Training Audit for Restore Education’s Training and Development Program
Proper training of employees determines their ability to be competent at their workstations. In particular, the need for quality education is a significant motivator for quality training of school staff members. Although schools’ staff often intend to teach in the best way, the quality of their service can be bad due to the poor quality of their training. Thus, an audit of their training is critical to ensure that their training institutions meet the required standards. This paper intends to audit the quality of the training program for GED administrator assistants, instructors, and tutors at Restore education.
Findings and Recommendation
Administrator Assistants, Instructors, and Tutors
Restore education ensures that all the employees adopt the culture of servant leadership to restore the desire of students pursuing teaching as a career. According to the institution’s training manual, the employees are encouraged to help the students wholeheartedly without expecting any compensation in return. According to Murphy (2013), servant leadership promotes the development of strong brands and vibrant cultural scenes that are essential for the prosperity of communities. Encouraging this culture can help the employees to achieve the institution’s goals for the students at the end of the training programs. Thus, demonstration of servant leadership among the employees can help in inspiring the students into pursuing education as their career.
Additionally, restore education training program intends to nurture the culture of academic honesty throughout the education system. The institution pursues this goal by promoting academic integrity and appreciation of other people’s work. According to English (2013), students cheat because they are desperate and lack confidence in their abilities to pass. If left untamed, such actions result in the employment of incompetent employees to work in various workplaces. Restore education fights such tempting factors by promoting their preparedness and confidence through the scheduling of the institution’s events and counseling of students respectively. Besides, they ensure that the facility offers a successive educational framework that upholds institutional integrity and responsibility to ensure that the education system remains reputable. The institution’s graduating students, who respect academic honesty, will guarantee the employers of a productive and reliable workforce.
Furthermore, the institution emphasizes the significance of confidentiality among the tutors and instructors. Restore education maintains secrecy among the employees by preventing the training professors from openly sharing information about the training administrator assistants, tutors and instructors. This demonstration intends to make them appreciate the significance of confidentiality in the education process. Besides, the emphasis on privacy is expected to build trust between instructors and students (Murphy, 2013). Therefore, breaching confidentiality will negatively affect students’ self-esteem and their academic performance. This impact of information leak to students’ academic performance explains the need for protecting student information.
Moreover, Restore education urges the trainers to maintain professionalism in their work. The training manual uses the influence of a teachers’ conduct on students to demonstrate the essence of professionalism. For instance, the training manual states that maintaining a proper dress code among teachers can help the students to avoid destructions and concentrate in class. Besides, the training manual also mentions integrity, discipline and guidance and counseling as parameters that demonstrate professionalism at work. The manual has described the form of punishment that the employees will face as a means pushing for these qualities. According to Ssonko (2010), punishments are essential to reinforce professionalism in institutions. Although Restore education’s training manual has set the guidelines to promote professionalism, the corrective measures are necessary to help the administrative assistants, instructors, and tutors to maintain professionalism.
The institution also prioritizes the safety of the employees at work. First, the training manual has described Restore education’s policy regarding security threats such as sexual harassment violent attacks. More so, the institution also requires the tutors to ensure that the students know the dangerous places in school to avoid them. English (2013) states that providing a safe workspace for the students will ensure that they prosper in their education. This reward of excellent academic performance justifies the Restore education’s effort to provide security to the students while at school.
Additionally, Restore education insists on the students fully meeting their expected requirements. These requirements include things such as a GED certificate, high standards of literacy, passion for general education and willingness to learn new things. The institution urges the employees to check on these requirements from students to ensure that the students have a good chance of benefiting from the program. For example, students having a passion for general education and embracing servant leadership will conquer the feeling of frustration at work. These qualities are critical in helping employees to understand that the urge of seeing a student succeed overcomes the desire to get more compensation for the assistance offered to the student (Murphy, 2013). Learning to overcome such challenges shows the ability of an employee to grow professionally as a teacher.
Besides, computer literacy has a critical role in sharpening the students’ ability to thrive in the respective employment duties. Although the computer skill is not mandatory, the training recommends that administrative assistants, tutors, and instructor should be a computer survey to teach the skills to students comfortably. This skill is important in building the students’ confidence in the education system since demonstrating mastery of a particular knowledge helps the leaners to have faith in the quality of the education offered (English, 2013). Thus, the training should make computer literacy a mandatory requirement since the knowledge is a helping tool that eases their work.
Additionally, the training promotes order among the employees. For example, the training manual describes the period that the training will take and the schedule of all the activities during the exercise. According to Ssonko (2010), encouraging order in a workplace increases the efficiency of the workers. Thus, having a schedule will improve efficiency in the training process. Furthermore, following a particular program in education helps the facilitators to cover the curriculum fully. Although the training has a schedule, the schedule lacks details on the venue of these events. Providing this information is essential for the institutions’ staff to prepare the place in advance. Therefore, the training manual should give additional information about the venue of the training program to promote the smooth running of events.
The training program also focuses on the obligation of students. According to the training manual, the students should exercise legal compliance, build a shared vision, embrace core organizational values and follow the set code of conduct. In the spirit of servant leadership, the training institution urges the administrative assistants, tutors, and trainers to fulfill these obligations for the students to emulate from them (Murphy, 2013). These responsibilities are intended to shape the students into becoming teachers who are law abiding.
