Unlock the secrets to becoming an effective and empathetic leader with our free course, Approaching leadership with care. Delve into the core concepts of leadership by exploring the significance of empathy, compassion, and understanding when leading others and yourself. This course is designed to help you define your leadership style, cultivate a caring approach, and enhance your overall leadership skills.

This course is adapted from the Open University course, K318 Leading, managing, caring.

Please note: As part of a review of content, this course will be deleted from OpenLearn on Sunday 5th of September 2021.In this free course, Applying social work skills in practice, you will explore the social work role in working with vulnerable and socially excluded individuals and groups. You will learn about risk and the assessment of need in social work practice, and explore the wider context of social work practice and responses to social work. You will also explore the application of relevant knowledge, skills and values in social work, and think about the place of research in supporting social work practice.

Professional footballer Dominic Ball has completed a Business Management Degree with The Open University. He explains why it’s important other current players start planning for the future, plus how the support of the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA) helped.

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.

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 how organisations can draw on established theories of value creation for fostering and promoting new types of value.

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.

If you've had breaks in your career, a skills-based CV might help present your abilities in the best light.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused many organisations to go into warp speed and pivot their workforce to remote working almost overnight in 2020. The return to pre-pandemic office routines has been slow, and many organisations are now keen to work in a more agile and flexible way. Hybrid working does, however, introduce a new set of challenges, and that requires new thinking, new policies and significant cultural change.
This course will help you to explore your current organisational structure, plans, external environment and sustainability to consider how you strengthen your hybrid working infrastructure. You will begin to identify what digital transformation means in the higher education institutes (HEIs) sector and how this accelerates working practices for hybrid. You will also start to create habits to continue to future-proof your organisation, and consider future ways of working that may arise and how to prepare for them.