanding work environment. Whether you work in private, public, or not-for-profit organization you will take away up to date information needed to succeed in the work place. Our world class certified facilitators with their engaging delivery style and relevant up to date content have delivered to hundreds of participants globally.

Our programs are certified and accredited by Canadian Council of Professional Certification (CCPC Global) to ensure quality, content, and engaging delivery.

Completion of our certification process confers the right to use the title Certified Client Service Specialist and the right to use the initials CCSS© after one’s name.

This 3-course program offers the right blend of knowledge and skills to become an expert in all aspects of customer service delivery – everything from professionalism to customer service, to sales, handling difficult customers, and more. Upon completion of the program, you will be able to build a solid foundation for your career and gain and industry specific credential that is recognized by major organizations.

Accredited Courses Required

1-Day Delivering Responsive Customer Service

This program is ideal for anyone who deals with customers and wants to provide a more customized or personalized experience for them. This training will provide you with the skills to not only handle a customer’s immediate requests, but also provide information and recommendations to build the customer’s relationships through providing valuable conversations.

1-Day Managing Difficult Clients and Situations

This program is ideal for anyone who deals with difficult clients in various challenging situations and wishes to remain in control. The program will lay out strategies for turning negative situations into opportunities for building lifelong relationships.

1-Day Conflict Resolution

Have you ever been in a conflict that you wished you could have handled better? We have all experienced the stress that comes from having unresolved conflicts with our co-workers. Conflicts that are ignored or resolved badly don’t go away – they cause people to feel resentful and to avoid each other. The effects on an organization are a loss of productivity, absenteeism and high turnover.

Join us February 26 – 28, 2019!

For more information, please click here

To Register, please click here

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2-Day Coaching for Performance Course

Most organizations would say that their company has a “coaching culture” and that the number one priority of its team leaders is to coach. However, studies show that number of centres where this is a reality is very low. It comes as no surprise that those centres which do have a real coaching culture have the lowest attrition, the most motivated staff and the best at satisfying the demands of their customers.

Staff job descriptions almost always include the fact that they do coaching. However, upon further probing, we consistently discover that the quality and quantity of coaching are inadequate for producing the results that would be expected from an effective coaching program.

Join us March 28th & 29th, 2019

For more information, please click here

To Register, please click here

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2-Day Leading with Excellence Course

In today’s dynamic workforce, there are a lot of demands on leaders and management teams. Their responsibilities include facilitating change management; reducing the negative effects of mergers, downsizing or rapid expansion. They also need to understand and motivate their staff and others in the organization. In other words, they need to lead their department and company with inspiring leadership skills and techniques.

This course will equip supervisors, team leaders, and managers with leadership skills that will strengthen their role as the critical link between strategic goals and tactical performance. Through this development program, supervisors will learn the skills necessary to lead their teams to success.

Join us on January 31st, 2019!

For more information, please click here (https://mycspn.com/blog/course/leading-with-excellence/)

To Register, please click here

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Complimentary Webinar – Employee Engagement Part 2

CSPN is pleased to provide this complimentary webinar on:  January 10 2019, at 2:00PM – 3:00PM

CSPN helps individuals and organizations achieve their business goals and set new standards through professional development, customized solutions and a powerful, expert network.

Our highly engaging and industry recognized customer service and leadership and designation training programs help individuals and organizations drive customer and employee engagement levels leading to personal achievement and business success.

Offering public workshops and customized on-site solutions, our team of customer service experts and dynamic facilitators work with you to identify your needs, address your challenges and guide you to out-shine your competition by delivering consistent world class customer service.

CSPN offers public workshops, call centre assessments and customized solutions throughout Canada, Southern Ontario, and in the GTA including Toronto, Mississauga and York Region. CSPN is a government approved Canada-Ontario Job Grant training provider.

For more information and/or to register, please click here

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Technology in Hiring Is Growing. Where Should You Invest?

