my boss wants me to go on a course, I don't want to waste my time AIBU?

[PersephoneSmith]

Please can you help me decide if I should just suck it up and attend or make a big deal about how I shouldn't have to do it?

Course is in person, about 3 hours in a classroom, in another city, so will mean expensive peak time train journey as well.

I wrote the course material and used to deliver the course for the company, before being promoted last year. I trained the person who now delivers the course.

My boss says I have to attend because 'it is mandatory'

AIBU?

I thought you were being unreasonable until I saw you wrote the course material ! That’s a hilarious waste of time.

If you have to go, coffee on train, turn off your emails, see how training is being done now and call it a day off.

But she wrote it!!

And surely knowing it is the important part!!

If just showing up is the important thing then the world has truly gone to hell in a handbasket

Putting aside the course contents, I do think the drip feed is relevant because it would be perfectly reasonable to ask for reasonable adjustments in terms of travel and attendance. So that sort of does cross off the travel/attendance bit.

having to attend a course you wrote is just generally bonkers, although I can see what a PP said about reviewing the course delivery could be quite interesting. Are you able to test out of the course? We have mandatory courses at work that we have to do annually (feels more frequent tbh) and we can skip to the end and take the test - if you pass it you don’t have to go through the course materials, but if you don’t then it’s probably worth doing the refresher. Might that be an option?

I used to be what we called a 'training adviser' and the first thing I'd always do when working with a company is question their 'mandatory training' as there was usually zero point on post of it.

In a situation like yours, it is a complete waste of time and effort and I'd challenge the bosses to revisit the whole 'mandatory training' schedule as it is obviously utterly batshit.

Sorry if someone has already suggested but can you ask them to set up a zoom link in the room so you can attend that way as a reasonable adjustment to train travel in a wheelchair in this country being so awful?

I am able bodied and get the train a lot and often see people.in wheelchairs hanging around waiting for station staff and ramps. I think you'd probably end up late for the class anyway!

Is your boss the top boss, or is there someone above them that you could run this situation by?
They probably would see it as a waste of company time and money, then tell you not to go.

Is your boss trying to make things difficult for you in any other ways?

This being a discussion forum, which means an exchange of ideas etc, I mearly asked what's good about it, obviously nothing.

Have you specifically asked why is it mandatory for me to attend a course I wrote and trained the person who is delivering it?

They'd need to pay for someone to accompany her, (preferably her carer if their able/willing), stay over & help her get showered/dressed in the morning too.

a lot of hassle & expense to attend a course she wrote!!

Suck it up. It’s fully paid and mandatory.

Yes, I'm aware.

I once had my new team leader pull out procedures I had written, to explain them to me. After that I put my name on each page of all documents I produced.

Christ

You do realise that as an employee, you get paid to follow management instructions? Pushing back on mandatory learning is a pointless hill to die on. Your cards will be marked as being difficult and not a team player. Possibly even subordinate, given that managers are allowed to allocate you work.

Are you sure that the course material hasn't changed since the last time you gave the course? Company policies about operations and compliance with the law are always changing, it may be as simple as the way contracts are determined in some markets now needs more careful scrutiny. It may not be obvious that the US ban on certain exports to China, also affects UK companies if they are using components that were ultimately sourced from the US, despite the UK company ordering them from Germany. This is the sort of thing that is covered in refresher courses.

No, nothing has changed about the course, it’s just learning to use our software, which I helped create and then wrote the training materials for.
I am still curious about the risk assessment thing. If an able bodied person has to get a train to a new location for work no one says ‘are you going to be safe getting there on the train ?’

Why on earth would it be any different for me? The train company has the duty to make sure the journey is safe for all of its passengers. Nothing to do with my employer.

That’s not 100% true. There are people who are uncomfortable with big crowds/ will have to leave way too early/ a lot of other reasons and would expect accommodation to that as their normal place of work isn’t a train ride away ( they have ensured their day to day lives are structured in a way that works for them). It’s different only if a person takes similar distance train in rush hour every day but for training suddenly can’t .

Let’s say they pay for me and my carer to stay in a hotel, costs a lot of money right? But they do it because they have been told they have to.

Next lot of useful training comes up the manager may well remember that it is expensive to send Persephone on courses and decides to offer the training opportunity to someone else. She doesn’t say anything to anyone, the same way a potential new employer offers the job to the able bodied candidate, not the disabled one.

Without ever admitting there was a bias. Nothing to see here, we just gave the job to the best candidate on the day.

Sorry I don’t understand what you mean. That doesn’t relate to my employer having any responsibility for my safety whilst travelling on a train.

@PersephoneSmith why don’t you make a request for the reasonable adjustment of remote attendance based on a) the additional carer expense and b) the unpredictable difficulty of train travel in your wheelchair?

Some trainings are linked to a company’s license to operate so it’s imperative that they can prove everyone in the company has taken the training. The same training is done every year (with the content refreshed every so often but usually not annually) and employees have to take it every year regardless of the fact they “know” the content. Some industries are highly regulated and this is linked to regulatory compliance. It’s nothing to do with knowing the content.

It isn't simply just about safety it is about removing disadvantage and equity.

It would disadvantage you for the points you have already raised: your carer would need time to rearrange her schedule, it will cost more for your carer, those costs may be passed on to you, and you have already experienced confrontation on trains and anticipate a similiar circumstance.

There are additional risks and your employer should be doing whatever they can to reduce or remove those risks, but as I have said it isn't just about safety.

Be ironic if the course is "positive attitudes in the workplace"

Of course companies also risk assess for able bodied staff...

You don't need to patronisingly explain disability discrimination to me. Apologies for trying to help.

Unless its a v small company, it won't be up to the OPs individual line manager whether she has to attend a mandatory course - because mandatory means everyone. Furthermore, if the OPs boss said she could skip it, but the wider company used attendance at all mandatory courses as a measureable goal for the year (many places do this, because its simple to comply, and easy to measure), it could massively disadvantage the OP if/when the company is looking to make staff cuts.