Additional Programs and Services

In addition to our 2009 offerings, we have many programs available on a custom basis. We will be happy to work with you to schedule a unique offering of any seminar that fits your needs and schedule. If you need a special program not listed below, don’t hesitate to ask the Center for Professional Development. With access to hundreds of practitioners and faculty worldwide, the Center has experts to help you craft solutions to your challenges.

Outplacement / Career Transition Services

Layoffs are unfortunate events. Our Outplacement/Career Transition services will lessen the negative impact of a layoff by helping your workers transition to new employment smoothly and quickly. The Center for Professional Development, in conjunction with BAT Leadership Training, provides customized outplacement solutions for your organization. Our program features motivational meetings, a self-paced career transition workbook, and dedicated contact with a Career Transition Coach. You will benefit with a price that provides considerable cost savings when com pared to other outplacement services. Whether you are reducing your workforce by 10 or 1,000 employees or more, we can provide effective, af fordable outplacement services.

Customizable Outplacement

Our customized programs for executives, managerial, professional, production personnel and administrative staff are designed to support job seeking individuals as they transition to new careers. Unlike other outplacement or career transition programs that only address job search related issues, The Center for Professional Development and BAT Leadership Training address the needs of the whole individual. Our programs deal with the practical aspects of the job search, as well as the emotional issues that arise from losing a job, such as feelings of rejection, stress and financial uncertainty.

Our Philosophy

At the Center for Professional Development, we believe that we can best serve displaced employees by engaging them completely in the transition process and helping them understand that their situation is temporary. To accomplish this, we provide displaced employees with a step by step manual to help them focus on the process and provide them the support they need. We also provide bi-weekly motivational group sessions to encourage them on their journey. With each of our outplacement packages, a displaced employee communicates with a Career Transition Coach via e-mail, telephone, or in person. Communicating with jobseekers via telephone consultations and e-mail allows us to work with displaced employees across the United States, wherever you have offices. By utilizing this approach, our overhead costs and fees are lower than many outplacement firms.

Our Process

We understand that individuals who have been downsized are not always in the best frame of mind to develop new skills such as resume writing, initiating a job search, or developing interviewing techniques. Through our programs stress and anxiety are redirected to action by a positive, self-paced, step by step process incorporating the work book, motivational meetings and personal coaching and support. Our Career Transition Coaches provide guidance, support, and motivation during the career transition process. The self-paced model allows jobseekers to call in and ask questions or discuss any aspect of their job search when they need help. Our coaches are available for consultation via e-mail and telephone to enable effective working relationships with our clients and their schedules.

Our self-paced workbook asks critical questions that help participants turn their personal accomplishments, skills, strengths and training into professional resumes that get results. Your employees will have access to research tools at our convenient Downtown location allowing them to manage their own job search in addition to working with their personal coach to identify career opportunities, potential advice and informational interviews in the marketplace.

The easy-to-use system is broken into sequential steps so jobseekers can access the information they need instantly. The training manual/work book includes:

1. Getting a job is hard work – you get out what you put into it!

1. You are the Product
2. What Job Do I Want?
3. Building your resume.
4. Networking
5. Job sources
6. Advice and Information Interviews
7. Interviews
8. Sample Resumes, Letters and Forms

Additional Seminars Available for Custom Delivery

• Leadership Responsibilities and Values - Excellence in leadership begins with a clearly articulated set of leadership values developed through a rigorous self-assessment of priorities and visions. This seminar will provide an environment where participants can begin or renew their commitment to becoming lifelong learners as they continue their personal leadership journey.

• EPIP: Employee Performance Improvement Program - Many traditional performance improvement systems use punishment to correct an employee’s performance. However, there are several significant problems using punishment to correct behavior. Our EPIP program utilizes positive discipline models. Positive discipline makes it easy for supervisors to confront problems as soon as they arise, since they do not have to punish employees to bring problems to their attention.

• Managing Projects in Today’s High Risk Economy - This seminar, built on the core PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge), will teach the concepts and skills necessary to successfully design and implement multifaceted projects in a timely and cost-efficient manner.

• Delivering Dynamic and Engaging Presentations - This seminar will make any business presentation easier on your nerves and energy. You’ll learn to create engaging presentations without much preparation time, respond smoothly when asked to make impromptu remarks, and never skip a beat when your audience starts drilling you with tough questions.

• Getting the Most from Your Key Contributors - This program will help managers use DiSC™ to read the situational needs of their key contributors and adjust their management styles accordingly.

• Writing and Pitching a Proposal - Discover how to put a “grand plan” into words and pictures. Uncover secrets to organizing your thoughts and then committing them to a coherent and effective proposal.

• DiSC Training - This two-day seminar designed to help you apply the DiSC™ model to gauge the needs of key staff and identify the obstacles in the way of better performance. You will take a DiSC™ assessment before the course begins to better understand your own management style. You will then learn the four dimensions of personality and how to communicate with people who approach work differently than you.

• Workplace Ethics - Enron, WorldCom and Tyco are examples of companies damaged or ruined bythe unethical behavior of a few people. This session will help you think critically about personal and organizational ethics. Topics covered include a definition of ethics, how people form their own codes of ethics, and what you can do to head-off unethical behavior in your workplace. You will learn to identify the signs that an organization encourages unethical behavior and what you can do when confronted with an unethical situation. You will explore several business scenarios to help you handle questionable situations. You will learn how to create a business code of conduct and identify the five steps organizations must take when confronted with public exposure of unethical conduct.