At some point in time, technology has disrupted every industry including recruitment. With more touchpoints across a multitude of platforms, companies are using technology to build a compelling employer brand, support the candidate experience and analyze their hiring team’s success.

In fact, an HR Service Delivery Survey reported that technology plays a key role in hiring in 92 percent of large companies, 77 percent of medium companies and 54 percent of small organizations.

A few of the most popular platforms include:

  • Assessments. According to Harvard Business Review, 76 percent of organizations with more than 100 employees rely on assessment tools. These tools, like our Emergenetics Selection Program (ESP), test for a variety of workplace tendencies. Some of the most common are cognitive ability, work ethic, motivation and personality.
  • Video interviewing. Between 40 – 60 percent of companies use live or recorded video interviewing for hiring, which can improve the candidate experience by making it easier to interview. When candidates record interviews, it can save the hiring teams’ time by allowing them to review on their schedules, and it can save money, particularly if the company pays for candidate travel expenses.
  • Applicant tracking systems. There has been significant growth in applicant tracking systems with 26 percent of companies using them to assess hiring metrics and manage candidate recruiting, hiring and onboarding.
  • Social recruiting. Social media allows employers to showcase their brand and help HR teams find talent. Nearly 60 percent of employers have used social media to successfully hire candidates.
  • Resume screening technology. This technology reviews resumes for keywords deemed relevant to an open position. When a company receives a large number of applicants, resume screening can make a recruiter’s life much easier.
  • Mobile recruiting. 70 percent of people use their cell phones to look for jobs, so mobile job boards and applications are extremely important.

This list may cause an HR professional’s head to spin, especially when you consider that there are hundreds of providers for these technologies – and the list is growing.

Still, when incorporated properly, hiring technology can streamline and standardize the hiring process, reduce reliance on “gut” instincts, provide relevant statistics to demonstrate success and help hire the right people.

Technology isn’t going away, so the best thing to do is embrace it. The question is: How do you prioritize an ever-growing list of technologies?

These are our tips for recruiters and HR professionals:

1. Have a clear understanding of your goals and measurements.
To choose the right technologies for your needs, start by identifying objectives as an HR team and as a company. Once a team is clear on what they want to accomplish and how to evaluate success, they can determine which technologies will get them there – and identify a list of relevant requirements to assess the tools against.

2. Determine where you have hiring process breakdowns.
Figuring out where to begin can be difficult. Start by assessing issues in the existing hiring process. Does the difficulty lie in finding qualified candidates or in the application? Social recruiting could help in finding qualified candidates while a streamlined applicant tracking system may make sense in smoothing out the application process. Or, is the challenge in resume reviews or assessing soft skills? Resume screening can help tackle the candidate resume review process and a hiring tool like ESP can help in streamlining the review process and assessing soft skills.

Once problem areas are identified, it is easier for teams to prioritize technologies that address these concerns.

3. Learn what technologies can do.
How many of us have purchased a tool and used it for one thing – only to realize two years later that they have features that would have accomplish other goals as well? As an example, some of our clients think specifically about ESP as a hiring tool when in fact it can be used to support career pathing and onboarding in addition to assessing motivations, aptitudes and work ethic. Take the time to truly understand the tool, and stay current on its features and those of its competitors

4. Don’t forget the human element.
Remember that technology is part of the hiring process – not the whole process. Sometimes, when we meet with managers who are interested in our hiring assessment, they ask if ESP will give them a yes/no answer on a hiring decision. This is something we don’t offer, as we believe you need to be wary of using technology for a yes/no decision.

If you have a candidate with a 90 percent job fit versus one with 79 percent, you should interview both applicants to understand the differences between them. It may be that the 10 percent misalignment of your 90 percent job fit candidate relates to factors that would significantly impact the candidate’s success, while the 21 percent of misalignment for the other applicant is due to less problematic factors.

