Across our site you will find around 1,000 free courses, as well as topical articles, videos, quizzes and interactive games covering a diverse range of subjects, which makes it the perfect resource to support any Learning at Work Week plans. The animation below explains more about us and the benefits of enrolling on our free courses.
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As part of our Learning at Work Week activities, we hosted a free webinar event, entitled 'The benefits of digital badges to you, your staff and your business'. If you were unable to attend, please watch the video recording below, to discover from the OpenLearn free learning experts how your business, and employees, can benefit from our free resources.
To help you quickly get to grips with what we’ve got to offer, we’ve collated some free learning we think any business would find useful in 5 key subject areas below.
This is just a fraction of what OpenLearn has to offer: our Skills for Work collection has around 150 items to explore, and you’ll also find courses and content designed to support people outside of work covering health and wellbeing, finance and other topics. Or, discover our most popular courses and content, and see the latest items that are new to OpenLearn.
All our courses provide a statement of participation when completed, and a growing number include a digital badge which can provide significant benefits to employers and employees alike.
Get started with the collections below and see what OpenLearn has to offer!
Learn about leadership, mentoring and coaching, and how to work in and manage diverse teams, with our range of badged courses.
Click here to learn about leadership, mentoring and coaching
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Leadership and followership
This free course, Leadership and followership, will help you to explore what makes a good leader, recognise common leadership challenges, and identify the skills you need to develop if you want to enhance your own leadership experience.
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Exploring career mentoring and coaching
This free course, Exploring career mentoring and coaching, will explain what mentors and career coaches do and how a colleague or expert who can ask the right questions, challenge assumptions, and help an individual to find the best solutions for themselves, can make a significant difference in a wide range of situations and contexts.
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Diversity and inclusion in the workplace
Do you feel concerned about a lack of diversity in your workplace? Is this something you want to address? Perhaps you’d like to feel more informed on a personal level before taking it further organisationally? This free course introduces you to the benefits and complexities of developing and supporting a diverse and inclusive workforce. It ...
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Collective leadership
This free course, Collective leadership, will give you an insight into the importance of how to be a more effective leader, and how to better engage and work with ‘followers’ in an organisational setting.
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Step up to leadership
This free course is one in a series focusing on leadership, decision-making and communication in the context of policing with the community. This particular course focuses on the challenge of leadership and leading change in an ever-changing policing context. It provides insights to help individuals become more effective leaders of teams ...
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Leadership challenges in turbulent times
Welcome to Leadership challenges in turbulent times, a free course offered by the Open University. We are excited to join you on your journey to explore leadership in the turbulent times that we live in.
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Leadership for inclusion: thinking it through
This course will help you to think about your professional educational situation and the ways in which you can develop your practices alongside others. It will provide you with a better understanding of competing values within the school system and how to identify and build upon opportunities to lead and collaborate in this context. You will ...
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Leadership for inclusion: what can you do?
This course will help you to develop your understanding of how to promote and support learning for all, within classrooms with a diverse student and staff population. It will encourage you to embrace your own capacity to lead at any level of an organisation. You will explore the tensions around collective responses and individualised challenges,...
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Leadership: external context and culture
Through studying this free course, Leadership: external context and culture, you will develop your understanding of the impact of external context and culture on the practice of leadership. The course begins by exploring the nature ‘societal culture’, identifying how culture, at a number of levels, impacts on leadership. We then explore how the ...
Become a more effective communicator and an even better team member.
Explore our teamwork and communication courses - click here for content
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Effective communication in the workplace
This free course, Effective communication in the workplace, explores the importance of communication as a skill in the workplace. It aims to increase your understanding of communication skills and to help you to consider how your communication could be perceived by others. You'll cover areas such as verbal and non-verbal communication, written ...
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Working in diverse teams
This free badged course, Working in diverse teams, will help you consider your experience of working in teams and the different roles you play in them. It will increase your confidence in marketing this key skill to employers as well improve your ability to perform well in teams you are currently part of.
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The importance of interpersonal skills
To succeed in management you need good interpersonal skills, you need to understand how to deal with other people. This free course, The importance of interpersonal skills, will help you gain an awareness of your own skills and understand that an awareness of the interpersonal skills of others can help us enormously in dealing with the work ...
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Groups and teamwork
Are you always the quiet one when it comes to group discussion? This free course, Groups and teamwork, will help you improve your working relationships with other people in groups of three or more. The course also deals with project life cycles, project management and the role of the leader.
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Working in groups and teams
This free course, Working in groups and teams, explores team working from start to finish. It looks at how successful teams are created, roles within a team, the life cycle of a team, how to manage conflict within teams and evaluating team performance.
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How teams work
This free course, How teams work, provides an introduction to working in virtual project teams by explaining terms and concepts related to teams and to projects. The complexity of the interaction of people and technology is highlighted.
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Difference and challenge in teams
This free course looks at how teams ‘travel’ together on a journey of development. Those journeys are hardly ever smooth. The course encourages you to recognise difference and challenge amongst individuals in the team who are pulling in different directions. It will help you identify where such challenges can be embraced for the benefit of your ...
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Marketing communications as a strategic function
Marketing communications help to define an organisation's relationship with its customers. This free course, Marketing communications as a strategic function, emphasises the strategic importance of such communication and its long-term effect on consumers. Communication models can act as a predictive guide, but in the end it is important to ...
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Marketing communications in the digital age
The influence and impact of marketing can be seen all around. For instance, you may find marketing communications being used to promote various brands, increase charitable donations, persuade toddlers to eat their vegetables, or encourage teenagers to behave responsibly around alcohol. In this digital era, if you use social media to portray a ...
