Learning & Development

"Sound Advice" for Training Supervisors

If you want to effectively train supervisors on legal hiring, don’t just show them or tell them, but do both!

If you’ve tried training your supervisors on HR and found that some just never catch on, perhaps you’re not properly accommodating their “learning styles.”

For as educators will tell you, some people learn best by seeing or reading the subject matter, and are therefore called “visual learners.” Others absorb new material best by hearing it. These are “oral learners.” Finally, there’s the hands-on group, who learn best by actually doing the new thing. These are “tactile learners.”

The problem comes when you try to train a group, which will, in most cases, not be uniform in their styles. That’s why the more senses you can stimulate with your lesson, the greater the chance they’ll learn.

It’s also the reason we got excited recently when we reviewed one of BLR’s new Audio Click ‘n Train training programs

Click ‘n Train is a brand-new series for teaching supervisors HR skills through concisely- written PowerPoint (R) slides. The audio version adds professionally recorded narration, which both enhances and expands what the slides teach and, as noted above, addresses a second learning style.

The program we got to review was called Audio Click ‘n Train: Hiring Legally. In 27 slides, running 23 minutes, it acquaints supervisors with all the key aspects of the subject, including:

–What laws control hiring (EEO, ADA, PDA, ADEA, IRCA, USERRA, among others.)
–How to write nondiscriminatory job descriptions and employment postings
–Questions you can and can’t ask in employment interviews
–Legal guidelines for preemployment testing
–Lawful reference and background checking
–How and what to document in the hiring process

This is good stuff, with nuances here we didn’t know.

We didn’t know, for example, that when several laws protect an applicant from discrimination, the one “most favorable to the applicant prevails.” Or that while you can refuse to hire an illegal immigrant, you can’t refuse those here legally, even if they’re not U.S. citizens. Or that employers should seriously consider how much to emphasize education or experience qualifications in job ads. Why? Because some protected groups have been denied the levels of education and experience you’d specify, forming a barrier they cannot, as a group, cross. That’s discrimination.

When writing these ads, advises Audio Click ‘n Train: Hiring Legally, put the emphasis on what work you need done, not what the applicant needs to be.

“That Self-Directed Thing”

This is a program supervisors can do on their own. You don’t even need to be in the room. Educators see this as another plus because most adult learners prefer to teach themselves, when they want, and at their own pace, a process called self-direction. Users of self-directed programs are more motivated because they have control over the material.

All these principles of adult learning are explained in-depth in the included Trainer’s Guide. There’s also a trainee handout to reinforce the main points, a quiz to test learning, and two provocative discussion exercises. You can also customize the slides by adding your company’s information. All this adds to the program’s efficacy, without adding to the cost.

If you’d like to experience Audio Click ‘n Train: Hiring Legally for yourself (there’s that self-directed thing again,) just click here to go to the BLR product information page. Then scroll to the bottom of that page and click on Download Sample Slides and Audio. Be sure your computer’s sound card is turned on and the volume is turned up.

Whether you’re a visual or oral learner, we think you’ll like what you see … and hear.


For more information or to order Audio Click ‘n Train: Hiring Legally, click here.


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