Empowering VA Employees to Serve Veterans Better: A Training Instructor’s Mission

On any given day, Stanbridge might orient new VA employees, train supervisors, teach employee development courses, or improve processes and marketing at the VA Nebraska-Western Iowa Health Care System.

Stanbridge is a training instructor in the Learning Resource Service (LRS) at the Omaha VA Medical Center where he works to impact Veterans' lives through the employees who serve them.

"I've always been passionate about education and helping connect people to things that will improve their lives," said Stanbridge." This was just a natural fit for me."

For Stanbridge, a Veteran who receives care at the VA with his wife, his passion for education has led to an extremely busy work schedule. For example, the first Monday of each pay period finds Stanbridge in-processing and setting up new employees into the VA Nebraska-Western Iowa Health Care System. The second Monday and Tuesday are devoted to new employee orientation, where he moderates the course, gives presentations, and handles logistics for the two-day program. 

Once a quarter, Stanbridge runs a two half-day new supervisor orientation, which requires additional prep work, such as communicating with the new supervisors and ensuring they have the needed materials. 

Any spare time is filled with teaching employee development courses, conducting team training at VA facilities across Nebraska and Iowa, working on process improvement and marketing for the LRS, and much more.

Improving the new employee orientation program has been one of Stanbridge's most significant projects. Building on the solid foundation laid by his predecessor, Stanbridge used his web design and development background to modernize the program, making it easier and more engaging for new VA employees, LRS staff and supervisors.

He built a brand-new SharePoint site for the LRS to replace the old, generic one - a three- to four-month project that has been an "absolute game changer" for marketing and getting people signed up for classes. He created email templates and recurring calendar invites with permanent virtual meeting links to streamline communications and save time.

Stanbridge also helped develop the LRS's federal resume writing courses and revamped some team-building offerings, such as Real Colors and Core Strengths. He is currently developing a brand-new team-building training course focused on finding common ground amongst coworkers.

Stanbridge said all these efforts aim to positively impact Veterans' experience at the VA, whether directly or indirectly. Though he doesn't provide hands-on patient care, he sees his role as critical in shaping the interactions between VA employees and Veteran patients.

"Everybody that comes through that door, I'm having some sort of impact or influence on them,” he said. “(The employees are) going to take whatever they get from orientation or training and pass it on to the Veteran somehow." 

Beyond the evident technical skills and knowledge, Stanbridge tries to impart a more profound message to employees in his training: that Veterans, staff, and everyone in between are human beings who want to be understood.

"It doesn't matter if you're the newest employee or the director, or the 20-year-old Veteran or the 80-year-old Veteran, everybody coming through the door is a human,” he said. “It doesn't matter if you're having a bad day as an employee, it doesn't matter if you're in a bunch of pain as a Veteran, you just want somebody to know what's going on with you."

For Veterans who may wonder what an education specialist has to do with their care at the VA, Stanbridge wants them to know just how much of an emphasis he puts on customer service and trying to understand their unique experiences and challenges. He also wants employees who give up precious time to attend his training to feel it was more than worth it.

"Nobody likes to sit down and listen to a PowerPoint for two hours. Even if the topic's engaging - you've got to have a good speaker or something to keep you engaged," Stanbridge said. "I am always looking for how we make things 1-percent more fun and engaging so that you show up, learn, and have a good time.”

Feedback from Stanbridge's training, which he collects through surveys after every session, has been overwhelmingly positive. Employees report that his courses are engaging, impactful, and even "more fun than expected" and praise him as an instructor.

"I love seeing the comments come through where people are like, 'Oh man, it was the best trainer that I've encountered in a while. This course is so great. You did such a great job.’ I like to hear that I did a good job making sure everybody had a voice, everybody was heard, everybody got a chance to engage,'" Stanbridge said. "You read it and know they didn't just get a PowerPoint out of this. You did have a lasting impact."

Still, delivering engaging and impactful training to a busy workforce is one of Stanbridge's biggest challenges. In a healthcare setting where patient care is the top priority, it's difficult for staff to block off several hours for professional development, no matter how valuable.

To meet that challenge, Stanbridge and his colleagues have gotten creative. They recently began offering "huddle trainings" by breaking longer courses into 15-minute chunks that can be delivered during daily team huddles.  For example, the LRS offers a two-hour "Understanding Our Veterans" course, which teaches VA employees about military culture and how to better interact with Veteran patients. Stanbridge can now deliver it to teams in combinations of 15-minute increments over several days or weeks.

"The feedback has been excellent," he said. "We asked questions like, 'What do you think about the format? Were the topics beneficial to you as an employee? Do you want to see more trainings in this format?' The answer was a resounding yes."

Stanbridge is also creating hybrid training that combines self-paced online elements with shorter instructor-led sessions. For a new Microsoft Forms training, for instance, employees complete the first two parts—composed of videos and knowledge checks—on their own time, then come to a 30-minute session with Stanbridge to learn advanced topics and get help with their forms.

“We're trying a lot to figure out how we meet customers' needs when they don't have time for the training we want to offer them,” he said.

When he's not teaching or developing training, Stanbridge looks for opportunities to interact with and support Veterans in any way he can. He recently volunteered at the Omaha VA2K walk, where he connected with Veteran employees and patients face-to-face.

As a Veteran himself, Stanbridge feels he can relate to the Veterans he serves.

"I've been stopped for issues, problems, I've been stopped for story time, that sort of stuff," he said. "I think in those situations where I can interact with our Veteran employees, I can have a big impact on them. Hopefully, they can see that someone in their shoes is here, cares, and is on their side."

Stanbridge said the most fulfilling part of his job is helping VA employees better understand and empathize with the Veterans they serve. He may not be providing direct patient care, but he can help shape every interaction a Veteran has from the moment they walk through the door to the moment they leave.

"What I'm hoping is that from that 'Hello' to that 'Thanks, have a nice day,' everything that occurs in that process is influenced in some way by either new employee orientation or a training that people have gone through with our team.”