Monday, July 29, 2013
Staff Training
I am always surprised at agencies that have no money for staff training. There's always time and money to clean up messes, but no money to help prevent things from happening in the first place.
Why is it OK for staff to just "hang out" with clients all day when they could be providing some actual skills training if they just knew how... and had the motivation to do so? We used a prompting hierarchy to train our clients in various skills. I asked my staff once who actually took the time during the day to follow each client's ISP and follow through using the prompting hierarchy for each individual client in a particular skill. The frustrating answer was... NONE of them!
When I asked why, there was a lot of mumbling about they "sort of" do it, and how much time it takes...
When I asked how much time it takes to follow through with prompts, no one was sure, and that's when it dawned on me that we were failing miserably in our training! I demonstrated how it takes maybe 10 to 15 seconds to use the prompting hierarchy and asked if they couldn't find 15 seconds per client per day to work on specific ISP Objectives.
Like most agencies, we left actual training of new staff up to our current staff... who were trained by staff prior to them... who also had never been actually trained either...
Our agency started up an online training program. It was very expensive and you were supposed to read some material and then take a test. If you failed the test, you could try again and keep guessing until you passed. When I asked my boss why we used that training, I was told that it was better than nothing.
No it isn't!
Using training materials that are only "better than nothing" is a waste of everyone's time.
That's when I wrote my own training materials... which, you guessed it... are for sale on my www.mosscanyon.com website. But look, even if you don't use my materials, please find something that staff can actually benefit from and that they can learn from how to do their jobs. They will be a lot more motivated to come to work if they know how to do their work. Everyone will be safer and the clients will certainly benefit!
Why is it OK for staff to just "hang out" with clients all day when they could be providing some actual skills training if they just knew how... and had the motivation to do so? We used a prompting hierarchy to train our clients in various skills. I asked my staff once who actually took the time during the day to follow each client's ISP and follow through using the prompting hierarchy for each individual client in a particular skill. The frustrating answer was... NONE of them!
When I asked why, there was a lot of mumbling about they "sort of" do it, and how much time it takes...
When I asked how much time it takes to follow through with prompts, no one was sure, and that's when it dawned on me that we were failing miserably in our training! I demonstrated how it takes maybe 10 to 15 seconds to use the prompting hierarchy and asked if they couldn't find 15 seconds per client per day to work on specific ISP Objectives.
Like most agencies, we left actual training of new staff up to our current staff... who were trained by staff prior to them... who also had never been actually trained either...
Our agency started up an online training program. It was very expensive and you were supposed to read some material and then take a test. If you failed the test, you could try again and keep guessing until you passed. When I asked my boss why we used that training, I was told that it was better than nothing.
No it isn't!
Using training materials that are only "better than nothing" is a waste of everyone's time.
That's when I wrote my own training materials... which, you guessed it... are for sale on my www.mosscanyon.com website. But look, even if you don't use my materials, please find something that staff can actually benefit from and that they can learn from how to do their jobs. They will be a lot more motivated to come to work if they know how to do their work. Everyone will be safer and the clients will certainly benefit!
