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All posts by Leks Drakos

Employee Development Program: The Key to Improving Productivity, Engagement, & Retention

Employee Development Program headerIn my early 20s, I worked as a shift manager at a well-known pizza chain. On my second day, every manager above me was fired and I was told to keep things running until the district manager could arrange someone to take over in “a week or two”.

Not only did I absolutely not know what I was doing, my team knew it.

Chaos ensued. Compliance regulations, SOPs, and basic safety measures flew out the window because the team didn’t trust that I knew what I was doing (which is fair: I didn’t).

It ended up taking three months to get a temporary manager to come over from one of the other stores, and by then I was frustrated beyond belief. The moment she walked in the door, I handed over my keys, put in my notice, and refused to discuss the possibility of staying on in any capacity for any longer.

Back then, I was only 20, this was one of my first leadership roles, and I was clueless. Since then, I’ve held other leadership positions, had some attentive mentors, and gotten to develop the leadership skills that they don’t tell you about in the job description. Today, I could walk into that same situation and roll with it, no problem.

Without those opportunities, though, I would still be that clueless kid failing to get his team united, failing to develop their skills, and failing to see his job as anything more than a means to an end.

Not prioritizing employee development is a bad look, people teams. But – as I’ve said many times before – Process Street’s got your back. Check it out:

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Optimize Your Onboarding Process With Workflow Automation (+ Free Template!)

Optimize Your Onboarding Process With Workflow Automation headerYou’re an HR department of one (and a bit). You have a PEO (professional employer organization) for support, but basically, it’s just you handling the day-to-day.

The CEO says he needs a new role filled ASAP with a list of qualifications. Filling the role will be a challenge, sure – but it’s not the main problem.

How are you going to get this new hire up-to-speed thoroughly in as short a time as possible when you don’t have any sort of standardized structure for doing that?

Simple: Build one.

Easy for me to say, right? It’s my job to build processes; I do it all the time. And that’s true. At Process Street, we do build processes all the time. Sometimes just for the heck of it. You might even say we’re pretty darn good at it.

This means – that’s right – we’ve already built the process you need. You can thank us later. Meanwhile, check out the rest of the post and exactly how you can optimize your onboarding so everyone has a good experience:

To the process mobile!
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AI & Data Analytics: 3 Ways They Can Improve Customer Experience And Engagement

AI Data Analytics 3 Ways They Can Improve Customer Experience And Engagement Since 2015, Nahla Davies has been working with enterprise clients around the world developing RegTech protocols and best practices. She’s also worked with both enterprise and sovereign governments as a key contributor for notable public projects like DCOM.

If the pandemic has shown the world anything, it’s that business professionals and, specifically, marketers can still meaningfully engage customers in an increasingly digital world. It’s undoubtedly challenging for marketers to continue providing a seamless customer experience across different digital channels such as social media.

Thankfully, though, factors such as artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics can make multi-channel customer experiences engaging across the entire customer journey — from product consideration all the way to purchase.

Businesses have proven themselves both capable and willing to remain adaptable amidst the tumultuous COVID pandemic in order to understand business problems and subsequent opportunities. The process of actually understanding these problems and opportunities, however, isn’t exactly straightforward.

Analytics, data, and artificial intelligence have the potential to enrich marketers’ understanding of their customers’ experiences in order to deliver meaningful, relevant experiences in the future. To that end, let’s quickly take a look at how data and analytics can be invaluable for marketers interested in enhancing the complete customer journey that they provide across different digital channels.

Let’s jump in!
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The Impact of Data & Tech on the Future of Hybrid Work for Startups

The Impact of Data & Tech on the Future of Hybrid Work for StartupsJoanne Camarce is a digital marketer focused on growing and strategizing B2B marketing and PR efforts. She loves slaying outreach campaigns and connecting with brands like G2, Wordstream, Process Street, and more. When she’s not wearing her marketing hat, you’ll find Joanne lost in the world of Japanese music and art, or just being a dog mom.

From increased employee autonomy to the transformation of offices into meeting hubs, the world of work has experienced a fundamental shift in how things are done. As data and tech innovations continue to morph the future of hybrid work for startups, that change will keep moving.

And that’s a good thing.

None of us knew exactly how much change the pandemic would bring, and some of that change has been frustrating, difficult, and not exactly ideal. Some of it, though, has been very necessary. Some of that change has even been a bit brilliant and revolutionized workplace accessibility in ways many employees have only dreamt of.

We’re talking about change that has made the startup world more efficient, strategic, and, heck – more human.

So how exactly do data and tech continue to impact the future of hybrid work for startups? Let’s find out.

In this post for Process Street, I’ll cover the primary impact hybrid has had so far – and what companies can expect going forward:

Let’s get to work!
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How Talent Acquisition Changes as You Scale a SaaS Startup

How Talent Acquisition Changes as You Scale a SaaS StartupThe early days of a startup are crazy.

You have a small group of brilliant and adventurous people taking on tasks they’ve probably never done. Tight budgets leave you doing things like building desks out of doors because they’re cheaper. Your whole focus is solely directed at the goal of getting your product out there in front of customers, who probably don’t even realize how much they need your product yet.

