Sexual Harassment Prevention Training, Anti-discrimination Training, and Onboarding are High Priority Trainings: Finds XpertHR

XpertHR report found that HR plays a major role in learning, development, or training programs and currently HR teams are giving priority to sexual harassment prevention training, anti-discrimination training, and new hire onboarding.

With more emphasis on reskilling and upskilling the current workforce, the regular learning and development programs have been relegated to the background. The ever-changing economic landscape and volatile social environment have recently highlighted the focus on some other areas of training as well. Organizations have begun to create and implement programs that are mainly responsible for – an inclusive workplace and engaged workforce.  

The new survey by XpertHROpens a new window shows that the three learning, development, and training activities in which HR teams are most involved are sexual harassment prevention training, anti-discrimination training, and new hire onboarding.  10 learning, development, and training activities were included in the survey and as per the results, 57% of the responding organizations delegate the sole responsibility to HR for sexual harassment prevention training, followed by 53% for anti-discrimination training, and 48% for new hire onboarding. The survey also shared that even when the HR team was not entirely responsible for a training they still had to be partly involved. This might also link to the fact that most employers preferred to keep learning and development in-house.

The survey also shared a crucial finding related to the effectiveness of their learning and development activities – The most popular method to measure this is employee feedback, with 69% of employers choosing this option. The second most common process to measure this was performance/operational efficiency after activity (48%).

“Even if HR doesn’t have sole responsibility for a particular learning, development, or training activity, they are usually at least working on the task with staff from other departments,” says Andrew Hellwege, Surveys Editor, XpertHR, “which indicates how crucial HR is for an organization’s learning, development, and training programs.”

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Factors such as the emphasis on safe workplaces for all genders and races, drives the need for training that addresses issues like preventing sexual harassment and discrimination. Also, due to the cautiously optimistic approach that organizations are following, there is some level of hiring, which explains the onboarding training being one of the most prevalent. While that is good news, the fact that HR teams are heavily involved in these trainings as well as others, indicates a need to shift to technology at a faster pace on the learning and development front. The growth in online learning has been tremendous. There are many tools which are now supporting the above trainings as well and can reduce the effort of the HR teams.

1.Anti-Discrimination – Some vendors provide interactive training that is relevant to the workplaces of the future. Such programs are also designed to reduce the risk of costly harassment and discrimination claims. For example, Trailant Opens a new window has videos based on situations that allow employees to identify and manage those. The course content covers a range of topics which are common as well as those which are new-age such as Technology as a platform for discrimination and harassment and Transgender and LGBTQ sensitivity. There are special trainings that also focus on key content such as the laws that pertain to discrimination, such as the one that is offered by J.J.KellerOpens a new window .

2. Onboarding – Several tools support the hiring efforts of organizations and most of them also contain the features that support virtual onboarding. Making it a memorable experience for the new hires is what is important. BambooHR, Avature, Wisp and so on, have virtual platforms for clients to use for this process. Creating a structure for participation from everyone is also important. For example, Zillow employees can participate in “Virtual New Hire Open Houses,” which is a specific Slack channel where all new hires are invited to join so they can support each other during their first few months. 

The pandemic has opened up many such possibilities and it might be time for HR teams to be moved to playing more strategic roles in learning and development, than operational ones. 

Note – XpertHR’s 2020 Survey on Learning, Development, and Training was conducted from June 2, 2020, to June 26, 2020, and published on July 24, 2020. The survey includes the responses from 325 US employers of various industries and workforce sizes. The total estimated number of employees of responding organizations is 1,019,316

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