Among professionals and student staff alike, there are few times as painstaking and perhaps controversial as returning staff training. Generally, responses can come back to “I learned this last year (or the year before),” “I could be doing other things right now,” and “this is too long” among returning staff. The reality is that annual and bi-annual training periods are beneficial to staff for refreshers, teambuilding, and departmental updates, but professionals have a long way to go in planning training that accurately hits on what returning staff needs are. My pitch to this issue is ASK: Adapt, Simplify, Know. ASK seeks to understand the changes that are needed from team to team, creating a streamlined training to cover necessary topics, and maintaining an understanding of what is already known by returning staff.
This blog series features different writers responding to the prompt, “How can we re-envision ResLife staff training?”
To tackle the ASK acronym, starting with “Adapt,” this refers to the idea of adapting your training to understand your team and specifically how they tend to learn. Gen Z learners have shown that the typical classroom style, “words off a powerpoint” don’t work for getting a learning across. Leaders need to adapt their training to offer modern learning adaptations that provide hands-on instruction and discussion opportunities. While Behind Closed Doors is already a controversial training topic, I encourage professionals to think of additional ways to create scenario based learnings away from the typical “RA on duty” challenge, along with other practical approaches to residence life work tasks. Other considerations for adapting training is going away from long hours in a single room, providing ample “in hall” time for teambuilding and individualized instruction, and break times to allow for resets and hall opening preparations.
“Simplify” refers to simplifying content and avoiding extended hours of training in unhelpful settings. By any means, staff training is a crash course in how to work in Residence Life for a given academic year. Given that this is a crash course, consider what staff need to know in the time immediately following their training, and cater training sessions to hit on these topics in a simplified manner. Throughout the year, ongoing training should occur in staff meetings and other professional development opportunities to further enhance staff’s learning in the areas that are not as pertinent as what to expect through hall opening. Questions of consideration would include “what can I remove from training and teach throughout the semester” or “what do my staff really need to know now?”
Finally, “Know.” Know your campus culture, and know your team. Leaders often get in their heads of thinking “this is what was helpful previously, therefore it needs to happen now.” Putting on a staff training is no easy task, but knowing what your team needs and the context of what is happening on campus that is relevant to staff roles is imperative to putting on effective training. Not knowing these groups can lead to continuously ineffective training from year to year and a furthered distaste for training among staff.
The times are a-changing, and getting out of the “old school Residence Life” habits of long training and overengagement need to adapt along with the changing generations of staff. Planning this year’s upcoming staff training, consider ASKing yourself and your team how you can simplify training to highlight what your staff needs and how they learn best. We owe it to our staffs to best prepare them, and the age of information overload and burnout before the year begins needs to change into a healthier approach.
Austin Korynta (he/him) is a higher education professional based out of Minnesota. Austin started down the path of working in higher education at his freshman orientation when he boldly told his academic advisor he wanted to drop his intended major and “do what you do.” Since then, Austin has been all-in on housing and residence life experiences across institutions in Iowa, North Carolina, and Illinois prior to settling down in Minnesota. Outside of work, Austin enjoys playing the bass guitar, cooking new recipes, and setting expectations too high for his favorite sports teams.
