Alex Bell, Author at Enterprise Training Solutions Blog

California SB 396: Here’s Everything You Need to Know (And More)

California SB 396 updated and expanded the anti-harassment training requirements of AB 1825

Do you know what California SB 396 is?

You should if your an employer in California.

Senate Bill 396 (SB 396) updated California’s harassment prevention law on October 15th, 2017 by amending Assembly Bill 1825.

The new amendments went into effect on January 1, 2018.

To help you quickly understand SB 396, we’ll go over exactly what amendments were made to AB 1825, what are the terms you should know, and what specifically you have to do now to comply with the law (or face the consequences).

By the end, we’ll give you a simple checklist for easily implementing these changes.

Let’s dive in.

What Does SB 396 Mean for California Government Agencies?

To answer that question, let’s make sure we understand what AB 1825 is.

AB 1825 mandates agencies with over 50 employees to provide at least 2 hours of training and education regarding sexual harassment to all supervisory employees within 6 months of assuming a supervisory position, and once every 2 years thereafter.

SB 396 makes multiple amendments to AB 1825 and further requires agencies with over 50 employees to include training inclusive of harassment based on gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.

Let’s take a look at the SB 396 amendments to get crystal clear on the specific changes to the law.

What Amendments Did California SB 396 Make to AB 1825?

California SB 396 made 5 amendments to AB 1825.

We summarized those amendments for you below:

Section 1

Section 1 of SB 396 states that employers must “amend its current poster on discrimination in employment to include information relating to the illegality of sexual harassment.”

This means your new sexual harassment and discrimination posters must affirm the rights of transgender and gender-nonconforming employees.

You can obtain amended signage from the Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH).

Section 2

Section 2(c) of SB 396 is what requires employers with 50 or more employees to include training that covers harassment based on gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation as part of the required 2 hours of training for supervisors.

Section 2 expands on this mandate and states that your sexual harassment training and education curriculum must include practical examples of harassment based on gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.

You must also include “prevention of abusive conduct” as part of your training and education curriculum.

Abusive conduct is defined as “conduct of an employer or employee in the workplace, with malice, that a reasonable person would find hostile, offensive, and unrelated to an employer’s legitimate business interests.”

The section goes on to say that any “repeated infliction” of verbal abuse, physical misconduct, or sabotage of a person’s work environment can be construed as “abusive conduct.”

Section 3

Section 3 of SB 396 amends and expands section 14005 of the California Unemployment Insurance Code.

Section 3 also adds transgender and gender nonconforming individuals to the list of “individuals with employment barriers” which guarantees them access to employment “programs of rigorous and high-quality education, training, and other services” that do all of the following:

Align with the skills and needs of industries in the economy of the state or regional economy involved.
Prepare an individual to be successful in any of a full range of secondary or postsecondary education options, including apprenticeships.
Include counseling to support an individual in achieving the individual’s education and career goals.
Include, as appropriate, education offered concurrently with and in the same context as workforce preparation activities and training for a specific occupation or occupational cluster.
Organize education, training, and other services to meet the particular needs of an individual in a manner that accelerates the educational and career advancement of the individual to the extent practicable.
Enable an individual to attain a secondary school diploma or its recognized equivalent, and at least one recognized postsecondary credential.
Help an individual enter or advance within a specific occupation or occupational cluster.

Section 4

Section 4 and 4.5 of SB 396 authorizes the appointment of “community-based organizations that serve transgender and gender nonconforming individuals” to the California Workforce Development Board.

Section 5

Section 5 of SB 396 affirms that section 4.5 of Sb 396 will go into effect if AB 957 is approved by the Governor on or before January 1st, 2018 (which it was).

What are the Terms and Definitions You Should Know Regarding Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Individuals?

As you update your training manuals and courses, it’s important to understand the terminology of topics related to transgender and gender nonconforming individuals.

Here are some of the key definitions you’ll need to know to comply with SB 396 that come from the Fair Employment & Housing Council Regulations Regarding Transgender Identity and Expression:

“Gender expression” means a person’s gender-related appearance or behavior, or the perception of such appearance or behavior, whether or not stereotypically associated with the person’s sex assigned at birth.
“Gender identity” means each person’s internal understanding of their gender, or the perception of a person’s gender identity, which may include male, female, a combination of male and female, neither male nor female, a gender different from the person’s sex assigned at birth, or transgender.
“Sex” has the same definition as provided in Government Code section 12926, which includes, but is not limited to, pregnancy; childbirth; medical conditions related to pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding; gender; gender identity; and gender expression, or perception by a third party of any of the aforementioned.
“Sex Stereotype” includes, but is not limited to, an assumption about a person’s appearance or behavior, gender roles, gender expression, or gender identity, or about an individual’s ability or inability to perform certain kinds of work based on a myth, social expectation, or generalization about the individual’s sex.
“Transgender” is a general term that refers to a person whose gender identity differs from the person’s sex assigned at birth. A transgender person may or may not have a gender expression that is different from the social expectations of the sex assigned at birth. A transgender person may or may not identify as “transsexual.”
“Transitioning” is a process some transgender people go through to begin living as the gender with which they identify, rather than the sex assigned to them at birth. This process may include, but is not limited to, changes in name and pronoun usage, facility usage, participation in 2 employer-sponsored activities (e.g. sports teams, team-building projects, or volunteering), or undergoing hormone therapy, surgeries, or other medical procedures.

What Rights Do Transgender Individuals Have in the Workplace?

DFEH issued guidelines for transgender rights in the workplace in 2017 – meaning, you need to include them on your posters and in your training.

Here are the highlights:

Employers and interviewers should not ask questions designed to detect a person’s gender identity
Employers should not ask questions about a person’s body or whether they plan to have surgery.
An employer who requires a dress code must enforce it in a non-discriminatory manner.
Transgender or gender non-conforming employees may not be held to any different standard of dress or grooming than any other employee.
All employees have a right to safe and appropriate restroom and locker room facilities. This includes the right to use a restroom or locker room that corresponds to the employee’s gender identity, regardless of the employee’s assigned sex at birth.
Where possible, an employer should provide an easily accessible unisex single stall bathroom for use by any employee who desires increased privacy, regardless of the underlying reason.
All single-user toilet facilities in any business establishment, place of public accommodation, or state or local government agency must be identified as all-gender toilet facilities.

