Collaboration

TPC: What has seemed to work the best in quickly ramping up
new professionals?
JB: We have had success in online training and job shadowing. When
consultants and developers shadow, they are expected to understand
the answer and document the answer to help them gain knowledge of
how the solution works.
IS: We have one resource who spearheads upgrades, and when we have new
hires, we have them join on her team to start understanding complexities
of the process with visibility into ISVs and third parties from the get-go.
Then we place them in a gopher role where consultants have them
do their grunt work. This helps them learn quickly and groom their
troubleshooting skills. There is a lot of pressure when you’re trying
to solve a problem, and your client is watching you. It takes a certain
amount of skill and confidence to do that well.
JS: We have three programs to onboard new employees. The first is
for people who have been in the channel for a while, and that program
is focused primarily to see if they’re a fit for our culture.
For those who have two to three years of experience, we have a
learning path dubbed the consultant onboarding (COB) program.
Our consultant in training (CIT) program is geared toward those
who have no past work experience with Microsoft Dynamics; they
are either coming out of a college-type program or were previously
working somewhere totally unrelated. There is a three- to six-month
investment to get them up to speed, and our education team runs the
CIT programming to get them where they need to be.
TPC: How about remote employees? Have you had good
experiences with keeping remote employees engaged?
JS: We have four offices but have people working from all states.
This has been one of the bigger challenges as PowerObjects has
gone beyond 300 people, and it’s something I think about daily.
When we are able to have people office in one of our locations, that
is ideal, but if not, we really make sure we leverage technology such
as Yammer and Lync (Skype for Business) to keep the team plugged
together.
IS: We are very firm believers of keeping a good balance between life
and work. As a women-owned company, family always comes first,
and we’ve had quite a few employees choose to work from home
versus in the office. We did move an employee from Texas to Virginia,
so she is 100-percent remote, and it’s worked great!
Technology has really allowed this to be possible. We do have a
monthly all-hands meeting, so we’re all face-to-face at least once a
month, and attendance is not optional. We hold a morning huddle
every day at 8:15 a.m. to review what everyone is working on. One
consultant runs the meeting, and each person gets two minutes. This
really helps keep us all connected, and if someone has issues, we take
that time to help each other out.
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