Can you imagine if being known as one of the best places to work becomes ATC’s normal reputation? It can happen, and here is one way that it can be accomplished: Continuing Education (CE)!
In most industries, public and private, employees are encouraged to refine their skills, and in most companies touted as “great places to work,” it’s not just a mundane mandatory requirement that distracts workers from their responsibilities. In contrast, one would quickly find that in the most successful companies CE is revered as an essential employee benefit! In fact, the best companies consider their opportunities for employee development in their recruitment efforts as they try to land the best team members possible to ensure the organization’s success! That’s right… CE opportunities can be a recruiting tool used to attract employees from one company to another. Why? Because employees find opportunities for personal, professional growth that important!
Employees may be initially hired based on the skills they already possess to do the job correctly, but intentional and successful continuing education can be the difference between an employee simply working for you and an employee growing with you, eventually lending a hand in the corporations growth, improvement, and expansion. Think of your own career experiences. Do you remember the difference between two jobs where one of them offered you an opportunity to get where you are today? Do you remember the company that invested the most in you?
ATC National Accreditation Standards (currently) require mandatory courses in Confidentially and Universal Precautions. These two courses are required for all employees because of the delicate nature of our work, most of which is covered by federal law like HIPPA (and FERPA for our Adolescent Centers). However, each staff member has choices to make regarding the remaining CEU’s they are required to obtain and ATC’s National Office has recently provided quite the platform to do so (ATC Bridge) …most of which is FREE. ATC Bridge is comparable to many professional learning platforms found in any reputable workplace… and we now have it!
When an employee chooses a set of courses to meet his/her annual CEU requirements, they can choose not only courses to help them become a better staff member in their current role, but courses that allow them to experience and explore new skills and topics based on where they want to be 2, 3, or even 5 years from now. As CEOs and Executive Directors (in one of the largest nonprofit addiction recovery organizations in the world), are we meeting with our employees and helping them to become the very best they can be? What does our professional growth and development reputation in the workplace program look like when compared to other organizations investing in their staff?
Did you know (or do your employees know) that currently their employer (you) offers highly professional, well-written and constructed courses in the following areas: Appreciating Diversity, Harassment & Aggression Prevention, Understanding & Supporting Healthy Grief, Dynamics of People Helping, Coaching through Feedback, Conflict Resolution, Start Right Mentoring, Critical Thinking, Compassion without Compromise, 8-Steps to Steady Enrollment, Effective Meetings, Improving Presentation Skills, Being an Effective Team Member, Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace, and Facilitator Training for ATC Curriculum? What would your center look like if most staff members had a file full of certificates showing increased competencies in the subject matter above? It’s all available…right now!
Continuing education in the workplace must not be taken lightly. Yes, internal training and seminars conducted by our own organization remains highly important and let’s face it, most of the time, the relevance of these internal trainings for the positions we fill is high. However, if we stop there and not encourage the exploration of free resources for in-depth, professional growth, we fail to provide the best work place (and training) experiences to our most valued resources…our employees, staff, and even volunteers.
May I encourage you to take a moment in an upcoming staff meeting to ask those who work so diligently for your ministry about their professional goals? Encourage them to refine those goals and then discuss how ATC is committed to helping them toward realizing those goals. As they work for you, you can invest directly into their futures. Some employees will move on eventually, but there are quite a few of them out there that plan to stay and move up in the organization over many years. Let’s start investing in future ATC CEO’s, Directors, House Supervisors, Counselors, etc. now. The first step is to begin creating an intentional path toward quality continuing education.
