Ball State employees learn life skills through workshops

Full-time staff members are given more than 90 opportunities a year to work on life skills, including keeping fit, writing grants and learning general skills that apply in and out of the office.

Ball State's Human Resources Services provide several workshops annually to full-time employees, which are separated into several categories: change management, customer service, general interest, grant writing essentials, lunch and learn, managerial and supervision skills, and supervisors of student employees.

Employees can sign up for workshops online. Each category has a workshop at least once a month.

Jerry Winans, assistant director of human resources, identified three programs that tend to be popular.

"General interest tends to bring in a lot of people mainly because it includes everything from personal topics to work-related stuff. Grant writing essentials helps them learn more about writing grants in a professional manner, so they usually like that," he said. "Wellness is also quite popular because it includes Lunch and Learn, which has more emphasis on their own personal wellness."

Patty Hollingsworth, director of the Working Well and Lunch and Learn series, said the collection of wellness programs benefits not only the staff but Ball State as well.

"We are focusing on keeping employees and their families healthy," she said. "Also, the workshops help Ball State with paying costs on health benefits since we are teaching employees how to be healthy and stay fit."

Exercise chats are available to teach basic guidelines for adult fitness. Nutrition chats cover different topics each time, but all pertain to portion sizes and health benefits. Nutrition chats take place during lunch time in Bracken Library. The first nutrition chat of the year was "Slow Food", which showed the benefits of eating food you have cooked rather than eating fast food. The next nutrition chat is called "Smart Drink for a Healthy Body" which will be held on October 6 at Noon.

General interest workshops cover a wide range of topics and try to target employees of all interests.

Winans said all of the workshops are meant to improve employees in all areas of their lives.

"The workshops are meant to better themselves," he said. "We want all of our employees to become lifelong learners."

After registering, employees receive e-mail notifications two weeks before all workshops. A full calendar of events can be found at the Learning and Development page at bsu.edu/hrs/learndev.

Upcoming workshops:

"The Immigration Process" -- Sept. 16

"Benefits to Laughter" -- Sept. 16

"Resiliency Makes the Difference" -- Oct. 6

"Balncing Work and Family" -- Oct. 7

"The Confident Networker" -- Oct. 20

"Preventing Death by Powerpoint" -- Nov. 3


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