New UCL Professional Development Programme for 2012-13

The courses cover a range of subject areas, including: leadership, people management, finance, project management, communication skills and personal effectiveness. There are also a number of popular researcher specific courses in targeted grant writing, networking skills, time management and personal effectiveness.

The programme has been launched following a review conducted earlier this year to capture the learning needs of staff in various roles and grades across UCL. The feedback gathered through this review has led to a number of new courses being added to the programme, in areas such as leading diversity, resilience, effective meetings, project and risk management and conflict. More courses are now available for staff in non-management roles, such as Introduction to Leadership and Management, Resilience and Resourcefulness, Breakthrough Conversations, Time Management and Conflict Resolutions Skills.

A key aspect of the OSD service is the ability to take existing programmes and deliver them locally for departments or teams, with an option to tailor content to focus on specific development needs. The work to date has been well received, and we continue to support colleagues locally as well as through our centrally delivered programme.

To support our diverse programme of development, we utilise a mix of approaches to cater for different learning styles, in order to create greater opportunities to embed learning. These range from interactive and innovative workshops, group activities, bite-sized master classes and 1-1 coaching and mentoring, through to enhanced e-learning via the Desktop Learning Portal.

The programmes new webpages have been designed to allow staff to search for courses in a number of different ways: by subject, level of responsibility, A-Z or our course calendar.

More information on the new Professional Development Programme, and course booking details can be found here. If you would like to speak to a member of the OSD team, please refer to our contacts page.

Cheryl Newsome

Director - HR Consultancy, Organisation and Staff Development