Bringing Onboarding to Life: How TTA Partnered with DCF To Create a Brandon Hall Award-Winning Onboarding Program

Onboarding is becoming a top priority for many organizations. Effective onboarding is a key component of attracting, retaining, and growing your organization’s employees. Many organizations are beginning to shift their focus towards improving their onboarding process to help integrate new employees and prepare them for success.

TTA recently joined forces with our valued partner the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF), to transform their onboarding program and better prepare social workers for their new roles. DCF has an extremely impactful mission and serving the community in such a significant way requires a large, efficient, and dedicated team. Creating this type of team, truly begins during the onboarding experience.

On any given month DCF hires on average 25 new social workers to join their team. Each new social worker is required to participate in one month of classroom and on-the-job training to prepare them for their new roles. During these training sessions, the management team at DCF noticed a pattern. It became clear that the same group of questions were repeatedly being asked before and even during training. Trainees expressed fear about social work licensing and were unclear on items such as dress code, where to go for training, how to prepare for training, benefits, and what to expect during their month of training. General questions being asked during training took up valuable time that could be devoted to core training topics such as DCF policies, procedures and practices. All of these generic questions needed to be answered prior to the training. In order to maximize the efficiency of their social worker training, DCF decided they needed to solve this problem by taking a proactive approach.

DCF needed an innovative, fun, informative and engaging solution to help lessen the number of generic questions asked during training time. DCF decided that TTA would be the right partner to help them craft a solution that was both unique and customized to meet their specific needs. Upon partnering with TTA, it was determined that utilizing video would be a great way to leverage technology and improve efficiency within the onboarding process. Utilizing content previously provided by DCF, they collaborated with TTA and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to create eight three-minute animated videos meant to answer all general questions that social workers may have prior to their first day of training. The videos featured scenes that were highly customized to be replicas of actual DCF offices, characters that looked and sounded like real DCF employees, and scenarios that took place in a typical day as a social worker.

Utilizing videos to prepare new social workers for their training turned out to be transformational for DCF. DCF exemplifies an organization that saw a window of opportunity for growth and took action. They are an organization that is proactive, and this shows in the success of their business. The onboarding videos were so impactful that TTA and DCF jointly won the 2019 Brandon Hall Group Bronze Award for Excellence in Learning. Since the initial launch of the videos, there has been an overwhelming amount of positive feedback. Upon reviewing the videos, it has been noted that:

• The amount of general questions asked during training time has reduced by 90%.
• Senior leadership within the organization stated that the videos were concise, informative, included great visuals, and were successful in targeting the younger employees.
• Prior to creating the videos, DCF had a goal of answering all previous questions they had been receiving prior to training. The videos successfully answered 100% of the general questions they had previously received.
• Both consistency and efficiency of new social worker training were drastically improved.
• Feelings of nerves were significantly reduced in the new social worker groups

DCF exemplifies an organization that saw a window of opportunity for growth and acted. They are an organization that is proactive, and this shows in the success of their business. The onboarding videos were so impactful that TTA and DCF jointly won the 2019 Brandon Hall Group Bronze Award for Excellence in Learning.