Take your career and skills to the next level with upcoming classes from UCOP Learning and Development. All courses are offered free to UCOP staff. Sign up today and meet colleagues while learning valuable skills.

Communications, professional skills and leadership development

Influencing Without Authority: Leadership as an Individual Contributor
April 1, 10 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Dive into the leadership skills all “rockstars” need to become influential contributors: building trusting workplace relationships, managing up, carving out a niche area of expertise and connecting the dots from their role to the organizational mission. In this training, you’ll gain insight into your unique position of influence at UCOP while exploring the leadership skills of relationship-building, managing up, honing expertise and aligning your work with our organizational mission. Then, you’ll put your skills to work by identifying one skill to strategically focus on for the next month.

Write Right: Business Writing Essentials
April 8 & April 15, 9 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Part of the UCOP Communication Series Certificate, this interactive workshop is designed to enhance participants’ writing skills with a focus on clarity, structure, grammar and punctuation. We’ll cover key fundamentals, including sentence structure, punctuation rules, readability strategies, active voice, parallelism, subject-verb agreement and pronoun clarity. Learn to make your business writing clear, concise and effective to ensure your messages are easily understood.

Practical Productivity
April 29, 10 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Time management can feel daunting. Competing priorities, unruly calendars and tight time budgets can leave you feeling like you’ve spent all day running on a treadmill with little to show for your efforts. In this class, we’ll strategically tackle the four phases in the time management cycle: prioritize, organize, execute and track. You’ll be introduced to a buffet of time-management tools and practices that will help you identify and address your biggest barriers to a balanced and productive work life.

Personal development

Subtle Acts of Exclusion
April 22, 9 a.m. – 12 p.m.
The term “microaggression” has become widely used, yet it is just as widely misunderstood. Join us as we reframe microaggressions as subtle acts of exclusion (SAE). Explore the SAE framework, learn how to interrupt SAEs, engage colleagues in discussion and reflect on how our socialization impacts our outlook, attitudes and behavior.

UCOP Basic Safety Awareness
April 22, 1 – 2 p.m.
Safety expert Melissa Collins, program manager for Security, Risk and Resilience, will facilitate this 30-minute live virtual class. Learn basic safety tips to feel informed, alert and safe as you travel to and from the workplace. We’ll allow extra time for questions and feedback.

Psychological Skills for Managing Stress and Change
April 28, 1 – 2 p.m.
Join Dr. Ana Dolatabadi of the Faculty and Staff Assistance Program for this special workshop on building practical skills to help you regulate stress, maintain perspective and access your thinking during challenging times. The session will explore strategies for staying steady amid multiple stressors, caring for yourself in sustainable ways and finding moments of connection and meaning within your community. You’ll leave with concrete tools to support your well-being while continuing to meet the demands of work and life.

Staff Talent Evaluation Process (STEP) performance appraisal system

See the “People Managers” section for manager-related STEP courses

STEP: Goals and Competencies
April 14, 1 – 2 p.m. | May 6, 10 – 11 a.m.
In this instructor-led STEP training, we will expand on the materials presented in the STEP Fundamentals for Employees eCourse, going into detail on the first stage of STEP, Define Criteria. Practice writing goals and learn how to align them to the UCOP Competencies. This course is designed to support new employees and those who would like a refresher to elevate their goals.

Technology and project management

Excel Advanced Data Analysis
April 7 & April 14, 9 a.m. – 12 p.m.
In this two-part class, participants will learn essential Excel skills, including working with multiple worksheets and workbooks, sharing and protecting workbooks, automating functionality, dynamic arrays, auditing tools and forecasting and mapping data. This course is part of the Data Analysis Series; Intro to Data Analysis is a prerequisite for this class.

UCOP Project Management II
April 9, April 16 & April 23, 8:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
This three-part course series from the Center for Project Management emphasizes traditional project management techniques that are highly relevant at UC. Learn practical tools, methods and techniques that you can immediately apply in your work! To register for this course, you must have previously completed Project Management 1 or have project management experience.

UCOP Creating Accessible Documents 1: MS Office
April 21, 1 – 2:30 p.m.
Digital accessibility is about ensuring that users with disabilities can easily access and engage with any digital content. In this course, you’ll learn the principles of digital accessibility, how to generate accessible Microsoft Office Documents and how to export these documents to PDF. This is the first course in the series and a prerequisite for UCOP Creating Accessible Documents 2: PDFs.

Box Advanced
April 28, 11 a.m. – 12 p.m.
In this advanced Box class, we’ll cover a variety of topics, including securely storing sensitive data in Box; sending data to Box via email or URL; setting up alerts to monitor folders; and using Box groups to manage department collaborations.

For people managers

ME@UCOP: Employment Law, Leaves and Accommodations
April 2, 9 – 11:30 a.m.
Courses in the Manager Essentials at UCOP (ME@UCOP) series are required for all staff who are new to a management or supervisory position. Experienced managers are also welcome to join us. In this virtual, instructor-led session, we will discuss employment laws and policies, including Equal Employment Opportunity, Affirmative Action, labor and employment laws and accommodations and leaves, including family and medical leave, reasonable accommodations and worker’s compensation.

Manager and Employee Conversations Part 1: Feedback and Coaching Employees
April 7, 10 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Effective managers create space for meaningful conversations that support employee growth and performance. In the first of a two-part required series, managers will learn how to structure conversations with employees using the GROW framework — a practical model that guides collaborative, coaching-focused discussions. This course was previously offered as “GROWing Your Check-in Conversations.” If you completed that course, you do not need to retake it; however, you are welcome to join us again to refresh your skills and gain additional practice.

Managing Represented Employees
April 16, 9 – 10:30 a.m.
This session will provide managers with essential guidance for effectively managing represented employees in a unionized environment. You’ll learn the fundamentals of labor relations, including contract awareness, roles and responsibilities and appropriate communication practices.

Managing Psychologically Safe Teams
April 17, 10 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Research shows that a culture of psychological safety is the top determinant of team success. In this workshop, designed for managers, we’ll learn the nuts and bolts of psychological safety and our power to influence our team’s working conditions. We’ll explore the 4 Stages of Psychological Safety and behaviors associated with each; assess our teams’ culture and behaviors that contribute to or reduce psychological safety and learn to keep a pulse on individual psychological safety through the BICEPS framework.

People Leader Forum: Talent Insight Process
April 24, 1 –2 p.m.
The People Leaders Forum is a monthly opportunity for people managers to connect with one another to develop leadership skills, build community, share best practices, swap strategies for navigating current challenges and learn to better support themselves and their teams. In this session, we will cover the talent-insight process that helps departments place the right people in the right roles at the right time. This process is supported by the Organizational Development team and guided by thoughtful planning, collaborative strategy and a strong culture of development. The four-stage cycle: Assess, Develop, Implement and Review provides a framework for departments to create a one to three-year plan tailored to evolving talent and workforce needs.

For questions about the above classes, contact ucopld@ucop.edu. See all upcoming courses on the Link Classes & Workshops page.

About

View all post by