Dear Colleagues,
With the New Year upon us, now is a great time to put your personal and professional development plans into action and invest in yourself. We have excellent resources right here on campus to help you take those steps toward creating meaningful change in your personal and professional realms. After all, in our recent One Minute Pulse Survey, 69% of you agreed that you could achieve your career objectives here at Berkeley, so let’s make it happen together!
Free Courses: Have you visited the new staff Learning & Development “How Do You Want to Grow Today?” site, featuring links to 1,000’s of free learning opportunities through your L&D team, lynda.com, the UC Learning Center, University Extension (UNEX) and more?
Almost 2,000 staff members watched 2,327 lynda.com online training videos last year. Staff who took advantage of their one free UNEX course per year were 22% more likely to make a career move over those who did not. Popular UNEX offerings include languages such as Spanish and Mandarin, and introductions to College Admissions Advising and Big Data, while lynda.com has everything from managing stress for positive change to time management. We’ve gathered many terrific resources together in our newly relaunched Wisdom Cafe so you don’t have to go far to get the ball rolling.
Career Development: Developing your career is most effective when you make it an ongoing part of your routine. We have specific career-development workshops scheduled for January through May, including a new workshop that explores Design Thinking as applied to your career. You can sign-up for them right now. Don’t forget to also take advantage of our online career development portal, My UC Career. This self-directed toolkit includes access to job openings across the UC system, an interview-practice tool, resources for creating effective resumes, cover letters, and social media presence, plus research tools for identifying professional associations and databases.
As you might recall, to underscore the importance of professional development, we ask each staff member to always have a performance goal focused on professional development. While it can be hard to find time for professional development, do know that you are well worth the investment! We encourage you to sign up for classes or a new experience that sounds interesting to you. Our new Grow Your Skills page can help you find something that’s right for you.
Be Well at Work! The New Year is also a great time to take care of your physical and emotional health here on campus with University Health Services (UHS). Be Well at Work offers workshops for staff ranging from parenting and ergonomics to financial wellness and stress management. This Spring features themed programs and workshops to help you find a balance of technology in your life, in addition to helping manage technology with kids, teens and seniors. A full list of Spring workshops can be found on the UHS site. Make sure to check out the new recalibrate site, designed to support individual well-being and reshape the way we approach and a chieve wellness as a community.
Communities of Practice & Staff Organizations: What’s the best way to meet new people and network across campus? Get involved with a Community of Practice or a Staff Org! For example, Alianza builds professional development and promotion of our Chicanx and Latinx staff on campus, while the Cal Assessment Network (CAN) holds monthly sessions to support the assessment community (think - writing effective surveys and metrics for data-driven decision making). At Berkeley, you always have support like this on your career journey - be sure to check out our Staff Orgs website to find like-minded communities of practice and affinity groups made up of Berkeley staff like you.
And finally, as always, we’re eager to hear your feedback, so please let us know what personal and professional development opportunities are working for you, or if there are courses or programs that we could add to further your wellbeing and development.
Together we can make 2019 a better year for everyone, starting with you!
Warmest regards,
Jo and Anna
Jo Mackness, Interim Assistant Vice Chancellor, Human ResourcesAnna Harte, MD, Interim Assistant Vice Chancellor, University Health Services
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