The Human Touch

Efficiency is a wonderful thing. In many large organizations, it is easy to sign up for training on-line, take the course on-line, take a quiz on-line, turn in an evaluation -- and never inteact with a human anywhere in the process. Or, if there is a question about a practical matter, you might talk with a staff person who handles the "registration database".

But you're not likely to talk to a person who will exchange ideas with you, about what you have learned. Or who will pursue a question that doesn't have a pre-fab answer.

In some companies, the desire for efficiency has overwhelmed their interest in a corporate culture that reinforces company values and furthers key organization strategies for success. It takes less staff time if trainees can sign themselves in, educate themselves, and test out of a topic.

But it takes even less staff time if we don't do any work at all. The ultimate "cost-efficient" approach is to go out of business. "Less staff time" is not an end in itself -- or shouldn't be, although it achieves that status in places where they believe you can cut your way to growth and success. "Less staff time" to deal with customers accounts for the state of what is laughingly called "customer service" at many big companies.

Really, is there anybody who hasn't had a hell of a time getting a simple question answered, a small problem fixed, because we are doomed to endless loops of voice menus and automated on-line "knowledge bases". And when we do get a real person, he or she can't answer our question because that "helper" is just reading the answers off another on-line knowledge base.

When we train people to employ best practices, to do things the way we think will build our organization's success, that will lead to us accomplishing our mission, it really is very similar to a customer service situation. We provide a tool they use to improve their (work) lives -- admittedly, for the benefit of the company -- and if they have problems or questions, a good, efficient, human response to those issues builds loyalty to the company.

As a trainer and instructional designer, I find it frustrating when employees just want their "ticket punched", they just want to have credit for having gone through some required training, and they don't really care how it applies to their work. No company really needs that kind of worker representing them with customers, prospects, suppliers, or the public.

But when an employee is looking for support, or additional information, on an issue the comes up in training or policy dissemination, it is just as frustrating to have it treated like an "automated support ticket". They file an e-mail (or worse, on-line form), wait for a canned response -- and come to the realization that to their employer, training them is like churning out piece work on a production line.

I don't have space to preach the virtues of automation and technology here, but I do firmly believe they can be used to enhance the human element, to bring efficiency to the human touch, in communications and training to spread best practices.

Still, I can't help feeling that too many have decided that automated, self-operated training is always better than other options. These organizations have brought efficiency in to replace the human touch, and as often as not, they've simply convinced their employees that the company is happy to just have an automaton punch their ticket and leave it at that.