More Micros

How much is it the responsibility of the worker to keep up or accept microaggressions and adapt and overcome vs the employer (or dominant group) to ensure they are speaking in a non insulting and validating  manner at all times. 

In some situations its far more black and white and seeing that so many people have to be so professional in the workplace because most people want to make the best choice everyday all the time. I thought about something similar that happened to me. My managers and direct reports know where I went to school and know that I grew up in a more well off area of the city we work in. 

Working Underclass

When I was asked about social capital and education I think of the reading by Nesbit (2005) regarding social class and adult education where citing Morris (1994) he writes, “most recently the concept of a fourth class, an underclass has arisen. This rather unfortunately named group consists of those whom society considers largely excluded from the economic order, such as the certifiably insane, the long-term unemployed, drug addicts, recent immigrants, prisoners, and others with certain so called pathological deficiencies” (p. 7). This passage struck me because of so many of the initiatives we have seen in our learning community lately and with the organizations we support. 

Nesbit writes about a segment of the underclass being recent immigrants. When I was a recruiter, and our organization was constantly understaffed, I would have loved to been able to recruit, hire, and train recent immigrants to work in our field. There were several things stopping me however, first, was the lack of training that many of these immigrants could understand and use to work safely. 

Hiring and Diversity

 I had to read three articles on critical theory and hiring. It gives me problems. It's about not hiring the "best person" for the job, but rather to make changes or make things "equitable." Anna wanted more discussion on it so I gave it some more thought, this time a bit more of the self-authorship kind of thinking. 

I think that the articles tend to show, and this tends to make sense, the hiring managers and committees need to be sure of their goals, and that the processes fit those goals. Having hired quite a few folks in my life, I know how subjective the process becomes. In the past few hiring decisions I've made, I've been a part of a group of four and even we all had our own framework, and model for making that decision. We performed over 25 interviews for this position, and each of us had our set of questions, and I know that I took notes and ranked each candidate on a series of characteristics and traits. But, were these the right characteristics and traits for our goals? Did the rest of the committee know them and help me with them? 

Third World Countries and Training

My classmate and I had a chance to chat and he asked me a question I couldn't immediately answer about intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation in training. I don’t know if there is a way to completely change the dynamic that we currently see. 

OSHA safety stats are used by owner facilities to judge contractors. Without that standard, then I fear that contractors would revert to the Wild West. We’ve seen that before with sites prior to OSHA’s formation in the 1970’s and at times when regulators are more lax. The results are more injuries and fatalities and super fund sites when organizations try to skirt the rules. There has to be a dynamic of opposing forces help keep things moving in a straight forward direction. 

Love These First Lines Posts!

I've written alot about the importance of first lines. When I first started writing about them, I didn't think they were as important as so many authors and reviewers believe. I'm a convert. I now see that they are important. That's why I created this group on all the first lines I come across and have grouped them so they can be easily accessed . . . Click HERE or you can always find the hyperlink on the right navigation bar. 

I'm on book 4 of WEB Griffin's The Corps series. Personally, I'm more impressed with his Brotherhood of War series, but I'm stuck in the middle of this series, so I have to see it out. 

PE Fit in the Energy Industry Annotated Outline

This project will be used to investigate the effects of Person-Environment (PE) fit on contractor hiring and retention in the energy industry and will focus on several different established qualitative study methods and methodologies including phenomenology, case study interviews, and qualitative coding. PE fit theory or the idea that finding a "values congruence" between an employee and the organization they work in has been studied for decades to determine to what degree PE fit or other subsidiary concepts and theories can help lessen negative consequences such as high turnover, and worker burnout. There are many positive aspects for organizations that use PE fit and other fit theories; these include but are not limited to: (a) greater employee career prospects, (b) increased worker engagement, and (c) greater job satisfaction. 

