Long-term care leaders and managers have “superpowers” that can improve their organizations’ return on investment in corporate training, according to experts speaking at a recent webinar sponsored by the Green House Project.
Resources that can help managers avoid the challenges they face may be untapped, said Marla DeVries, chief learning officer at Green House Project’s parent organization, the Center for Innovation.
Audience members homed in on several challenges in training new staff members. For instance, high staff turnover prevents consistent application of training, according to a poll of attendees taken during the webinar. Additionally, participants said that they often don’t have the time to observe whether training is done well. Because training often is conducted to meet compliance requirements, participants said they often are left with unclear expectations on how to apply what they learned.
The presenters identified several ways to strengthen the workforce and maximize the value that companies place in training staff members.
For instance, training must be an effort backed by the whole organization, not just an individual or two, they said. In a typical training scenario, learners attend training and get credit for attending, and then a leader moves on to the next priority, they said.
“What we see is that training impact is neither maximized nor known, and what we call this is the check-the-box approach,” said Ella Lawson, resource management specialist at the Green House Project. “It’s task-focused. It’s inefficient and doesn’t maximize what training can really really do.”
A third of the respondents to a poll during the webinar said that, at their organizations, the manager of the staff leads all training. Others said that staff members lead training sessions, that they are led by dedicated instructors or that teaching is a shared responsibility.
“Nobody said, ‘No, it’s the senior leader who is responsible for seeing that training is applied,’” DeVries noted.
Ideally, senior leaders both set the guidelines for education and conduct the training, according to the experts. They equated managers as liaisons between the instructors and the learners. Each person has his or her own role to play.
The webinar was part of a series conducted in conjunction with the EmpowerEd learning platform of the Green House Project and Pioneer Network.