Enrol on our selection of free badged courses to help you succeed in the workplace and develop career resilience.
Personal development - click here to gain the skills for success
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Succeed in the workplace
Do you want to change jobs, are you just starting in the job market or may be returning after a break? If so, then this free course, Succeed in the workplace, is for you. It will help you explore career opportunities. You will also gain the skills to write strong CVs and application forms, and to handle different types of interviews. By the end ...
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Personal branding for career success
This free course, Personal branding for career success, considers what a personal brand is and whether you currently have one. You’ll look in detail at theories and examples of personal branding, and relevant marketing processes and practices. You’ll identify the values, skills, knowledge and expertise that you want to promote to employers, and ...
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Developing career resilience
Do you sometimes wish you were more resilient when faced with changes at work? Do you have career plans but feel unsure about progressing with them? If you do, then this free course, Developing career resilience, will help you to build your resilience and approach career-related change with greater confidence and motivation.
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Diversity and inclusion in the workplace
Do you feel concerned about a lack of diversity in your workplace? Is this something you want to address? Perhaps you’d like to feel more informed on a personal level before taking it further organisationally? This free course introduces you to the benefits and complexities of developing and supporting a diverse and inclusive workforce. It ...
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Understanding your sector
This free course, Understanding your sector, will help you to understand the difference between sectors, industries and professions. It will also help you to gain the inside knowledge to impress in applications and at interviews and to put together an action plan that is tailored to you.
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Working in the voluntary sector
This free online course, Working in the voluntary sector, will introduce you to some of the main activities carried out by volunteers and staff, will give you some background on how different organisations work and will provide you with knowledge and skills you can apply to your own work or volunteering, as well as to your every day life.
From digital skills to developing an entrepreneurial approach to business, there's lots to discover.
Click here to enhance your skills for the workplace
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Digital skills: succeeding in a digital world
This free course, Digital skills: succeeding in a digital world, will develop your confidence and skills for life online, whether study, work or everyday life. It explores a range of digital skills and practices, including digital identity, digital well-being, staying safe and legal, finding and using information and online tools, and dealing ...
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Entrepreneurship – from ideas to reality
This free course, Entrepreneurship: from ideas to reality, is about starting and running your own business. Using case studies it will take you through the decisions from generating initial ideas through to deciding what you will do and how to establish your business and grow it. It will guide you through business models, funding options, ...
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Business communication: writing a SWOT analysis
This free course, Business communication: writing a SWOT analysis, is designed to develop your writing skills for business. You will be taken step by step through the process of writing a SWOT analysis, with clear advice on selecting key information from a case study text, making concise notes, choosing an appropriate structure and using ...
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Risk management
Recent decades have seen an array of news stories where risk management failings have undermined an organisation and dented the credibility of its management. These failings have led to the demise of some companies – for example Lehman Brothers, World-Com and Enron. Worse than this, in many instances the failings have resulted in deaths and ...
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Understanding your customers
This free course, Understanding your customers, is a short introduction to understanding customers. The course underlines the relevance of understanding customers as individuals, members of society and members of organisations. It clarifies some key marketing concepts and terminology and highlights some differences between consumer and ...
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Understanding organisational value
All organisations must find new ways that benefit both their stakeholders and society. This means constantly improving their processes, goods and services. In the 21st century, new ideals of collaboration, inclusion, and equality are challenging more narrow market-based notions. This free course, Understanding organisational value, will explore ...
A selection of free courses that can be completed in 2 hours or under. The perfect activity for your lunchtime (or two).
Click here to reveal some courses that take 2 hours or less to complete...
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Facilitating group discussions
Gain an insight into facilitating meetings and discussions in the workplace. In this free course, Facilitating group discussions, you will look at some of the behaviours effective facilitators exhibit. Informative and engaging videos will introduce you to examples of facilitation in practice.
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Commercial awareness
This short course encourages you to look across your organisation, at your place within it and the value you create. It considers how getting different perspectives and widening existing ones within your organisation can enhance commercial awareness.
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Difference and challenge in teams
This free course looks at how teams ‘travel’ together on a journey of development. Those journeys are hardly ever smooth. The course encourages you to recognise difference and challenge amongst individuals in the team who are pulling in different directions. It will help you identify where such challenges can be embraced for the benefit of your ...
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Three principles of a coaching approach
This course provides a good sense for three of the core skills required of an effective coach. Whether or not you recognise the use of a 'coaching approach' in your workplace, you will be able to use the learning in the course to enhance your day-to-day interactions in your workplace.
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Developing high trust work relationships
Learn about trust in the organisational context. This free course, Developing high trust work relationships, introduces the concept of trust, what it means to you and how it may affect your organisation.
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Speeches and speech-making
This free course, Speeches and speech-making, explores an aspect of language use where 'voices' and 'texts' converge: the art of speech-making.
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Introduction to business agility
This short course is designed for anyone leading change in their organisation at any level. It provides an introduction to core principles of business agility, with practical exercises, and is a base that can be built on with reference to the associated textbook and global public community of practice.
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Simple coding
Have you ever wanted to try out simple coding? Want to understand the basics of what it entails? This course introduces you to the skills, concepts and jargon of coding.
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Exercise and mental health
Each year thousands of pounds are spent on medications to treat conditions such as anxiety and depression. These medications often have negative side effects. Exercise is an alternative treatment that is low cost and has few side effects. In this free course, Exercise and mental health, we will look at the links between exercise and improved ...
If you like what OpenLearn has to offer, we could work with you and your business to create a bespoke offer relevant to your organisation. To find out more, or to discuss how else we can support you during Learning at Work Week and beyond, email openlearn@open.ac.uk.
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