Case law is one of the guides that helps to indicate when we need to conduct training in law enforcement. The Walker Test (Walker v City of New York) stands out as a fairly clear guideline for when training needs to occur. It also indicates that there are times when training is not required, at least in the eyes of the court. And we need to recognize that any time we use training to attempt to solve an issue that training doesn’t affect that reduces the effectiveness of all training.
There are procedures that are part of every job where training is either not required or does not help. So, what do we do about issues that might arise within a job where training is either not required, or is not helping?
As an example of this issue, in my law enforcement career I spent several years as a CSI. One of the things I often found myself doing as part of those CSI duties was to book in evidence. The procedures and rules that accompanied booking in evidence and other property were myriad and often complex. It was not uncommon for those who booked in evidence to get a notice telling us that we had done some step incorrectly when booking in a piece of evidence.
Because there were many different ways that property might need to be booked and booking property happened in a controlled, low risk environment, this is a good example of a time when training is not the best response to errors. However, a job aid could be quite helpful in reducing the number of errors that occurred. Job aids for these types of situations can be as extensive as is needed to reduce the number of errors to an acceptable level.
We might want a job aid for any low-risk tasks that are done on a regular basis, but where mistakes are easy to make, especially when those mistakes have the potential to be high in liability. Job aids can be made to be scalable by the user. Meaning that the job aid would include many of the finer details of the task, but those details could be skipped so that only the main steps or the common errors are highlighted.
Some guidelines for when to create a job aid:
· When the end user has at least some control of the time spent on a task.
· When the task is low in risk but complex with multiple steps or opportunities for error.
· When the task is not done often enough for the end user to form a habit of the correct procedure.
Some common law enforcement tasks that might benefit from a job aid:
· Booking in property
· Rarely used portions of the report writing system
· Booking in arrestees
· Dealing with juvenile arrestees
· Incident Command
· Others?
Job aids might take the form of a step-by-step “how to” with pictures and detailed directions, as might be helpful with booking in property. The aid might be a flow-chart, as I have seen for dealing with juvenile arrestees. Or it might simply be a checklist of tasks that need to be performed as might be helpful with an incident command situation.
As you continuously examine the training you conduct and attend, watch for those situations where a job aid would greatly ease the efforts of the students. A quality job aid should reduce the number of errors while decreasing the risk or at least without increasing the risk that might already be present in the situation. They can also stand in place of time spent in training. Building a job aid can take some time, just like building training does. But a well-built and appropriately applied job aid might result in better outcomes than any training effort.
-Will