In addition to the above guidelines, employers are required to address a transgender or gender nonconforming individual by their preferred name and pronoun, as detailed in the Fair Employment & Housing Council Regulations:

“If an employee requests to be identified with a preferred gender, name, and/or pronoun, including gender-neutral pronouns, an employer or other covered entity who fails to abide by the employee’s stated preference may be liable under the Act.

An employer is permitted to use an employee’s gender or legal name as indicated in a government-issued identification document only if it is necessary to meet a legally mandated obligation, but otherwise must identify the employee in accordance with the employee’s gender identity and preferred name.”

Quick Checklist of What You Need to Do to Comply with SB 396

To make sure you don’t get bogged down by the details and can simply enact the changes set forth by California SB 396, here’s a checklist of the changes you have to make to your training courses and manuals:

Update posters regarding harassment and discrimination policies
Update dress codes and standards
Train employees to use the proper terminology when discussing gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation
Train employees to use a coworker’s preferred name and pronoun
Train supervisors to identify and prevent harassment related to gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation

That about covers it for SB 396, but here’s something you should think about…

How comprehensive and up-to-date is your current harassment and discrimination training program?

An outdated program could teach your employees, supervisors, and managers information that is no longer relevant, or is even frowned upon or illegal.

The last thing you want to do is make it easier to incur a lawsuit or liability.

That’s why we created “Smart Workplaces: Sexual Harassment Prevention for Office Managers & Supervisors California AB 1825 and all 50 States.”

It’s a full-fledged sexual harassment program that covers everything you need to know about identifying and preventing sexual harassment in your office or agency.

You can check out that program and thousands more for free today.

How?

By signing up for a 14-day trial of Enterprise Training below.

Experience the proven, easy-to-use, and cost-effective benefits of online training by scheduling your free online training consultation today!

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Everything You Need to Know About Near Miss Reporting

Near miss reporting could be the difference between a serious accident and a safer workplace

Imagine you’re walking around a corner in your warehouse and a forklift speeds past you, almost taking your head off. You wheel backward jumping over cables and extension cords littering the ground.

Before crashing into a shelving unit and knocking down expensive packages, you steady yourself.

You’ve just experienced a near miss.

Instead of writing this incident off as a “close call” or a “fluke,” you should file a near miss report.

But many managers and employees don’t practice near miss reporting. Or they don’t quite know why it’s important.

We’ll tell you why it’s important, how to write one, and how you can develop a culture and program of near miss reporting.

But first, let’s define near miss reporting.

What is Near Miss Reporting?

Near miss reporting goes by many names – near miss incident report, near miss accident report, or near hit – but they all mean the same thing:

An unplanned event that could’ve caused human, environmental, or equipment damage but didn’t cause harm because of a fortunate “break” in the chain of events.

So if no one is hurt and the business doesn’t suffer an interruption in operations, why does a near miss report matter?

The Importance of Near Miss Reporting

A near miss is a warning sign of potential future accidents.

Near miss reports give managers and employees information about their current work conditions, processes, and systems and hints at possible solutions to dangers in the workplace.

Without near miss reports, workplaces may simply rely on “days without an accident” to track their progress and level of workplace safety.

But “days without an accident” don’t tell you anything about how to improve workplace safety – it merely tells you that the workplace is presumably safe.

Near miss reporting, on the other hand, is a useful tool for driving continuous safety improvements across your organization – which is one of many advantages near miss reports provide.

Benefits of Near Miss Reporting

The benefits of near miss reporting are varied and far-reaching. Apart from helping managers identify unsafe workplace conditions, here are a few additional benefits:

Promotes a workplace culture of safety by encouraging others to report near misses
Prevents future accidents by educating employees on how accidents almost occurred so they don’t make the same mistakes
Proactively reduces near misses and accidents by encouraging employee participation and looking for any and all things that contribute to unsafe conditions and eliminating or reducing them
Provides data for statistical analysis to identify unsafe workplace trends and track performance of individuals (after all, some near misses can be attributed to people, not just machines or systems)

So you can see why near miss reporting is important, but how do you actually create a near miss report?

How to Write a near Miss Report

If you or your employees experience a near miss, here’s what to include in your near miss incident report:

Date of near miss
Time of near miss
Location of near miss
Names of people involved, including employees, supervisors, and managers
Departments involved
Sequence of events leading to the near miss
Mode of action of the employees involved (walking, running, climbing, lifting, operating machinery, etc.)
Environmental conditions surrounding the near miss
Equipment used or present during near miss
Analysis of the primary and secondary causes of the near miss
Recommendations for corrective actions, policy changes, environmental changes, etc.

Now, one near miss report could go a long way. But if you want to engage your employees in contributing to a culture of safety reporting, then you have to design a strong near miss reporting program.

How to Design a Near Miss Reporting Program

To design a near miss reporting program, follow the steps below:

Choose KPIs for near miss reporting and define the goals of your program such as “reduce near misses by 50%.”
Make reporting near misses as easy as possible to increase the likelihood that most employees will take the time to create a report (and know that it won’t take much time to do so).
Get every leader in your organization involved and excited about the near miss reporting program – if they’re not onboard, your employees won’t be either.
Educate your employees on the benefits of near miss reporting to ensure buy-in from them.
Define near misses for your employees and give them concrete examples of near miss accidents.
Monitor and track every near miss reported.
Never punish your employees for reporting a near miss (even if it seems it was their fault). Near miss reports should be used for preventative measures only, not punitive actions.
Always seriously investigate near miss incidents.
Use near miss reports to drive organizational improvements in workplace safety.

One Essential Tool to Prevent Near Misses

We’ve given you plenty of ideas and actions for using near miss reporting to improve the safety conditions of your workplace.

But there’s one tool we didn’t mention:

Safety training.

If you don’t have updated safety policies, or aren’t continuously training yourselves and your employees in safety best practices and safety hazards (such as the top OSHA violations), then near miss reporting won’t be as effective as it could be.

To get the full benefits of near miss reports, you need to implement regular safety training.