In 2022, a non-profit safety council in the Gulf Coast of the U.S. performed a qualitative study on employees' experiences of being hired and how fit theory may have been applied by the hiring organizations. This study was performed to determine: (a) challenges faced by new employees to organizations among contractors who support the energy industry, (b) how these new employees deal with those challenges over their first three months of work, and (c) how the concepts of "fit" theory apply to these employees, the contracting organizations, and these challenges. The purpose of this research is to explore in what ways industrial contactors are motivated to remain at their organizations after several weeks of work as compared to their expectations about the organization. A secondary purpose is to help determine if the worker's expectations for the hiring organization and their goals for themselves align with the organization's goals.

Opportunities in the Community

Yugant, I love this question of yours. I’m a huge proponent of education that goes beyond the standards and frameworks that we’ve become used to. There’s a lot to be said for established organizations and frameworks, but innovation too brings a lot of advantages. 

In my learning community we see a lot of people who are employees looking for employers of last resort, this means that they are taking the jobs in our fields because they can’t get work in any other industry. 

Binary Loop

Got into a bit of an early morning tiff with Lawnee the other morning. My fault? Maybe. Hers? Could be, but looking back on it, it was mostly mine. I write (or try to write daily) in my self-authorship journal. This post really belongs there. 

We were discussing the class that I'm in that I am really not enjoying. I loved my class on Learning and the Brain. Figuring out how the brain processes and stores data, how it retrieves data, and how memory works in the short-term, mid-term, or long-term. That was a fun class. Or Adult Development. GREAT class. Loved learning about how adults grow, learn, and develop,l and what we should expect from learners. This class, is not at all fun. Critical Theory . . . or Critical Race Theory. BLECH.

Concept Mapping

My concept map looks like something out of the Russell Crowe movie A Beautiful Mind or worse Charlie Day and his thoughts on who Pepe Silvia is. It's a mess of arrows and routes, and bubbles here and there. UGH! 

Well, I've decided to clean that sucker up a bit for the dissertation. This is the concept map I've been working on since last summer. It's supposed to show my thoughts in regards to my dissertation. Everything I bring up in my dissertation should be represented here with its relationship with other concepts. It's an illustration of my dissertation. 

Southwest Microaggressions

My classmate Andrew brought up a microaggression he had to deal with on a flight where he works as a flight attendant. He said someone came in and said, “why don’t you hire any pretty ladies anymore.”

Whenever I think of microaggressions and airlines I think of Southwest Airlines. I believe that in order to lighten the mood a flight attendant used a nursery rhyme to try to motivate and amuse the passengers to get underway.

PE Fit Up Write Up of Data

Person-Environment (PE) fit theory, although relatively new has become more well-developed and mature since its inception in 1974 (Caplan 1987). PE fit theory or the idea that finding a "values congruence" between an employee and the organization they work in has been studied for decades to determine to what degree PE fit or other subsidiary concepts and theories can help lessen negative consequences such as high turnover, and worker burnout. Some of the positive aspects for organizations that might use PE fit and other fit theories can include greater employee career prospects, increased worker engagement, and greater job satisfaction. 

In 2022, HASC, a non-profit, contractor training organization supporting workers in the energy industry performed a qualitative study on employees’ experiences of being hired and how fit theory may have been applied by the hiring organizations. This study was performed to determine: (a) challenges faced by new employees to organizations among contractors who support the energy industry, (b) how these new employees deal with those challenges over their first three months or work, and (c) how the concepts of "fit" theory apply to these employees, the contracting organizations, and these challenges. The purpose of this research is to explore in what ways industrial contractors are motivated to remain at their organizations after several weeks of work as compared to their expectations about the organization. A secondary purpose is to help determine if the worker's expectations for the hiring organization and their goals for themselves align with the organization’s goals.

Social Capital and Adult Learning

I had a chance to speak to a classmate about social capital the other day. It was an interesting discussion about the concept of social capital and adult learning. 

When we talked I thought about several of the classes that we provide in our learning community. When he discussed social capital as an outcome I especially sat up and took notice. I thought about how different people and learners in our community utilize and gain social capital, particularly when it’s an expected outcome of training.