In today’s age of lawsuit bingo, trainers (and those who design training) have to be more careful than ever about what they say and how they say it. I was recently looking at a short video with a really impactful message. It reflected well the values of treating both our customers and our coworkers well. The movie had no blood, sex, or inappropriate language and would not be censored on broadcast television. Part of the reason it was so impactful is the final reveal of the movie is depressingly sad. It definitely would have left our trainees with exactly the message we wanted, but they could have been too traumatized the rest of the day to pay attention to other trainings to follow. Appropriately, we left the video out of that training.
About a month ago I attended a training in a hospital where they showed us a simulation of post birth traumatic bleeding. It was bloody and uncomfortable, but something trainees HAD to go through to do their job.
These two experiences led to a conversation about what kinds of “controversial” materials are worth the risk in a training environment. Another trainer talked about an alcohol training that he ran where he used a video that showed alcohol related accidents, where the trainees were highly impacted by it, but the client did not want to use it due to potential negative impact on the trainees.
Have you encountered similar situations?
How do you measure the value of something that might be uncomfortable or even traumatic for trainees vs. having a memorable training (emotional) impact?