One of the things I get excited about as a conference blogger is the chance to chat with some of the speakers ahead of the event. I pick different speakers every year to, wait for it…, expand my world! Okay, that was a cheesy set-up to spotlight the theme, let me move on!
I had the pleasure of chatting with Patti Perez, VP of Workplace Strategy for Emtrain, and 
we had THE. BEST. CHAT.!
I picked Patti because her session title, “Top 10 Ways to Make Your Harassment Prevention Training Impactful and Consequential,” caught my eye. I think we can all agree that events playing out in the spotlight over the past year have us all in a position to evaluate our training and culture, so this is the kind of session I’m looking for at SHRM18. What I wanted to find out for all of you, and myself, is Patti’s approach to this topic and I was not disappointed.
Before I tell you what I learned about her session, I should pause to tell you how excited she is to be speaking at the SHRM Annual Conference & Exposition again. This time she is most excited about connecting with attendees because the last two times she presented at the big show, she didn’t take the time to do any intentional networking!
I want to encourage you all to go ahead and follow her on twitter @patticperez to help her with this goal (You can also find her on LinkedIn here, and yes she is already planning on meeting Steve Browne in person this year to help him out with his goal to meet every person at #SHRM18).
For this session you can expect Patti to tell us like it is: bad training is BAD, bad training is ineffective! She’s going to call you out if you’re doing training with just your compliance blinders on because it has to be so much more! You saw that she has her JD and you thought she was going to roll in and teach us compliance, didn’t you?
Patti’s approach is delivered in three main sections: 1) Philosophical/big picture consideration. 2) Practical Tips. 3) Delivery/design and how to engage. More of a “here’s a template, but please accommodate for your organization as needed.”
I’ve been to many a conference and one of the things that I hear often is “that’s nice, but we could never do that,” so I dug a little further and chatted Patti up about that very challenge. How can we implement this in our organization? Patti believes there are basically three kinds of executives/managers when it comes to this challenge and we can divide them up in buckets, just for fun!
The first bucket being “woke executives,” or the executives who already understand the business case for a healthy organization.
The second bucket being the kind who knows “simply complying isn’t good business,” or the group who knows they don’t want to be the next Uber (or insert many a name instead of Uber).
The third, and most challenging bucket, being the “paranoid, fearful, people are out to get me” group who basically lack trust and haven’t understood the benefits of treating people professionally, respectfully, and with a transparent approach.
To apply what you’re hearing in this session (or any session at any conference), you have to identify which one is your audience (what bucket does your management team fall in) and build your case to that challenge. Patti wants to move everyone out of the paranoid bucket, but it's probably going to take work from her and the audience to accomplish that task.
Training is one piece to the puzzle, it's not a magic pill, and it has to match your overall approach to your work environment. Saying one thing in training and doing another during real life opportunities in the workplace will undoubtedly render your training useless, so it is necessary for your training to be a reflection of your organizations approach to problem solving and how you value your talent.
I’m really looking forward to hearing from Patti at #SHRM18 and would love to meet you at her session!
Originally posted on HR Pockets blog.
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