TRAINING


and become complex? It’s in the unpredictability of people and their level of conscious awareness. We need to: n Appreciate the different stages of human growth and development.


n Understand the values that individuals hold at any given time.


n Appreciate where those values come from.


n Understand how those values play out in their actions.


n Determine how aligned they are with the workplace.


n Determine how motivated staff are to ‘internalise’ new information, making it their own in order to then apply the knowledge gained?


Ensuring relevance


The question we should really ask when considering any training as an intervention is: ‘How can we make it more relevant?’ Modern societal conditioning has inadvertently placed a higher value on academic-style learning. Whether you are practical or academic, neither is better or worse than the other. When it comes to developing training and education programmes, it is believed that ‘examination-style’ tests and ticking boxes demonstrate that ‘learning’ has taken place. We forget that ‘learning’ is also a practical ongoing process, connected to our present human experiences, and the legacy of our past. The generic ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach expects people to know what to do with the information. However, if it is not meaningful to the individual, it will neither be sufficiently motivating to maintain their attention, or indeed aligned with having a measurable performance improvement impact, enabling evaluation of the effectiveness of the learning and development initiative.


Having a clear goal of what you want to improve should provide the focus for the training development. Unfortunately, this is often not known or clearly communicated by the organisation’s leadership team, partly because sufficient time hasn’t been invested to really


Table 2: Translating training goals into measurable impacts. Training needs?


“We need sales training”


“We need training on conflict management”


“We need training on water safety and management”


“We need training on infection prevention and control”


“We need training on medical device decontamination”


Measurable goals (i.e. ‘What you really want’)


vs. Sales will increase 5% by Q3. vs. Grievances will decrease by 10% in


two years. vs. The number of remedial actions on


water assets will decrease by 20% by 2020.


vs. The number of days’ closure due to


an outbreak event will decrease by 30% in two years.


vs. The number of operations cancelled


for non-clinical reasons due to equipment failure will decrease by 10% by 2019.


understand the issues or training ‘gaps’ to be addressed. Table 2 provides some examples of how to translate training needs into measurable goals, to help strengthen the focus of the training intervention:


Inspiring and enabling


The purpose of education is to inspire and enable individuals to discover their possibilities, and engage with the parts of themselves working for and against their own growth; to confidently go ‘from knowledge to action’ (known as ‘growth mindset’). An organisation’s role in that context is to create an environment where continuous learning is a value, embodied and role-modelled from the leadership team to the ground force. Sadly, many early negative experiences during formal schooling years may have switched high numbers of adults off from learning for the fun and love of it, with many believing that education equates to test scores and exams, and that these determine their personal value and worth. This has been reinforced by employers screening candidates by the numbers of


qualifications attained, which in turn has led to a disenfranchised workforce, low in self-esteem and motivation for self- directed learning.


into the link between wellbeing and academic attainment within children of primary and secondary schools. They found that emotional wellbeing was a key factor to positive learning outcome – a factor that I believe doesn’t change when you become an adult.


Let’s come back to the word ‘compliance’ – from the organisational perspective you know you have to fully comply with the law etc; it could be a matter of life or death. The life experiences we all have, of course, determine our level of engagement with whatever training or learning is being recommended. The learning development needs of somebody who didn’t have a positive experience of school may differ markedly from those of an individual who loved learning while at school, and readily took on information. Looking at the former, how might they might they interpret compliance? In 2012 the Department of Education funded research4


October 2019 Health Estate Journal 67


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