Re-Envisioning ResLife Staff Training: From Boring to Impactful

How many residence life trainings have you been to? 10? 15? Do you see your staff spending more time on their laptops and phones, rather than engaging? 

I started to feel that over the past few years. Yes, staff still know how to do their jobs once they have sat through boring training, but how can we make the most of the short amount of time we have to completely pour into our teams before students arrive at move-in? Training time is such a special time for a residence life team, and I think we can sometimes forget that this is the only time we are all together for any lengths during the year. Training sets the tone for the team and the year, let’s make the most of it by rethinking staff training using a few simple ideas.

Use/ Explore Adult-Learning Theory 

In my previous role, I was an academic advisor. Students would tell me how boring their classes were or how they did not learn the way that their professor was teaching them. Why are we not thinking about how our staff learn? Do you learn best when you are lectured at from PowerPoint all day? Do you retain that information. Think about how you can make your training as hands-on as possible. How can your staff start applying what they learn right away? Explore Adult Learning Theory and Andragogy. Here is a link to get you started from the New England Institute of Technology.

Be Considerate of Time/ Energy

July can be rough. Your team sits through training for weeks on end, to then welcome their RAs back to campus to do it all again… sit through training for weeks on end. How can you best use your team’s time? Do you take account of how long presentations usually take? Do you have random bits of down time when someone finishes early, and you are waiting for a presenter to arrive? Have outside presenters present in the morning, that way, if things finish early and you get through internal presenters, you give your team back their time. Think about how often you go a full day during training. Are there days that you could have shortened the day to give office time, so your team does not feel like they are drowning at opening? What sessions could come after opening? Do they need that information for August or November? Think about continual training so that your team gets what they need to open and then go from there with continual sessions. 

Socials Should be Optional and Not Every Night

Yes, we want to build one cohesive team who all enjoy spending time together. But, being together every hour of training can be exhausting, and socials are not for everyone. There are people who gain energy from spending time together after work, and it does make a difference to the quality of their lives at work. But social things do not need to happen every night. New staff may feel pressured to attend all socials possible with fear of missing out. Returning staff may feel obligated to attend (especially if you ask all returning staff to plan a social) on days they may need to just re-charge.  Space them out, make them impactful, and introduce staff to their new communities. Giving people nights with nothing on the schedule (even though you say they are not required), gives people the space to take their time and re-charge. 

Use Returners but do Not Isolate them from New Staff

Returning staff is a wealth of knowledge. They give invaluable perspectives and experiences during training. Please use them during training to help explain topics and information for new staff. But be careful on how you do this. There could be a strain between returning and new staff if returners are seen as not needing to be at training, or that they already know all the information. There is a good balance of using return staff and also letting return staff be a part of the team. This leads to the next portion of the post, thinking about how often you have returning staff present during training over other experts on campus. 

Experts Should Present

Does your team require that everyone on staff needs to present something at training? I can see this as trying to spread out the work and letting everyone get the experience of presenting. But is this always the best approach for the department? Experts in the content should be presenting the content and training the team. Are you talking about team dynamics? Bring in your Human Resources Department to lead the session. Are you discussing how you use your occupancy management system? Bring your occupancy team. Not every member of the staff needs to present at training unless they are the content expert. Play to the experts and bring them in to build a stronger foundation for your team. This also builds off the ten essential elements of a curricular approach and brings in a foundation of expert knowledge to your team (Kerr et al., 2020). 

Get to the Heart of it: What do they really need to know for Opening? What can we have an additional training for later?

Get to the heart of it, what does your staff need to know to open their building and support their students? We have a finite amount of time for training. Use that time wisely to think about what is needed now, and what can come later? What is talked about during RA training that you could take out of professional staff training and make sure they attend that during RA training? Be essential and specific about what you include in your summer training (McKeown, 2014). Then be essential, specific, and strategic about what future training and developments look like throughout the year. They will not remember something needed for November if you teach it in August. Teach that in October! Re-think about what your staff needs to get started and then bring in more later. 

Adding these different viewpoints, thoughts, questions, and ideas to your professional staff should make your training more engaging, impactful, and lead to less confusion in the future. Best wishes with your training and I hope that you have the most engaging and hands-on training yet!