Wrong month? Check out our latest list of free L&D webinars.

Are you in that lazy, heat-drenched mid-summer state that tends to drift over us right about now? Or are you working flat-out and barely registering that the sun’s out? Either way, you could probably use a one-hour respite every now and then. Why not check out a free webinar and get some new productivity ideas? There are baskets of them in August to choose from!

Thursday, August 1, 2019, 9AM – 10AM PT: gomo Authoring: Authoring technology for Modern Learning Design
Today’s modern learner demands specific requirements when it comes to skill development. Short snippets, collaboration, and relevance are now must-haves. How does that change how we design? In this session, we’ll see how the right authoring technology can help you to reduce the time it takes to create relevant content and how you can effectively collaborate with subject matter experts to get the very best to your learners quickly.

Thursday, August 1, 2019, 9AM – 10AM PT: Interact & Engage! Activities for Spectacular Live Online Training
Whether it’s an online meeting, a presentation via webinar, or live online training, engagement is the main question on everyone’s mind: Will it be worth my time to attend, or will it be an opportunity to check email instead? L&D professionals often struggle with getting everyone to interact. Interaction is the answer to successful engagement and using the features of the platform is the answer to interaction. However, the features alone do not engage the participants. It's what you choose to do with those features that’ll make the difference in your next virtual training, webinar, or meeting. During this session, you’ll learn what you can do to be successful in the virtual environment and avoid having everyone ask for a recording or a copy of the slides five minutes into your next virtual event.

Thursday, August 1, 2019, 12PM – 1PM PT: Do THIS Not THAT for Deeper Learning In the Virtual Classroom
Research shows that the virtual classroom offers certain natural benefits and barriers. To get the best outcomes when using the virtual classroom, you need to design to maximize the benefits and minimize the barriers. With Deeper Learning at Work experts Patti Shank and Karen Hyder, you'll learn what research tells us are critical strategies for deeper learning in the virtual classroom. You'll gain important insights and learn several tactics to make your virtual classroom sessions better.

Thursday, August 1, 2019, 2PM – 3PM PT: A Framework for Building a Successful Sales Force (Free for ATD members)
Want to learn how to identify the key sales competencies that members of your sales team need to help your organization achieve its KPIs? This webcast will show you how to use a sales enablement framework for hiring and developing the sales force you need. Using the competencies captured in the ATD World-Class Sales Competency Model, competencies that were defined through a comprehensive study of the trends shaping the sales profession, and with input from sales leaders worldwide, this webcast will help you learn how to identify and customize a set of key competencies for your sales team. It’s ideal for individuals who are new to sales enablement and seasoned sales enablement professionals who are thinking about enhancing their organization’s existing practices.

Friday, August 2, 2019, 11AM – 12PM PT: Nine Types of Videos to Enhance Learning and Stand Out in Your Organization (Free for ATD members)
Video is a powerful medium that has become less expensive and less time-intensive to make over the years. Creating a video can be done quickly and effectively for training purposes, but we can easily get caught in a cycle of creating the same types—which can save time for the creator, but also become repetitive for the audience. What video types can and should trainers focus on? We'll explore nine different types of videos you can use in your organization to keep your learners’ attention and impact their learning, training, and performance.

Monday, August 5, 2019, 11AM – 12PM PT: Driving It Home: Real Change Is Not an Event, It's a Process (Free for ATD members)
Your organization is in change. Getting your team members focused on the right things is critical. Implementing a blended solution that leverages the best of the human side of change with a cinematic microlearning process is key. Join Laura Goodrich, Co-Founder of GWT Next, to learn:

• What a cinematic microlearning process is and how it can bring value to your organization.

• How to utilize a microlearning program as a piece of a larger strategic plan.

• The importance of messaging, microlearning, self-reflection, questions, and digital tools.

• How different generations view blended learning and microlearning.

• How to be a change champion in your organization.

Tuesday, August 6, 2019, 11AM – 12PM PT: Five Ways Training Managers Can Optimize a Video Library to Overcome Their Top Organizational Learning Challenges (Free for ATD members)
Every year, U.S. companies spend more than $90 billion on training and development, yet training managers continually feel pressure to do more with less. Fortunately, changing workforce dynamics have created new opportunities for L&D teams to identify what content, format, and delivery will best help their organizations’ employees to learn and succeed. Dave Dumler, Head of Video Evangelism at Panopto, will discuss the top challenges that training managers are dealing with and how to optimize an internal video library to help relieve some pressure.

