People

United Nations

Diverse training groups are extremely beneficial for a trainer

In my opinion, one of the best things about this job is the opportunity to meet people.  Literally, any person, from any background you can think of.  Just this week I have trained a Latvian, a Portuguese, a Slovakian and a Ghanaian.  I was making a list in my head the other day of the different nationalities of the people I have trained over the years, and I started to slow down by the time I got to around fifty.  I’m sure the real figure is double that. It's healthy.  To remind myself that there is a massive world beyond the A1 and Cambridgeshire border. One thing I try and do is to find some common ground with each learner, regardless of where they are from or who they are.  In the moments where the learner is taking a break from having their turn on a forklift or just having their morning break, I will see if there is an opportunity to find something I can use to make the person feel more relaxed so they can open up and perhaps perform better at the task they have been given. There has bound to be some learners who just thought I was plain annoying and nosey but, (and to ease my ego), I hope they are in the minority. However, there was one trainer who I worked with many years ago, who didn’t exactly share this view. I’ll take them, you can have them One of my first consistent spells of training in one premises, was located in a major distribution centre. My assignment was to travel to this site ready and willing to train new, agency staff on manual handling equipment (MHE) for a rather challenging 6:00am start.  Throw in the fact that it was also coming into early October made this particularly testing as to be there on time.  I needed to leave my house at 4:30am.On arrival, all the trainers waited in the staff canteen, which at times was around 4-5 of us and all the agency staff, who bothered to turn up, were then shepherded into an oppressive, overly lit room to sit and listen to a trainer explain the theory of the truck usage on site.  If they managed to stay awake throughout this presentation (many didn’t) they would then sit a theory paper and try to pass an exam to “prove” they understood what the trainer was talking about and all the rules of the site. Now, the vast majority of the agency staff who were sent to this site had not long been in the UK, couldn’t speak English, couldn’t write or a mixture of all 3. As you can imagine this did make the theory classroom session rather challenging for those agency staff and if they didn’t pass the test, they were culled in a similar way the celebrities are on SAS: Who Dares Wins.  I must admit, I found this whole experience quite uncomfortable. Those that had passed the theory exam were then put into groups of 3 and then assigned a trainer and this is where I would come in.  I would then take them to an area to deliver the practical training on the truck. After a few weeks, one of my fellow trainers approached me and started a discussion regarding the allocation of the learners to each trainer and to my shame, he highlighted something I didn’t notice at all. He astutely pointed out that another trainer, let’s call him, Malcolm, who was in our group always allocated the same demographic of learners to himself to train on a truck.  That demographic was often British, White and usually, Male. Looking back at this period has made me realise that I should have done more to call this out.  In my rather pathetic defence, I will say that it didn’t go completely ignored.  My fellow trainer who highlighted the issue and I, would deliberately start sabotaging the group assignments and start taking ownership of the delegation of learners to ensure that Malcolm had to train who he was given. Maybe Malcolm was just incapable, inflexible and stuck in his ways to alter his training so that everyone could understand his sessions and learn a skill for their job.  Maybe Malcolm felt insecure that he couldn’t communicate clearly to all learners, no matter what their background was.  Maybe Malcolm lacked patience and subtlety to guide his groups to successfully perform the tasks required. Or maybe, he was just a massive racist.