Human Resources

Cultivating Cultural Competence & Inclusion - Inclusive work environments can yield greater creative output, boost employee morale, and benefit a company’s bottom line. But even as a slew of modern companies make strides towards true workplace inclusivity, many still miss the mark. This is often due to a lack of cultural competence, or the ability to engage and adapt across cultural differences.

Managing a Multigenerational Workforce - This program helps managers gain an understanding of the complexity of leading a workgroup comprised of four or even five generations: traditionalists, baby boomers, Gen Xers, millennials, and Gen-Zers.

Hire, Retain, and Grow Top Millennial Talent - More than one-in-three American workers today are millennials. By 2020, millennials will form 50% of the global workforce. The war for the best and brightest of the millennial generation is on now.

Confronting Bias: Thriving Across our Differences - Find greater meaning, well-being, and productivity by learning how to interact with others across differences. Continue your Thrive journey and discover how to create inclusive environments where everyone can thrive. In this course, Arianna Huffington and Verna Myers discuss the impact of our cultural lens on our daily relations and how to counter bias in our words and actions.

Skills for Inclusive Conversations - Developing the skills to conduct meaningful conversations on potentially polarizing topics such as race, religion, and gender is critical for human resources professionals, managers, and team leaders. Mary-Frances Winters offers a multistep process for building the skills necessary to engage in inclusive conversations. Find out how to conduct an exploratory self-assessment to better understand yourself and your team, learn tactics to go from polarization to common ground, and discover practical techniques for discussing difficult topics.

Inclusive Leadership - Join global workforce management expert Dr. Shirley Davis as she shares how to create and lead an organization that leverages the diverse talents of all contributors. Dr. Davis reveals the benefits of inclusive leadership, including the positive impacts it can have on employee engagement, innovation, and creativity. She then outlines a best practice framework for developing inclusive leaders in an organization, and shares tips for avoiding common leadership pitfalls. Upon wrapping up this course, you'll be equipped with practical strategies you can use to cultivate a more inclusive workforce.

Out and Proud: Approaching LGBT Issues in the Workplace - In this course, instructor Jacqui Lloyd lays out why diversity and inclusion matters for businesses, how professionals who identify as LGBT can feel more confident about coming out at work, and how allies can help create a more inclusive work environment. Using her own experiences as a visible and proud out gay woman, Jacqui explains how coming out can help you personally and professionally. Plus, learn why, regardless of your sexual orientation, it's important to be aware of the role you can play as an ally in supporting your LGBT colleagues.

Creating Psychological Safety for Diverse Teams - Today's workforce comprises multiple generations, cultures, and ways of working. By creating a culture of psychological safety—in which team members feel comfortable taking risks—you can lead these diverse teams to greater success. In this course, leaders who've worked with organizations ranging from the New York Times to the NBA explain how to create a work environment where every team member feels valued, seen, and ready to innovate. Get strategies for communicating with people who think differently than you, managing across cultures, and helping your direct reports form habits that actually stick. Plus, learn how to find balance among the skill sets in your organization by embracing the unique talents that each person brings to the team.

How to Be More Inclusive - Creating an inclusive workplace, where every employee feels welcomed, valued, respected, and heard, requires both structural change to your company processes and active allyship in your day-to-day interactions. In this course, Kelsey Bardfield explores common biases in the workplace and tangible ways to shut them down. Kelsey explores privilege and equity, and illustrates the key differences between equality and equity and the importance of doing so. She also discusses key topics like identity, microaggressions, hiring practices, allyship, and inclusion best-practices.

Diversity Recruiting - As a buzzword, "diversity" sounds good, but speaking frankly about age discrimination, gender bias, and hiring disparities can take many talent acquisition professionals out of their comfort zone. In this course, Stacey Gordon explains how to confidently approach the topic of bias and successfully address it when recruiting. She outlines the most common mistakes that recruiters make as well as ways to assess your current recruiting strategy to achieve success.

Recruiting Veterans - With roughly 200,000 men and women transitioning out of the military each year, veterans are a rich source of talent to tap. Through their military training, veterans learn the importance of strong leadership and connecting jobs to mission and values. In this course, veteran recruiting expert Lida Citroën helps recruiters identify and appreciate the differences between post-9/11 veteran and civilian candidates, as well as the qualities, skills, and talents veterans offer to employers.

Fair and Effective Interviewing for Diversity and Inclusion - Every organization knows that talent makes the difference in how well it can execute on its mission and goals. To have the best talent, companies must be able to attract individuals from all backgrounds. A diverse workforce brings different perspectives, spurs innovation, enhances problem-solving, and introduces new skills and markets. The hiring process has many components: outreach, recruitment, screening, interviewing, decision-making and following-up with accepted candidates. In this course, Vernā Myers teaches skills for interviewing, an important but sometimes overlooked aspect of an inclusive hiring process.

