Business Management

Human Resources

Leadership

Sales & Marketing

Education

Business Management

Smart Start
Do you have a business idea or looking to purchase a business?  This workshop will guide you through what you need to know to launch your business and be successful.  Hear from local entrepreneur about how they started their business and lessons learned along the way.  Learn how to creat a business plan, conduct market research and estimate cost, prepare for a bank loan, legally organize the business and other license/permit requirements, record keeping and taxes, marketing ideas, and what financing options are avialable.  Receive a business plan template, step-by-step guide to opening your business, and other resources available to help you succeed!

Business Model Generation
Are you an entrepreneurial spirit?  Are you constantly thinking about how to create value and build a new business?  Are you trying to find innovative ways of doing business to replace old, outdated ones?  If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, welcome to our group!  We will be utilizing Business Model Canvas, a visual 9-Block mapping tool, to describe a company's value proposition, infrastructure, customers, and finances, allowing the business to better align their activities to start and grow their comstomers base, markets, product offerings, and overall business.  You will leave the workshop with a visual overview of your business or business idea on a single canvas.  Canvas and book included.  

Understanding Your Business Taxes
Income tax, sales tax, payroll tax, and the list goes on for taxes your business pays.  Discussion will center on the various busines taxes, forms and ways to file and pay the taxes, and things you can do in your record keeping system to better understand and lessen your tax burden.  Participants will receieve all materials and are encouraged to bring specific questions.  

Accounting Basic Concepts
Designed for the non-accountant bookkeeper, office manager or owner of a business. Learn basic accounting terms including revenues, expenses, assets, and liabilities. Learn to build and read the income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows. Become familiar with accounting debits and credits as you learn how to record transactions in this hands-on course. This course is approved for the Business Bookkeeping Certificate.

QuickBooks Online Software Comprehensive
We make it easy to get comfortable with QuickBooks.  This course will address setting up your chart accounts, customer and vendor files, recurring transactions, and products/services you sell.  Learn how to manage money coming in including sales, invoicing, and deposits, and money going out by paying bills, booking credit card expenditures, and tracking expenses.  You'll learn how to reconcile accounts, track loans and loan payments, book fiexed assets, and use reports to understand your business, track sales trends and profitability, and prepare for tax time.  You'll leave knowing that you're doing a good job and can handle whatever QuickBooks sends your way. This course is approved for the Business Bookkeeping Certificate.

Payroll Accounting
It's a fact of business-if a company has employees, it has to account for payroll, fringe benefits, and payroll taxes.  This comprehensive course will guide you through processing a new employee, calculating payroll and payroll taxes, payroll tax reporting, periodic and year end payroll reporting to the government.  This course is approved for the Business Bookkeeping Certificate.

Human Resources

SHRM Certification Prep
Commit to Your Career. HR professionals like you are facing new and larger challenges each day due in part to a changing workforce, shifting legislation and regulations and so much more. Ensure you're prepared for these changes, and anything else thrown your way with SHRM's global HR credentials, SHRM-CP and SHRM-SCP. Unlike memorization-based certification credentials, SHRM certification measures an HR professional's most critical skill: the ability to apply HR principles to real-life situations. No other exam compares. By becoming SHRM certified, you prove your knowledge, competency and value to colleagues and to employers looking for a competitive edge in today's global economy. Wherever your career takes you, your SHRM certification will define you as an HR expert and leader. Network and collaborate with peers to share real-life examples and bring HR knowledge and competencies to life. The tuition includes the cost of instruction and the SHRM learning system (online and printed material). This course is provided through a partnership with North Iowa Area Community College (NIACC).  Register by 8/18/2023

SHRM Essentials of HR
Sharpen Your HR Skills to Face Today's Hr Issues SHRM, the leading global HR professional organization, has developed the SHRM Essentials of Human Resources course, which teaches the HR knowledge, skills and competencies required for overall business success. Whether you are new to HR, or it's one of the many roles you fulfill at your company. In less than 20 hours of training time, you can cover the issues you need to reduce potentially costly lawsuits. The straightforward format ensures that HR concepts can be mastered and applied to real-life situations. This course is in partnership with North Iowa Area Community College (NIACC).

