Reimagining Workforce Training: How Fairfax County Scaled Digital Readiness for 16,000 Employees

The County of Fairfax, Virginia

The County of Fairfax, Virginia, is one of the largest and most recognized counties in the state, known for its excellent education system and high quality of living. With a workforce of 16,000 employees across various departments—from facility management to transportation—the County's Organizational Development & Training Division (OD&T) is tasked with ensuring that each employee is equipped with the skills they need to excel in their roles. This includes their ability to do great work using their various software applications. 

The challenge

Despite being small, the OD&T team efficiently manages training programs for thousands of employees. The primary method of technology training is in-person software skills classes scheduled through their LMS which include half-day or full-day sessions, requiring significant time commitments. The challenges that the OD&T team experienced: 

• In-person technology training classes filled up fast  

• Adding more training classes was expensive  

• Employees found it difficult to fit popular classes into their schedule 

• Some managers couldn’t afford to approve a half-day training class when employees were needed in person 

• Employees would sit through an entire class to review one particular topic 

• Employees would take a class twice to get a refresher on the material 

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these issues, as many employees suddenly required urgent training on new tools for remote work. Departments unaccustomed to digital tools faced even steeper learning curves, making it clear that the county needed to re-think their employee training and adoption strategy. 

County of Fairfax’s OD&T team needed to find a scalable way to expand training access to more employees and create a more relevant training experience for individuals. They needed a way to enable all 16,000 employees to master their everyday tools so they could continue and improve engagement, productivity, time efficiency, collaboration, and more. 

The Solution

The County of Fairfax identified BrainStorm—an end-user engagement and adoption platform—as the right solution to address these needs. BrainStorm helps organization’s scale technology training and learning among employees making it easy for admins to onboard employees to their technology, transition the organization to new software, remediate undesirable behaviors, and optimize software usage. With pre-built courses on The County of Fairfax’s essential software tools, BrainStorm was able to help scale the training employees needed most right when they needed it.  

The OD&T team leveraged BrainStorm as a complimentary training resource alongside their existing LMS and training classes. Some of the challenges they faced like over-flowing training classes and employees taking a half-day class to review one topic, were eliminated once they started to advertise BrainStorm courses and QuickTips as a complimentary training option to an in-person class. These complimentary training solutions worked great for employees who were looking for a refresher on “how to” topics but didn’t need a deep dive into the technology.  

The OD&T quickly leaned into new and innovative ways to add BrainStorm to their training stack to meet immediate constraints. 

• Integrating BrainStorm within the learning ecosystem with strategic communications: With newsletters spotlights and targeted email campaigns, employees consistently stayed in the loop on training opportunities powered by BrainStorm.  

• Driving engagement with technology learning events: At company-wide learning events, BrainStorm representatives shared tips and best practices, helping employees discover new ways to leverage the platform and maximize learning.  

• Empowering managers with virtual lunch & learns: Managers received hands-on guidance on creating skill paths and managing communications, enabling them to easily distribute training across their teams.  

• Bringing learning to everyday workspaces: By integrating BrainStorm into their LMS and Microsoft Teams instance, training resources became accessible right where employees already go to learn—creating a seamless learning journey.