Learning through scare of a punishment

As a side note to the previous blog entry, I had to undergo yet another process to certify myself as an employer in Singapore through the Ministry of Manpower. There seems to be a process for everything and all of them work very efficiently. As part of this process I had to participate into a mandatory training event either in a physical class room session or through self paced e-Learning. As I have found myself in my new job role to be a training specialist I applied into the online training from professional interest.

In terms of e-Learning you have your typical "please spend more time on this page before proceeding forward" check, but also some kind of a verification that you actually have the window with the course content active while waiting for the time to pass before proceeding. So essentially I couldn't multitask through alt-tabbing as I had expected, but actually had to sit through the whole ~3 hour course from beginning to end.

Couple of interesting observations:
- One out of every six households in Singapore employ a helper.
- Clarity followed with Patience seem to be the key virtues in terms of getting to positive results with setting expectations and guidance.
- There was one quiz as part of the training where the false assumption was to expect the FDWs (Foreign Domestic Workers) to speak English.
- In the graphics supporting the learning content, the instructor was always portrayed as Chinese looking male with a tie, the employer as Western lady and FDW as a Filipino lady. In the text even though mostly genderly correct occasionally FDW was just being referred as she. Granted that there are not likely many male FDWs, but still this struck my eye.

And finally the biggest interesting finding. Throughout the education it was emphasized how many dollars of fines, how many years in prison or how many strokes from a cane will the employer get if something that is against the job contract is being conducted. Of course I understand that it would not be OK to ask the helper to clean the windows outside the apartment on the 18th floor (This had apparently really happened!) or to have the helper do your work related chores at evenings (sounds tempting though). But for me highlighting all the time the scare of the punishment didn't make the participation into the training more captivating nor did it reinforce the learning objectives in an appropriate way. I wonder if we should utilize these scaring techniques more with our professional training material at work...

My possible future