Connecting with Your Millennial Manager - Conquer the key challenges you might encounter as an older worker having to report to a younger manager—perhaps for the first time in your career. Learn how to navigate working with all generations in today’s workforce by understanding key differences and similarities. Forge a solid working relationship with your younger manager through effective communications and management practices that transcend generational and cultural divides. Career coach John Tarnoff, who specializes in transforming and extending careers for older workers, provides specific skills and steps you can take to build your confidence and become a valued and trusted member of a younger manager’s team.

Equity First: The Path to Inclusion and Belonging - Equity is a very important concept in today’s workplace. In this course, instructor Mary-Frances Winters helps you gain a better understanding of what it is, shows you some of its benefits, and offers some practical advice on fostering equity in hiring, promotions, and development. Mary-Frances begins by explaining what equity is and how it compares to equality. She highlights how equity makes organizations stronger, then goes over what equity in the workplace looks like. Mary-Frances discusses gender equality, racial and ethnic equity, sexual orientation equity, and equity for people with disabilities. Then she goes over ways to develop and enact equitable practices in hiring, promotions, and leadership. Mary-Frances concludes with a roadmap pointing us toward a more equitable future.

Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging - Diversity is having a culture that values uniqueness: people of different backgrounds, cultures, genders, and races. Inclusion means inviting diverse groups to take part in company life. If you're tuned into conversations about HR, you've probably heard these terms before. But there's a third critical piece: belonging. It's belonging that makes each individual feel accepted for who they are. Explore the diversity, inclusion, and belonging (DIB) approach, and discover how to activate it in your organization. Join HR luminary Pat Wadors as she explains how to drive the conversation on DIBs, hire and retain diverse talent, listen to employees, and integrate DIBs into your employee life cycle. Managers and executives should tune in for special tips on embedding DIBs in the employee experience.

Inclusive Mindset - Creating an inclusive environment is not a passive act. Rather, it is a skill that can be learned and improved upon with humility, bravery, and dedication. Inclusive communicators are better able to recruit, retain talent, navigate conflict, and develop buy-in in their work environment. In this course, learn about the importance of fostering an inclusive mindset in the workplace and how to implement beneficial changes in your organization. Examine the research about the critical roles that diversity and belonging play in business. Find out how to cultivate spaces that are safe by acknowledging common challenges that can come from privilege, mistakes, ignorance, or insensitivity. Discover how to promote allyship. Dereca Blackmon covers each of these areas to help you grow as an individual and to help you support others.

Communicating about Culturally Sensitive Issues - Discussions about cultural differences can be uncomfortable. They take courage. In this course, Duke University professor Dr. Daisy Lovelace shares principles and strategies that can help you have more productive, meaningful conversations on topics related to diversity. Daisy helps you understand that everyone has a unique lens based on their experiences, and that understanding and appreciating that difference is the first step in being able to discuss sensitive topics. She also outlines a number of techniques to help you navigate these difficult conversations.

Becoming an Ally to All - All organizations face barriers to diversity and inclusion, such as implicit bias and stereotyping. One key solution to these challenges is allyship. Allyship is integral to diversity efforts because it allows those who are at lower risk of discrimination the opportunity to advocate for others to gain visibility, validity, and credibility for their work and their contributions. Join Kenji Yoshino, renowned NYU Law professor and director of the Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, to learn why allyship is important, how to become an ally, and how to grow as an ally along a three-stage maturity curve. Using the innovative concept of the Empathy Triangle, and a set of realistic scenarios, this course teaches allies how to reach wise allyship decisions, help people affected by non-inclusive behavior, and relate to sources of non-inclusive behavior.

Unlocking Authentic Communication in a Culturally-Diverse Workplace - What does it take to be a great communicator, particularly in a global and culturally-diverse modern workplace? The answer is, largely, authenticity. In this course, Jonathan Wilson teaches key principles of authentic communication, real-world tips for practicing authentic communication, and how to develop cultural awareness so you can build relationships, support colleagues from underrepresented groups, and be a more effective professional. Jonathan explores what it means to be authentic in a way that celebrates who you are, resonates with others, highlights the importance of cultural differences, and energizes those around you. It may take a while and some work to attain competence and expertise in these areas, but if you’re looking to be someone who can connect with anybody with ease, navigate tricky conversations, and learn what matters to people, join Jonathan in this course.

Each year, state agencies set goals for the year ensuring continuous improvement in results achieved over last year, working towards creating a performance excellence environment. Do you know how your individual performance expectations directly support and contribute to the success of your division and your agency? Do you know how success on each of your expectations is measured? If not, engage your supervisor in a discussion.

The INSPD Workforce Strategy & Performance Management team delivers year-round training on topics such as goal setting, SMART goal action plans, improving poor performance with intervention, working tests (relevant to classified employees only), effective evaluations, feedback, self-assessments, etc. Search and register via SuccessFactors Learning.

The Spot Bonus Recognition Program was created in an effort to recognize exceptional work efforts. Employees who demonstrate exemplary service that results in tangible and measurable cost savings or achievement for the agency may be nominated for a Spot Bonus Recognition Award. Click here for eligibility and instruction guidelines and here for the nomination form.