Thursday, March 13, 2008
Annals of employment law: Fast learners not wanted in California
Like most companies, mine has extensive requirements for compliance training. All employees take several online training "modules" each quarter, rotating through fifteen or twenty subjects over a period of a couple of years (I am now primarily in re-runs). Generally, the programs are easily digestible, and if you are already conversant in such things (as I am, being a lawyer with responsibilities over human resources, regulatory affairs, quality systems, the law department, and the finance and accounting department, among other things) you can read them and pass the little test in 20 - 30 minutes.
With that background, imagine the delight with which I read this in my morning email:
This e-mail serves to update you on the Harassment modules for supervisors this quarter. Some of you have been assigned the California class. Please be advised that we have reloaded the correct courses and they should now be correct on your home page.
Managers who supervise individuals in California either directly or indirectly were assigned to the California module. NOTE: Because of the legal requirement that the time spent on harassment training is 3 hours, this module makes sure that you spend adequate time to take the module. It will not allow you to advance the screen as with other modules that you have taken. You must also take the employee edition course to complete your 3 hours.
So, according to the government of California, it is not whether you know something that matters, but that you took a long time to learn it.
Thanks, Arnold. Anything else I can take a long time to learn?
6 Comments:
By 
Andrew Hofer, at
Thu Mar 13, 01:14:00 PM:
They have that with a lot of the continuing ed programs in the securities business. We used to buy our programs from a vendor that wouldn't let you skip the intro text and just answer the questions.
As if it never occurred to anyone that you might already know the answer.
At the same time, you just keep answering until you get it right.
Happily, we changed vendors.
By TigerHawk, at
Thu Mar 13, 01:23:00 PM:
We had that problem as well, and fixed it (with the same vendor, actually), so that you can at least click through the screens as fast as they load (still have to get through 60 screens per module in order to take the test). Unfortunately, it is a California requirement that this particular module take 3 hours. Unbelievable.
By Ray, at
Thu Mar 13, 03:27:00 PM:
We used to have lots of random online training modules at work, before I went to grad school.
Thankfully, few of them were required when I was there, but they were all boring and unhelpful.
When there was a new software tool I had to learn, I would really have preferred to have an old-fashioned manual. At least then I could have been playing around in the program while learning about it.
My favorite training module, though, must be the radiation-safety one we had in college. It was a simple HTML thing, and you could figure out which question was correct by looking at the links under each of the choices -- the one that led to the next question was the correct answer. Suffice to say, very few of us in my year ever actually learned anything about radiation safety. Nor did we need to, since our radiation sources couldn't have mutated a fly even if we shoved its eggs down the spout.
By Sisyphus, at
Thu Mar 13, 04:03:00 PM:
As a California lawyer and a certified trainer in sexual harassment, I am pretty sure you "only" have to do 2 hours of sexual harassment training if you are a supervisor. There are various other requirements about content, too, of course.
It sounds like your company is making you do your 1 hour corporate training in addition to the 2 hour California course. It's hard to believe there's anything more tedious than what California makes you do, but apparently your company found it.
By 
, at
Fri Mar 14, 12:30:00 AM:
california is vast going to hell in a handbasket in a hurry
By Georg Felis, at
Fri Mar 14, 08:51:00 PM:
The EEO and Security computerized training modules we get are mangled with some of the best examples of how NOT to do testing and training I have ever seen, from double-negative questions, to vague answers, to an abundance of flowery animation that has little to do with the content. I suspect one of the metrics it satisfies is "Obviously people needed the training, see how many they got wrong until they went back over the material a few times" (and memorized what random set of answers the testing software wanted). Because, of course, any test that you can zing thru and get 100% on must be too easy, right?