Workers' Compensation
Learn essential knowledge and skills of one of the most important and fastest-growing areas of law.  This course provides a solid foundation in worker's compensation law and greatly increase your chances of landing a job with a private law firm.

Leadership

Time Management & Documentation Basics
Time Management - There is never enough hours in the day, but you can learn to be more effective with the ones you are given.  This session will provide you with several action steps that will allow you to take control of your day and make sure you are unleashing all of your productive potential.  We will cover managing time, wasting time, personal study time, planning and tools, the Eisenhower Matrix, meetings, and email.  
Documentation Basics - A habit of creating meaningful documentation is an essential tool for any successful leader, providing essential tool for people management while protecting and minimizing company liablity.  This session will provide the fundamentals of good documentation practices - including good versus bad documentation, tools, and methods, and retention requirements.  We will also workshop different scenarios highlighting the importance of strong documentation practices.

Supervision Certificate
Leader, manager, supervisor, team leader – no matter what your official title, you're expected to get the job done through others. This course provides new and experienced supervisors with the tools and skills for building personal confidence in their leadership role. You will see the relevance of the training, rapidly acquire the skills, and quickly put them to use on the job. Attend all twelve modules and earn a certificate in Supervision. Our program is designed for anyone who manages people in manufacturing, retail, or service industries.

Supervision Survival Skills
This training program is designed for new managers and non-managers interested in or identified for promotion. Knowledge gained in this program will enable you to avoid some of the hard lessons that come from on-the-job learning. Applicable in manufacturing, service, and retail organizations, this seminar presents the fundamental leadership and communication skills and techniques required to manage employees effectively. Content of this training covers the first two modules of the Supervision Certificate.

Behavioral Interviewing
Hiring the right person for the right job requires behavioral, objective, fact-based criteria to be part of your hiring process.  You will learn how to construct a thorough list of job requirements; and learn how to ask questions to reveal past experiences and interpret behavior.  Finally, you will learn the importance of prompt and fair follow up in order to build a successful team.  This course is approved for the Effective Management Certificate.

Leading High Performance Teams
Transform your team into a high performing one.  Learn the basics of team dynamics, the stages of team formation, and learn to utilize individual strengths to bring out the best in all team members.  Learn about your own leadership style and explore it's impact on team performance.  This course is approved for the Effective Management Certificate.

How Millennial's and Gen Z Affect the Culture of Work
No matter what generation you are part of, come increase your perspective about how age influences our motivation, communication, and work practices.  We will focus on key actions we can take to attract, coach, engage, and retain employees accross the generations.  We will engage in discussions and activities to help understand Millennial's and Gen Z's unique perspective and what actions leaders can take to build even stronger teams.  This course is approved for the Effective Management Certificate.

Leading Change in the Workplace
When faced with change, you have one of three choices.  Lead, follow or get out of the way.  Choose to lead!  This course will help managers deal with change in the workplace - both personally and as a leader of their team.  Topics include understanding both positive and negative effects of change, learning personal responses to change, helping lead employees through change, seeing change as an oppurtunity, and communicaiton during change. This course is approved for the Effective Management Certificate.

Effective Performance Appraisals
Learn to write measureable performance expectations and evaluate, non-tangible skills.  Learn to evaluate employees' current performance and write performance objectives they can follow.  This course covers when employees do not meet expectations and disciplinary action that must be taken; as well as progressive disciplinary including written performance plans.  This course is approved for the Effective Management Certificate.

The Supervisors Job
Describe the role of supervisors as a performance coach, develop strategies to develop employees so they can meet and exceed expectations.  Identify the role of supervor.  Identify what is the most important part of being a supervisor.  Identify how to make the transistion from lead worker to supervisor.  Compare the differences of the baby boomers and gen ex and millennial employees, and how to empower them all.

Handling Conflict
One of the most difficult and most avoided topics in every company and relationship is that of conflict.  We all learn from our past in how we handle conflict with others.  Some of us have great examples and others, not so much.  Everyone experiences some degree of workplace conflict; therefore, we all deserve training on how to handle it most effectively, focusing on great results and best teaming relationships.  you will focus on conflict do's and don'ts.  Pay close attention to a conflict roadmap that will allow productive strategy for encouraging and following through with healthy conflict.  We will take a closer look at each individual's natural style to increase awareness and become better able to effectively navigate more effective conflict situations.  

