[Michlib-l] Professional Development/Staff Training Compilation

[Sharon Crotser-Toy]

Hi everyone!

Sorry this is long in coming (and long in reading, btw). Below are the responses I received of recommendations for staff training days. Lots of great ideas. As always, I am so thankful for your input and the time it takes to respond!

HERE GOES:

My staff loves to visit other libraries on Staff Development Day. We get lots of new ideas and meet some wonderful people! We've found this to be a very beneficial activity.

I like a more active day with different activities to keep folks' attention.
We've done a "Self-Care" in-service: organizational ergonomics with Physical Therapists, Yoga/stretching/mindfulness for stress release with a local yoga studio, building a healthy lunchbox with a local chef.

We've done an "inclusive" in-service: Disability awareness with Mark Bashaw from Disability Network Of MI, mental health and public service with someone from our Employee Assistance program, and one other speaker that we didn't like and no one can remember who it was. (If we did it now, I'd include a speaker about internal bias and how it affects library service or someone to talk about homelessness)

We've done our "new library planning" in-service. (We built a new library and opened it about 2 months ago.) When we were planning for our new library, on the inservice prior to starting our plans, I broke our staff up into four groups of 4-5 and then had them pick libraries in the Detroit metro area. They had to pick at least 2 libraries to visit and could not duplicate other libraries. I asked them to arrange for a tour ahead of time and take a lot of pictures. I told them to ask library staff what they would do differently, what they wished they had in their building, what they loved about their building, what they hated. It was so much fun for the staff and so enlightening! We met back at the library at 3pm and had snacks and we uploaded their pics to google drive and projected them on a big screen and talked about their experiences. Probably one of the most fun in-services that we've done.

We did a "cleaning house" in-service where we had a local speaker talk about clutter and how to reduce clutter in your life and then we had lunch and in the afternoon, everyone worked on their own desks and offices and then we group cleaned our storage areas and got rid of a ton of junk.
We skipped 2020 and 2021 because we were just trying to keep our heads above water with COVID and we did a bunch of new library training when we were moving into our new building in 2022.
Another note: Our Friends pay for us to all go out to lunch together. It's such a team-building day and always leaves everyone in great spirits.

 For our staff development day, we had a State Trooper come for safety training.  We also learned how to handle fire extinguishers (ask your staff if they’ve ever even held one…lots of people  never have)

Usually, the morning is training and then the afternoon is a time to ‘spring clean’ closets, breakroom, etc.

The Novi Public Library just recently held our in-service training for staff. This was a day-long training with  an icebreaker(bingo- get to know each other theme) two presentations, one on emotional intelligence and leadership (by HR) and a presentation on emotional intelligence and personality types (flowers instead of colors)  by Dr. Rose Moten located in the metro Detroit area. We also had a group activity of family feud based on information about our directors, breakout department meetings and then our final group activity was painting on canvases. In August 2021 and March 2022 we focused very heavily on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in addition to safety training and reports from our City Manager. We needed to lighten up our session while still making it impactful for staff, which I believe we managed to do. After almost two and one half years of COVID and significant industry change, we decided to incorporate more input from staff. I believe the in-service was a smashing success. The information absorbed by staff is still present as we are all asking each other, "What flower are you?

In Charlevoix the last few years, we have split the day between a "learning" heavy portion and "fun" portion. Last year, we had a mental health expert come in to talk about maintaining our own mental health as well as helping others do so. Then we went bowling which was a blast.

Other successful activities have included a historical scavenger hunt around town where we divided up into teams and had to locate and learn historical facts about our community. The local historical society helped with that. We followed that up by getting a tour of a local orchard along with hard cider tasting.

Prior to my time, some activities staff still raves about include a sailboat ride, charter fishing together, and  touring some of the larger industrial facilities here in town including the recycling and waste center and the large graphics business where they produce magazines, displays and so on. Staff got to learn about those businesses but it was also like a peak into how other people work all day which made them appreciative of how they work. We are trying to organize a tour of the local cement plant for this year and staff is excited about that. We might then follow it up with axe throwing.

1.    We have had the fire department spend the day with the staff, teaching CPR and how to use a fire extinguisher (they lit a fire in a barrel for each of us to practice).
2.    We have had the deputy police chief out to conduct active shooter training.  This was really nice because we were able to practice in our own building and really think about plans and escape routes and such.
3.    We have visited other libraries in our area to get an idea of what our neighbors are doing.  This was fun.  My youth staff would head straight to their youth area, my adult staff would head to the adult, I would usually have a nice chat with the director.  We all got something out it.
4.    We have hired a self defense trainer and spent the day learning personal safety.

Other Library Directors
              (especially topics they’ve shared a conferences)
Local Fire department visits and does fire extinguisher training
Active Shooter/Building Safety – we had the State Police and local emergency coordinator come
CPR Training
Mental Health First Aid Training (suicide prevention)
              We have someone here through the Great Lakes Recovery Center and our county health department
I’ve had a local social worker come and talk about empathy and working on differences
Library of Michigan Staff (lots of topics)
MSUE – The Michigan State Extension has lots of options, we had a local MSUE person here to do a session on healthy eating
Personality testing
Retirement – we’ve had the MERS rep here to share on retirement planning
Your Own Staff -  I always try to mix things up but we’ve done years where every staff member had to share a tip/trick for their favorite resource as one session
Dog therapy – time with animals
Yoga/mindfulness – had someone from MSUE come and present this one year
New equipment demos (can be company rep or willing staff member)
Local historians/historical society (we had a local researcher who had compiled a number of resources and she came and shared her work and what was accessible to the public as well as tips and tricks for us to share with other researchers
Mission Statement/Vision Statement/Philosophy brainstorming
Policy Review
Customer Service


-Sharon

Sharon CrotserToy
Director
St. Ignace Public Library
110 West Spruce Street
St. Ignace, MI 49781
(906) 643-8318

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