How To Manage Your RFP Process

Join our panel discussion to learn about how to assess your situation and determine the best process to use to achieve your goals. We will explore different perspectives from practitioners, vendors, consultants and others.

Date and Time: May 17, 2022 | 4.30 pm to 6.00 pm EDT

Price: Members: $10 + HST | Non-members: $15 + HST

Panelists:

Victoria Mirlocca: CPPB, C.Mgr., C.I.M., NIGP-CPP, CMM II, Procurement Manager, Client Relations & Category Management
Lori Jackson, BSc., CPPO: Buyer, York Regional Police
Hugh Lawson: Director, Business Development, Canada
Chris McLeod: CEO, NVision Insight Group Inc.
Sandra Lisi, Director Purchasing, Client Services, City of Toronto
Greg Dadd, Principal, Procurement and Fairness Advisory Services, Industry & Public Sector Group

REGISTER HERE

If you are thinking of a corporate training session (for a team of 10 or more) with the above topic or any other topic that is relevant for your organization, please review this Supply Chain Canada Training Brochure – Public Sector.

CHANGE OF DATE – Free Training Webinar – Living Through a Ransomware Breach

NOTICE OF CHANGE OF DATE

Due to circumstances outside our control we have had to re-schedule this free training webinar to December 17th. Our apologies for the change in date.

muniSERV is proud to partner with industry expert Valencia Risk, to invite you to a complimentary 90-minute emergency cybersecurity awareness session on December 17th at 2:00pm EST, Living through a Ransomware Breach.

Presented by Aron Feuer 25 year veteran of the cybersecurity industry, and developed in collaboration with our senior colleague Richard McDonald (former CIO of CSIS and CSE). This session is intended to inform City managers, CAOs CFOs, IT and IT and cybersecurity staff responsible for respond to a breach.

Session Audience

This session is for City, Town and Municipal employees that would be involved in a breach response or information protection. We invite CAO, CFO, CIO, Legal, and Emergency response executives, Council, and Privacy professionals to attend.

Session Description:

When an attack hits, executives must act quickly. In a ransomware breach, City managers are coming in cold, navigating uncharted waters with untested tools and playbooks. This session will describe the importance of being prepared for an attack through sharing the experience of a ransomware outbreak – from initial breach to recovery. Attendees will learn:

What to expect from their cyber-insurance provider, MSSP, and tech partners
Where to act fast, and how to make informed decisions during a breach
What to measure for Cybersecurity health
Why a cybersecurity audit or assessment isn’t the best tool
Protecting yourself when you work from home
Recovering from a breach post-incident

To register for this event send your RSVP to [email protected]

About Aron Feuer, Managing Director of Valencia IIP

Aron is the managing director of cybersecurity at Valencia. Before Valencia Aron founded Cygnos IT Security as head hacker, and sold the firm to Grant Thornton in 2015. Valencia IIP specializes in cybersecurity, privacy, and cloud. Aron’s work is with the federal government, cities, provinces, fortune firms, national retailers. He’s responded to hacks by Anonymous, lead classified security projects for the government, and run hundreds of penetration tests, risk assessments, simulations and security incident responses. His certifications include CISSP, CISA, CRISC, CRMA, CDPSE and CIPP/C, MCSE

Citizen Service Summit

Event name: Customer Service Professionals Network – Citizen Service Summit

Cost: Complimentary until August 15, 2021

Register Here

Description:

Join public sector leaders from all over Canada to learn new strategies to digitize, personalize, and automate citizen service.

This innovative 2-day virtual summit will be held on September 15 & 16, 2021 and will consist of sessions designed to share future-forward trends and tactical steps organizations of all sizes can take post-pandemic.

Sneak peak of speakers below. More to be announced shortly.

Andrew Enns, Executive VP, Leger Winnipeg: Measuring Community Perceptions
Dr. Gillian Mandich, Happiness Researcher: How to Build More Positive & Resilient Teams
Corey Atkinson, VP of L&D, CSPN: Inspiring Change Through Training
Nitin Badjatia, Head, Product Strategy – Customer Service Management, ServiceNow: Using Knowledge Management to Increase Employee Retention
Kenny Johnston, President, Bill Gosling Outsourcing: Optimizing Your Service Centre
David Singh, Partner, CSPN: Mastering Change Management Amidst the Post-Pandemic Chaos

Special thank you to our sponsors:

ServiceNow
Bill Gosling Outsourcing
Leger Canada

For more information, please visit our website here.