Conversational Spanish
This training course will offer a more advanced training designed for managers, supervisors, team leads and anybody who works with Spanish speaking employees and co-workers in a manufacturing or warehouse setting.  Pre-requisite is Intro to Conversational Spanish.  Class does not meet 12/26 & 12/28.

Introduction to Conversational Spanish
This training will be an introduction to basic Spanish designed for managers, supervisors, team leads and anybody who works with Spanish speaking employees and co-workers in a manufacturing or warehouse setting.  This course will help participant with pronunciation of Spanish words and initiate a conversation by learning the basic essentials of Spanish.  

Sales & Marketing

Sales Manager
This course will teach you the theories behind effective sales management.  You will learn what skills are needed to be successful sales representatives and how these factors into building and leading a sales team.

Marketing Your Business on the Internet
In this hands-on course, you'll discover proven methods for establishing an Internet presence and building a brand identity.  You'll learn to incorporate SEO, advertising, email, social media, and more to develop an effective Internet marketing plan for your business even with little money to spend.

HTML and CSS Series
Introduction to CSS3 and HTML5 - Learn how to create state-of-the-art Web sites using modern CSS3 and HTML5 techniques. Take your existing HTML skills to the next level and start building sites like the pros. If you want to survive and excel in the fast-paced world of Web publishing, you're going to need to keep up with ever-evolving standards. The new standard for Web developers is to use CSS3 and HTML5.

Digital Marketing Suite
Marketing Your Business on the Internet - Find out how to market your business on the Internet, even if you have little or no money to spend! In this practical, hands-on course, you'll discover proven methods that will help you establish an Internet presence and build an online brand identity. You'll learn how search engine optimization (SEO) works and how to track your site's performance using Web analytics. You'll understand how to use online advertising, email marketing, and social media (including blogs) to drive business to your Web site. Finally, you'll learn how to keep your visitors coming back again and again!

Using Social Media in Business
One of the biggest challenges for business owners is finding new customers. Over the past decade, some business owners have leveraged social media to do just that. Whether you're a social media novice or a seasoned veteran, this course will give you a solid foundation in social media marketing and using it to grow your business. In today's globally connected environment, social media is a game changer for businesses.

Achieving Top Search Engine Positions
The vast majority of Web traffic comes from search engines. That means the most important thing you can do to increase your website's traffic is to improve its search engine ranking. To do that, you have to understand both the art and science of search engine optimization (SEO). In this course, you'll gain the knowledge you need to boost your website's visibility. By the end of the course, you'll have mastered proven, step-by-step SEO strategies that you can implement right away.

Education

Communication, Ethics, Confidentiality
This is the first course in preparation for the Para-educator Certificate.  In this course, the student will develop skills and strategies to enhance communication and examine situations where professionalism, ethical standards, and confidentiality will guild correct courses of action when working with colleagues, students, parents, and others.  This course is approved for the Paraeducator Certificate.

Roles & Responsibilities
This is the second course in the Paraeducator Certificate Program.  The student will develop skills and strategies to assist, support and maintain safe environments, educational activities, team interventions, and technology integration when working with colleagues, students, parents, and others.  This course is approved for the Paraeducator Certificate.

Behavior Improvement
This is the third course in the Paraeducator Certificate Program.  The student will gain knowledge, skill, and strategies to assist, support, and maintain the positive social, emotional, and behavioral development of children. This course is approved for the Paraeducator Certificate.

Early Childhood Certificate Level I
This certificate equips individuals with an operational understanding of both historical and modern approaches to early childhood programs, covering the qualities and skills necessary for working with young children.  Health, safety, and nutrition are also discussed as factors which impact growth and development of children from birth to age eight.

Introduction to Early Childhood Education
This course is an overview of early childhood programs and curricula, historical and present, and an examination of qualities and skills necessary for working with young children. This course is approved for the Early Childhood Certificate Level I.

Child Health, Safety, and Nutrition
This course focuses on evidence-based concepts in the fields of health, safety, and nutrition, and their relations to the growth and development of the young child ages birth to eight.  This course blends current theory with problem solving, practical applications, and assessments.  The course includes collaboration with families and assesses the role of culture, language, and ability on health, safety, and nutrition decisions in early childhood settings. This course is approved for the Early Childhood Certificate Level I.