Fast forward a couple of years and those brilliant and adventurous people now have job titles and (more or less) set job descriptions. Your engineers are spending most of their time finessing the UI and developing new features rather than building fundamental structures and foundations. You have a solid customer base that’s avid about your product – and just keeps growing.

Except – as brilliant as they are – that small group of people no longer has enough hands to do everything that needs to be done.

It’s time to scale your startup – but you need to do it fast, accurately, and strategically. So where do you start?

To find out, I sat down with Process Street‘s very own head of talent, Rosy Bellorini, to get an inside view on how to get the talent you need to scale your startup.

Let’s dig in!
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Level Up Your Employee Onboarding Workflows With These Modern Process Management Strategies

onboarding workflowInstead of an alphabetic writing system, the Incan Empire used a series of knotted and colored strings called quipu.

Quipu are still used in South America today, primarily by herders recording livestock numbers, but experts still only have theories about how the actual Incans used their quipu way back. Some believe quipu were simple memory aids, while others point to purely numerical record-keeping. The latest trend is the theory that quipu were on their way to becoming viable alternatives to written language.

onboarding-workflow-quipu
(Source)

Looking at that image, I know what you’re thinking: How could a series of knots ever represent a narrative about anything?

To be fair, though, the ancient world had a lot of weird record-keeping methods. You’ve probably encountered the Celts’ Ogham alphabet, Viking runes, and the Egyptians’ hieroglyphs – because scholars have been able to figure out what those symbols mean – but there are still many – like the quipu – we don’t quite understand.

For the most part (we think), these cultures followed a predominantly oral tradition, which is why we don’t have any documents explaining their languages. Even the Romans – who loved to write things down – left us a language (Latin) we don’t actually know how to pronounce. All because no one thought about documenting their systems in a universally understandable way that would stand the test of time.

Now, hopefully, your internal onboarding processes aren’t at risk due to your CEO’s sibling overthrowing their rule or violent colonization by an invading force, but if your organization’s employee onboarding isn’t a documented process anyone could use, it’s about as useful to your company as an Incan quipu is to a 21st-century New Yorker.

HR has gone through so many changes in the past few years that it’s not even called HR anymore. The same old systems that have worked just fine up to now just aren’t going to cut it anymore. People managers need dynamic, interactive processes that are flexible enough to meet the ever-changing needs of both their future new hires and their current workforce.

In this Process Street post, I’m going to show you how to easily level up your employee onboarding so it doesn’t become yet another antiquated system no one remembers how to use.

Let’s get started!
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Employee Metrics: 9 Essential Data Points to Track in 2023

employee metrics to trackThomas Forstner is the Head of People & Talent at Juro – a contract management platform on a mission to help the world agree more – where he is building a human-centric, scalable People & Talent function from the ground up.

There are ton of metrics you could measure as a People and Talent lead at a fast-growth company. But tracking them all simply isn’t valuable. Instead, you should be economical and focus on a few metrics that can tell you the most about your function, keeping the rest in the background until you need to delve a bit deeper.

So which metrics do you choose to focus on, and which do you put on the backburner?

It’s a hard choice, there’s no doubt about that. However, some employee metrics are more valuable than others in terms of what they tell you and how important that insight is to your broader business strategy.

Ultimately, you want to grow your team consistently with the best talent, facilitate their development and ensure they’re fulfilled and engaged in their role at your company.

This Process Street post will explore the ten best metrics to track in 2022, including:

It’s time to track the data that matters!
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ERP Suites Halved Onboarding Time & Saw 5X Fewer Customer Complaints with Process Street

erp suites case study customer success

“Overall, [Process Street has] made a world of difference inside the organization. It’s really helped our quality and keeps our customers happy.” – David Schenz, Director

ERP Suites helps enterprise companies implement scalable IT solutions for secure data, improved response times, and application of industry knowledge & best practices.

The company began its very humble start in 2006 with a few guys in a basement with a vision. By 2017, ERP Suites had grown into an award-winning company known for its IT solutions and innovations.

Currently, they meet the needs of over 250 mid-size organizations within the US and abroad.
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How to Implement Workplace Monitoring & Preserve Employee Autonomy

workplace monitoringI play video games at work.

It’s the remote manager’s nightmare: A wayward employee who does whatever they want because they lack the strict supervision of the office to keep them in line. Critics of remote work would seize on this very scenario as proof that remote workers are merely lazy and entitled.

Should employees’ web activity be tracked to make sure they’re putting in a solid eight hours of work time?

For those remote workers who don’t have designated space or equipment that is “work use only,” why should they agree to be surveilled in their homes and on their personal devices?

How do you guarantee that both your clients and your employees can feel secure that what is meant to be private will not be made public?

Most importantly, if the deliverables are delivered when they should be, does it matter how they got there?

In this Process Street post, I’m going to (attempt) to provide answers to some of those questions, discuss the issues employers need to consider before monitoring employees, and look at some “soft surveillance” alternatives to hard data collection.

Read on!
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