Wednesday, August 7, 2019, 11AM – 12PM PT: Learning to Listen: How to Harness People Data to Drive Employee Engagement (Free for ATD members)
Though the number of organizations using engagement tools to survey and respond to employee engagement issues has increased, Forbes reports only 22 percent of them see their investment result in higher engagement. Join Zach Pendleton, VP of Engagement Strategy, Instructure, to learn how to avoid band-aid solutions, better listen to employee feedback, and leverage best practices for measuring engagement and sentiment to achieve better engaged employees and managers and positive business outcomes.

Wednesday, August 7, 2019, 12PM – 1PM PT: Peer to Leader: How to Develop Your First-Time Managers
The transition from individual contributor to manager can be a daunting task. A survey by CEB, now Gartner, revealed that more than 50% of new managers fail. Balancing new responsibilities while learning how to lead former peers is a common challenge that most first-time managers struggle to overcome. During this webinar, Learning & Development Manager Libby Mullen will discuss this challenge and five others that new managers face. She’ll explain why management training is a crucial element to success as your newly promoted managers transition to roles that require new, and frequently unfamiliar, skills and competencies.

Thursday, August 8, 2019, 10AM – 11AM PT: Understanding How the Workforce Learns
The shift from relying on L&D to self-directed learning has left many organizations wondering about the role of L&D in a worker-driven world. Does L&D curate learning? Design learning? Let learners control it all? We think the best place to start is by understanding how your workforce learns so you can better enable their skill development. Join David Wentworth, Principal Learning Analyst with Brandon Hall Group, and Todd Tauber, VP of Product Marketing at Degreed, as they look at ways organizations should be thinking differently about learning and how to move forward.

Thursday, August 8, 2019, 11AM – 12PM PT: Five Brain-Based Approaches to Increase Retention (Free for ATD members)
The moment they complete a course, each learner faces a crucial point of divergence. They’ll follow one of two tracks–learning or forgetting. The success or failure of your learning design depends on what happens in the minutes, days, and weeks after the learning experience is completed. Marjorie Meacham, Chief Freedom Officer of Learningtogo, Inc., will lead this interactive session, in which you’ll learn:

• Why learning (and forgetting) begins the minute your course ends.

• How the spacing effect can keep your audience on the learning curve and off the forgetting curve.

• The five biggest mistakes that propel learners down the forgetting curve.

• How the 80/20 rule affects instruction design.

• The power of a Just Noticeable Difference (JND) to change behaviour.

• How to avoid learner burnout by understanding the Law of Diminishing Returns.

Thursday, August 8, 2019, 11AM – 12PM PT: Product Demo: How Informal Sales Learning Can Kick Team Performance Into High Gear
Research shows that as much as 90% of professional learning is informal and experiential, taking place out in the world and not in a classroom. It’s what people do every day in their personal lives when they access content from sites like Google, YouTube, Yelp, and TripAdvisor. Yet companies are ignoring how employees intuitively learn and forcing them to train in the exact opposite way. Join Jake Miller, Product Training Lead at Allego, to explore:

• Why today's formal learning on its own fails for sales teams.

• How to formalize your team's use of peer-to-peer collaboration, just-in-time research and on-the-job experiences.

• Technologies that help sellers more easily share, and sales managers to better understand seller competencies.

Friday, August 9, 2019, 11AM – 12PM PT: Take It on the Chin Coaching (Free for ATD members)
Effective coaching does not start in the locker room at halftime. “Take it on the chin” coaching is about your team’s ability to endure hardship, difficulty, setback, or defeat with stoic courage and poise.  With Carrie Van Daele, President and CEO of Van Daele & Associates, you’ll learn when to coach using continuous negative and positive feedback for your team. You’ll learn to coach for growth and development by using day-to-day interaction with your team, targeted specific behaviours from your team, and communicating a vision for first place.

Monday, August 12, 2019, 8AM – 9AM PT: Cracking the Culture Code: How to Build a Better, More Inclusive Work Culture (Free for ATD members)
When it comes to creating a healthier, higher-performing organization, culture matters the most. The research is quite clear—diverse and inclusive environments are performance enhancers. Employees are looking for more purpose, meaning, and inclusion in their workplace culture. More than career paths, they want to feel alive at work, to recognize that what they do is making a difference. Everyone’s talking about designing a holistic diversity and inclusion employee experience, but no one’s telling you how to do it. As a result, most leadership teams haven't started defining and executing their strategy to improve these aspects of workplace culture. Attend this webcast with Devin Hughes, Devin C Hughes Enterprises LLC, to learn real, tangible, and actionable steps you can take toward building a better workplace culture through a proven method for culture change.

