Background: While many individual professional development opportunities are available to staff at our library, the idea of an All Staff Training Day arose as a means for employees across our two sites to build rapport, share their expertise, and learn from one another. Staff across the library contributed by brainstorming topics and activities to include, presenting to their peers, and providing feedback on successes and potential improvements for subsequent iterations of the training.
Description: A sub-team of three individuals (one paraprofessional from each location and a librarian administrator) developed an initial slate of topics, followed by an email solicitation to the rest of the staff for additional ideas; contributors were encouraged to consider both topics they wanted to learn about and topics they felt they could teach to their peers. After several reschedules based on staff availability, the first All Staff Training Day took place in January 2019, with staff from our smaller Jacksonville branch traveling to Gainesville so that everyone could participate together in person. Interactive sessions, such as a team-building exercise, diversity training, and hands-on technology training, were interspersed with short didactic sessions including refreshers on using specific literature databases and brief presentations by project teams (e.g. assessment team, marketing team).
Conclusion: Results from a follow-up evaluation survey, distributed electronically shortly after the event, indicated that attendees valued the All Staff Training Day as a whole. Overwhelmingly, participants found sessions both helpful to their work (e.g. technology and diversity trainings) and enjoyable (e.g. an initial team-building exercise and a personality test conducted over the lunch hour). Staff identified a number of topics they would like covered in subsequent trainings as well as logistical suggestions for an even more inclusive future iteration (e.g. involving more collaborative scheduling of the event and inviting student workers to attend). A second All Staff Training Day, incorporating these suggestions, is being planned for 2021.