Crocuses are popping up, and the sun is putting in a longer work day lately—could spring be approaching? Clear out the winter cobwebs and jumpstart your spring with some new business ideas for March; there are plenty of free webinars to choose from. We hope they will inspire and motivate you.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Diversity and Inclusion: Inspiring Learning for a Changing World (Free for ASTD members)

With globalization and shifting demographics, understanding diversity and inclusion (D&I) is a requirement for every training professional to ensure that learning is relevant in a changing world. In this one-hour interactive webinar, you will learn how key trends are transforming the workplace, workforce, and marketplace, and what the implications are from a training perspective. The presenters will provide practical tools that you can adapt in your training initiatives going forward to address this business imperative.

• Learn what D&I is and why it matters to you

• Discover D&I best practices for greater effectiveness

• Enhance your professional skills to address changing requirements for success

Thursday, March 6, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Agile Project Management for Learning Projects – LLAMA!

Either by design or by default, your team’s environment and work practices are reflected in the level of service you deliver to clients and customers. New technologies, rising expectations, and shrinking budgets challenge us all to new levels. How do you keep your project from falling short in delivering on time and on budget when things are constantly changing?

Agile project management is a hands-on practical approach created by the software development industry to keeping up with the ever-increasing speed of change. In this session, we’ll explore how TorranceLearning’s approach to Agile project management (LLAMA: Lot Like Agile Methods Approach) creates the team ecosystem and project management methods that set the stage for delivering amazing results for your clients (internal or external) and for your team. 

Thursday, March 6, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Emotional Intelligence for Effective Leadership (Free for ASTD members)

Today’s fast-paced and complex business environment requires leaders who can cope more easily in stressful situations, exude confidence, and be flexible and optimistic. This webcast will explore the exciting topic of emotional intelligence (EI) and how it provides the foundation for the qualities and characteristics of an effective leader. Participants will look at the world’s first scientifically validated model of EI, the EQ-i 2.0, and understand how leadership connects to specific EI skills. The webcast also will present a plan to cultivate EI and empower one's ability to create greater leadership effectiveness.

Monday, March 10, 2014, 9:30AM – 10:30AM PST: Disengaged to Engaged Employees – The Impact on Your Culture (Free for ASTD members)

When you look around your work environment, do you as a leader/manager recognize the signs of a disengaged employee? Do you understand the impact that this can have on your organization as a whole? Constant negativity at the water cooler may be slowly poisoning your work environment. Good employees say very clearly that if a negative culture does not change, they will seek a position elsewhere. Remember that it is always the good employees who leave—because they can!

Join Doug Lawrence as he explores the signs of disengaged and engaged employees, and how both types can impact a mentoring culture. Doug will leverage past learning experiences to help you create an organization that has an engaged, empowered, and accountable workforce—enabled through a mentoring culture. This presentation will benefit leaders and managers in any organization, and HR practitioners who are struggling with a culture that is driven by negativity and disengaged workers. If you suspect this is you, then consider joining us for this presentation.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014, 9AM – 10AM PST: Are You Training Sales Managers for the Right Skills? (Free for ASTD members)

Sales managers have always worn too many hats, and that level of responsibility is only increasing. Still the question remains—is their development keeping up? To keep up, many sales organizations are turning to surveys to capture important sales manager performance data. Unfortunately, survey design is not something sales professionals know much about. The result is that many sales surveys produce faulty data that lead to bad decisions. In this highly interactive session, you will:

• Examine how the role of sales manager has changed

• Learn why assessments are an effective method for developing sales manager performance

• Analyze the common mistakes made when creating sales manager assessments

Tuesday, March 11, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Magnetic Culture – Tools to Retain Your Top Talent

Highly successful organizations know that the key to their success is keeping their employees fully connected throughout the entire employee life cycle. Connection begins as your top talent is on-boarded and continues as they learn, collaborate, innovate, socialize, and share. How do you improve the employee processes so that those employees not only feel connected but also share this feeling with others, creating a magnetic culture? How do you enhance your culture and make it one that employees do not want to leave?