That doesn’t mean you have to hire expensive speakers, or disrupt entire work days, or ruin your employees’ weekends with long training seminars.

On the contrary, you can easily provide quick safety lessons that stick in your employees’ minds long-term at a low cost.

How?

Through eLearning.

The low cost of eLearning combined with the effectiveness of microlearning makes it easy for you to quickly implement and deliver safety training to your employees in the comfort of their cubicles or homes.

Enterprise training provides a host of safety courses, covering topics from creating a safety program to laser safety training, for example.

We also offer a near miss reporting system ideal for capturing and preventing these events – to learn more, schedule your free consultation today!

Experience the proven, easy-to-use, and cost-effective benefits of online training by scheduling your free online training consultation today!

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How to Use the Swiss Cheese Accident Causation Model

The swiss cheese accident causation model can help you understand and prevent future accidents

No matter how robust your safety procedures are, accidents inevitably happen.

But why do accidents occur? Where do they originate? And what can we do to stop them from happening?

These are the types of questions the swiss cheese accident causation model attempts to answer.

The video below walks through its definition and an example of the model in practice.

After watching the video, continue reading because we’ll expand the definition, discuss its origins and key concepts, and show you how to apply its insights to your organization.

What is the Swiss Cheese Accident Causation Model?

The swiss cheese accident causation model is a theoretical model used in risk analysis, risk management, and risk prevention.

As the video above points out, “any components of an organization is considered a slice [of cheese] in this model. Management is a slice. Allocation of resources is a slice. An effective safety program is a slice. Operational support is a slice.”

But if there are any deficiencies or flaws in any of these “slices” of your organization or agency, then you will have a hole in that slice. Hence, swiss cheese.

If holes within each slice of your organization line up, meaning one weakness carries over into another weakness and so on, it creates a single hole throughout your organization – causing an accident.

Who Invented the Swiss Cheese Accident Causation Model?

The swiss cheese accident causation model was invented by James T. Reason and was first described in his well-known book Human Error.

In this book, he describes several famous disasters including the Challenger space shuttle accident and instead of simply discussing various causes for the accidents, he proposes an integrated theory of accident causation now known as the swiss cheese model.

What are the Key Concepts of the Swiss Cheese Model?

Reason was able to construct his integrated theory of accident causation through in-depth research into the nature of accidents, leading him to the following insights:

Accidents are often caused by the confluence of multiple factors.
Factors can range from unsafe individual acts to organizational errors.
Many contributing factors to an accident are latent errors – they’re lying dormant waiting to be triggered by any number of active errors.
Humans are prone to operational errors which require properly designed systems to mitigate the errors humans inevitably commit.

These insights form the key concepts behind the swiss cheese accident causation model.

What are Active and Latent Errors in the Swiss Cheese Model?

According to the US National Library of Medicine, Nearly all adverse events involve a combination of these two sets of factors:

Active Failures

Active failures or active errors are the unsafe acts committed by people.

An example of an active failure would be an employee who chooses not to follow safety procedures like cleaning flammable debris from a machine.

But according to the swiss cheese model, their active failure was not the ultimate cause of the accident. There are other factors at play.

Latent Conditions

Latent conditions or latent errors are the failures built into procedures, systems, buildings, or machines by the designers, builders, writers, or management.

Latent conditions are failures waiting to be triggered by an active error.

An example of a latent condition would be faulty fire alarm systems that are inoperable.

If you combine this latent condition with our example of an active failure – failing to clean flammable debris from a machine – you get a serious fire accident.

How to Apply the Swiss Cheese Model

While the swiss cheese model isn’t prescriptive, you can use its insights to improve the overall safety of your organization.

One way to prevent active errors is to know the top OSHA violations in 2017 to ensure your safety procedures match OSHA’s standards so your employees don’t make these common mistakes.

One way to prevent latent errors is to know the Government facilities management trends of 2018 and keep up-to-date with the latest technologies and practices to ensure the safest environments for your employees.

Beyond those two suggestions, you’ll need to regularly provide in-depth safety training to your employees. That’s difficult to do on a tight budget and little time to set aside for a week or a weekend’s worth of training.

But instead of in-person training, you can use the effectiveness of eLearning to train your employees quickly and easily using nothing more than their computers and an internet connection.

But to get the right training, you need an eLearning platform that specializes in producing courses on Government safety training.

Lucky for you, Enterprise Training specializes in all forms of Government training, and we have plenty of programs to satisfy your safety training requirements.

Experience the proven, easy-to-use, and cost-effective benefits of online training by scheduling your free online training consultation today!

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Do These 9 Things to Resolve an Employee Harassment Complaint

An employee harassment complaint can be resolved quickly if you take the right actions.

An employee harassment complaint is one of the most difficult issues you as a manager must know how to resolve.

One of your primary duties as a manager is to provide a safe work environment for your employees, which means reducing and eliminating all forms of harassment.

As the video below points out, “It’s your job as a manager to know what to do when an employee reports a harassment claim.”

In this post, we’ll help you understand exactly what you need to do to resolve an employee harassment complaint.

First, go ahead and watch the video below for a few quick tips.

Then, continue reading because we’ll give you the precise legal definition for harassment and show you how to handle an employee harassment complaint tactfully and effectively and how to prevent it altogether.

What is a Legally Legitimate Employee Harassment Complaint?

When it comes to harassment at work, you should know the precise legal definition for harassment so that you know what it is when it happens.

According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Harassment is:

“Unwelcome conduct that is based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.”

But that’s not what makes harassment illegal. Petty slights, annoyances, or mild isolated incidents aren’t illegal. What makes harassment illegal or unlawful is when:

“Enduring the offensive conduct becomes a condition of continued employment, or the conduct is severe or pervasive enough to create a work environment that a reasonable person would consider intimidating, hostile, or abusive.”

Here’s a list of offensive conduct that could create an intimidating, hostile, or abusive workplace:

Offensive jokes
Slurs
Epithets or name calling
Physical assaults or threats
Intimidation
Ridicule or mockery
Insults or put-downs
Offensive objects or pictures
Interference with work performance

If you receive an employee harassment complaint that meets these requirements, there are specific actions you should take immediately that we outline below.

How Should Managers Handle Employee Harassment Complaints?

