Both of the trainings I’m about to describe were for work. One training I received when I was just starting out at Providence Medford Medical Center, which is part of a large hospital system, and the other I received when I started working at The New Well, which is part of a larger health and wellness company based in Grants Pass, Oregon. The training for Providence was comprehensive in that they took the time to delve into what personality traits made for good employees (which they referred to as “caregivers”) and how the kind of person you are plays into how you are able to make a difference in the world in a healthcare setting. This kind of training made me feel immersed in the culture of the company and as though what I had chosen to do for employment truly made a difference. Having supervisors from all different departments come talk to us about what their work meant to them was meaningful to me because it made me feel like everyone that worked there was able to get personal satisfaction from what they did for a living. This training was both meaningful and impactful.
The other training that was less effective was with The New Well. The training that we were required to do was meant to get employees to be more vulnerable with each other and to become more self-aware through the use of a workshop called Empowered and I absolutely despised the whole process from start to finish. It felt cult-ish, and the entire time I questioned if the people that seemed engaged were sincerely engaged or if they were just having less of an awful time than I was because they weren’t new to the company and they had friends who were participating in the workshop at the same time. This training was focused on building interpersonal relationships with coworkers and to develop leadership skills, but the way the training was delivered seemed overly-emotional and for this reason, I was completely repelled by the method of the training. My obvious lack of interest made me a bit of a target for the instructors and as you may be able to guess, this didn’t make the class any more appealing to me. Part of the training consisted of staring into someone’s eyes as you sat across from them for a solid five minutes. This in no way made me a better person or employee and I will always remember how powerfully uncomfortable this workshop made me. Another part of the training was sharing an experience that was painful and how we dealt with the painful experience. There are many reasons I don’t for work for this company anymore.