Ask For Directions – Business Training

Ask For Directions Business Training

Who is it for? Entrepreneurs who are starting and growing their businesses

This program has been inspired by the Grow Vantage training program. For the past 17 years, we have trained entrepreneurs to start up and grow their businesses, in an in-person environment. The program is consistently updated and taught by experts who are also entrepreneurs with their own businesses. We train the practical side of business and during the past year of the pandemic, we’ve updated and expanded the information we teach – adding 60% more content and sequencing classes from the idea stage to exit strategy.

What is the program made up of?

7 Modules of classes (from 5-6) released once per month:

Set Up Your Business: 3 modules – covering business concept, set up and registration, initial marketing approach and brand, insurance and financial guidelines

Grow Your Business: 4 modules – covering communications, personality profile, and personal skills, sales, marketing strategy and vehicles(advertising, media, PR), rules and regulations (including HR, privacy rules and contract guidelines), financial planning, accounting and cash flow.

Weekly group coaching calls throughout the program for mentorship, advice, analysis, strategy and peer mentorship.

A private Facebook group to enhance community collaboration

When does the program begin?

Doors will open on May 21st and the program will begin with a group call on May 19th

Registration: Will open soon

For More Information Contact:

Patricia Dent, Business Mentor, Grow Vantage

[email protected]

Bus: 705-727-0789
Cell: 705-229-4969

The Art of Strategic Planning for Rural Municipalities

Acquire the skills needed to develop a comprehensive Strategic Plan that will provide guidance and direction.

Overview

Strategic planning is the process of establishing and documenting a direction for your organization by assessing both where you are and where you want to go. It involves analyzing the organization, setting realistic goals and objectives, creating a plan of action, and establishing metrics to determine whether you have achieved your goals and objectives.

In this workshop you will learn a powerful but easy-to-apply methodology that will help you form a solid foundation for your strategic planning success.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this 2-day workshop you will be able to:

Conduct a Situational Analysis
Identify Key Priorities
Formulate Goals and Objectives
Create a Plan of Action
Set Key Performance Indicators
Execute and Monitor Strategic Plan

Date/Time

Monday, November 9, 2020 from 12:00 pm to 3:00 pm EST

AND

Tuesday, November 10, 2020 from 12:00 pm to 3:00 pm EST

Provided by: TRAICON

Learn more and Register Here

How Do I Set up a Webinar? Productivity Tools to Help

November 11, 2019

muniSERV’s professional members know that as part of their membership, we advertise their webinars directly to our municipal members. We know it’s hard to get past municipal gate-keepers so what better way is there to increase your visibility and credibility with municipal decision-makers, than with a webinar?

And our municipal members love webinars – particularly the free Lunch & Learn type webinars. We know this because our open and click-through rates for our newsletters are consistently higher than the industry average rates.

To be successful though your webinar must be educational and address a topic of interest to municipalities. Municipalities won’t register for your webinar if they think it’s just about “selling” your product or service.

Here’s What Our Members Say

“At Emergenetics we are always looking for strong, credible partners as we build our international brand in Canada and I have loved partnering with muniSERV and muniJOBS.

I am continuously impressed by the outreach opportunities we receive with our muniSERV membership, the response we receive to our webinars and the quality of the audience it attracts.”

Gail Green, President – Emergenetics Ontario April 2019

Ideas for Webinars

If you sell risk management software, provide some educational – or even scary statistics and inform municipalities on ways to mitigate online losses.

If you sell HR services, speak to the importance of performance reviews and what led you to develop your solution. You can even provide a sneak peek of your solution with a quick demo – but again, it must be delivered as a solution to the problem you are educating them on and not just a sales pitch for your services.

Here’s where I feel a bit hypocritical though. I know the value and the power of providing webinars (that’s why we encourage our members to do so), but I confess, that while I have co-sponsored some webinars, I have never actually set one up myself. (because shamelessly – I don’t know how to do it!)

So, in order for me to help you I had to help myself by learning how to conduct a webinar. Here are some tricks and tools I learned along the way.

Webinar Tools

Your webinar can be as basic as creating PowerPoint slides and delivering a webinar by using remote conferencing services that use cloud computing, such as Zoom or JoinMe.

I use Zoom to share my screen and provide online demos of muniJOBS. While I pay the annual fee for Zoom, you can use many of their features for free. However, their specific webinar service comes at an additional cost.

If you want folks to register for your webinar (and you will so you can gather leads), you will need a way to handle the registrations even if registration is free. There are many registration tools available, but one I’m familiar with is Eventbrite.

To create and deliver webinars you may want to consider using specific webinar software. Here’s an article by Joe Warnimont for codeinwp, that summarizes and compares the Best Webinar software of 2019.

Once you’re ready to start creating your webinar content, these Six Tips for Success are a great guideline to follow. Don’t forget to engage your audience with a poll, some direct questions or an icebreaker to make it interactive and fun. There’s nothing worse than listening to a “talking head”, with no opportunity to provide input or ask questions!

