Untitled Document

TTA onboarding takes another step forward

District 6 piloted a TTA Bootcamp in FY17, which was selected as a Best of the Best winner in the Employee Development category of the employee innovation program. Now, an employee team has taken the concept even a step farther, moving it statewide and providing additional resources.

Pictured above, left to right: Tony Loomer, Trevor Elordi, Beau Hansen, Eric Copeland, Will Miller, Justin Pond, Brenda Williams, Jon Kleppel, Sharon Short, Shirley Wentland, Drew Meppen, David Fullmer, Breanna Logerwell, and Greg Dietz. Joshua Sprague is at the lectern.

The original idea — to prepare the next set of TTAs coming into the department to become full-fledged Transportation Technician Operators (TTOs) — didn’t really change, but the process was fine-tuned. Realizing that maintenance men and women make up a third of the ITD workforce, the team began investigating ways to ease the onboarding process, while also devising a comprehensive plan.

By providing better training for ITD’s newest maintenance workers, the TTA Onboarding team focused not only on getting employees trained on the basic elements of the TTO program, but also standardizing workflow and grouping hirings together and training those newbies together in convenient pockets of the state.

To ease the process, the team created a checklist of common tasks and the skills needed to perform those tasks at a high level. Every district is now using the checklist.

Pictured at left: TTAs David Berdrow (foreground) and Buck Sherwood prepare an obstacle course for training recruits at the Idaho Falls shed Oct. 30.

A big success story comes from the District 2 maintenance area, where a new hire will be plowing snow in Powell this winter, and the checklist was used to guide his training.

“A guy who has never really trained anyone was assigned to ‘show him the ropes.’ He had no idea where to start with the guy. I printed out our checklist, handed it to him, and said ‘here’s a good starting point,’” said Jon Kleppel, a TTO in Powell.

“He thought our list was the greatest thing in the world. At the end of the day when I got back to the shed, he was pretty excited about the whole thing because of how easy that list made it for him to train the new person.”

Several districts have also scheduled their own TTA Bootcamps. With the onset of winter conditions, most events are scheduled for next spring.

District 6 just completed a second TTA Bootcamp, giving training to six new recruits, providing instruction on equipment operation, highway maintenance, emergency response and ITD goals.

The training also helps new employees prepare to take the commercial driver’s license (CDL) test if they were hired without one.

Although District 6 is leading the effort and already has two of the bootcamps under their belt, the benefit will be felt statewide. The concept will be refined at the maintenance foremen’s meeting next spring and re-deployed as lessons learned and best management practices surface.

Watch the TTA Onboarding Team video.