Professor: Supervisor training fosters business growth

So the hospital brought in some outside help, tapping Evangel University business professor and former health care executive Bernie Dana to train 100 mid- and upper-level CMH managers on basic business topics such as problem solving and conflict management.

Jeremy MacLaughlin, CMH director of human relations, said the idea was to offer employees training beyond what they typically receive for their jobs.

“When you go into a meeting, sometimes people are looking at issues from a couple of different areas,” he said. “There are a lot of technically trained people, but there’s not a lot of business training.”

Dana said opportunities for professional improvement are among the most important employee perks, and supervisor training, in particular, is one of the fastest ways to reduce turnover.

“If the supervisor doesn’t know how to effectively manage people and understand people’s strengths and use them to engage in their work effectively, it creates lots of problems,” Dana said. “If people don’t end up leaving, they’re disengaged, which causes productivity to suffer, quality to suffer, and leads directly to problems with profitability, employee morale and customer satisfaction.”

As a result, more local businesses are recognizing the benefits of professional advancement and educational opportunities for employees.

Learning to laugh

Among the opportunities available locally, the corporate division of Upside Down Creative Group, which also includes The Skinny Improv, uses improvisational theater techniques to build relationships between co-workers.

“We try to use the theater arts and creative thinking to help businesses, churches and organizations develop the creative side of the business and think outside the box,” said Tim Lee, the group’s booking manager. “We use the techniques of improv and theater to get people to think creatively, work together, build better teams and communicate better.”

One organization that has used Upside Down Creative is UMB Bank, which wanted to help employees learn more effective ways to communicate.

“It gives you a different outlook and perspective on how to handle yourself, and a different way to look at your effort when you’re visiting prospective clients,” said Michael Garner, UMB Bank assistant vice president. “We tend to grow into a mode of what’s comfortable when we’re seeing these people, and (with training) we got a different way to think about it – a different angle.”

Boosting benefits

CMH’s MacLaughlin said the benefits of professional development such as what Dana provided go beyond the employees.

“If they’re successful as individuals, we’ll be successful as a company,” he said.

The benefits of bringing someone in to train employees extend to the bottom line; MacLaughlin said the hospital spent less than $5,000 to bring in Dana to train 100 employees, while sending those employees to training sessions would easily cost $1,000 each.

Dana said the benefits of training aren’t just financial either, especially when it comes to managers and supervisors.

“The link between good supervisors and the overall health of the company is strong,” he said.

“For the company, training helps to begin to address the issues of creating a productive, healthy, engaged work force. It also builds the confidence and esteem of the supervisors, to help them feel like they’re effective at what they do.”