How to Manage Lab Staff
$449
Leads to certification
General

How to Manage Lab Staff

People are the key to any lab. What the lab learns and delivers is all due to the people. Lab managers need to develop sufficient leadership skills to enable the staff to be successful. The leadership basics course will provide a foundation of basic leadership skills that will benefit all lab managers. Lab managers also need to learn the skills necessary to bring in the best candidates, train them, and develop them for growth within the lab, and retain them. In this stream, lab managers will learn how to recruit, hire, and onboard new lab staff, which brings in the talent needed for the lab’s success. A key to retaining existing staff is an effective performance management process, which is covered in two courses. One will cover how to develop and execute effective roles and objectives documents to ensure all lab staff understand what is expected of them and to clarify how they contribute to the lab’s success. Another will cover evaluating performance and building development plans for staff. Finally, this stream ends with a course on succession planning, which will enable the lab manager to preserve the knowledge of the organization, enable the lab to continue to thrive even if key staff leave, and help to develop and grow staff to be ready for greater responsibility in the future.

As an IACET Accredited Provider, Lab Manager Academy offers IACET CEUs for its learning events that comply with the ANSI/IACET Continuing Education and Training Standard.

Curriculum content

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    Managing a lab is a big responsibility. It requires a significant amount of leadership knowledge and skill. This course will provide a broad introduction to the many leadership skills required of lab managers that they are rarely taught and have to learn through trial and error. Taking this course will enable the lab manager to better recognize which leadership skills are needed and have a firm foundation to apply those skills with confidence.  Learning Objectives: Explain the importance of leadership, Identify foundational leadership skills, Integrate positive leadership traits into your lab management style, Design strategies for improved relationships.

    • Lesson Lab Leadership Basics

  • Providing staff with clear performance feedback, and helping them grow and develop is critical to the lab’s success. Addressing staff performance is a key role for all supervisors. Taking this course will enable the lab manager to design and create effective performance review conversations, determine key strengths of staff members, and create appropriate development plans to grow high performance and repair poor performance. Learning Outcomes: Improve performance with conversations, Generate effective performance reviews that include accomplishments, development, and a core message, Develop staff through their strengths, Provide paths to promotions through development plans, Meet expectations with performance improvement plans.

  • Clearly defining what is expected of staff is critical to success. Lab managers need to know how to clearly define both the roles and responsibilities and the key objectives for each member of staff. Taking this course will enable the lab manager to select the most important aspects of a staff member’s position, develop effective roles and objectives documents, and identify and integrate SMARTER objectives into individual goals. Learning Outcomes: Learn the importance of developing effective roles and responsibility, and objectives documents, Select the most important aspects of the position, Identify and integrate SMARTER objectives, Create effective documents for staff.

  • Having a talented staff drives all of the success for any lab. Lab managers need to know how to differentiate candidates, conduct effective interviews, onboard new hires efficiently, and provide ongoing training. Taking this course will enable the lab manager to read resumes with greater confidence, conduct meaningful interviews, build an effective onboarding process, and develop training plans that make the best use of budget and resources. Learning Outcomes: Recognize that technical skill is less important than attitude, Identify important traits in candidates, Recognize effective ways to structure interview questions, Summarize the components of an effective onboarding plan, Describe the components of an effective training plan.

  • Determining and preserving the right mix of skills and expertise is vital for the success of the lab. Lab managers need to know how to conduct an effective analysis of the skills and expertise needed for the lab. The skills analysis will also drive investment, training, and hiring decisions. Succession planning is required to plan role and position changes as the staff evolves and changes. Learning Outcomes: Characterize skill levels, Current state skills analysis, Generate a key knowledge retention analysis, Determine the best future investments, Create an effective succession plan.