Soft skills
MAPTS instructors have all been "the employer" prior to coming to work for the University of Alaska Fairbanks. They know what a successful employee looks like and how to motivate them to develop their potential as high-performers. They have refined the soft skills module with that end result in mind. For many students, this module combined with the rest of the training, is a life-changing opportunity.
This training develops and encourages employability and job-readiness skills, good work ethic and budget and life/career planning techniques by emphasizing the importance of spending quality time with family and increased community/volunteerism involvement. It motivates a typical employee who views his or her contribution at a day-to-day job as mundane and elevates them to an employee who can envision the prospects of advancement and helps prepare them to meet opportunities when they arise. Creating a forward-thinking, well-rounded employee decreases problems that have the potential to lead to employee retention issues.
Using this positive reinforcement and in-house developed techniques, MAPTS has been extremely successful in helping our students realize their potential.
Our training also addresses sensitive multicultural and gender issues that, if left unchecked, can derail a productive team and cause numerous problems for an employer. MAPTS students understand what makes a successful team and they graduate from our training with the tools to be a good fit for an employer's already highly-functioning team.
The soft skill portion of the training was identified right away by the Yukon College and MAPTS as a key component to the overall success of the remote camp training.