Tuesday, March 11, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Next Generation of Learning Content Strategies – Learning Content in the Age of YouTube and Facebook

Every organization that delivers employee training and development programs must deliver learning content. The challenge in today’s world is that traditional approaches to content might no longer help organizations find, develop, and deliver the right content to the right employee at the right time. In this webinar we will explore the critical elements of the next generation of learning content strategies:

• Curating – organizing content to provide context and access

• Defining content – in today’s world, content is anything employees can use to improve job performance

• Delivery – using next-generation strategies to merge delivery tools with content for the greatest impact

Tuesday, March 11, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: How to Transform Your Training Content into an Engaging Story

As learning and development professionals, we know that we’re wired for stories. The problem is, we’ve got to teach facts and figures and processes and tools—which can get pretty boring. Here’s the good news. Even this content can come to life and be “stickier” through the power of storytelling. Anyone can learn to construct and deliver stories that spark interest and improve results. Join Roger Courville and get ready to take notes as he reveals how the world’s oldest pastime can rock the modern virtual classroom.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014, 12PM – 1PM PST: Survey Basics(Free for ASTD members)

Back by popular demand! Patti Philips will walk you through the fundamentals of creating and using surveys and questionnaires. Surveys and questionnaires are common instruments used to collect data of all types. Whether evaluating a training program or assessing an organizational climate, self-administered surveys are a tool with which we must contend. This webcast presents the four basic but critical challenges that can make or break a successful survey project. Upon completion of this session, you will be able to:

• Recognize the four challenges in survey design

• Calculate the sample size given the size of the population, when sampling is appropriate

• Calculate the appropriate number of responses required, given the size of your target group

• Improve the accuracy of responses by following the tips provided for asking the right questions the right way

• Consider key issues in developing survey questions

Wednesday, March 12, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: eLearning Salary & Compensation 2014

What do eLearning professionals earn these days? Are salaries in your country and worldwide rising, falling, or flat? How do your organization size, industry, years of experience, and other factors influence your salary and compensation?

Join 2014 Global eLearning Salary & Compensation Report author Patti Shank as she leads a panel of eLearning professionals to compare key report takeaways. The panel will address what the almost 6,000 survey respondents said in late 2013 about their salaries and compensation, review salary and compensation trends, and discuss the trends they expect to see moving forward. Whether you have read this report or not, attend this webinar to learn more about global eLearning salary and compensation.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Personalize the Learning Experience by Leveraging CRM and LMS (Free for ASTD members)

In today’s self-paced world of online learning, students are empowered to learn on their own terms. While this flexibility may be a significant advantage to the learner, it can be a challenge to provide learners with the support they need to be successful. In this session, we will look at innovative ways that CRM and LMS systems can be integrated to provide support teams with real-time access to learners’ status and information. By more closely linking these systems, potential up-sell or cross-sell opportunities can be identified more easily, and case-management solutions can be used to address learner questions and feedback. Leveraging both CRM and LMS systems provides an opportunity to make the learning experience more personal and bring back the human element with personalized interaction.

Friday, March 14, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Our Profession: Where We've Been; Where We're Going (Exclusive Webcast for ASTD's Professional Plus Members)

Join legend Elaine Biech as she reviews the history of the T&D profession and makes a case for why you should care, what’s important, and what’s not.

Monday, March 17, 2014, 9AM – 10AM PST: Career Development for Millennials (Free for ASTD members)

Hired the best early-stage talent? Are they staying with you as long as you had planned? Join  Dr. B. Lynn Ware to hear how your company can design its career development offerings so that they will appeal to this generation of talent and extend the employee lifecycle.

Ware will report the results of a recently completed, groundbreaking study about how Gen Y workers make decisions to change jobs. The reasons are different than you think. The results cry out for a change in company talent management practices to emphasize early career support and development, even during the on-boarding phase.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Demystifying Mobile Learning

A lot has been said about mobile learning and how it is taking enterprise training by storm. However, it has become quite challenging to separate the noise from facts. In this webinar, we will address:

• The state of mobile learning and key drivers behind mobile learning for enterprises

• Different types of mobile learning formats and use cases

• Low-cost approaches to jump-starting your mobile learning initiatives

• Pros and cons of various mobile learning models

• Recognizing potential minefields and best practices when it comes to building, deploying, and measuring learning impact

Tuesday, March 18, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Planning Lives and Building Engagement (Free for ASTD members)

Industry icon Marshall Goldsmith helps attendees to:

• Review why it is so difficult to achieve even simple change—and the classic delusions that keep us from changing

• Understand the classic debate between determinism and choice and see how most engagement work is deterministic

• Learn a new model for planning the future

• Understand why active questions can help people become more engaged

• Participate in the "active question" research study (optional)

Wednesday, March 19, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Best Practices for Virtual Leadership Development

The challenge of leadership in global organizations and the deficit of emerging leaders are two of the many factors leading businesses to explore alternative approaches to leadership development.  New technologies have opened to door to creative, cost-effective, and engaging ways to train your future leaders, regardless of their location.