When dealing with employee harassment complaints, you should aim to be methodical and detailed to avoid any legal repercussions and so you can effectively resolve the conflict and achieve justice for the potential victim(s).

With that in mind, here some of the things you need to do after receiving an employee harassment complaint:

Take the Complaint Seriously but Impartially

You should accept an employee harassment complaint as potentially true without passing judgment on whether it is true or not.

Your job is to assist in finding the truth, which means you have to remain objective until the investigation into the complaint has been concluded and sufficient evidence has been collected that proves or disproves the harassment complaint.

Treat the Person Who Reported the Complaint with Respect

As the video in our intro pointed out, “It’s not easy for an employee to come forward about harassment. It’s embarrassing and demeaning.”

Your job as a manager in this situation is to treat the complainant with respect and kindness. You should exhibit honest empathy and offer genuine comfort.

Delivering a harassment complaint and enduring the ensuing investigation into the complaint can leave an employee feeling vulnerable and afraid, which can lead to poor performance at work.

Ensure that the complainant feels comfortable with you, and do whatever you can to make them feel as comfortable as possible while at work.

Always Investigate the Complaint

If an employee harassment complaint matches the guidelines set forth by the EEOC then it must be investigated – even if the complainant insists on not pursuing an investigation, or the complaint was delivered to you informally.

If you don’t investigate the complaint, you could face legal repercussions if more complaints are filed later and law enforcement discovers you didn’t investigate the situation after the first complaint.

Even worse, you could allow a bully or predator to continue harassing more employees when you had a chance to stop him or her.

Keep The Harassment Complaint as Confidential as Possible

An employee harassment complaint can quickly polarize your office. Some workers will side with the complainant while others will side with the accused – creating unnecessary tension, conflict, and gossip.

Worse yet, if details regarding the complaint are leaked, damaging the reputation of the complainant or accused, you could be sued for defamation and liable for damages.

Follow Established Procedures

If your office has a handbook, it likely has procedures for handling a harassment complaint. It’s best to follow those procedures exactly as they’re laid out to avoid mistreating the complainant and to avoid taking illegal or negligent actions during an investigation.

If you don’t have a handbook that deals specifically with employee harassment, then consider creating one.

Never Investigate a Harassment Complaint on Your Own

You should never investigate an employee harassment complaint on your own. The first thing you should do after listening to an employee harassment complaint is to contact HR.

All investigations and proceedings should be led by an HR professional, an internal affairs officer, an outside manager trained in conducting internal investigations, or a law enforcement official.

Write Everything Down

It’s critical that you record every interaction with the complainant and accused harasser, along with anyone else you interview or interact with as part of the harassment investigation. Include dates, names, and documents in your notes.

Keeping a meticulous journal of the proceedings will protect you in case a complainant accuses you of malfeasance in an investigation, retaliation after an investigation, or that you ignored a complaint and never conducted an investigation at all.

Take Appropriate Action Against the Harasser

After you conclude the investigation with the help of HR and anyone else, decide if the accused harasser is guilty. If he is guilty, then discipline him accordingly.

You may need to terminate him if his actions were especially dangerous or egregious, such as stalking or threatening the complainant.

If the harasser wasn’t violent, but was mean or ignorant, as in the case of excessive office pranks or insensitive jokes, then counseling or a leave of absence may be appropriate.

Whatever you decide to do with the harasser do it quickly, document it, and encourage the rest of your employees to speak out when they see harassment.

Don’t Retaliate Against the Complainant

This should be obvious to you, but it is illegal to punish someone for complaining about harassment, even if the claim is unfounded and dismissed after a proper investigation.

This means you can’t do any of the following as a result of an employee harassment complaint:

Terminate a complainant
Discipline them
Cut their pay
Demote them
Change their shift or work hours
Change their job responsibilities
Isolate them
Exclude them from meetings or other office functions
Or threaten any of the above

Now, if you’re a sensible manager you wouldn’t do any of these things anyway.

However, to legally protect yourself, you should take extra precaution against performing any actions that would imply retaliation against a complainant – because again, they can sue you even if their complaint was unfounded.

How Can You Prevent Employee Harassment Complaints?

If you want to prevent employee harassment complaints you have to learn how to prevent employee harassment.

To do that, you’ll need high-quality training that can teach your employees how to spot and prevent harassment in the workplace as well as training that teaches you and the rest of management how to prevent and mitigate harassment in the workplace.

But you probably don’t have the time nor the budget to afford a lengthy seminar or speaker.

What you need is on-demand training you can watch from any device, anywhere for quick and easy learning.

Where can you find high-quality employee harassment training that you can access immediately with nothing more than an internet connection?

Right here at Enterprise Training.

Experience the proven, easy-to-use, and cost-effective benefits of online training by scheduling your free online training consultation today!

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6 Effective Strategies for Managing Remote Employees

You can start managing remote employees effectively by using a few different tactics and strategies

Employees regularly working at home has grown by 115% since 2005, resulting in 3.7 million employees (2.8% of the workforce) now working from home at least half the time.

These statistics come from Global Workplace Analytics, and they showcase the trend of companies allowing or encouraging employees to work remotely.

Government agencies are also riding the remote employee trend.

According to the United States Office of Personnel Management, the number of eligible teleworkers in the Federal Government has increased from 29% in 2012 to 46% in 2015.

So how do managers effectively manage remote employees?

As you might know (or have experienced), managing remote employees requires different tactics and strategies than what you commonly use to manage office workers.

For that reason, we have a video for you below that details ways to manage a virtual team effectively.

The main point of the video is this:

“The key to making those kinds of situations work [managing remote employees] is…clarity of what good performance looks like. The clearer you are on what good looks like, the easier it is to evaluate.”

You can hear all of the points made about managing a virtual team by watching the video below.

After that, we’ll give you 6 tips for better managing remote employees.

Best Practices for Managing Remote Employees

There are many things you can do as a manager to help your remote employees improve their productivity, stay connected to their team, and deliver great work on time.

Here are 6 best practices for managing remote employees:

Build Real Relationships with Your Employees

In general, if you want your employees to respect you and respond to your requests, then you have to establish rapport and build a genuine relationship with them.

