What No One Tells You About Onboarding
As a way to keep our users informed on company activities, the marketing team put together this new blog series called OnStation in Motion. When they presented me with the idea, I thought it was very fitting and was thrilled to be asked to write the first blog post…. The pressure is on!
Pictured: (Left) David Thomas, Shreyas Chaudhari, Brennan Hamstra, Arry Lazaridis, Samyuktha Kodumuri, Jessica Kodrich, Patrick Russo, Jake Bailosky (Right)
Increase in Funding = Increase in Resources
As the most recent round of funding closed on June 25th, Jake, CTO and Founder of OnStation, and I knew our first step was to hire a team to support our vision and users. This is not an easy task as we were looking to grow in a short period of time from a team of four to ten. We decided to focus our efforts on building the development, project configuration, sales, and marketing teams. This was not easy, but we found amazing individuals that will become a crucial part of the growth of OnStation.
We Have the Team, Now What?
Being a startup, changes happen fast, and it is crucial that when new members join the team they are trained quickly. My first goal when our new team members started was to get them oriented with our culture, product, customers, and needs. With this, it was important to communicate our vision and goals to make sure we were all on the same page. Thinking back, the training I provided is very similar to the start line of the race when the announcer yells, “ready, set, go!”
Ready – Here is who we are now.
Set – Here is where we want to be a year from now and the goals we want to hit.
Go – Let’s do this!
My role is to support, inspire, protect and lead. Somedays my voice would give out after many hours of training meetings! But at the end of the day, I’m a firm believer it’s the employees that make it happen. After only a few weeks of training, I saw that our new team members were creating a positive impact when it came to improving our users’ experiences. New features were introduced – such as a new tagging system to organize your flags, cleaner/clearer messaging, faster project configuration times and a new resource to call upon for assistance. Our Sales team is working on communicating the voice of our customers with others as word of mouth is huge right now. I also can’t forget to mention that our marketing team is hard at work to support our current customers by creating “How To” videos and in-app training. Some of these changes and projects have an immediate impact, while others progress us towards the bigger picture. All occurred sooner due to our new investments.
Ongoing Onboarding (it never really ends)
It is important to continue having conversations with our team discussing, reviewing, and presenting our strategy for the future. Things change and it is imperative to have an open line of communication, so no one gets lost on this journey. As the company grows, I’m excited to watch them grow professionally.
Conclusion: Month One is Behind Us
OnStation is accelerating into another month, I can’t help but think of the rate at which we are moving. This upcoming month includes the plan to move into a new office, talk more about expansion plans with customers, and accelerate our product roadmap development. We can’t thank you, our users, enough, who report to use OnStation every day on the job. We don’t take that loyalty lightly. You can expect more from OnStation so your day is easier, more productive, and safer.
Hope this was a good first stab at blog post writing. Look forward to hearing from another team member next month.
Written By: Patrick Russo