Tools like ESP can help you combine the benefits of technology with the human element. ESP highlights the areas of misalignment from candidates, so talent acquisition teams can pay particular attention to potential challenges for the new hire, tailoring interview questions and digging into the results of the assessment. Rather than make a yes/no decision based solely on ESP results, the results can be used to determine if these issues would have a material impact on job fit.

Always remember that technology is not a substitute for human interaction in the hiring process. It should be used to support human interaction.

When you consider these four factors, you will be well on your way to finding the right technologies to support your organization’s needs and integrating these programs so that your recruiting process runs smoothly, attracts the right candidates and helps you successfully hire them.

If, in the process of following steps 1 – 4, you have any questions about how ESP could support your company’s needs, please contact me at [email protected].

Kelly Fullerton
Director of ESP
Emergenetics International

 

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Free Webinar – Leading the Ins and Outs of Cognitive Diversity

Leading the Ins and Outs of Cognitive Diversity

Dec 6, 2018 @ 1:00 p.m.

I will help you explore how to build better teams and a positive workplace culture. Based on the principles of Emergenetics, you will learn to improve communication, connection, and performance through an enlightening process of self-awareness and discovery. Learn how the real magic happens when teams can be built synergistically, and team members can collaborate more effectively by “borrowing another person’s brain.”

This webinar address will include: •Reflective activities to connect concepts to personal cognitive strengths and team members cognitive strengths •Scientific background on how we work and establish neuro-pathways •Story-telling and activities to illustrate concepts.

Please REGISTER HERE for this  exclusive free opportunity!

I sincerely hope you will take full advantage of this invitation and informative experience! 

with thanks, Gail

  Gail Green

  Office: (905) 636.0797 
  Mobile: (416) 659.3623
  [email protected] 
  EmergeneticsOntario.com

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The Importance of Emergency Planning for Municipalities

The Importance of Emergency Planning for Municipalities

by  | October 25, 2018 | Emergency Management

The Importance of Emergency Planning for Municipalities

Does your municipality have an effective and well-planned out strategy to put in place in the event of an emergency or natural disaster?

Risks and threats to Canadians and Canada itself are becoming ever more complex due to the glut of natural hazards affecting our country, and the proliferation of transnational threats arising from the consequences of terrorism, international disease outbreaks, global climate change and cyber attacks. In the increasingly interconnected world of today, emergencies can quickly worsen in severity and scope, jump across jurisdictional lines, take on international proportions and result in catastrophic human and economic losses.

In order to better understand what we mean when we talk about an “Emergency” in the context of this article, we have provided some important definitions for you below:

  1. Emergency refers to an anticipated or real event, or an unpredicted mixture of circumstances which necessitate the prompt action or immediate coordination of action as mandated or renewed by the Lieutenant-Governor, a cabinet minister, or an emergency management council or committee.
  2. Emergency Management is the commonly used term for the processes and systems for mitigating, responding to, preparing for, and recovering from disasters and emergencies.
  3. Emergency Management Plan is a living and breathing document. It requires foresight and imagination to predict the risks a municipality faces, and to implement the countermeasures that will help mitigate the damage in these situations. It documents procedures, resources, people, communications and organizational structures required to alleviate the impact of an emergency.

Why is Planning for an Emergency Crucial for Every Municipality?

Emergency plans are crucial, not only for dealing with the aftermath of a disaster, but also to ensure business continuity during the crisis, and map out reconstruction and recovery effectively. Dealing with unexpected crises is a social process that necessitates broad public support for the spearheading of initiatives and participation by a wide range of first responders, experts and citizens. Furthermore, it needs to be tenable in the light of obstacles posed by climate change, population growth and wealth imbalances.

It can be said that, in essence, emergency planning is simply common sense. Yet the ever increasing complexity of disasters has necessitated a thorough professionalization of the field. This is most notable when we consider the increasing role of emergency response in information and communications technology. Disaster planning experts are also resource managers, and moving forward, they will need to deal with difficult and complex transfers of material and human resources.