This will be the foundation for working through both job-related and personal problems with employees.

Strong relationships also protect you from unwarranted condemnation from employees if you make a mistake.

And a strong relationship with your remote employees will make them more likely to motivate themselves and deliver what you ask of them because they’ll no longer just care about doing their work to get paid, they’ll want to do their work to please you, too.

Use Video as Often as Possible When Communicating Remotely

Similar to building solid relationships with your employees, video communication helps you connect on a more emotional level when conducting meetings remotely.

Since over half of human communication is nonverbal, you’ll need a better medium than email to deliver your message.

Video calls help you be more persuasive, but they also help you judge your employees’ reactions to tasks given, and help you understand your employees’ feelings about their jobs, and gives you insight into any issues your employees might be dealing with.

All those nuances are lost through text.

Video helps you maintain a strong relationship with your employees, and helps you detect and fix any problems quickly before they get worse.

Schedule Meetings That Accommodate Every Employees’ Time Zone

If you have quite a few remote workers, chances are they don’t all live in the same time zone, which presents a serious scheduling issue:

One or more of your employees will be meeting early or late in the day, or at some other inconvenient time to make the meeting work for everyone else.

Managing remote employees is all about making that faraway person still feel appreciated and part of your team.

To maintain that kind of relationship, you should try to schedule meetings that work for that one person or group of people who always sacrifice their time to meet someone else’s requirements.

This proves to your remote employees that you value their time and you’re willing to work in their best interest – which compels them to do the same for you.

Set Clear Expectations

As the video in our intro pointed out, the key to managing remote employees is “clarity of what good performance looks like.”

Remote employees have more freedom, which means they need more structure and clearer targets to stay on track.

Make sure you create individual development plan goals for every new and existing employee and regularly review those goals with your employees, especially the ones working remotely.

Furthermore, every employee should know their daily and weekly tasks and projects.

By making your expectations clear, and precisely defining your employees’ work requirements, you’ll avoid confusion and incomplete tasks.

Focus on Completed Tasks, Not Activities

One other expectation you should set with your remote employees (and yourself) is to focus on completed tasks (deliverables), not activities.

You can’t monitor your remote employees’ behavior, so you have to focus on the one thing you can monitor: what they produce.

Let them know that all you want is the correct finished product – which requires setting clear expectations – and that they can use any methods to get the job done in the way that works best for them.

This can actually increase employee engagement by allowing them the freedom to be creative and inventive. They may even create better work processes that they can share with other members of your team.

Encourage Continuous Learning

Building a culture of continuous learning is essential for agencies to continually improve their processes and develop skilled employees.

But remote employees usually can’t attend in-house training or instructor-led seminars – it’s often too expensive to fly them out for just a one or two-day event.

But the cost of eLearning changes that.

With eLearning, your remote employees can educate themselves on essential subjects and topics in their home office or hotel room.

This type of education is often superior to long-form training because it uses a method of education known as microlearning.

Microlearning uses quick, easy-to-consume lessons instead of extended learning sessions – resulting in learners absorbing the information faster and retaining it longer.

The easiest way to provide eLearning opportunities to your employees is to find a proven platform that teaches a multitude of courses across a range of subjects.

And since you’re a Government agency, it would be helpful if the platform you choose specializes in teaching and training Government employees on both the Federal and State level.

Where will you find such a platform?

Right here at Enterprise Training.

Take Care of Your Remote Employees’ Education with eLearning

We provide courses for remote employees teaching them how to communicate effectively when telecommuting and how to maximize their productivity.

But we also provide courses for all types of jobs they may be performing, from IT training for IT exam preparation to project management training for getting things done efficiently and on time.

Whatever you need to run a high-functioning agency and manage remote employees, we have it ready for you.

Experience the proven, easy-to-use, and cost-effective benefits of online training by scheduling your free online training consultation today!

Schedule Free Consultation

5 Tips for Creating a Government Leadership Development Program

Creating a Government leadership development program is critical for running a high-functioning agency

Government leadership development is often done haphazardly and informally.

But as the video below points out, “Without having mentoring and leadership in place, the company really struggles.”

The same applies to Government agencies.

Watch the video below for a few more insights on the importance of leadership development, and then we’ll show you how to create a Government leadership development program today.

How to Create a Government Leadership Development Program

By 2020, millennials will make up 46% of the workforce, according to the Brandon Hall Group.

If you don’t start identifying and developing the next generation of leaders in your agency, then you’ll lack the knowledge, skills, and experience needed to reach your organization’s goals.

To help you successfully develop a Government leadership development program, here are 8 tips to get you started:

Define Your Goals

Before you can develop leaders, you should know what you’ll need leaders for.

Create a clear vision and concrete goals for your agency. If you already have written goals, then review and update them.

This is important both so you know what skills you’re looking for in future leaders, and so that you can inspire potential leaders with your agency’s mission.

Also, you need to know if you’re developing leaders for the short-term or long-term. Clear goals will help you accomplish this.

Create Government Leadership Criteria

Now that you know what you need leaders for, you should define the characteristics of a good leader.

Develop a leadership framework and assess all current and potential leaders according to it.

The reason why you need a model for leadership is that people are often promoted based on technical skill, which does nothing to increase employee engagement or foster a culture of engaged managers.

Yes, the individuals you promote should possess the technical skills to do their jobs, but they should also know how to inspire and lead your team, take initiative, listen to employee needs, implement new strategies, act fairly, act decisively, and act with integrity.

These are just a few of the traits you should use to evaluate leaders if you want to maintain a high-functioning agency.

Identify Potential Leaders

Now that you know what you’re looking for in a leader, you should start identifying potential leaders within your agency.

It’s easy to put everyone in your staff through leadership training and call it a day, but if you want to get the most out of the money you spend on your team, then you should spend it on your most energetic, ambitious, and hard-working people.

One way to identify a potential leader is to use a manager-for-a-day program. This allows a promising employee to work alongside an established manager to understand what their job entails – and to allow the manager to better evaluate their leadership capabilities.

If it doesn’t work out with one person, try it with another.

If it does work out, you’ve successfully identified a leader you can start developing using all of your resources.