Today’s virtual programs are a far cry from the online programs of just a few years ago. In this Training Magazine webcast, Tom Masotto—Vice President of Product Management at ON24—will discuss best practices for using virtual environments to:

• Reach global leaders faster and more cost-effectively

• Provide busy leaders with more flexibility

• More tightly integrate learning with daily work

Wednesday, March 19, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Research Spotlight: Recent Research Highlights from Brandon Hall Group's Talent Management Practice

This session of the Brandon Hall Group Monthly Research Spotlight Series highlights actionable talent management data. You will learn:

• Insightful analytics-based facts about leadership development drivers and talent management risks

• Talent management trends to plan for

• Talent management priorities on which to focus your attention for better business impact

• A framework for designing talent management excellence

• A model for diagnosing your current level of talent management maturity

• About upcoming talent management research

• Exclusive research resources available through our Brandon Hall Group membership

Wednesday, March 19, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Creating a Modern Mentoring Culture (Free for ASTD members)

Mentoring has proven again and again to be a powerful and effective workforce development tool, and the need for mentoring, knowledge sharing, and skill building continues to grow. However, traditional mentoring, where an older mentor meets with a younger mentee in person to help facilitate development and groom them for career progression, is no longer adequate in today's hyper-connected and fast-paced world.

Based on the September 2013 Infoline, "Creating a Modern Mentoring Culture," this webcast will describe how organizations today must embrace a new form of mentoring and knowledge sharing that allows workers to find and connect with their colleagues so they can learn while on the job, share best practices throughout all areas of the business, and collaborate with people no matter where they may be located.

Thursday, March 20, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Leadership Development – Strategy in Action

According to Brandon Hall Group’s recent Leadership Development benchmarking research, more than 300 survey respondents told us that leadership development was their top priority for accelerating business performance, yet only 25.3 percent of respondents rated their leadership development programs as extremely or very effective. How do we improve leader development, increase leader excellence, and in the process achieve higher and sustained levels of business performance?

Session topics include:

• Strategy: Understanding the what and why of leadership strategy to identify leader development priorities

• Culture: Shaping organizational culture to enable experience-driven development

• Action: Identifying key moments to spark change and being a passionate and courageous agent of change

• Sustain: Creating an enduring learning organization and building an internal coaching culture to sustain it

Friday, March 21, 2014, 9AM – 10AM PST: Gaining Credibility: Leading Executive Conversations to Improve Your Results (Free for ASTD members)

Are you a manager, director, or vice president (or aspiring one) who has found that conversations with C-level executives can be challenging? Do you want to improve your results? Executive coach Sally Williamson will share insights into what top execs value, and give you strategies to gain the credibility and influence you need to get buy-in for your recommendations and improve your results. You’ll learn:

• What top executives value and how they think

• The three core concepts that leaders listen for, and ways to deliver on them consistently

• How to define and create a compelling message

• Tips for developing a high-level conversation framework to capture executive interest and support for your projects and recommendations

Tuesday, March 25, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Engaging & Retaining Employees That Keep Your Customers Happy

Great performance is achieved through successful employees. Successful employees are highly engaged. Highly engaged employees receive feedback and recognition. Over 75 percent of organizations believe employees receive most of their feedback in the performance management process; less than half feel that feedback is highly effective. How do you improve the employee feedback and recognition process, increase employee engagement, and in the process achieve higher levels of performance? How do you help your employees become successful?

Join the discussion with Trish McFarlane, VP of Research from Brandon Hall Group, as she shares recent research and key practices on creating a positive talent management environment that focuses on increasing employee success, and in the process increasing performance outcomes.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: L&D Emerging Measurement Practices: From Executive Reporting to "Instant Insights"

This presentation will share the latest topics on the minds of L&D practitioners as they relate to emerging measurement practices, including executive reporting, big data, social learning, scrap learning, strategic program measurement, prescriptive “Instant Insights,” and building a business case for analytics. Glimpse into the latest trends and challenges on the minds of thought leaders and practitioners, and glean creative insights to augment your learning analytics strategies, now and beyond.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Learning and the Innovating Organization (Free for ASTD members)

In the fall of 2013, ASTD and Claude Legrand, managing partner of Ideaction, Inc., conducted an extensive survey on how the Learning and Development (L&D) community sees its role in the creation of innovative organizations. L&D has a critical role to play, because innovating organizations do not have more effective processes or more creative individuals. Instead, they have leaders, managers, and individual contributors who are trained to innovate systematically.

This webcast will discuss the results of the survey and what organizations need to do to become more innovative. Legrand, an expert in innovation for more than 25 years, will present a primer on how to create successful innovation programs, and will suggest options you can consider to help your organization become more innovative.