In a globalized world that is accelerating physically, socially, and economically, the challenge of properly managing emergencies depends on proper planning and foresight, and the skills necessary to connect miscellaneous elements of the emergency response into cohesive strategies.

New bill clarifies roles and plans for municipal emergencies in Alberta

The Government of Alberta has introduced legislation to help define roles and responsibilities for decision-makers when disaster strikes. The proposed changes were tabled by Municipal Affairs Minister Shaye Anderson, and will include minimum emergency management training for individuals, more specifically, elected officials.

The changes are primarily response to a number of recent catastrophic events in Alberta, including the 2013 Calgary,  Alberta floods and the Fort McMurray, Alberta wildfire in 2016 that forced tens of thousands of people from their homes.

Under the new legislation, municipal officials would remain the final decision-makers during a natural disaster, providing the province has not declared a state of emergency. Perhaps most importantly, the bill will state that anyone who refuses to evacuate an area in an emergency must take responsibility and liability for their actions and may even be fined $10,000.

Transitional Solutions Inc. (TSI) is a consulting firm dedicated to assisting municipalities in transition.  With the organization’s more than 10 years of serving municipalities, combined with its team of senior-level consultants who have extensive experience in administration, governance, human resources, emergency management, engagement, and more, TSI has established themselves as a leader in working with municipalities of all sizes.

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The Extraordinary Coach Workshop

The Extraordinary Coach (1 Day Workshop)
Toronto – January 15, 2019

In The Extraordinary Coach Workshop, you will develop the essential coaching skills that are required to be a great leader. In addition, you will learn what extraordinary coaches do well and how you can maximize your leadership impact and inspire others to perform at their peak.

Leaders who coach and develop others have a huge impact on bottom-line results. In The Extraordinary Coach Workshop, you will develop the essential coaching skills that are required to be a great leader. In addition, you will learn what extraordinary coaches do well and how you can maximize your leadership impact and inspire others to perform at their peak.

This is a one-day, interactive, leadership learning, assessing, and planning experience led by Jim Clemmer in:

Toronto –January 15, 2019 – hosted at Centre for Health & Safety Innovation, Mississauga [Directions] [Hotel Suggestions]

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Register Now!  (don’t forget to use your muniSERV discount codes!)

Discount Code: MUNIS1 for 1 day ($150)

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Leadership Development & Coaching Skills Workshops

Toronto – January 14, 2019

Building Leadership Strengths

The Extraordinary Leader (1 Day Workshop)

In today’s rapidly changing, highly competitive environment, the organizations that excel in their respective markets will be those whose people are most competent, passionate, and focused on delivering results.

The Extraordinary Leader Workshop presents a proven framework for helping individuals make a profound difference in their organization’s results, and in their own performance and development.

This is a one-day, interactive, leadership learning, assessing, and planning experience led by Jim Clemmer in:

Toronto –January 14, 2019 – hosted at Centre for Health & Safety Innovation, Mississauga [Directions] [Hotel Suggestions]

See also The Extraordinary Coach (1 Day Workshop)  This workshop follows the Extraordinary Leader Workshop. Save when you register for both workshops!
Toronto – January 15, 2019 – hosted at Centre for Health & Safety Innovation, Mississauga [Directions] [Hotel Suggestions]

Register Now!  (don’t forget to use your muniSERV discount codes!) 

Discount Code: MUNIS1 for 1 day ($150) or MUNIS2 for 2 day ($250)

 

Check out these other complimentary resources!

 

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Mental Health Problems and the Workplace

October is Mental Health Month. Recently there has been bigger mindfulness of the impact of mental health problems on individuals and the workplace. The economic impact is realized through direct treatment costs to the health care system as well as indirect costs, such as reduced or lost productivity due to absenteeism.