Develop Government Succession Plans

Government succession planning is crucial if you want to pass on the combined knowledge and experience of your best leaders to your future leaders – keeping employees productive, and avoiding any disruption in your agency when a top leader leaves.

Here are 5 tips for executing a successful Government succession plan:

Identify the Key Positions Within Your Organization You Can’t Function Without
Identify The Base Competencies That are Required for Each Position
Identify Your Backfilling Talent
Develop a Mentorship Program Between Your Backfilled Talent and Senior Managers
Deploy Education and Training Programs to Backfilled Talent

Develop, Don’t Train

Like we showed with our example of manager-for-a-day training above, it’s best to place individuals into situations that require them to learn and grow on their own – to apply themselves – as opposed to just reading good books or going to a seminar on Government leadership development.

When a manager is away, give one of your potential leaders the opportunity to step up and perform some of their duties.

Allow potential leaders to collaborate with colleagues in other departments on a special project.

Throughout this process of hands-on training, make sure to provide your leadership candidates with personal feedback and coaching to effectively nurture them on their development into a leader.

How to Develop Government Leaders Quickly

The quickest way to develop Government leaders is by implementing a leadership program immediately.

But what do you need to make your program successful?

You can use the tips we’ve given you, but if you want to create an effective program, you’ll need the help of people who have taught other Government managers how to implement leadership development.

And, thanks to the low cost of eLearning and the efficiency of microlearning, once you have identified your required leadership competencies, you can quickly and inexpensively develop the skills to create your own leadership development program today, and start applying what you learn tomorrow.

So where will you find a platform that offers training specifically designed for developing Government leaders?

Right here at Enterprise Training; our implementation consultants are experienced and ready to help you map courses to competencies and create a complete development plan for aspiring leaders.

Experience the proven, easy-to-use, and cost-effective benefits of online training by scheduling your free online training consultation today!

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17 Benefits of Agile Project Management

The benefits of agile project management apply to software and non-software pursuits

Government agencies need to respond to policy changes and the needs of the public quickly.

To do that, they need a method for completing projects efficiently.

Traditional project management methods like waterfall take a long time to plan and execute – resulting in projects being finished past the deadline or long after a policy change has taken effect.

Agile project management, on the other hand, encourages you to swiftly gather the materials you need, execute a part of your plan, and build on the feedback you collect in the process.

This guarantees that the final product or service you produce will serve the people it’s supposed to serve more effectively.

There are many more benefits of agile project management, and we’ll take a look at those a little later in this post.

First, let’s define agile project management and look at its guiding principles.

What is Agile Project Management?

Agile project management was created by a group of software developers in 2001 with the release of their manifesto.

The agile framework focuses on continuous improvement, flexibility, input of the team, and the delivery of high-quality results.

Unlike other project management methods which work in a linear, sequential manner toward the final product, agile project management creates a prototype, tests it, and uses feedback to iterate that process until a final product is ready to be launched.

Instead of breaking up the process of planning, researching, building, testing, etc. into separate parts, agile project management does it all at once so project managers and developers can judge the progress and quality of their product faster and more effectively.

To help you understand the original intent and benefits of agile project management, here are its 12 principles as outlined in the manifesto:

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
Working software is the primary measure of progress.
Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential.
The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

What are the Benefits of Agile Project Management for Government Agencies?

While the benefits of agile project management were intended for software developers, they do extend to non-software pursuits.

According to PM World Journal Vol. V, Issue VIII Benefits of Agile Project Management in a Non-Software Development Context – A Literature Review, there are many benefits of agile project management for organizations doing work outside of software.

The author of the article reviewed 21 case studies and found 17 reported benefits. Here are all 17 benefits the researchers found, listed from the most cited benefit at the top to least cited benefit at the bottom:

Better collaboration in the team
Increased customer interaction
Increased productivity and speed
Increased flexibility and the ability to cope with change
And a better understanding of goals, tasks, and requirements
Increased transparency and visibility
Increased quality
Customer-centered value-add priority process
Increased knowledge sharing
Increased cross-organizational collaboration
Better focus
Impediment removal process
Increased individual autonomy
Decreased customer complaints
Increased motivation
Clear sense of progress
Improved resource allocation

This list should give you a clear idea of what you can expect if you use the agile project management framework in your agency.

Which may leave you wondering, “how do I implement agile project management?”

We answer that question below.

How to Implement Agile Project Management in Your Agency

Reading the Agile Manifesto will give you the philosophy of agile project management, but how do you turn those principles into actionable practices?

By learning the method from an organization that actively teaches it to Government agencies.

No expensive speakers or weekend seminars required – you can learn the agile method in your office right now.

The cost of eLearning has made it easy for new managers and experienced managers alike to learn and apply tactics and strategies for running a better office and getting more done. All you need is a computer and an internet connection.

If you’re interested in applying agile project management in your agency, we provide a full suite of project management courses such as:

Agile Principles, Methodologies, and Mindset
Agile Project Management Fundamentals
And (for the software developers out there), Managing Agile Software Development

To get started, just click the link below.

Experience the proven, easy-to-use, and cost-effective benefits of online training by scheduling your free online training consultation today!

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What New Managers Need to Know: 5 Tips for Success from Day One

Learn what new managers need to know to be successful in your new position.

Today, we’re going to tell you what new managers need to know.

We’ll start with this:

“[Becoming a manager] requires fundamental shifts in the way you relate to the people you’re working with.”

That quote comes from the video below which outlines a few major mindset and behavioral shifts you have to make to be a great manager.

After you watch the video, we’ll expand on it by giving you 5 additional tips for succeeding as a new manager.

What New Managers Need to Know

60% of new managers will “underperform” in their first 2 years, according to research conducted by CEB (now Gartner).

By “underperform,” they mean 60% of new managers “drive performance gaps and employee turnover across the entire frontline.”

What new managers need to know, as the video above points out, is that “you’re no longer a doer, you’re helping other people do.”

If you help them do well, then you can prevent falling into that 60% category, and your employees won’t leave their jobs, and their performance will improve instead of decline.

To help people do well, you’re going to need to change how you interact, coach, and deal with your employees.

Here are 5 tips to get you started:

1) Help Your Employees Accomplish Their Tasks

It can’t be stressed enough:

Management is not about you. It’s about everyone else.

