WorkRamp Cover Story: Championing Youth Safety & Compliance at the NBA with Alyssa Fein

WorkRamp Cover Stories shine a light on some of the best learning leaders in the WorkRamp customer community. 

In this feature, we sit down with Alyssa Fein, Senior Manager of Youth Safety & Compliance at the National Basketball Association (NBA), to learn more about how she creates a safe environment for kids in 173 countries around the world to play youth basketball through her safety and compliance programming. 

Program Overview

Tell me a little bit about yourself and your role in the NBA. 

I lead and operate the NBA’s global youth safety program, which is a robust operational and compliance system that works to keep kids safe in NBA youth basketball programs all over the world. There are hundreds of youth programs run with the NBA and its regional offices every year, creating opportunities for kids of all ages and abilities to play basketball. 

Alongside the expansion of the NBA’s youth programming, I designed and launched the NBA Youth Safety program that is in place today, and I continue to focus on strategic growth and development of our youth safety and compliance initiatives. 

I’d love to learn more about the NBA’s youth programs. What opportunities are there for community youth to be involved with the NBA?

There are hundreds of youth programs run with the NBA and its regional offices every year, creating opportunities for kids of all ages and abilities to play basketball. From international and domestic Jr. NBA programs to NBA Basketball Schools, Basketball Without Borders camps, and NBA Academies, the NBA’s youth programs are expansive and far-reaching, engaging kids year-round in 173 countries in addition to the United States. 

Building out Compliance Programming

Where do your safety and compliance trainings come into play as a part of your youth programming? How are your trainings structured for each of your learner segments, and how do you collaborate with staff, parents, and volunteers to ensure everyone is on the same page regarding safety and compliance? 

Safety and compliance training is a key factor of our youth programming, supporting the crucial focus to foster safe and inclusive programs for kids. I worked closely with an incredible expert organization to establish safety and compliance policies that govern interactions with children in our youth programs, and the safety and compliance training we offer furthers those efforts to ensure the right people are being trained and armed with the tools they need to contribute to a safe environment.  

In terms of structure, I designed a curriculum that is responsive to our programming types, roles, and levels of access to vulnerable populations. While compliance is not always everyone’s favorite training topic, it is the backbone of our programming, and I try to communicate that to our learners. 

It is important to me to do what I can to design training that is engaging and interesting, targeted to our learners, so they are actually paying attention and absorbing information, not just mindlessly clicking through content.  

How has implementing an LMS like WorkRamp enabled you to deliver on your compliance goals? 

WorkRamp has been an invaluable tool for me and for our youth programs. We are able to use the internal platform to keep our staff aligned and trained across all of our international offices, and we use WorkRamp Academies to deliver training and development resources directly into the hands of coaches and other adults working with kids all over the world. 

Before we had WorkRamp in play, the only method we had available to us was to deliver in-person training – a tremendous lift and a virtual impossibility to capture every learner in every country. At best, we were able to deliver static informational resources without the ability to track precisely who receives what education, the way WorkRamp allows us to do (in an incredible automated way).

Our use of WorkRamp is a bit non-traditional, given the reach and nature of our programs, and it has been a really remarkable process implementing WorkRamp to solve needs that would otherwise be tremendous gaps.

What are some of your tips and best practices for running safety and compliance programs with success? 

One of the best things that can be done to run a successful safety and compliance program is to focus on the “why” and make sure that those who are being trained understand not only why the training is important, but also how important they are as individuals in the greater context. 

Each person that engages with youth in one of our programs contributes directly to the safety and security of the youth basketball environment. Every individual person matters on both micro and macro scales. A true culture of safety is key. 

The Impact of Robust Compliance Programming

How are you measuring the impact of these training efforts? What has the engagement been like so far?   

In the last year, we have had nearly 1500 individuals engage with over 3000 trainings, collectively receiving almost 4000 hours of training and education in a variety of languages. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with a real desire coming from our constituents to get trained and develop their knowledge and skill sets. 

The rollout of our safety trainings in WorkRamp has also allowed us to engage our operator partners in a new way, allowing us to provide them with custom and branded training and education resources that their staff and coaches are able to utilize. As our youth programming continues to expand globally, our safety program will continue to be a key factor. 

How has having formalized training programs helped create a better, more engaging NBA experience for your participants and volunteers? Of the programming you’re all working on next, what are you most excited about and why? 

Having a formalized training program is a central pillar of the NBA Youth Safety Program. In addition to making every effort to keep our youth programs safe for kids and adults alike, it allows us to bring gold-standard training and development standards to programming all over the world, everywhere we operate. We are able to engage participants and volunteers in an incredible way off the court in addition to their on-court experiences.

Currently, I am working on building a robust and expansive training library, focusing on different aspects of coaching and officiating youth in a safe and productive way, above and beyond the essential foundation of mandatory abuse prevention education.

I am also engaging WorkRamp’s Instructional Design services to help produce engaging and interactive content that will be best-in-class. The goal is to provide our participants with resources to help them improve and grow their skill sets to create a safer and stronger global youth basketball ecosystem. 

Basketball is a safe space for kids around the world, thanks to Alyssa and her team at the NBA. Learn more about the NBA’s youth programming and how to get involved at https://jr.nba.com/. 

Want to build compliance programming that ensures the safety of your organization and its partners? Chat with our team about how the Learning Cloud can help.