Also, be sure you turn off any chat windows and on-screen notifications that could (and will) pop up while sharing your screen.

And finally, be prepared with extra batteries for your wireless mouse and a fully charged headset – because we’re all well aware of Murphy’s Law!

C12 Driver Training

Welcome to driver training for waste management systems, EPA Regulation 347 C-12 Driver Training Certification program.

This online course includes references to the Land Disposal Restrictions, better known as the LDR

It also encompasses the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act or the TDGA

By the end of this course you will have a better understanding of Regulation 347 and how it applies to you, the operator or driver of the vehicle, in relation to the waste you are hauling and the regulations surrounding those duties.

Click here for more information and course description. Since it’s delivered digitally, it can be started at any time. The date listed is simply the date of posting.

Presented by MySDS Inc.

Contact: [email protected] | 1-855-282-4537 | 1-705-665-3719

The Benefits of Digital Training

September 16, 2019

The manner in which technology has become a part of our daily lives has grown exponentially with each passing day. Working with, and taking advantage of technology has made us capable of reaching new heights of communication and has improved our ease of access to information. Finding new careers has never been easier, and neither has completing the training to go with them. When you’re able to offer online, digital training, the benefits are plentiful for not just the company, but the employees as well. Let’s take a look at some of the top benefits of offering digital training.

Flexibility

With the on-demand nature of digital training, employees are able to complete their courses on their own time. This can make everyone breathe a little easier. Employers can easily set out learning plans for employees and assign the course work with a deadline for completion, and staff are able to pick out the best time in their day to work on it. The whole training process can successfully accommodate everyone’s schedules, as the employer doesn’t have to dedicate extra resources to setting up a training day, hiring trainers and/or arranging to send employees to a training event on a specific day, and the employees can all work at their own pace.

Affordability

On-site training can be expensive. Having to pay the dedicated trainers to attend the workplace, to train the trainees can cause labour costs to soar quicker than you realize. Not to mention room rentals, catering costs for lunches and snacks, etc. These costs are even much greater if employees need to travel to off-site training courses. It just makes sense not to disrupt the daily operational activities at work and instead assign the training to a laptop, computer or phone.

Versatility

Digital training can encapsulate a whole variety of methods to keep it interesting, engaging, and, most importantly, retentive. Using more than just pages upon pages of text is crucial. Switching things up with videos, graphics and quizzes and even incorporating gamification keeps the pace moving while shaking things up for the trainee so they don’t get bored. It’s been proven that the more interactive digital training is, the more the learner will retain the information presented.

Accessibility

With access to phones, laptops, computers and tablets, training can be done on nearly any type of current device. The streamlined, ease of access to online training ensures that everyone is capable of getting on board. Never requiring more than an internet connection and an internet browser like Edge, Firefox, Opera or Chrome, logging in to an online training profile to complete the training on any and all devices, has never been easier.

Keeping municipal operations running smoothly while educating your employees can be stressful. However, be sure you’re setting aside dedicated time for employees during the day to work on their digital courses because squeezing courses in between other daily activities are just too disruptive and employees will view it as another task that has been added to them. You want to be sure they’re given the time to enjoy the courses and receiving the soft skills training they need to be ready for the job at hand. Taking the leap and investing in a digital training platform can ensure you are getting the best value for your training budget and that you have complete control over the learning and development plans for each individual in your organization. Consistency is key!

Course Quality Matters

Unfortunately, some digital courses can aptly be described as purely for entertainment value. If you’re simply wanting to check off a box that says an employee received training to comply with organizational policy, then a 20-minute entertainment-style digital course might fit the bill for you. That doesn’t mean that all 20-minute courses don’t deliver value – just be careful that you are getting value.

However, quality, certified digital courses will ensure your employees not only have taken the course but that they have comprehended and retained what they’ve learned because they will have been tested and graded. It seems to be a waste of time and money, and there’s no real value to the individual or the organization if they didn’t understand or retain important information that can help them to do their job better and better.

muniSERV is a leader in quality, certified digital training and learning development solutions for municipalities. Our new PERFORM® leadership soft skills training is used by governments, educational institutions, private enterprises and organizations worldwide to deliver tangible, real-life competency-based skills.

Through the use of free learning assessments to get learners started, PERFORM® is able to identify soft skills gaps and recommend a training solution targeted to key leadership development areas for your team. Ask us for the links to these free assessments.

Finding the right training organization to help you achieve your learning and development goals takes time. It’s more than just hiring someone who says they have the materials that meet your needs. Do your homework and go with proven, reputable training organizations and you’ll experience all the benefits of digital learning!

