Onebright: Supporting brighter futures

Supporting brighter futures with Onebright

Onebright has gone through exponential growth - from a modest 75 employees to over 500, with no sign of slowing down. They needed to find systems training that would suit their majoritively remote team. Something that could be agile, scalable and, importantly, fun.

We caught up with the Group Head of Quality and People Development Kevin Coughlan, Chief People Officer Katy Sawyer and Senior Trainer Emily Grant to hear more about their experience bringing systems training to life with Attensi Process and Engage.

Static training was struggling to keep up with growth

With both clinical and operational staff making up the Onebright team, it was clear to the L&D team that training requirements varied. Kevin, Katy and Emily all comment on how training before Attensi was largely static - made up of paper documents, presentations, demos and classroom training.

As the organization began to grow, this started to pose challenges. This was never clearer than during the COVID-19 pandemic when the workforce suddenly went remote and was no longer able to attend face-to-face training sessions.

Throw in a huge merger where teams needed to learn a brand new system and the team knew it was time for something new.

Kevin tells us how he wondered how he and his team could create training that would be meaningful and lasting and that people would look forward to coming back to. For Katy, she wanted to know that they had something in place that would deliver the same quality training, wherever people were in the world.

Introducing Attensi

Kevin explains how Attensi stood out to him because of our existing work with the NHS, the NSPCC and other healthcare organizations and charities. It was important to them that whoever their training provider was would need to be reliable in dealing with highly sensitive information.

A blended learning approach

They decided to implement game-based simulation training as part of their systems training. Attensi Process was introduced to support ongoing classroom sessions and other training. Kevin and the team were determined to offer as much variety as possible to create a real blended learning approach within Onebright - somewhere where there is something to suit every learning style.

Process has allowed the team to give new staff members a thorough induction - full of realistic client scenarios and practical exercises. This allows new staff to gain confidence in their practical use of systems and how they can apply what they’ve learned to real-life situations. The best part? They can make mistakes without any fear they’ll ‘break’ the system or face any consequences. If anything, making mistakes is highly encouraged.

First reactions and feedback

From the 24/7 access and flexibility to leaderboards and quizzes, the feedback from the team has been overwhelmingly positive. When juggling the requirements of clinical and operational staff, the flexibility to add and take away modules and elements has been extremely useful.

Kevin tells us that those working in certain departments love the competitive elements of the simulation training. Others, less so. It’s therefore useful to be able to add leaderboards for those who want them and remove them when they’re not needed.

It’s clear from the feedback that teams are really enjoying learning Onebright’s systems in a way where they can freely try things without fear of consequences. They can really explore and get to know the system, get things wrong and then learn from their mistakes. For Kevin, who’s passionate about his employees feeling empowered and confident, this has been a huge game changer.

How was your experience working with Process and Engage?

Onebright has now consolidated all its learning resources in Attensi Engage, including its Process modules. Kevin shared that he knew they would need an LMS put in place as they continued to grow. Portal has proven to be a great space to keep all their materials. It’s also somewhere they can easily add new modules at pace - a significant improvement on the more static approach of previous years.

Emily tells us about her experience of working with Process and Engage. After initially feeling a little daunted, Emily soon gained confidence with the easy-to-use, no-code system. So much so that she then felt able to train her own colleague how to use it.

What has been the impact of introducing this training?

As well as establishing a positive working relationship between Attensi and Onebright, the results from Onebright’s simulation training have also been significant.

For Katy it’s important to be able to demonstrate ROI when it comes to a learning strategy. The metrics and analytics from the Portal dashboard allow Katy to clearly see how learners are progressing along their journey, and how that directly impacts performance. This gives managers plenty of momentum for performance-based conversations during one-to-one sessions.

Both Kevin and Emily talk about the difference the ability to ‘self-learn’ has made in the efficiency of training. They’ve noticed that people can have more autonomy and ownership of their learning, helping them to grow in confidence. Something which, Emily tells us, has made a dramatic difference in time to competency. In her role as a senior trainer, it’s good to see people be excited about learning and completing new modules.

With more locations, more staff and an ever-changing mental health landscape, we can’t wait to see what’s in store for the Onebright and Attensi partnership next.