Your job is to provide the coaching, direction, assistance, resources, and encouragement that your employees need and crave.

If your team fails, that means you’ve failed.

This is a heavy burden to bear, but if you can bear it, you’ll earn the trust, respect, and productivity of your employees that so many new managers will never get.

2) Don’t Be “Friends” with Employees, Be Friendly

You used to work side by side with the people you’re now managing. You used to be peers, and now you’re their superior.

That’s tough.

You don’t have to sever ties with your existing friends, but you should be extremely careful about making new friends with subordinates.

Since being a manager means you have to hold people responsible for their actions, you’re going to have to have difficult conversations with old friends and new employees who are doing the wrong things.

This can be hard to do if they look at you like you’re one of them.

What new managers need to know is that you can be friendly, but you have to be confident and steadfast too.

Let your employees (and friends) know you’re a mentor and confidant but that you’re not afraid of having serious discussions about their performance and behavior in the workplace.

3) Make Confident Decisions

Managers often fail because they fail to act.

They wait until they know everything they’re supposed to know. Or, they wait until their superior tells them what to do (But isn’t that why you’re a manager?).

Stop thinking and dreading about the “right thing to do” and start making confident decisions.

Fail forward.

The more you take charge (while also taking your employees’ wants and needs into consideration), the more respect you’ll earn from your team.

4) Build on What Was Created Before You – Don’t Tear It Down

The caveat to making confident decisions is to resist the temptation to change everything the previous manager put into place.

Keep in mind that the people on your team helped the previous manager create the current policies. If you start tearing them down to create anew, you’ll reduce your employees’ trust in you.

Instead, ask your employees what they currently like and dislike about workplace policies. Ask them what they want to change or keep.

Getting your employees involved will increase employee engagement and productivity. Plus, you’ll earn their respect and build your credibility as a manager who listens to his employees and takes action on what they say.

5) Review And/Or Create Individual Development Plan Goals with Each Employee

According to Gallup, “clarity of expectations is perhaps the most basic of employee needs and is vital to performance. Great managers don’t just tell employees what’s expected of them and leave it at that; instead, they frequently talk with employees about their responsibilities and progress.”

To clarify expectations with your employees, you should sit down with each one and create or improve their individual development plan goals.

This will help you understand their motivations and aspirations, and will let them know that you have their back and that you care about their success at work.

Bonus Tip: Seek out as Much Training on Management as You Can

The more you learn, the better you’ll manage.

What new managers need to know is that continuous learning, both for themselves and their employees, is the key to success in any field.

Seek out all the tools, resources, and mentors that will help you upgrade your knowledge and refine your skills.

While formal training is important and essential, it’s not always cost-effective or convenient – which makes the cost of Elearning look even better.

But it’s not just cost that makes Elearning so beneficial; it’s also the fact that it uses microlearning to enhance your retention of what you learned.

Even more than that, Elearning programs can be consumed on-demand so you can learn wherever, whenever.

The only problem is, where will you find ready-made Elearning programs for new managers?

Right here at Enterprise Training Solutions.

Discover What New Managers Need to Know Today

We have 12 videos and courses on the essentials of being a new manager that you can watch and apply right now. From living up to your roles and expectations to handling common challenges, our courses will teach you how to tackle a new management position with poise and purpose.

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Maximize the Effectiveness of ELearning with These 5 Strategies

You can improve the effectiveness of eLearning in your agency by applying the right strategies.

Have you implemented an eLearning program in your agency but aren’t seeing the results you expected?

We understand how frustrating that can be.

You probably see all the obvious advantages eLearning offers your agency – low cost, easy to use, available on-demand, etc. – yet you still struggle with optimizing the program’s usage and adoption.

Why?

Because implementing a program alone isn’t enough.

You have to work with your employees and managers to set forth the right plans, policies, and procedures to improve the effectiveness of eLearning in your agency.

In today’s post, we’ll help you do just that.

We’ll give you 5 tips for making your eLearning program effective both for learning and productivity.

By the end, you’ll be armed with proven strategies for building a long-lasting eLearning program that delivers the results you’re looking for.

5 Tips to Improve the Effectiveness of ELearning

Create Individual Development Plan Goals

Individual development plan goals are part of a formal agreement between the employer and the employee regarding how the employee will grow within your organization.

These goals establish the expected results that your employees will accomplish over a set period of time.

One of your employees’ major goals should be the development of their skills and knowledge.

Once identified, you can help your employees put together a concrete learning plan that will teach them the information and abilities they require to reach their goals.

WIthout clear learning goals, your employees may jump from one resource to the next, educating themselves haphazardly, and never making any real progress.

That’s where managers come in to help employees align their skill gaps with the necessary courses and resources for achieving their objectives.

Use Microlearning

While long-form learning is critical for educating your employees about big and important subjects, microlearning is useful for most other subjects – and makes learning more productive.

According to Bersin by Deloitte’s infographic Meet the Modern Learner, The average employee only has time to devote 1% of their work week to professional development. That means only 24 minutes a week or 4.8 minutes a day can be allotted for training in a normal 40-hour work week.

Microlearning maximizes your employees’ retention by delivering bite-sized concepts in an easy-to-consume format – enhancing the effectiveness of eLearning.

Also, microlearning makes it easy for you to organize training within the context of the work your employees actually do.

For example, if one of your employees needs to brush up on microsoft network security, they can watch a short video and get back to work in a few minutes. The same is true if they need to read a short white paper or flip to a certain chapter in a book.

Giving your employees microlearning resources they can access and consume quickly will make your eLearning program more effective and engaging.

Increase Employee Engagement

According to Wikipedia, an engaged employee is a person who is fully absorbed by and enthusiastic about their work and who takes positive action to further the organization’s reputation and interests.

Engaged employees work harder without being asked. They stay late because they genuinely want to perform well for their department and agency. They don’t complain about playing catch-up on work because their coworker was out sick – they gladly shoulder the load.

The engaged employee is the person who lives and breathes your agency’s mission because they’ve made it their own.

By increasing employee engagement in your agency, you’ll make it more likely that your employees will take your eLearning initiative seriously, contribute to enhancing the program, and work hard to achieve their goals.