Instructors and Tutors
Restore education training program intends to foster communication among the staff and student to ensure proper coordination of the institution’s program. The organization employs media such as social media, emails, memos, meetings, team building activities, classrooms, and phones to strengthen the communication around the institution. According to Betts (2009), using these media is essential since they will help the organization to evaluate the progress and quality of the training program. This evaluation will be through reviewing the students’ and staff’s feedback in forums such as meetings and team building activities. Moreover, these panels will help in the governance of the school by enabling the employees to pass the necessary information to the whole institution. The role of effective communication in empowering the success of Restore education program justifies the need for the organization to invest in developing proper communication channels.
Besides, the institution ensures that only legible students and tutors join the training program. According to the training manual, Restore education’s training program is for students who are between 17 and 27 years old, disciplined and underprivileged. Contrarily, enrolling tutors and instructors should have proof of having had prior high school experience. These standards ensure that the right students are admitted into the program. Furthermore, the rules ensure that the correct tutors and instructors are training the students. This is commendable since the institution will promote a balance in the access to education opportunities between the privileged and the underprivileged students. Additionally, the legibility of the tutors and trainers will help foster the integrity of the program. This adherence to tutor and student legibility demonstrates the institution’s intention to offer quality services.
However, Restore education training program offers an unclear employment contract to the employees. Although the institution includes strict rules and regulations in the work contract to promote hard work, the description of the basis of punishment is unclear. For instance, the agreement fails to explain the causes of absenteeism that are punishable and those that are forgivable. Besides, the deal has no description of the required length of working hours for the employees. This vagueness gives room for supervisors to overwork the employees. According to Nagashima (2007), this exploitation causes anxiety, irritability and general fatigue among the employees. Eventually, these effects will lower the productivity of the tutors. Thus, the adherence to the recommended working hours is essential in the maintenance of the institution’s performance.
Restore education’s training also bestows the tutors and instructors with the task of mentoring the students. The training program ensures the mentorship is effective by encouraging activities that promote servant leadership among the instructors and tutors. These activities involve participatory learning in class and demonstration of approachable personalities by the tutors. Although these measures will strengthen the relationship between tutors and students, the tutors should be careful to avoid the risk of sexual harassment accusations (Murphy, 2013). They can prevent such allegations by maintaining the professional standards when counseling the students. Hence, strengthening of teacher and student relationship is essential in a mentorship program provided the teacher keeps a professional environment when helping the students.
Moreover, the training program trains the instructors and tutors to ensure that students remain committed to learning. The training emphasizes that tutors should not miss classes as a way acting as an example to the students. The program further directs that teachers should lose 5% of their salaries while students should lose marks incase they miss classes. Giving these punishments acts as a negative reinforcement to discourage missing of classes (Palestini, 2011). Besides, the training manual recommends other possible measures that can help avoid missing classes. For instance, the manual proposes that teachers can do outdoor activities, give exams or facilitate class debates instead of avoiding lessons. Although these methods offer lesser information to the students than the conventional classroom lessons, they improve the students’ interest in education and help stop absenteeism.
Administrative Assistants
The training manual guides the administrators on the institution’s communication policies on how to use communication channel to perform their duties. For instance, the manual recommends the administrators to use emails for communications with students and phone calls for all instant communications. Selecting the suitable communication channels is important because the effectiveness of a message depends on the appropriateness of the communication channel (Betts, 2009). Therefore, administrative assistants should strictly adhere to the training guidelines on effective communications.
Furthermore, Restore education program bestows the administrative assistant with the responsibility of supervising three other administrative activities. These include record keeping, registration of students and management of library resources. Including these guidelines in the training program is essential in the preparation of administrative assistants for their duties as coordinator of different departments in the institution (Lunenberg, 2010). The inclusion of these roles in the training of administrative assistants proves the ability of the Restore education’s training program to produce competent school administrators.
Conclusion
Indeed, Restore education training program offers quality training of the administrative assistants, instructors and tutors despite facing limitations. The institution has separated the training content into three separate categories that include the material for administrative assistants, instructors, tutors and general information for all the three posts. This separation helps to prevent jurisdictional conflicts and has eased the audit of the training program. However, the training program provides inadequate information on scheduling of training events and the term of service in the work contract. Addressing these two issues will help smoothen event preparation and prevent exploitation of workers. Despite the two limitations, Restore education training program can produce competent teachers.
References
Betts, K. (2009). Lost in Translation: Importance of Effective Communication in Online Education. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration. Retrieved from http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/
English, J. A. (2013). Plugged In. Boston, MA: Wadsworth.
Lunenburg, F. C. (n.d.). The Principal and the School: What Do Principals Do? , 27(4). Retrieved from http://www.nationalforum.com/
Murphy, F. G. (2013). Community engagement, organization, and development for public health practice. New York: Springer.
Nagashima, K., Suwazono, Y., Okubo, Y., Uetani, M., Kobayashi, E., Kido, T., & Nogawa, K. (2009). Working hours and mental and physical fatigue in Japanese workers. Occupational Medicine, 57(6), 449-452. Retrieved from https://academic.oup.com/occmed/article/57/6/449/1375262.
Palestini, R. H. (2011). Educational administration: Leading with mind and heart. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Ssonko, D. K. (2010). Enhancing professionalization of human resource management in the public service in Africa. Uganda Management Institute. Retrieved from http://www.umi.ac.ug/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&layout=item&id=49&Itemid=122
