Business Services
Setting an example
How to train employees to fit your company and culture
By Matt McClellan
Smart Business Cleveland | April 2008
Damon Hacker
President and CEO, Vestige Ltd.
When things get busy at
Vestige Ltd., Damon
Hacker picks up some of the extra work.
The company’s president and
CEO says doing so is more
effective than scrambling at the
first sign of an upturn and hiring
the first warm bodies you find,
only to lay off those same
employees three months later,
Hacker says.
So at Vestige, everyone pitches in a little extra until the signs
of an upturn are verified as an
actual boom, which gives management more time to find a
new team member who fits the
culture.
The strategy has worked for
the $12 million firm, which provides computer forensics for
use in civil litigation, law
enforcement, criminal proceedings and corporate policy
administration
Smart Business spoke with
Hacker about how to keep up
during times of growth and how
to train employees by osmosis.
Q. How do you manage
business growth?
It tends to come in spurts,
and we tend to have times
where it gets pretty crazy.
Initially, it’s extra effort by the
team until we can analyze it
and say, ‘Is this a true upswing
in our business, or is it a seasonal, temporary change?’
The way that typically happens is the management team
tries to have enough resources
— staff and computers — to
stay a little bit ahead of the
curve. When we do get really
busy, the management team
ends up picking up the slack
until we can get above that.
Then we put in new resources; we train people. The problem is
we have a two- or three-month
time frame of training and getting people up to speed. So
we’ve got to manage that pretty
closely so that when we do recognize that there is an upswing
in our growth that we’re looking
to bring people in.
Q. How do you find those
people?
Something that has been successful for us is internships. Then
we have some fresh blood who
are already indoctrinated into
our culture and know how they
do certain things. We can
bring them in at the low-level, entry-level positions
and grow them while
growing the people who
have been in the organization a little longer up
through the organization.
Q. How do you indoctrinate employees into
the company culture?
Some of it is as simple
as our physical office
space. We have a very
open office. We don’t have
cubicles, there are no
desks. Even from a management standpoint, we’re
in that same open area.
If someone is struggling
with something, one of us can
step in and give a little bit of
coaching or mentoring. The flip
side is that our analysts and
everybody that is working for us
hear the partners on the phone
dealing with clients.
From a sales or development
standpoint, they hear some of
the things we talk about and
how we approach the client.
Without talking to the individual
and saying, ‘I want you to use
this analogy,’ or, ‘This is how we want you to talk,’ we hear them
come up with some of the same
lines when they’re on the phone.
Q. How does that culture
benefit you as a manager?
From a management standpoint, it gives us a little bit of
control. When we hear something that’s just a little off, we can
almost immediately address it.
We don’t have to wait for somebody to tell us, ‘I heard this guy
on the phone; this is what he
said.’ We probably heard it.
From a coaching standpoint,
we accept and understand that people will make mistakes. We
try to coach through that, point
it out and work with them.
It can be as simple as somebody getting on the phone and
saying, ‘This is the first time I’ve
ever done this.’ Well, it may be
the first time they’ve done this
particular thing; it may not be
the same as what we do on a
normal basis.
But the client may hear something completely different than
what the individual meant. We
just hear it and tweak it. So control from that standpoint does
offer us that.
Q. How does addressing a
problem right away benefit the
company?
It doesn’t fester, and it doesn’t
get worse. That’s the biggest
thing.
Usually, people form a habit. If
we don’t address it before the
fifth time and nothing negative
has happened the five times the
person has done it — at least
nothing negative that they perceive — now, they’ve got a habit.
And if we go to correct them,
they say, ‘Hey, I’ve been doing it
for a year like this; nobody has
ever said anything. Why do I
have to change it? It’s never had
a negative effect on me.’
One thing we try to drive in to
people is that we’re real cautious
about feedback from our clients.
Most clients don’t complain when
there’s something minor, but they
just might not come back.
We have a pretty strong client
retention rate — it’s easier to retain than it is to start over with a
new client. We have a good reputation. We maintain that.
It doesn’t fester; it allows us to
break that habit before it
becomes a habit.
HOW TO REACH: Vestige Ltd., (330) 721-1205 or www.vestigeltd.com
