Just thinking: How often have you ever attended training for how to deal with workplace problems? The range of topics could cover a lot of valuable ground:

How to respond to someone who’s not doing his/her job — and it’s affecting yours

How to approach someone who’s lack of boundaries is causing problems

How to best deal with lack of professionalism in another department

How to handle customer complaints if it’s not normally your job to do so

The answer we often hear is “Just tell your manager and let your manager deal with it,” but frankly, I think that’s a bit weak. A manager may be the appropriate authority to address a problem, but that doesn’t alleviate the day-to-day (and sometimes minute-by-minute) struggle a person must endure.

Certainly, some form of company endorsed techniques can be taught so that people are equipped to handle such situations maturely and professionally.

To the companies that already conduct such training, hats off to you. But my observation is that such training is extremely rare.

In the Employee Handbook?

Some will no doubt tell me that these problems are addressed in the employee handbook, and that employees should just go read that.

Tell me — when was the last time you saw anyone gaining skills for solving workplace problems by studying the employee handbook?

And how many employee handbooks address the more personal issues?

How to help a co-worker cope with the death of a loved one

How to diffuse an emotional outburst

My point? We can read about and perhaps even understand these things, but unless we get a chance to experience them and imprint what we learn into our memory, dealing with workplace problems is pretty much “by guess and by golly.”

It’s my serious contention that companies conducting this type of training will see amazing results from doing so.

What are some other thoughts on this?  Should an employer get involved in training people in these skills?

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Filed in Work, Training, Management, Team Building, Customer Service, Workplace