Online Courses

The Institute has added more courses to its flexible online learning portfolio. Learners can take their own route through a variety of topice covered in each course. They can learn at their own pace through a variety of activities designed to accomodate a range of learning styles.

The course can be studied over a period of three months from the date of first login. Each course should take about three hours in total and costs £70 per person.

Subjects covered are:

Businesss thinking

• Business performance management
• Key performance indicators
• Making budgets work in the real world
• Managing through a recession

Professional skills

• Communicating complex ideas
• Customer service
• Effective communication skills
• Negotiation skills
• Networking skills
• Problem solving
• Project management

Managing yourself and others

• Leadership skills
• Managing high-performing teams
• Managing workload

For further information, contact: Professional Development team. Tel: 01536 740105. Email: quals@iomnet.org.uk.

Business performance management

Using key performance indicators (KPIs) can help to add real value to a business and ultimately to deliver success. Optimising performance and achieving great results depends on excellence in both management information systems and management responses.This course provides the tools that managers need to help their organisations succeed. Managers will be able to achieve control of their processes and improve the performance of their team and the business.

This course is designed to appeal to professionals and managers in functional areas such as sales, operations, and commercial and shared services.

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Key performance indicators

KPIs enable us to control performance.They are powerful tools not because they tell us results, but because they enable us to change them. Drawing from over 25 years' experience of advising businesses how to make their plans reality, Robin Tidd's advice is always firmly based in reality. By linking short term results to longer term goals, he shows how KPIs are the key tool for management control.

This course is written for senior managers or advisors who want to take on introducing KPIs into the medium sector business.

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Making Budgeting Work In The Real World

Budgeting seems so simple in the textbooks. So why does it often fail in practice? Stuart Warner explains the barriers to effective budgeting and enables learners to create and manage more successful budgets.The author's practical experience, coupled with many hours discussing the issues in the classroom, enables him to frame the key questions and open the debate about how to create an effective and efficient budgeting process. Peer-enriched learning courses stimulate intelligent dialogue and debate and provide a valuable and evolving resource of professional knowledge and experience.

This course is designed to appeal to professionals, both in finance functions and other areas, who are looking for a practical course that enables them to apply budgeting theory and knowledge in their own organisation.

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Managing Through A Recession

Whether you are concerned about your own business or wanting to support your clients going through difficult times, this course will enable you to think through your approach to managing a business through a recession.Working through the process of understanding what is going on, assessing the damage, planning under pressure and making it happen, learners will develop their approach and engage in a dialogue with their peers. Robin Tidd's experience helping a variety of clients informs both his ideas and the stimulating questions he raises to provoke the debate.

Managing Through a Recession is part of the peer-enriched learning suite of learning. It is designed to appeal to professionals, both in finance functions and other areas, who are looking for a practical course that enables them to apply business theory successfully to manage their organisation through a recession.

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Communicating complex ideas

How do you explain complicated concepts and issues to colleagues or others who do not have your technical expertise? Whether getting support for ideas from senior management or communicating critical issues to customers and non-technical colleagues, professionals in a wide range of disciplines are increasingly finding that to succeed they need to sharpen their communication skills and augment their technical expertise. The difficulty lies in the complexity of the message. Sharing the full detail of an issue risks baffling the recipient; simplifying the matter without misleading can be difficult.

This course provides a professional process for a professional audience to develop their skills in this underemphasised area.

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Customer service

The fundamentals of good customer service are the delivery of high standards of service and being focused on and understanding of its customers needs. Good customer service is all about paying attention to the detail. It’s about action not promises. This course assists the learner in building relationships, effective
communication, handling difficult situations as well as the elements of procedures and processes.

Target audience
Everyone who has contact with both internal and external customers and suppliers.

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Effective communication skills

The way you communicate can affect every aspect of your work. If you think you are not being taken seriously - your ideas and inputs are being lost - it may not be because of the standard of your work, but because of how you are putting yourself and your ideas across. To make an impact on your business, and to achieve business goals, communicating effectively is key.

This course helps the learner to master the aspects of communication that will make them successful in their organisation: how to listen, how to present, and how to write reports.

Target audience
People in all functions at all levels
Those wishing to improve their overall effectiveness.

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Negotiation skills

Negotiation is a key part of every professional's life. How long will it take? Who's going to do it? How much will it cost? This course has, as its central premise, the idea that the best outcome for a negotiation is that both parties feel they have been successful. It helps the learner plan for negotiations, make sure the outcomes are successful and handle difficult situations when they arise.

Target audience
Everyone who negotiates with suppliers, partners or customers.

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Networking skills

All professionals have a network, whether they focus on it actively or not. For some it is a source of specialist advice or a resource that can help them to meet their clients' needs. For others it is the source of new clients. This course explains the key skills needed to make the most of a network, expand it, and ensure that it meets career and business needs. Practical exercises and activities make it easy for any professional to put the sound advice into practice.

Target audience
People in all functions at all levels
Those wishing to improve their overall effectiveness.

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Problem solving

Every day in our working lives we encounter problems. Many are small and we overcome them easily, but some require more thought and can end up blocking our progress. Successful businesses are able to solve problems as they arise in a timely and efficient way.This course provides a systematic approach to solving problems that will equip you to overcome barriers and move forwards.

Target audience
People in all functions at all levels
Those wishing to improve their overall effectiveness.

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Project management

You may not be called a project manager, but that doesn't mean you don't need to manage projects. Much of what we do in our day-today roles is project management and this course will give you the skills and techniques to be able to handle a project successfully, ensuring deadlines are kept and objectives are met.

Managing projects of any size requires a very specific set of skills and knowledge and a defined approach - that’s why there are so many project management methodologies out there.This course draws on some of the common principles in current project management thinking and takes you from how a project comes into existence through to what needs to be done once your project is complete. It will help you to ensure that the work you put in to your project results in lasting positive change.

Target audience
All staff who are responsible for projects.

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Leadership skills

Many people make the mistake of thinking that leadership is something that only very senior people have to consider. In fact, leadership is a key skill that every manager needs to master. This course helps learners to develop their leadership skills and use them to provide direction for their team.

Target audience
Senior & experienced managers
New managers
Those wishing to develop management skills.

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Managing high-performing teams

Successful team management can provide a multitude of benefits to an organisation. A hogh-performing team increases morale, improves productivity and effeciency and provides better overall organisational performance.

This course will equip manager to create, develop and nurture a streamlined team. Learners will understand the different stages of team development, how to adopt the most appropriate approach and how to handle issues such as team performance, politics, dynamics and power structures.

Target audience
This course is designed for people at all levels. New managers, or those preparing to take the role on, will be equipped to create, manage and nurture a streamlined team. More experienced or senior managers will value the opportunity to refresh their skills and approach. 

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Managing workload

WWe all have times when we have to work to tight deadlines or feel we have to much to do, but we shouldn't be fooled into thinking there is nothing we can do about it.

This course helps the learner develop techniques for managing their workload through identifying their priorities correctly, setting effecitve goals and making the best use of their time. It also looks at what they can do when their workload really does become excessive.

We all, from time to time, have problems managing our workload. Professionals at all levels will benefit from thinking again about this key organisational skills.

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