2520 Courses in Reading

This half day or whole day course is designed to support both novice and experienced trustees in providing effective governance within their organisations. It considers their roles and responsibilities in general before looking at particular areas in more detail. The half day course covers all the essential information; the whole day session includes specific exercises and case studies to develop the participants’ problem-solving skills.

Summary This half day course is designed to help managers and supervisors understand the causes of poor behaviour and look at different strategies for dealing with this. The course can be run as a one-off session or can be incorporated into a series of sessions on managing staff. Alternatively it could be increased to a day-long course with participant’s role playing different scenarios in the afternoon. For voluntary and community organisation participants the course could include dealing with difficult volunteers as well as paid staff.

In some organisations appraisals are seen as an annual chore that has to be undertaken and neither the manager nor the staff gain any real benefit from it. This half day course is designed to help managers appraise their staff effectively so that both parties develop more insight, motivation and a better understanding of each other. It will help participants work with their staff to create work plans that are effective and realistic. This course can be run as a one-off session or as part of a series of sessions on staff management.

This half day course is designed to help relatively inexperienced managers and supervisors to manage their staff effectively. The course can be run as a one-off session or can be incorporated into a series of sessions on managing staff. Alternatively it can be run as a day session and incorporate elements of the Managing the Difficult Staff member course. The course can concentrate on managing paid staff or (for voluntary and community sector organisations) can include aspects of supervising and supporting volunteers as well.

Often your recruitment and induction processes determine whether you retain your staff and volunteers. A poor induction often leads to a lack of productivity and motivation. This half day course is designed to help participants ensure that new staff receive a comprehensive and welcoming induction so that they can settle into their job or role quickly and with confidence. The course can be run as a one-off session or can be incorporated into a series of sessions on managing staff.

This half day course is designed to help managers and supervisors to develop or hone their interviewing skills and ensure that your organisation’s recruitment processes are rigorous but fair. It will cover how to develop an efficient recruitment process, how to read a CV or application form to ensure that you choose the right candidates for interview, how to organise and conduct the interview process and the follow-up procedures. It can be adapted to cover the needs of organisations, statutory agencies or small businesses. Although scheduled as a half day course, it can be extended to cover a whole day to include some role play interviews.

A half day course for those who find themselves taking and presenting minutes for different kinds of meetings. The session will provide practical tips on how to write minutes that are clear and more concise and how to save time during the minute-taking process. It will be a useful session for both novice and experienced minute takers.

This course, which can be run as a half day (3.5 hours) or a whole day course, is designed to help those who chair or participate in meetings to understand how to run effective meetings that are constructive, concise and actually achieve something! The course can be adapted to cover meetings in general or focus on specific types of meetings such as trustee, director or committee meetings, staff or project meetings.

This half day course looks at practical methods of saving time and prioritising work so that participants are more productive. It considers a wide range of strategies to overcome some of the physical and mental barriers for those working in an office or home environment.

This half day course is designed to help staff working in statutory agencies, and local representatives, understand the role of Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), how the management of European funding for Social Inclusion is changing and requiring more partnership working, and the opportunities and issues that arise in working in partnership with the VCS.