Your Team is Trained. Can YouProve It?

Most BIT/CARE and threat assessment teams would probably answer yes if someone asked whether their members receive training. They attend conferences. Someone brings in a trainer every few years. The chair forwards webinars and articles. People pick up training through professional associations and their home departments, and experienced members learn quite a bit simply by working cases together.

Ask a few more questions and the answer can get fuzzier. Who has been trained? What did they take? When did they take it? Which training was required? Who joined the team six months ago, and what were they assigned when they arrived? Did they complete it? When does anyone need a refresher? Then there is the question that tends to produce some looking around the room: Where, exactly, is all of that recorded? For some teams, there is a spreadsheet. Certificates may also be sitting in personnel files, departmental folders, inboxes, learning-management systems, or wherever the person who chaired the team three years ago decided to put them.

We have been thinking about that problem quite a bit at InterACTT because it sits in an awkward space between training and administration. Teams need ongoing professional development, but somebody also needs to know who was assigned what, whether they completed it, and what still needs attention. That is why we have added training assignment and completion tracking to the InterACTT platform. The feature is new but the problem is not.

The Solution

Our new approach to tracking allows the team chair to share a list of trainings they would like their team to completed. We then set those parameters for the team members and once they watch the video training, their tracker is updated. Have a new team member? Not a problem. We can help you select which resources you would like them to review and track their progress. This makes is easier for the team lead or training coordinator to give clear expectations as well as tracking compliance.

For current InterACTT users, the goal is to make the training side of the platform more useful for the way teams actually operate. A new member can be assigned foundational training when they join. Experienced members can be assigned continuing education. A chair can see where something remains incomplete rather than assuming everyone got to it.

For institutions looking at InterACTT for the first time, this also reflects something we think matters about team training more broadly. Training should not be a collection of disconnected courses that people happen to take. There should be some way to connect what the team needs to know with the people who actually need to know it.