Chemical Inventory & Safety Audit : What You Need to Know

September 13, 2019

Setting up and managing a Chemical Inventory can be a difficult task, even when you think you have done your research or have prepared yourself with a spreadsheet or list to follow. The difficulty comes when you begin attempting to cross-reference Chemicals with the Vendor SDS, which may create significant problems if you are unable to do so.

Tracking chemicals in the workplace requires detailed knowledge of all possible “hiding places”. Chemicals can be found in the strangest places –and they can be easily overlooked.

It is not always obvious that certain items can also be considered “chemicals” – did you know that welding rods and certain building materials (IE. insulation batts, bricks) may be hazardous if exposure to by-products occurs? As a result, you may not be able to perform risk assessments for the whole site. Chemicals often interact explosively with other chemicals, so storage location may be a problem if you need to have multiple chemicals with a certain distance between them. The Inventory must identify the distance between chemicals so that appropriate incompatibilities reporting can take place.

Chemical Inventory and Safety Audit made easy…

Green Lights and MySDS will work with you to determine which procedures and information are necessary for your business.

We will conduct a physical inventory of all hazardous chemicals including *consumer products.

*Consumer products are products that do not require a Safety Data Sheet (SDS) when purchased by a consumer in a retail setting, however, some of these products do require an SDS when they are brought into the workplace (example: paints, hand soaps, inks)

We will compile a list including:

• Chemical name (i.e Acetone)

• Amount – unit of measure (i.e 1 litre)

• Container type (i.e Glass bottle)

• Manufacturer (i.e Aldrich)

• Exact location (i.e Building C, Warehouse Office, Shelf A)

We will also update the chemical inventory database when you:

1) Move to a new location

2) Acquire a new hazardous chemical

3) Your inventory volumes change more than 10%

4) You remove a chemical from your inventory

IMPORTANT NOTE:

A company must declare their inventory status even if there are zero chemicals in stock when their inventory is conducted.

Other areas that may need to be reviewed during a Chemical inventory or Safety Audit:

· Placarding

· Designated Substances

· CAS Numbers

· Hot-Spot Identification

· Chemicals Incompatibility reporting

· Hazardous Substances reporting

· Dangerous Goods reporting

· Radioactive materials, biological materials (or etiological agents), or controlled substances;

are maintained in separate tracking systems.

We do ALL the work. We keep you compliant!

Green Lights Environmental is the sister company of MySDS inc.

www.greenlightsinc.ca | www.mysds.ca

Why You Should Become an Asset Management Coordinator

July 22, 2019

Asset Management Coordinator – have you heard this of this career before?

Well, if you haven’t, you’re about to hear a lot about it from municipalities over the next little while.

Many municipalities are facing challenges to fund their infrastructure at levels that ensure their sustainability. With ageing assets, increased renewal needs and pressures from changing climate there is a need to do things differently and collaborate to address the “infrastructure gap”.

The end goal is for municipalities, provinces, and the federal government to leverage asset management planning to optimize infrastructure investment decisions. For example, in December 2017, the Province of Ontario passed O.Reg 588/2017 that sets out new requirements for asset management planning for municipalities.

This makes the need to hire Asset Managers and/or Asset Management Coordinators, even more important and urgent. Therefore this is a rapidly growing and expanding career in Canadian municipalities.

So what is asset management and why do municipalities need an Asset Management Coordinator?

What is Asset Management?

Asset management refers to the systematic approach to the governance and realization of value from the things that a group or entity is responsible for, over their whole life cycles. It may apply both to tangible assets and to intangible assets. Asset management is a systematic process of developing, operating, maintaining, upgrading, and disposing of assets in the most cost-effective manner.

What kind of background and training do I need to have for this career?

Many asset managers have engineering, finance and/or planning backgrounds but another key criterion is Project Management, as addressed in a recent Public Sector Digest webinar, “Hiring an Asset Management Coordinator”, sponsored by muniSERV /muniJOBS, as being integral to the success of someone looking to enter this career.

Municipalities reported that core competencies should be there but much more important is that you can tell them how you’d add value to the position. Because this is an emerging field, you have a great deal of liberty to build the position as you go. Articulate it in your cover letter. You may not have all the skills right now but if you’re willing to learn, municipalities are willing to provide you with the right training to do the job.

Top skills reported are;

Willingness to learn on the job
Systems thinking
Relationship building and
Communications skills.

At present, there are no courses available at universities, although, the Municipal Finance Officers’ Association of Ontario (MFOA)and Public Sector Digest can help.

For municipalities looking for an Asset Manager or Coordinator, muniJOBS has some candidates with Asset Management listed as one of their skills. To search candidates, simply register for a free Employer profile.

We connect municipalities and the businesses that serve them.

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