Origin Housing achieves dramatically better customer satisfaction: Forum theater puts trainees in the spotlight
Human Resource Management International Digest
ISSN: 0967-0734
Article publication date: 31 May 2013
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to chart a novel approach to customer‐service training at Origin Housing, using forum‐theater techniques in which the trainees can decide where the action goes next.
Design/methodology/approach
Explains the background to the program, the form it takes and the results it has achieved.
Findings
Reveals that forum theater has two key differences from ordinary theatrical performances. First, the action periodically stops to give the audience the chance to discuss it. And second, a facilitator encourages the audience to speak to the characters in the play during these breaks, enabling them to attempt to influence the characters' behavior and change the outcome of the drama.
Practical implications
Explains that, because the audience watches a play in which characters struggle with the dilemmas of the trainees' everyday working life, they are able to think about and comment on those dilemmas in a free and unthreatening way. They relate closely to the experience of the drama, but without any feelings of exposure and nervousness which participating in a role‐play can bring.
Social implications
Highlights how such training is helping to ensure that Origin Housing serves its customers better.
Originality/value
Discusses an unusual form of theater training, in which the drama highlights many of the problems that employees encounter in their everyday work.
Keywords
Citation
(2013), "Origin Housing achieves dramatically better customer satisfaction: Forum theater puts trainees in the spotlight", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 21 No. 4, pp. 21-23. https://doi.org/10.1108/HRMID-04-2013-0016
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2013, Emerald Group Publishing Limited