• Managing Across Generations - For the first time there are four different generations in the American workplace. To be a leader in this multigenerational setting, you must understand how different generations are created, why they look at life differently and how to motivate them. Managing Across Generations will help you apply situational management techniques to bridge the generation gap. This session showcases a highly visual and emotional examination of the events that have shaped our different generations. In this half-day workshop you will learn the principles of situational management and how to apply them where you work.

• Creating a High Performance Workplace - Have you ever wondered how some leaders get people to follow them and commit to their ideals? This seminar takes lessons from “extreme motivators” and shows you how to translate their methods into a positive, high performance workplace. Learn why satisfactory performance is not good enough and absorb the five irrefutable rules of coaching to achieve higher employee performance.

• The Value of Coaching and Mentoring - Effective coaching and mentoring keeps employees engaged, ensures that you have qualified people to promote and reduces turnover. You can learn the five basic skills of coaching and use them to make a difference in your company, and in peoples’ lives. After taking a coaching skills inventory, you will learn to apply the five skills to get the most from the players on your team. This session begins with the five basic skills required of a workplace coach and mentor. You will then practice these skills in several different scenarios. By becoming comfortable with coaching and mentoring within the safe confines of the seminar, you will more easily transfer these skills to the workplace. You will create an action plan to identify where your coaching and mentoring will have the most positive impact.

• Team Scorecard - Today’s leader wants to ensure that his or her workforce maximizes performance, resources are utilized productively, and the training budget achieves the greatest possible return on investment. The Team Scorecard™ is a diagnostic tool that allows you to accomplish these objectives. The report that you receive, based on the data gathered from the Opinion Forms completed by your team, provides a comprehensive measurement of key human elements of your organization as well as mechanisms for continuous improvement.

• Leadership 360º - The changing dynamics of today’s organizations demand leaders with a skill set that allows them to navigate their teams over many hurdles in order to thrive. The Leadership 360º examines key attributes required to lead today’s workforce and projects in a continually improving manner. It assists leaders at all levels to identify strengths and opportunities for enhancement and to compare how the leader views him/herself as compared to supervisor, peers and subordinates. This program includes a coaching plan to help you achieve your desired results.

Business and Consulting Services

The Center for Professional Development is uniquely positioned to provide consulting services, executive coaching, strategic planning facilitation, and leadership development expertise. With access to hundreds of faculty worldwide, we have relationships with experts in most areas where you may have need. Please contact us to explore any of these and other options.

Training Facility Rental

If your organization needs a place to hold a special meeting or training session, the Center for Professional Development may be able to accommodate your needs. Webster University’s Old Post Office Campus is home to seventeen modern classrooms and computer labs that can be rented at a reasonable cost. Our rooms vary in size and are designed with flexible seating for 12-40 people in arrangements to accommodate different needs. Our state of the art computer labs are designed for up to twenty individuals at their own PC with a wired instructor station and projection system for ease of online and technical training.

Please contact the Center at 314-246-3135 to arrange a tour of our facility and see if we can help you meet your organizational training needs. In every way, the Center for Professional Development is here to help you go from where you are to where you’re meant to be.

2009 HR Leadership Roundtable Series

The 2009 HR Leadership Roundtable Series is an excellent opportunity to keep abreast of current trends in HR and network with other professionals. Hosted by the Center for Professional Development at Webster University, this FREE series features top St. Louis HR professionals as facilitators for roundtable discussions on specific topic areas. These leading practitioners facilitate a conversation on the chosen topic to bring out current and potential issues concerning today’s businesses with a focus on Human Resources. Each lead facilitator has been selected to align with a topic area where they have a proven and/or considered expertise.

• February 25, 2009 - Keeping Employee Morale High During Corporate Transitions led by Ed Adams, VP HR, Enterprise Rent-A-Car

• March 25, 2009 - Information Security, Personal Privacy and Disaster Recovery led by Lisa Filkins, VP HR, Colliers Turley Martin Tucker

• April 22, 2009 - HR as a Service Organization: What do You Provide For Your Organization? led by Jane Wulf, VP HR, Scottrade

• May 27, 2009 - HR and Automation: Maximizing Scalability While Staying Legal led by Ann Marr, VP HR, World Wide Technologies

• June 24, 2009 - Total Rewards Proposition: Retaining Your Portable Workforce led by Deborah Tallo, Director HR, Anheuser-Busch

• September 23, 2009 - HR’s Role in Succession Planning: Your Seat at the Table led by Teesha Hernandez, Director, Organizational Development, Emerson

• October 28, 2009 – Getting What You Pay For: Managing Your Healthcare Plan Provider led by TBA.

Sessions are hosted over continental breakfast at the Old Post Office campus of Webster University with seating limited to 30-40 attendees to facilitate more focused discussion. Doors open at 7:30 am for breakfast and networking with the session running from 8:00 am – 9:00 am.

While these sessions are free, we do require advance registration. If you would like to receive invitations to these sessions, please provide us with your e-mail address and we will add you to the list. If you have any topics of special interest that you would like us to explore, please let us know that as well. Send your information to the Center or RSVP at thebridge@webster.edu or call 314-246-3135. Please include your name, company, title, address, phone, and e-mail address.

If you are not able to make any of the HR Roundtables, we would like your input as we plan next year's HR Roundtable Series.  We wish to offer topics of interest that would be most beneficial to you and your company. Click here to access the survey and either fax, mail or email it to us at thebridge@webster.edu with your comments.