Effectiveness

Is Experience the Best Teacher?

by
Source: Patsy Michaud/Shutterstock
Source: Patsy Michaud/Shutterstock

We have often heard the expression ‘walk a mile in my shoes’ when someone wants to relay how a certain experience has affected them.  Usually, the experience was unpleasant, challenging, or just very difficult and we want to have someone else understand how we felt.  Why?  Sometimes, when we experience a difficult situation we want to talk about it just to complain,  but we also talk about our negative experiences because we don’t want to go through that experience the same way, again.  Having a negative experience, especially one that causes us discomfort, is certainly a key factor in changing our behaviour in order to avoid repeating the same experience in the future.  One hopes that what we learn for ourselves, we might help others with as well.

Listening to someone’s negative experience is very different from living through the actual experience itself. A very effective training design technique which implements experiential learning, is being used at the Michener Institute for Applied Health Sciences.  An “aging simulation suit’ is being used to train future healthcare practitioners.  The suit is designed in such a way that it literally allows someone to walk in the shoes of an aging person and to learn, through personal experience, what it physically feels like to be a patient or a client in a healthcare setting.

Click here to read the article and watch a video

Discussion Questions:

  1. Besides healthcare, what types of industries would benefit from having this type of sensory aging & mobility training provided to their employees?
  2. Have you changed something in your own work style because of how you felt someone treated you? What did you change and why did you make that change?
  3. From a customer service perspective, what other types of training tools could be used to relay the experience of aging?
  4. Why is this type of experiential training effective?

Leaders Loving Learning!

by

Off-the-job training is not just for those at the start of their careers.  Recently, the Queen’s School of Business and FEI Canada implemented a program for senior financial executives called the Leadership Beyond Finance Program.

Source: StockPhotosLV/Shutterstock
Source: StockPhotosLV/Shutterstock

Click here to read about the Leadership Beyond Finance Program.

Even though the program is one that falls into the ‘off-the-job’ training category, it calls upon real-life situations and shared learning taken from ‘on-the-job’ leadership experiences.  All too often leaders have to go through very painful and public work related experiences that, if not handled correctly, will lead to disastrous results.  We have all seen or heard of organizational leaders who are put to the test in unsafe and unwelcoming waters with little opportunity to go back and fix mistakes made along the way.

This program offers a wonderful opportunity to share those painfully learned lessons through the experiences of others and, hopefully, alter the leadership approach for those leaders in the program to achieve better results.

In our studies about employee training and development, it is evident that the best learning takes place in safe, welcoming environments that provide an opportunity to practice what is learned before it is applied.

Effective leadership is definitely something that requires lots of practice and will continue to offer multiple learning opportunities along the way!

Discussion Questions:

  1. Identify three traditional off the job training techniques described in the article.
  2. Why do leaders need to learn to listen?
  3. How would Human Resources Professionals benefit from this type of leadership program?
  4. Identify one personal leadership skill that you wish you had an opportunity to practice before having to use it in a workplace setting.

Investing in the Employment Relationship

by

One of the most effective employee training programs, that HR Professionals can provide, is new employee Onboarding.

Bringing new employees into an organization represents a significant commitment.  Not just from a monetary cost perspective, but more importantly, from a long-term investment into the employment relationship.  HR recruitment and selection programs spend an immense amount of time and money ensuring that the right person is hired into our organizations.  That investment must continue to be nurtured by ensuring that the newly hired employee is integrated into the cultural fit of the organization for the long term.

Click here to read the article.

This particular program, outlined in the article above, requires a high investment of time and focused commitment within the first 90 days of employment.  Is that enough time to assess the success of employee integration?  Many provinces have employment legislation that has a similar probationary period.  It makes sense to make use of a 90 day framework in the most cost-effective way possible.

When we invest in any relationship, we want to be sure that there is an equivalent return.  The same applies for employer-employee relationships.  By checking in with our employees at the beginning of their employment journey we are checking in on our investment with the hope for a very high and long-term commitment in return.

Discussion Questions:

  1. What is the cost-benefit of having a new employee buddy program?
  2. Have you left a position or a workplace within the first year of your employment because you did not feel welcome? What influenced your decision to leave? What would have influenced you to stay?
  3. Identify three new employee engagement/training activities that an HR department can provide at little to no cost, within the first 90 days of employment.
  4. Identify cost-related losses that occur when an employee leaves an organization within the first year of employment.