Here’s a fun piece of trivia: Did you know that in 2010, only 25% of respondents surveyed found that training improved employees’ performance?
What you have suspected all along turns out to be true. You are being unnecessarily taken away from your job to fall half-asleep in a talk that will do nothing for your both you and your employers in the long run.
And most of the time, your company is even paying for such a luxury.
Scientific studies have found that “adult learners in lecture setting forget nearly 50% of what they learn within two weeks“.
Of course in an ideal world, there is some merit to be had for a corporate training program. It is a good way for corporations to help build their staff into a more well-rounded team, and in some cases certain members of the staff even need that corporately mandated refresher course.
But there should also be something to say about corporations being much more discerning of what they choose to subject their poor employees to.
So here is a list of corporate trainings that companies can consider just taking off the roster altogether for the well-being of everyone involved.
1. Time Management Courses
Here is the true irony behind scheduling this particular course: Employees would be managing their time better for the day if they could have used the two hours spent listening to this talk on their actual job.
The worst part in time management courses though, is that often attendees are unable to convert what they learned into viable workplace strategies. Each job carries its own pressures, and often times it is too difficult to convert the strategies presented into skills that can be implemented long-term. That is, if the attendees even tried in the first place.
2. Leadership Training
The skills taught in these classes are too often not applicable in real life situations. Worst of all, it is often managers and leaders in the organization who are sent to these. If these individuals were actually promoted into leadership positions, shouldn’t they already have some prerequisite leadership skills that would make them good for the job?
If they do not have these skills, perhaps it is a good time to reevaluate your hiring choices. Leadership courses would actually be a better benefit for lower-tier staff who might actually learn some leadership skills to use in the future.
3. Interpersonal Skills Training
Also read as: Communication Skills Training, Personality Styles Training, Conflict Resolution.
It seems odd for higher-ups to outsource this training to a third person when the true solution behind office politics is to have open lines of communication between team members and higher-ups. To work with people is to have disagreements with each other. Providing an open line for staff to air their grievances as well as cultivating a polite culture of openness in the office would actually be a better solution for management to consider.
Also, if they wanted to find out their personality type, there are already plenty of websites online to help with that. They can even find out which Disney character they are or their secret spirit animal.
4. Ethics Training
Or better known as common sense training.
Most of everyone knows what ethics are. The choice of whether to employ it or not is all down to someone’s attitude.
Many attendees will be having flashbacks to their primary school Moral class days in these talks. And even back then Pendidikan Moral can be considered an easy A. Employers are treating their staff like children when they send someone to one of these courses. And employees who do resent the management of this are usually just too polite to say anything, probably because of their ethics.
5. Microsoft Office Training
While we should not be prejudiced towards some of us among the crowd who are not technologically inclined, there is no reason to punish the whole office just because Ali doesn’t know how to do =vlookup in Excel. A more targeted approach is of the essence here so everyone doesn’t need to learn how to rearrange the cells in an alphabetical order for the umpteenth time.
6. Sexual Harassment Training
The frequency of sexual harassment cases in an office is likely due to the ingrained culture of the office that employees are used to. While steps should be taken in order to prevent this negative behaviour, a seminar falling on deaf ears will do nothing to address the root problem of the issue.
At best, a sexual harassment seminar is just seen as a two-hour punishment for the wrongdoer, and everyone else suffers along with the perpetrator, which would likely just create an all-round awkward working environment.
As with ethics, the boundaries of actions and words that relate to sexual harassment are already familiar to us. We know the basics of right and wrong. If one can’t control themselves from sexually harassing other co-workers, perhaps he or she should be sent directly to the psychiatrist.
7. Language Proficiency Training
Chances are, employees are able to communicate just fine if they were able to pass the interview process to get to the job in the first place.
If they do need to brush up on their language however, one packed lecture over 2-3 hours will most probably not do much for the linguistically deficient. A language is a skill that takes at least months to master, usually years.
A couple of hours just isn’t going to cut it. Consider spending some resources on weekly personal classes instead.
8. Team Building Training
Having team-building exercises is one thing. Actually trying to teach employees how to do team building is when we just pack up and go home.
It is also worth noting that staff members are usually put into competitions against each other for the purposes of such training. If anything, a competition would tend to make one team fight against the other.
At best, management is just paying their staff to play games. The worst case scenario is when the training ends up backfiring when the activity results in grudges and gossip amongst colleagues.
If co-workers want to build interpersonal relationships and better teamwork, they would just hang out after work over a drink, on their own, without the need of a training session.