SESSION 9

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

It appears as though the phrase "...not another training sessiom" is becoming an integral part in everybody's daily work vocabulary. My employer is great at scheduling training for things we never get to see again. One can not help but wonder the purpose of such training, when we employees can not determine what the connection between the training and our job is. Perhaps some clarification coming fom the employer's end would help bridge the confusion gap.

One example of poor training is when the employer schedules training for employees on subjects that do not pertain to what we employees normally do. For example, we routinely train for subjects that pertain to the Sales Department. We are trained on these, because we in Technical Services, happen to fall under the umbrella of the sales department. I am not sure about the logic behind this type of "shotgun" approach; however, the result is that we employees simply exchange questioning stares among ourselves, for we already know well in advance this training will be an utter waste of our time. Our employer might think he is doing us a favor by providing all this training; we however, believe this is useless training if we are not going to apply the knowledge we just learned. Somehow, a piece of the puzzle is missing in this picture.

I have worked for other employers, where the training is directly applied to the tasks we perform on a daily basis. The employees are anxious to learn and then apply the knowledge just gained. The employees have been struggling with nagging work situations and they know that the training they are about to receive will make them more efficient. The training the employees receive will also make their jobs easier and the training will remove a lot of the stress associated with the prior lack of training. This is an example where the employee and employer both benefit; when the training provided is properly tageted to a mission, as Dr. Newberry explained in his podcast.

I believe professional development is a good thing when prior planning has been done. It is important to asses the needs as these pertain to both employee and employer as well. One-sided assessment of needs tends to alienate the party left unatended. Employee alienation results in lack of interest on the part of the employee; this in turn creates other undesirable consequences, such as lack of employee interest, loss of loyalty, motivation and even sometimes, loss of employee morale. therefore, in order to avoid training misguidance, careful planing of training and and a relevance assessment are of utmost importance.


WEEKLY LOG:

- Downloaded and listened to Session 9 podcast
- Formulated response to Session 9
- Posted response to Session 9 in my blog
- Read scholar's blog responses to Session 9
- Posted my comments on scholar's blog response to Session 9