Director’s Thoughts – 2/28/25
When I started as a director nine years, I felt strongly that we needed to have one day where most of the staff could come together to learn about the overall vision of the library, work on projects, and spend time together. It’s difficult to share information (I know, I’m a librarian!), but when there are thirty people working for one organization across all different schedules, it can be difficult to relay all the information, all the time.
We host our staff training day on President’s Day. I decided on this day because it’s a day that many people might already assume that we aren’t open, so it’s not a huge loss when it comes to foot traffic. I typically try to keep training to just a couple of hours and then host a luncheon and/or craft project for down time as well. Full-time staff are required to stay their full hours for the day and any part-time staff that are not normally scheduled are paid to attend training.
Communication
When we got back from COVID, there was so much information to relay to everyone and it was constantly changing! I sent out an email asking my staff for their preferred learning method and their preferred communication method. It was my hope that by learning more about how my staff digest information, the stronger we could become.
Your preferred communication style:
- One-on-one meetings
- Group meetings
- Videos (rather than written information)
- Formal training presentations
- Another way (please specify)
Your learning style:
- Visual – need to see something to understand it
- Auditory – need to hear someone explain it
- Kinesthetic – need to experience something to learn how to do it
- Reading/writing – need to read and write about an idea to fully understand it
The majority of my staff responded that they prefer communications through email (and I jokingly say you need to read the emails I send to know what’s happening) and many of my staff prefer to learn visually, which is great because I’m a person who loves to create procedures with plenty of instruction and photographs.
While this is not necessarily staff training, I think this is helpful information to have, so that when you do offer training, you can make sure to provide training in a way that helps the most people remember it!
Positives of Staff Training
Staff training is full of positive results! I’m always excited to go over any goals or expectations that I have for my staff in a full group setting. I also like sharing about our accomplishments, I usually do an overview of our annual report – highlighting some of the great things we did in the previous year. It’s also the perfect time to talk about any big changes that have occurred – collection moves, program changes, or new collections that we’re cultivating.
I also like to provide some sort of useful information – an overview of some of our online resources, we had the police come in last year to talk about active shooter scenarios, we’ve had our district consultant talk about how our library fits into the great scheme of libraries across our state. I think it’s great if you can bring someone else into training – my staff have to hear me talk all the time, having the information come from another source can be beneficial!
Negatives of Staff Training
While there aren’t many, there are a few things that can make staff training difficult. It’s hard to find training topics that are of interest to everyone on staff. Often times, training is more department-specific. I don’t want to waste my staff’s time, but I do feel coming together is important. It can also be difficult to get staff on board with the importance of staff training, when they’d rather be working on their own tasks. Overall, I think the benefits far-outweigh the difficulties.
My Final Thoughts
There are different parts of staff trainings that I’ve done over the years that have worked really well. One year we focused on online resources and after reviewing them at staff training, the staff were expected to complete a few “quizzes” about the online resources. It was just a couple of questions, to encourage staff members to actually try out our online resources so they felt more comfortable talking about them to patrons. I will say, whatever you do, don’t call them quizzes – that part didn’t go over so well! Call the worksheets or exercises and it’ll be fine!
One year I sent up a scavenger hunt around the library and broke the staff into five or six different teams. The only requirement was that you had to have at least one person from every department represented on your team. That way, different groups of people had to work together. My staff loved this one and really enjoyed learning about different parts of the library they weren’t familiar with!
We also tie-dyed summer reading t-shirts one year, which was fun and practical because it made finding my staff members so easy during big programs! Oh, and don’t forget to feed them! I usually leave candy at the tables and then offer some snacks for “breakfast” think coffee cake and fruit salad and then a big lunch. I’ve catered it before from Panera Bread, we’ve gotten pizza before. But, last year I made a couple different types of soup and had a salad bar. This year, I made baked potatoes with a salad bar. Rather, than doing a Christmas/holiday gift, I like being able to do this as something special for staff training. And while it’s a lot of work, my staff do appreciate the effort.
