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Letter From a Trainer

Submitted by Sue Pivetta on Tue, 01/25/2011 - 13:43

Hi Sue,

When an honest assessment of your work atmosphere includes the word “toxic”, you have to admit your agency is in serious trouble.  If you are in a position of authority or have some influence, I would recommend that you bring in some outside resources to help you turn things around.  You may want to even consider bringing in an industrial psychologist.  If the work atmosphere is as bad as it sounds, a trusted neutral party who is only interested in helping can be very helpful, and won’t cost as much as the overtime and staff churn you are currently paying. 
 
Has there been a good job task analysis done recently?  This can help both the staff and the administration get a healthy perspective on what you are all being expected to do, and can also be helpful if your pay scale is way off.  I suspect that the job’s complexity and responsibilities are much higher now than they were even ten years ago.  Did your senior staff learn the new responsibilities a little at a time over several years, but new hires are expected to learn it all to perfection in 18 weeks?  (yes, I’m exaggerating, but you understand what I’m saying)  If the senior people were starting over fresh today with no prior experience, would they make it through the training process and succeed?  Several of them probably would not.
 
Can you break up the job into separate tasks, at least for training?  This might allow a new hire to master a portion of the job, fill a shift, and give them a feeling of success before they take on the next portion of the training.  It can also give your trainers a break, before everyone moves on to the next phase.  Your pay scale can even reflect the partially trained status with incremental steps as each new phase is learned.  Are your trainers being paid extra to train?  Are the right people doing the training?  How much is seniority, or the attitude that sometimes comes with it, getting in the way?  Have your senior people’s lifestyles become accustomed to the steady overtime to the point they can’t easily live on their regular salary?
 
There are better personnel managers out there than I am.  Hopefully, my suggestions / questions will generate some more feedback that can help you and the many other agencies out there that are going through the same thing.  It will take time to turn it around, but it can be done.  Good luck!