Courses offered by Misco

Misco will be holding a seminar to investigate the benefits and mechanisms of employee suggestion schemes on Wednesday from 4.30 to 7.30 p.m. at Misco Training Centre, Regency House, Republic Street, Valletta.

These schemes are a powerful tool that can present important clues to solving problems and improving the working environment, process and product.

These schemes stimulate employees' creativity and give them a mechanism by which they can put forward their ideas and suggestions. A lot of valuable ideas may go by without ever being given the chance for consideration, simply because there is no mechanism to transport these ideas to management.

Misco's programme will present ideas from a typical suggestion scheme and a method to assess ideas submitted. With a little bit of effort in running the suggestion scheme, employers can boost employee empowerment, with obvious benefits to both employer and employee.

Executive Secretary II

Learning basic secretarial skills like typing, computer programmes on word processing, dealing with people on the telephone and sending out company correspondence are important aspects of any executive secretary's job. However, there are other important areas that also need to be developed.

Planning and organising meetings and conferences, on-the-job training of new staff members, motivating a team of people and basic interviewing skills have become very much a part of the executive secretary/personal assistant's daily routine. These skills cannot be learnt from a textbook but rather through group discussions, sharing of experiences and practical exercises.

This course will specifically focus on enhancing and developing these areas through case studies, role plays and individual exercises which are most beneficial for participants involved in office management and who supervise junior staff members.

Assertiveness, developing personal authority and handling criticism, areas that are extremely important in a secretary's own personal development, will also be discussed.

This three-morning programme, which is a follow-up to Executive Secretary I, will be held at the MISCO Training Centre, Valletta, between November 2 and 5, from 9 a.m. to noon.

Customer segmentation

Whenever a market for a product or service consists of two or more buyers, the market is capable of being segmented.

Customer segmentation has long been recognised as a key component of any marketing strategy, as it is the method by which companies reach their target customers as often and as forcefully as possible within the financial resources available.

Customer segmentation gets inside the lives of the customers because it ensures that companies fine-tune their marketing strategy and that it is tailor-made to their customers' requirements.

This programme is aimed at marketing executives, sales executives, brand and advertising executives and all those who during the course of their work need to take marketing-related decisions. It will be held on November 4 at the Misco Training Centre, Valletta, between 2.30 and 6 p.m.

For further information about Misco's courses contact M'Louise Xuereb on tel: 2122-0303/21 or 2123-9683, fax: 2124-7512/21 or 2125-1083 or e-mail: mlxuereb-@miscomalta.com.