Cultivate a Culture of Continuous Learning

A culture of continuous learning means that all of your employees are teaching themselves and helping each other be better, achieve more, and advance their careers.

This type of culture will encourage your employees to optimize the effectiveness of your eLearning program and maximize their results.

Also, continuous learning is key for well-executed Government succession planning by making it easier for leadership and institutional knowledge to be passed on and absorbed by the employees filling the vacant positions within your agency.

Here are a few ways to create a culture of continuous learning:

Establish policies for ongoing training, supportive management, specific office hours dedicated to learning, etc.
Tell your employees about your goals to create a continuous learning culture and encourage them to adopt the values and principles of ongoing education.
Turn your managers into coaches and teach them how to help your employees solve problems, motivate themselves, and stay focused.
Align each employee’s goals with the goals of your organization to stay on track and work together for a common purpose.

Find a Platform that Delivers Everything Your Employees Need

If you don’t want to commit to the hassle of designing your own courses, the best thing you can do is find an eLearning platform that delivers the information you need.

There are plenty of eLearning platforms available, but very few that cater specifically to Government agencies.

Even fewer that provide a wide enough breadth of courses for every one of your employees to choose from.

If you want a platform that puts their Government customers first and will tailor an eLearning program to your organizational requirements…

We can help.

Maximize the Effectiveness of Your ELearning Program

With courses for every level of employee, from leadership training to technical IT exam preparation, Our eLearning platform will allow each of your employees to advance their skills and upgrade their knowledge at their own pace and in their own time.

Experience the proven, easy-to-use, and cost-effective benefits of online training by scheduling your free online training consultation today!

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How to Create a Culture of Continuous Learning in Your Agency

A culture of continuous learning will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your agency

How do you get the best out of your employees?

By creating a culture of continuous learning.

Your employees are the most valuable asset in your organization, and by giving them the tools and opportunity to sharpen their skills and knowledge, you’ll help your agency perform at its peak potential.

The private sector is already using this strategy to empower their companies.

Corporate spending on learning rose to 10% in 2015 according to Global Human Capital Trends 2016. These companies realized that they could maximize the efficiency of their businesses by giving their employees the ability to learn what they needed when they needed.

The same can happen in your agency.

We’ll show you what a culture of continuous learning is and how to cultivate one in your organization for smarter, better, and more dedicated employees.

What is a Continuous Learning Culture?

For individuals, continuous learning is the process of keeping up with ever-changing trends, insights, and tools for better performance and higher achievements in your job.

For organizations or agencies, continuous learning is the process of empowering and encouraging your employees to upgrade their skills and knowledge at their own pace while helping their fellow employees do the same.

A culture of continuous learning means that all of your team members are teaching themselves and helping each other be better, achieve more, and advance their careers.

The benefits of a continuous learning culture are that your employees may offer ideas that you never considered before, or implement strategies and tactics that you didn’t know existed.

Your agency will gain a considerable advantage over other departments because your employees will become more mature, confident, and intelligent as a result of continuous learning.

So, how do you create a continuous learning culture?

5 Ways to Create a Culture of Continuous Learning

There are plenty of things you can do to make learning a large part of your agency. We’ll give you 5 ways to create a continuous learning environment in your organization today.

Define Your Goals

Before you implement a training program for your employees, you need to know why you’re implementing a program in the first place.

What’s your goal for your agency?
What do you hope to achieve?
How do you hope to improve?
How much money are you willing to spend?

Create a broad vision for your organization that keeps you and your employees on track, while at the same time allowing your employees to follow their own path to personal and professional development.

Provide training for new tools, software, and work methods, along with training that matches your employees’ individual goals.

Which brings us to the next tip for creating a culture of continuous learning…

Define Your Employees’ Individual Goals

Individual development plan goals are especially important for continuous learning.

Without them, it’s difficult for individuals to stay on track, and it’s hard for you to hold your employees accountable.

When your employees know what they’re learning and why they’re learning it, they’re more likely to finish their education and apply what they’ve learned.

But beyond the “why” of their learning plan, you should help them create an action list so that they implement the things they’re learning effectively.

Get Your Employees Onboard

A shift in your agency culture is only possible if everyone is onboard. The first thing you have to do to implement a culture of continuous learning is to tell your employees what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

You need to get all your employees to adopt similar values and principles, the same as you would when trying to increase employee engagement, for example.

Make learning a top priority, and consider revising your mission statement or internal agency slogan or “Values” to include continuous learning as a core tenet of how you run your organization.

You and the rest of your managers should lead by example and demonstrate your own commitment to continuous learning while helping your employees improve their continuous learning plans.

But you should be much more than just a manager…

Turn Your Managers into Coaches

A culture of continuous learning is dependent on managers and employees being open and honest with one another about learning goals, challenges, and achievements.

You should discuss those 3 things with your employees on a regular basis.

Like a coach, you need to be in their corner, ready and willing to help them solve problems and overcome obstacles when necessary.

Regular check-ins can provide the “push” that employees need to succeed. It also lets them know that you genuinely care about them and what they’re doing to better themselves.

Plus, by regularly checking in, you can course correct employees who may be studying or focusing on the wrong things, or help employees shift their priorities to be more productive.

The most important thing you can do as a manager/coach is to give them ample resources for continuous learning.

Give Your Employees Learning Resources

A continuous learning culture relies on constant access to learning resources.

Some of your employees will prefer long-form, formal training, while others will prefer microlearning that’s self-directed.

Sometimes, instructor-led training (ILT) is unavoidable and necessary.

But most of the time, all your employees need is access to relevant information for their specific job roles and goals.

The ease of access and cost of ELearning makes online education the most budget-friendly and employee-friendly option for all types of learners.

With the right ELearning platform, you employees can watch videos, read books, and listen to audio recordings on-demand.

It allows them to learn at their own pace, on their own time, when they’re ready to learn – as opposed to being forced to learn alongside everyone else in a group training session.

But where will you find a central database of resources that cover everything from IT exam preparation to project management and conflict resolution?

Right here at Enterprise Training Solutions.

Experience the proven, easy-to-use, and cost-effective benefits of online training by scheduling your free online training consultation today!

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