Mental health problems account for about half of employee absences due to illness each year in Canada for example, 3.5 days lost per employee per year are due to mental health problems. It is estimated that mental illness results in 35 million lost workdays each year in Canada.’

Employees living with mental health problems may feel and behave out of character at home and work. There may be feelings of things not quite right, yet they are unable to pinpoint the problem. Their co-workers, supervisors and family members may start to notice a change in mood and behaviour.

 

 Signs that indicate an employee or colleague may have a mental health problem are:

·      Regular late arrivals or often absent

·      Lack of teamwork or an over-all disinterest in working with co-workers

·      Lower output

·      Increased mishaps or safety problems

·      Numerous complaints of exhaustion or unexplained pains

·      Difficulty focusing, not being decisive or forgetting things

·      Making apologies for missed deadlines or poor work

·      Decreased attention or involvement in one’s work

·      Working excessive overtime over a prolonged period

·      Expressions of outlandish or grand ideas

·      Displays of irritation or pointing the finger at others

 

It is important to highlight that people behaving in these ways may be just having a bad day or week or dealing with a difficult situation in their personal life that may be temporary. A pattern that continues for a more extended period, however, may point to an underlying mental health problem.

 

Stress is a consistent part of life and work, and it can be positive or negative. Unwarranted hurtful stress through life events, including workplace issues, can contribute to mental health problems. Work itself can be expected to generate a certain level of stress associated with meeting deadlines and expectations, the need to feel valued and the loss of control over one’s time.

 

There are many causes of workplace stress. One key to effective stress management is maintaining awareness of the potential stressors and readiness to address them before they become problematic. Some of the most critical sources of work-related stress are listed below.

·    Poor communication

·    Incongruity in work demands, individual ability and amount of control over working practices

·    Work overload and work underload

·    Shift work and/or night work

·    Segregation, isolation and/or unstructured support for home workers

·    Short-term contracts

·    Role conflict, uncertainty and changing roles

·    The uneven weight assigned by management to consultation, support and control

·    Lack of training for managers in communication and people skills

·    Idleness

·    Uncomfortable physical workspace

·    Introduction of new technology, if not planned and gradual

·    The culture of presenteeism, in which an employee feels the need to be seen working at all times

·    Work-life imbalance

·    Home-based stresses that support or feed off of work-based stresses

 

Managing workplace stress can include training for employees to raise awareness about the causes and effects of stress, as well as to learn skills for coping with stress at work and in their personal lives.

 

Research has shown that some job stressors are worse than others, such as jobs that continuously involve imposed deadlines over an extended period and give individuals little control over the day-to-day organization of their work (high demand/low control). These jobs can lead to more than double the rate of heart and cardiovascular problems. As well as significantly higher rates of anxiety, depression and fell of being undermined. High demand/low control jobs also lead to substantially higher alcohol, prescription and over-the-counter drug use, and a significantly higher susceptibility to infectious diseases.’

 

Jobs that require high physical or mental effort but offer little in the way of compensation, status, financial gain or career enhancement (high effort/low reward) also affect employee stress levels. These jobs are associated with triple the rate of cardiovascular problems and significantly higher rates of depression, anxiety and conflict-related problems

 

The health of workers does not have to be compromised by stress. Changes to the workplace can make for a more mentally healthy workplace, especially when employees feel adequately rewarded and have greater control of their work.

 

Mental health problems can seriously affect someone’s ability to work. If left untreated and the mental health problem worsens, the employee may need to stop working altogether.

 

On the other hand, employees may try to continue to work knowing that they are not performing to their usual standards. If mental health problems are acknowledged early, and proper treatment is obtained, most people can quickly return to their regular performance at work, and much unhappiness and suffering can be avoided.

 

Monika B. Jensen Ph.D
TEL: 905-683-9953

WEBSITE: www.aviarygroup.ca
PRINCIPAL
FAX: 905-683-9912

 

 

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