Since its start in 2001, Newmark Education has been steadily growing. Under the leadership of co-founders Dr. Regina Peter and Cynthia Allman, Newmark added a high school to its original K-8 school program, moved to a state-of-the-art facility in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, and has grown to 80 employees.

The team at Newmark Education is dedicated to educating and supporting the academic success of students with behavioral disorders and disabilities. And from the start, they’ve trained their dedicated team of teachers and staff with training manuals of policies and processes — documented to provide their employees with all the resources they need to succeed in their roles.

But over those initial 10 to 15 years, their paper manuals have been growing and growing, with every change, every expanded procedure, and every new program that the team has added to make Newmark a better environment for academic success. And when they started to hand out five huge binders to every new hire, the leadership decided there had to be a better way to document their systems and train their employees. Enter Trainual.

“One thing I love about Trainual is that it’s everflowing. You’re always updating it, it’s alive, and it’s a living, breathing document. So, if you need to make a change, you can make it immediately.”
<blockquoteauthor>Dr. Regina Peter, co-founder and executive director at Newmark Education<blockquoteauthor>

A knowledge management system that saves time and increases efficiency

Before finding Trainual, the team at Newmark trained using printed manuals — which made updating them incredibly difficult. 

“When we were in the Word document phase, we would never update [the manual] until the end of the year,” shared Dr. Regina Peter, co-founder and executive director Newmark Education. “And it was so cumbersome to review everything. Now, we’re so much more efficient. We update things in real time, we don’t have to print things out, we don’t have to do any of that.”

The ability to update their documentation is especially important for events that only happen a few times a year. With the constant busyness of working with students every day, the details of what needs to be updated can be lost — something that was an issue for Newmark when their manuals were only being updated once a year.

“‘Is it Trainual? Did you update it in Trainual?’ It’s literally one of my first questions [when we have a new process].”

A business playbook that shows how everyone’s roles are intertwined

Not only is Newmark a combination of two schools under one roof, but it’s home to a wide range of staff. “We have academic teachers, occupational therapists, speech therapists, counselors, admin, maintenance. Everyone really intertwines,” Dr. Peter shared.

And while all of their employees get similar onboarding, individual training and documentation differs, especially when creating new programs with different roles. 

“We’re creating some great new programming with our occupational therapy (OT) team, but that’s permeating into the classroom. They’re creating how [the program] works under the system of OT. Then, where do we [connect] that with the people providing instruction?”

At Newmark, they put a lot of emphasis on each person’s role, while also fitting those disciplines together with the rest of the team. And with Trainual, it’s easy to share how one team’s documentation and programming is connected to what other roles are taking care of — like with the OT team and the academic teachers.

“Trainual has helped people take ownership of their role and the things that they can do. Because everything is laid out and we can teach people on how to do that.”

A training manual that empowers employees and produces consistency

As a school that is dedicated to empowering students with needs, consistency is incredibly important. “One thing that Trainual helps us tremendously with is it keeps us very consistent in all areas,” Dr. Peter said. “We don’t have the luxury of being inconsistent. Because for our students, it really does affect them.”

And that desire for consistency in their operations (to help them “run like a Swiss watch,” in Dr. Peter’s words) also means giving their employees the confidence to make decisions. With documentation in Trainual, every employee knows exactly what to do in different situations to be the best for their students. 

“We want people to make decisions and have good judgment right on the spot. And if you can structure that for them [in Trainual], you’ve hit a home run,” said Dr. Peter. 

“Our best reviewers [of Trainual] are new staff. People that are coming from other schools are saying to us, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen anything like this. This is really great, and it’s easy for me to find things.’”

The transition from paper manuals to Trainual has really helped Dr. Peter and the team at Newmark continuously improve the procedures and operations that make the school a great academic environment for their students. 

And their documentation isn’t finished. As the team explores different types of training material like video, they’re looking to potentially build a scalable program to help structure other schools focused on students with special needs. And with Trainual, they’ll have an easily updated platform that can help them build long-term sustainability.