Employer Mandated Training

One of the most fulfilling employer training programs I did last year was Empathy In the Workplace.  Another name for it is Sensitivity Training.  You know, when employee's need to think before they speak and say something that either offends someone or makes them depressed. In my clients case they had an employee who did both to the point that the employee was no longer allowed to go to their clients office until they had proof that he had been through some sensitivity training.  Here are the objectives for the program I developed:

Empathy In the Workplace Learning Objectives:

1. Increased understanding, insight and self-awareness about ones’ own behavior and its impact on others, including the ways in which others interpret one’s behavior.
2. Increased understanding and sensitivity about the behavior of others, including better interpretation of both verbal and nonverbal clues, which increases awareness and understanding of what the other person is thinking and feeling.
3. Better understanding and awareness of group and inter-group process, both those that facilitate and those that inhibit group functioning.
4. Increased diagnostic skills in interpersonal inter-group situation. The first three objectives are important for the accomplishment of the fourth objective. 
5. Increased ability to transform learning into action, so that real life interventions will be more successful increasing employee effectiveness, satisfaction, and output.
6. Improvement in individuals ability to analyze their own interpersonal behavior, as well as to learn own to help themselves and others with whom they come in contact to achieve more satisfying rewarding and effective interpersonal relationships.
7. Complete self-assessments to help the employee further understand how the concepts in the program apply personally to them. 

Another program that I delivered for an employer was in response to a harassment and discrimination complaint they had received.  The board of directors made the management training mandatory and I provided some guidelines for management to share some of the slides I developed with the employees so the awareness did not stop there.   Here are the objectives for the program I developed:

Title VII Management Training Learning Objectives

• Explain what federal discrimination laws are and their basic provisions
• Define discrimination
• Define harassment
• Cite categories of harassment
• Define retaliation
• Cite costs involved with violations of federal discrimination laws
• Describe the organizations policy on discrimination, harassment, and retaliation
• Describe the organizations complaint process and procedures
• Explain the responsibilities supervisors have in complying with federal discrimination laws

These are just a couple of topics employers should require to be mandated but often are not even on the radar.  Employees are coming into organizations expecting dignified and respectful treatment. Gone are the days where employees put up with disrespectful and inappropriate treatment. It's important to consider what has previously been termed "soft skills" as important as those needed to do the work because communication is part of the work. It is what helps to engage and retain employees.