This article offers an example of what administrators can do to help improve the well-being and functioning of new hires, and as a result, also help the odds of their retention over time.
This scenario probably plays out daily in countless jurisdictions. You’re about to start offering basic training at your correctional agency’s Training Academy. Among your new recruits you have Bob who up to a few days ago worked at the local Walmart, Mary who a couple of months ago graduated from high school, and Todd whose only prior job experience involves working at fast-food joints and delivering pizzas. Now you are training them to become tomorrow’s Correctional or Detention Officers. You try to prepare them with training on topics such as CPR/First Aid, Defensive Tactics, use of force, OC spray training, ethics and professionalism, offender disciplinary procedures, and many more.
Other than what they may have seen on TV or in a movie, these individuals and many others in your class have no knowledge of what working in a prison or jail is about, what to expect, and how to best deal with what they’ll be facing. Yet, typically they receive no information and no tools for comprehending and coping with the conditions and the culture they are about to encounter inside. In may not be surprising then that after a couple of years on the job, less than half of the new hires may still be serving at the correctional agency that employed them and which spent many thousands of dollars training them.
That is why we at Desert Waters aim to prepare new hires at the psychological level and equip them to some degree at least for what they are about to experience at work, and how that can impact them both on and off the job, and what they can do about it.
To accomplish that we offer the 4-hour in-person course Towards Corrections Fulfillment™ (TCF), and we also train instructors to offer that course to new hires at the Academy or elsewhere. TCF is a prequel to the award-winning and internationally recognized course CF2F.
We now also offer TCF as a self-paced, interactive online course, taking about 2.5 hours to complete. Academies can purchase licenses annually for new hires. Considering the high cost of training and turnover rates, investing in TCF is a clear choice. Retaining even one new hire makes a significant difference, and the boost in morale and team cohesion is invaluable.
Contact us for more information on TCF and to how to get the Self-Paced version of the course in your Academy.
