Department of Health employees push back on mandatory agency training from Utah institute

The Washington Federation of State Employees is calling on the state Department of Health to cancel its contract and funding for mandatory DOH employee training that some say perpetuates workplace issues and creates an uncomfortable work environment.

In a news release, WFSE provided a web link to a petition that is now circulating among DOH employees asking the agency to discontinue the training.

Patrick Sugrue, the director of communications for WFSE, told McClatchy Monday that the petition has already been signed by over 200 current DOH employees, and that the number of petitioners is growing fast as they put pressure on DOH publicly.

The “Outward Mindset” training is provided by the Arbinger Institute, based in Utah. The website for the institute says that by using the communication training framework, “participants learn the difference between inward and outward mindsets.”

Participants who take the course will be able to “assess the extent to which they are working with an inward mindset,” “change their mindsets to become more outward,” “hold themselves more fully accountable,” and “address and resolve conflicts,” according to Arbinger’s website.

Employee concerns

Current and former DOH employees told McClatchy otherwise.

“It is on the surface such a necessary thing. Yes, we should all get more skills on how to better relate to people. But the problem is the underlying foundation of it and how it gets weaponized,” said Rachelle Martin, a current DOH employee speaking in her capacity as a WFSE member.

Martin, who was raised in a fundamentalist Christian family, said there was familiarity in the training because it pushes the idea that “all of your problems are your fault,” similar to the church she was brought up in.

“If you have a problem, the first thing you’re supposed to do is really sit with ‘what have I done in this situation to cause this problem?’” Martin added.

Within days after Martin was hired, she said DOH sent her the Outward Mindset training. The expectation was to read both of the two books included, fill out a handbook in the kit, and then take a two-day training course based on the materials within the first month. Employees are paid their wages during the training and day-long courses can be taken once a month after the initial course.

The training is “embedded” in the workplace environment and in most conversations, Martin said.

Martin said not everyone at DOH feels the same way, and others have gotten some value out of the training, including how to be better communicators. She noted too that she was able to take one thing of value away from the training, which was to create a map of who she worked with that directly impacted her.

A former DOH employee who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation told McClatchy that they immediately noticed red flags when taking the course and said that the course did not prevent disagreements within DOH.

When the former employee tried to take a work-related issue to supervisors, they were instead given a “letter of expectations.” DOH Human Resources staff then told them during a meeting that they weren’t being “outward” enough and the employee said they felt like the training was being used to punish them.

“That’s one example of weaponizing the language of Outward Mindset to punish. And really what it felt like was that Outward Mindset was a controlling tool to get staff to be in line, or to avoid conflict, or to basically say ‘you’re the problem,’” the employee told McClatchy. “A lot of the language in Outward Mindset is, ‘it’s not you, it’s me.’”

The training also doesn’t provide any framework for systems of oppression regarding race, gender and power dynamics, they said, which contributed to what they felt was an uncomfortable work environment.

“I did not implement the principles of Outward Mindset with my team because I felt like it was so misused and so misappropriated from how I think the founders really intended it to be, which is really sad, because you don’t want to be actively working against the thing that your agency is promoting,” they said. “I just saw where it could go wrong, and that’s where I was like ‘Nope, I’m not going to do this.’”

Additionally, they said the terminology, framework and the way it was “forced down our throats” felt like “religious indoctrination.”

Why DOH uses the training

Amber Santoyo, the state DOH Chief People Officer, told McClatchy that DOH first started using the training in 2017, but brought the program fully onboard in 2019 after some DOH employees made it clear that they wanted some type of training to better facilitate communications between themselves and management.

Santoyo said DOH felt like the basic principles of the Outward Mindset training resonated with the agency.

Santoyo confirmed that DOH has paid $2.5 million in tax revenue for the training since 2019, but emphasized that DOH “followed all contractual obligations” through a purchase order because Arbinger’s information is proprietary. Other training outside of Outward Mindset is also provided to DOH employees, she said.

She also addressed concerns about equity within the training. Santoyo said DOH has never said that Outward Mindset was its solution to addressing inequities, and that other trainings are provided to achieve Diversity, Equity and Inclusion objectives.

Santoyo also said there are other avenues involved when employees have complaints or concerns that don’t involve the Outward Mindset training.

“I definitely want to make sure if things are not going well and not going right that we have an avenue for that and for folks to know that Outward Mindsight is not the only track in which to explore issues or some of the undesirable behaviors if someone was experiencing that within the workplace,” Santoyo said.

She said DOH worked with WFSE in 2019 to bring the Outward Mindset program onboard, and that there are ongoing conversations about the program with the state workers union.

Santoyo did not want to speculate on what the future of the program within DOH would look like, but said that DOH wanted to find ways to “forge forward and find ways to help people connect in a healthy way and to feel supported in conversations with supervisors and managers.”

Santoyo also acknowledged the religious aspect that members had voiced concerns about. However, she said, Arbinger is not itself a religious organization and the program has no religious tenets.

Arbinger Institute reaction

In a statement to McClatchy, Michael Lazan, the executive vice president at Arbinger Institute, said that it was “unfortunate that there has been a small group of WADOH employees who have fundamentally misunderstood the purpose of our workshops and what we mean by working with an outward mindset.”

Lazan, who has worked with Arbinger for 18 years, told McClatchy that the program is used by organizations all over the world, including the military and other organizations similar to DOH. He said he has never encountered this type of misunderstanding before.

“In fact, the feedback we receive to our workshops is overwhelmingly positive. We have consistently found that the workshops enable our clients to build deeper relationships and create healthier, more effective work environments,” Lazan’s statement read.

“We are eager to speak to any WADOH employees to clarify what an outward mindset means and how working with an outward mindset contributes to creating human-centric cultures characterized by collaboration and respect.”