Mandatory Training - III

A lot has already been said about Mandatory Training, see the following three post:

1) You know you work at a Shitshow when….
2) Mandatory Training II
3) Mandatory Training

What hasn’t been mentioned is the tactics flunktional managers use to get people to complete their mandatory training, go ahead and guess…

If you guessed providing incentives and making it an overall positive experience, you guessed wrong.  Public humiliation is the preferred tactic.

As the deadline approaches the flunktional office administrator starts sending out an email reminding people to complete their training.  Attached to the email is a list of all employees and what training each has to take and their individual status.  It’s a large list but anyone can look to see who has done what.

Since most people only look to see what training they have to do, the flunktional directorate turns it up a notch.  In the body of the email they start listing, the “worst offenders.”   The last email that went out singled out 1 person as the “worst offender.”

I can only hope the person called out in the email is not doing training because he’s throwing rocks knowing that his manager and director will be graded on if all their minions completed their training on time.  More than likely, this is just another Bob figure who just doesn’t know how to take the online training.

Nonetheless by individually calling out people, the flunktional managers hope to shame the “worst offenders” into completing their training.  The funny thing is at aquariums, zoos and theme parks around the world, animal trainers know positive reinforcement is the way to train their animals and dolphins to do tricks. However, at the Shitshow, flunktional managers still resort to old-school circus style brutality training.  

Because shame and humiliation are the preferred method to get employees to complete training, I throw rocks.