Tuesday, August 13, 2019, 9AM – 10AM PT: Soft Skills Are Cutting Edge. Your Training Should Be Too.
Across industries and functions, soft skills are a clear differentiator in individual and team performance. They are both rare and valuable because they require real experience (mistakes, failure and reflection) to master and reach higher on Bloom’s taxonomy. But how can your learners practice high-stakes interpersonal situations in a safe and efficient fashion? By using mixed reality VR, you can combine authentic human interaction enhanced with artificial intelligence to scale training and drive true behaviour change.

Tuesday, August 13, 2019, 11AM – 12PM PT: Maximizing Everyday Leadership Moments in Manufacturing (Free for ATD members)
Leadership moments happen every day, and the definition of “leader” has expanded well beyond the boardroom. How do we address this new paradigm and help all leaders succeed every time they face a leadership moment? Join Kim Arellano, Executive Consultant, AchieveForum, and Jessica Strzepek, Manufacturing Client Director, AchieveForum, who will share insights, invite audience perspectives, and introduce products designed for today’s leader.

Wednesday, August 14, 2019, 9AM – 10AM PT: Personalization: Branding Your Learning Program(s)
The perception of learning programs in your organization is a fundamental factor in determining the success of those initiatives. That perception begins with past experiences, and if you're working to enhance and improve outcomes, that sometimes means you have a big uphill climb just to encourage participation. Learning programs and initiatives can benefit from many of the principles of effective change management—among those is the importance of effectively communicating the importance and purpose of the program—from the perspective of the participants.

Branding is an excellent way to communicate that message to your team. It provides a solid opportunity to communicate the importance and purpose of an initiative, and it encourages team building and alignment around that common purpose. Join Dr. Allen Partridge, Adobe eLearning Evangelist, for this free webinar describing the potential of branding your learning initiatives.

Wednesday, August 14, 2019, 10:30AM – 11:30AM PT: The Leading Edge: Transforming Good Managers Into Great Leaders
Today, more than ever, organizations look to everyone, at all levels, to think and act like leaders. The key is to first create inner self-leadership, which ultimately will determine how people perform in their roles and help move the organization forward. Leadership is clearly the key to success. Strengthening those “soft skills” to build high-performing management teams and organizational cultures has always been important. Despite all the talk about leadership and change, many “change fatigued” leaders struggle with just how to strengthen personal effectiveness and leadership. Today, organizations look to everyone, at all levels, to think and act like leaders. The key is to first create inner self-leadership, which ultimately will determine how people perform in their roles and help move the organization forward. Leading with the heart inspires higher energy and commitment to meaningful change toward more successful outcomes for everyone.

Wednesday, August 14, 2019, 11AM – 12PM PT: How HR and L&D Can Bridge the Gap Between Learning and Performance (Free for ATD members)
The days of point-in-time performance reviews are disappearing. The modern workforce wants a continuous feedback loop to answer questions like: “How am I doing?”, “Where am I headed?”, and “What training, learning, and development opportunities are available?” But there’s a disconnect. While L&D professionals are tasked with training, learning, upskilling, reskilling, and more, human resources oversee performance and professional development plans alongside department heads. During this webcast, led by Matthew Brown, VP Learning and Brand Success, Schoox, you’ll:

• Learn why connecting learning and performance is crucial for organizations to drive performance, engagement, development, and retention.

• Discover how L&D leaders can cross the chasm and become part of the performance management conversation.

• Develop a simple framework for connecting jobs to skills, competencies, goals, and performance reviews in an intuitive, easy-to-manage way.

Thursday, August 15, 2019, 10AM – 11AM PT: Three Imperatives of Modern Leadership
Leadership is going through its biggest transformation in 100 years, and few organizations are prepared to support it. Younger employees reject outdated managerial practices, collaborative work design is shifting power from leaders to teams, and research is uncovering the changing role of modern leadership. Join David Sturt, Executive VP, O.C. Tanner Institute and Marketing, and Claude Werder, VP and Principal HCM Analyst for Brandon Hall Group, as they share insights on modern leadership.

Tuesday, August 20, 2019, 8AM – 9AM PT: Mobile eLearning: Create True Responsive Content Using Ready-to-Go Slides and Fluid Boxes (Free for ATD members)
If your learners have started taking your eLearning courses on their mobile devices and are frustrated with endless scrolling or trying to decipher the tiny text in the scaled content, it’s time for you to start creating responsive courses. Join Pooja Jaisingh for a step-by-step demo about how to create courses in minutes using mobile-ready slides from the all-new Assets store, where you can choose from a variety of ready-to-go slides to add to your project. Learn how to edit these slides by replacing text and graphics to quickly create your mobile-ready courses.

