4 ms·

Well written piece. I've been subjected to these kinds of 'workshops', and, like the author I too resent them. What's interesting is that many people (a major

• koboll 7y ago
  It might have something to do with >A select group of faculty and staff, those identified as opinion leaders, are being offered all-expenses paid trips to the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando “to gain first-hand insight into Disney’s approach to culture.”
  • hartator 7y ago
    Well. That explains a lot.
    • bjd2385 7y ago
      Maybe everything.
  • mindslight 7y ago
    The free trips to Disney World aren't for directly incentivizing management to open the purse strings. Rather, what the trips do is indoctrinate management into the culture that such workshops are a highly beneficial thing. After this, the money flows naturally. It's a similar social proof by misdirection as millionaire motivational speakers selling expensive seminars to "get rich", mid level marketing schemes recruiting new members, etc.
• btrettel 7y ago
  Here's one example showing why people might be reluctant to speak out about wasteful training: (Sorry, this is a bit long!) Early in my PhD, I was made vice-president (or something like that; I don't actually remember) of the university's Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE). This title was really only a formality as there were no duties aside from some training that the university required. The organization existed mainly to get external speakers every once in a while. The organization was purely professional. Keep this in mind. The most annoying training could accurately be described as "frat boy training" in the sense that it seemed to be targeted specifically at heavy-drinking fraternity members. The training lasted about 2 hours as I recall and had to be retaken yearly. It involved groups of roughly 100 people watching videos and participating in discussions about (basically) why you should call for medical help if someone passes out after drinking too much. (There were some other lessons, like telling us to call a certain phone number to report on people who seem to be "suspicious" but are not breaking the law.) The entire event seemed to be motivated by lawyers' desire to reduce the university's liability in the event that someone drinks too much and dies. The first year I was in a leadership position in the local SFPE group I attended the training and thought it was a huge waste of time. None of the training applied to our group. We never had any social events, much less ones with alcohol. Plus, I don't need to be told to call for help if someone is obviously in medical trouble. Given that, in the the second year of the training I arrived early and politely asked the presenter about why my group was required to attend this training. The presenter responded rudely along the lines of "Of course you have to take the training. Sit down and do it." Not only that, apparently they had a panic button, because soon after that two security folks came in to escort me out of the room for being belligerent. (I don't recall the presenter doing anything that seemed to indicate they were calling for security.) I was really struck by this because I was polite the entire time and was actually going to take the training again. After being removed from the room, some admin came down to chastise me. I carefully explained to the admin that I don't believe this training is relevant to my group at all, particularly as one of the only graduate students in attendance. The admin continued to chastise me, and told me that I would have to reschedule my training for another time even though I had not missed much as I recall. Later the same admin contacted me to tell me that yes, in fact, my group was misclassified, and we will never have to take that training again.
  • jimbokun 7y ago
    > The entire event seemed to be motivated by lawyers' desire to reduce the university's liability in the event that someone drinks too much and dies. Yeah, I think most of the time the purpose of these trainings is so the employee can't say "I didn't know I wasn't supposed to [harass people/reveal private customer data/accept bribes...]" and thereby reduce legal liability for the organization.
• nkrisc 7y ago
  > Why don't employees unite and speak up? Why? What's to gain? These workshops wouldn't be happening if the highest levels of leadership didn't want them to. So it's my opinion on the matter against theirs. Maybe they will value my opinion and consider, or maybe they won't. I don't know for sure. If they want to pay me to daydream through silly horoscope or culture training, fine. I'll pick my battles and that's just not one I care about enough to fight. We'll do the training for a few days and then we'll never think about it again and continue doing our jobs as usual.
• rogual 7y ago
  Maybe that is the team-building. You know, give everyone something to roll their eyes at together.