We did it. We rebooted our all-staff training format, shifting from the fall semester to the spring semester. I wrote about the plan to make this transition in Staff Training – Developing Team Leaders back in August 2023.
Yes, if you’re paying attention, writing about this in 2023 and executing it in 2025 would suggest the timeline did not develop as originally thought. We hit some challenges, found some opportunities to pivot, and the end result was a productive and rewarding staff training of which we will replicate in the future.
The original plan was relatively simple — or so we thought. The plan focused on two parts:
- Change the timing. Change all staff training from fall (August) before classes start to spring (January) first week of school.
- Develop Team Leads to take an active role in spring training. In the fall, identify team leads across the department, work with them to take a role in training day and use them as promoters of spring training.
Changing the Timing
This turned out to be the easy part. If you’re one of many traditional campus rec programs, your first question might be, why change from pre-fall semester training to spring semester training? In a word: timing.
Like most campus rec departments, programming expectations are high for the weekend before fall semester classes start. Our challenges were layered between early housing move-in accommodations and needing to be open for programming the Friday afternoon before school starts. We have about two full days for about 14 staff teams across our six-unit department to do their job-team-specific training.
With these challenges in mind, adding the expectation for a half-day or full-day all-staff training stopped making sense. We knew our respective teams were getting the job-specific training needed to start off the semester. What we were missing was unity of having all the teams together and the group training that fosters connections, builds community and furthers our RecWell brand. A spring training would allow us to focus more on broad training topics — we chose professionalism — and to incorporate team-building elements.
Develop Team Leads
This turned out to be the more layered part of the plan to tackle. First, we realized that a common training for Team Leads was needed. Over the 2023-2024 school year, our Staff Development Committee worked on a common core mission for Team Lead training. Knowing that our goal was Spring 2025 training, we started the Fall 2024 semester with the goal of identifying current Team Leads and scheduling time to discuss their role in the next semester training.
This revealed unanticipated challenges. The first was an inconsistency of Team Lead designations. Across our 14 staff teams, Team Leads were at varying stages in the fall semester. Some were already in the role. Other teams were identifying leads. This led to the second challenge — scheduling time to meet with a group of Team Leads that were still unknown, in some cases, through half or more of the semester.
Time to Pivot
The original idea to use student staff to influence staff training was still good — we just needed to identify a staff group. While Team Leads would have been ideal, ultimately a representative from staff teams could meet the same goal. Enter RecWell Advisory Board (RAB).
RAB members consist of representatives from our Student Government funded areas which is the majority of the department. We used our RAB members to fill a modified role of the original plan for Team Leads. With three RAB meetings scheduled for the fall semester, we had time to get RAB influence on training content and to help promote the training.
Final Product
The agenda for our rebooted Spring All Staff Training & Team Building was a true collaboration between our student staff and professional staff. Our student representatives through the RAB were instrumental in the training content. After a review of professionalism topics, they chose time management, conflict resolution and problem solving, and communication as the most relevant to include in training.
Our Staff Development Committee, consisting of RecWell staff supervisor representatives, built an agenda around the staff input. To address time management, we had a guest speaker from Student Success. The Dean of Students spoke about addressing conflict resolution and shared support resources.
The team-building activity was led by our Challenge Course facilitators from our Eco Adventure program. Their creative team-building activity incorporated communication barriers and problem-solving – concepts that were talked out through a debrief after the activity.
One of the ideas RAB had for training was to include a tour of our areas. The challenge to pull this off is because our department facilities and program areas are spread out across the campus and our agenda format did not account for this amount of time. The solution: virtual tours. RAB exceeded expectations through 1-minute video tours that showcased their roles in our department.
This experience has created a model for future training, to make it by students, for students. We will continue to utilize RAB representatives to choose the theme, our Staff Development Committee to put the agenda together and then refer back to our students for input to make it interactive.