Wednesday, August 21, 2019, 8AM – 9AM PT: Virtual Reality—How to Create Virtual Walkthroughs in Minutes using Adobe Captivate
Virtual reality training is an amazing way to provide realistic immersion for your learners, and now it’s incredibly easy to create this experience with Adobe Captivate 2019. This approach is perfect for orientation, simulations, location, and product training. Join Dr. Pooja Jaisingh to learn how to create interactive virtual reality based training using Adobe Captivate. You’ll learn how to easily import 360° media assets and add trackable hotspots, quizzes, and other interactive elements to engage your learners with near real-life scenarios.

Wednesday, August 21, 2019, 10AM – 11AM PT: Create a Culture of Learning That Supports the Speed of Business (Free for ATD members)
ATD defines a culture of learning as one in which employees continuously seek, share, and apply new knowledge and skills to improve individual and organizational performance. It’s the “continuously” part that ensures skills keep pace with the speed of business, perpetually upskilling and reskilling. While this may be obvious to you, how can you convince senior leaders? Cheryl Lasse, Managing Partner, SkillDirector, and Lesley Roddam, Customer Success Manager, SkillDirector, will build a business case that you can present to your senior leaders to help them understand the magnitude of the skill-gap problem they face and how a culture of learning can help solve it.

Thursday, August 22, 2019, 12PM – 1PM PT: Ten Guaranteed Ways to Make Leadership Training Stick
Most leadership training and learning are based on the “Look at me” or “Look at them” emulation of best practices. In the real world, learning to lead is about a mixture of skills, attitude and depth of perception. It’s challenging and difficult to learn in classroom or in emulation, simulation or lecture and exercises. In this session, Ray Jimenez, Ph.D., will show you experience-based learning using ten real-life situations that challenge, provoke, and inspire learners to learn how to lead.

Friday, August 23, 2019, 7AM – 8AM PT: Opportunistic Compliance: Making Compliance Training Valuable for Everyone (Free for ATD members)
Historically, the primary value of compliance training has been its ability to mitigate the legal and reputational costs of misconduct. When employees make the wrong decision, compliance training allows organizations to confidently claim, “We told them not to”—and that claim is often enough to reduce collective liability. This ability to mitigate risk is critical to any organization, but compliance training could be doing much more.

This webinar, by Travis Waugh, Instructional Technologist, Georgia Tech, will explore how instructional designers can play a unique role in expanding compliance training’s ability to reduce risk and solve problems instead of just mitigate the costs of those risks. Many practical tips will be shared before, during, and after implementation that can help us shift our compliance focus away from lawyers, policies, and mandates, and toward our employees and their real opportunities for behaviour change. With a renewed focus on learners and learning, we can create compliance training that does more than check a box; we can deliver measurable value at every level of the organization.

Tuesday, August 27, 2019, 8AM – 9AM PT: Rapid Authoring Using Quick Start Projects and Out-of-the-Box Interactions in Adobe Captivate (Free for ATD members)
Authoring an eLearning course from scratch can be a daunting task. You have to design the user interface, screen layouts, and interactions, as well as choose the color scheme, images, characters, and icons to go with it. And then you’ll still have to spend hours developing the animations and interactions. Join Pooja Jaisingh for a step-by-step demo about using Quick Start Projects and out-of-the-box interactions to create visually appealing eLearning courses. You’ll learn how to use the ready-to-go slides, and make them your own by replacing text and graphics to quickly create your eLearning courses.

Tuesday, August 27, 2019, 9AM – 10AM PT: Amazing Presentations Using Google Slides
Google Slides is a great presentation development tool that you can get completely for free, but is there such a thing as a free lunch? Can you create credible presentations with Google Slides? Yes, you can. Not only that, but you can produce amazing presentations with Google Slides. In this session with Richard Goring, Director, BrightCarbon, we’ll look at how you can:

• Use Google Slides to bring your presentations to life with visual storytelling techniques.

• Create content quickly with neat productivity tools.

• Deliver beautiful designs that will leave your audience astounded.

Wednesday, August 28, 2019, 10AM – 11AM PT: Data-Powered Upskilling (Free for ATD members)
Understanding which skills employees have now, which skills are critical for the future, and how to most efficiently close the gap are among the most daunting challenges for any organization. Hear from Vinod Bakthavachalam, Senior Data Scientist, Coursera, and Kyle Clark, Enterprise Content Expert, Coursera, on how they are using their machine learning-powered Skills Graph to answer these questions for customers and learners alike, and identify ways to prepare your workforce for the future with a skills-first strategy powered by data-driven insights.

Know of any upcoming free L&D webinars? Let us know in the Comments below or contact us here!