I was at a conference recently for an organization called Lifelines. Lifelines is an anti-death penalty organization which matches like-minded people in the UK with men and women on death row in the US, for the purpose of offering friendship to each other.

The first speaker was Renny Cushing, the chief executive of Murder Victims’ Family for Human Rights. He said that the execution of the perpetrator is often held out as the event which will bring healing and closure for the victim’s family. He went on to say: “healing is a process, not an event”.

It made me think of other things which are really processes, not events. One which came to my mind was training. We attend training courses - whether in house or externally - and these are events. However, is that where the training happens? I don’t think so. It may well be the start of a process, but it isn’t the process. The process happens when the person changes - whether that is what they do, how they do it, or why they do it.

I think of computer training. How many of us have gone on a course to learn a new system? I have. We went and it was explained to us. We even had computer so we could try it out and get familiar with the basics. So far, so good. Unfortunately, there were delays in implementation, so we didn’t have the system for six months. When we suggested we could do with a refresher, the answer we got back was “You had a training course.”. Not surprisingly, none of us were really able to use the system. New staff did go on a half day session, so I got them to re-train us. We had learnt nothing from our half day.

So how do you as the employer get that process? There are some steps to take to get there. They are:

• Know what you want the outcome to be - and make sure you communicate that to and agree this with your member of staff.
• Understand what you need to do, say, or act like to support the training process. Change will happen; after all, wasn’t that the intent?
• Give it some time and space - training and translating that into confident, everyday action takes time. Allow for hesitancy and errors.
• Review how things are little and often. A series of short, focused reviews is better than a one-off overview.

Think about when you have been on a training course and then come back into the workplace. I went with my staff to a talk on choice based lettings in 1996. We found it an exciting idea, but it was not adopted by our employer. We did, however, begin to change our attitudes towards those applying for housing. We started making the system easier, the point system less complex, and we clearly told people the average waiting times in different areas. This was part of the training we had had – thinking of people as applicants, not supplicants. When we made the move to a choice-based system a year or so later, we were able to move very quickly because the attitudes and behaviours had bedded in, so we could execute the idea quickly.

Remember, training - and the learning which we want - is a process, not an event.

Beth Peakall is MD of TCLuk Training http://www.tcluk.com and TCLuk Housing http://www.tclukhousing.co.uk one of the UK’s leading housing consultancies.

Tags: attend training, chief executive, closure, computer training, death penalty, half day, lifelines, men and women, murder victims family, perpetrator, person changes, refresher, renny cushing, six months, surprisingly, women on death row

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