What’s New!

The ABC's of Learning Plan Development

MS Office 2003/2007 Skills Builder Program

How to Get Motivated

Tips of the Month

Upcoming Application Courses

Upcoming Technical Courses

The ABC's of Learning Plan Development

What's New!

By: Moe El-Husseini

When organizations invest in its people, it is truly investing in its own future. Ensuring that your people possess the necessary knowledge and skills to perform their jobs is critical to achieving the organization’s strategic goals.

But how do you do that?

Today, most organizations adopt a “first come first serve” approach to training. Those employees who are eager to develop their interpersonal and technical skills are the first to ask for the required training. Those who are not as proactive just miss their chance and the training budget doesn’t last long!
However, there are better ways to plan, manage, and measure your corporate training function. Here are some best practices:

• Ensure your HR department has a performance assessment and development program in place. The program would aim at measuring past performance, work on developing strengths as well as reducing weaknesses. By having such a program in place, individual, departmental, and corporate goals are better aligned. This partnership increases the chances of managing employee expectations and eventually unleashing their full potential.
• Connect a learning plan for each individual into the performance assessment and development program. The learning plan would help set achievable and meaningful learning goals. This means each individual gets the opportunity to complete appropriate learning activities and learning activities are tied to the organization’s values and strategic goals.
• Establish a learning evaluation process. For both in-house or external training, make sure you evaluate the outcomes of the training on many levels. What is the level of satisfaction of the employee out of the training? Was the training worthwhile? Did the training achieve the expected learning outcomes? Is the employee able to transfer the learning into his or her job? These are all important questions to ask even when the course is provided by external training providers and will certainly help with your future decisions in this regards.

In our next newsletter October Issue we are going to share with you templates for annual goals and learning plans.

MS Office 2003/2007 Skills Builder Program

Whether you need to improve your skills to become better at your job or to advance to another position, our MS Office Skills Builder Program will help you build a development plan to reach your goals for one low price.

Choose from:

Plans:
Four Course Builder – This plan is for clients who need to only develop a few skills in MS Office or need a course refresher. Choose any four courses and levels from the MS Office list to customize your learning plan.
Price: $595 – Save over 50% off our regular course prices!*
Six Course Builder – This plan is for clients who need a few more courses to reach their learning goal. Choose any six courses and levels from the list to customize your learning plan.
Price: $895 – Save over 50% off our regular course prices!*

Check out the www.neweratechnology.com/skillsbuilder

To learn more about this program or our other services, please contact us at:

*Some restrictions apply.

Tips of the Month

How to Get Motivated

By: Tyler Huggins

We all have something worthwhile that we may have wanted to get done for some time now, but for whatever reasons, have just never gotten around to.  Today’s tip covers three methods to motivate yourself to GET TO IT.  There are many more ways of course, and I will include those in future emails.

1. Post it where you’ll see it. Print out your goal in big letters. Make your goal just a few words long, like a mantra (like ”Eat Healthy”), and post it at home and work – walls, refrigerators, etc.  Put it on your computer desktop. You want to have big reminders about your goal, to keep your focus and keep your excitement going. Have your email send you reminders.  The power of visualization is huge, so post a picture to go with the reminders.
2. Start small. Really small. If you are having a hard time getting started, it may be because you’re thinking too big – break it down to mini goals. “Clean the office” should become “Deal with the paper work, sort other clutter, vacuum the floor, take out the garbage...” etc  Then target one task at a time.  You might even want to break down “deal with the paper work” into little parts, like “deal with last week’s paperwork, deal with this week’s paperwork...” etc.  This lets you get to it in small, unintimidating chunks.
3. Think about the benefits, not the difficulties. One common problem is that we think about how hard something is. Exercise sounds so hard! Just thinking about it makes you tired. But block that thought – throw it away!  The mind can only hold one thought at a time, so make a new positive thought, and use it to push the negative one out of the way.  For example, instead of thinking about how tiring exercise can be, focus on how good you’ll feel when you’re done, and how you’ll be healthier and slimmer over the long run (use the visualization trick). Really clearly dwelling on the benefits of something will help energize you.

Microsoft Office

By: Alex Siedule

In Excel:

If you ever find a situation where the # appears, it often means that a column is too narrow to fit the numbers entered into that particular column.

In order to fix this, place the mouse pointer on the right edge of the column that is too narrow and dbl-click the mouse. The column will automatically widen to fit the widest value.

Adobe Illustrator

By: Jane Pratico

Skip the New Document Dialog Box 
To create a new InDesign document without summoning the New Document Dialog Box, add the Opt/Alt key to the Cmd/Ctrl-N keyboard shortcut. The resulting new document will be based on whatever setting you last chose in the New Document dialog box’s Document Preset pop-up menu.

Have questions after class? Email our instructors at helpdesk@neweratechnology.com.

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