Telesystem
Toledo, OH
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Editor’s Summary: Telesystem, is an organization committed to creating a conducive environment for its employees to be their authentic selves and work towards a greater goal. The company nurtures employee growth, offering numerous advancement and training opportunities, including a competitive reimbursement program for further education and a learning management system with a diverse range of courses. Telesystem actively gives back to local communities, supporting charities and hosting Cybersecurity Summits. The company measures employee satisfaction through annual surveys, closely tracking and responding to feedback. Telesystem promotes a healthy work-life balance with a generous PTO policy and a flexible scheduling structure. The company’s culture encourages full disclosure, dialogue, debate, and collective decision-making, empowering employees to contribute meaningfully. It also prioritizes employee well-being, providing comprehensive resources and support for physical and mental health, along with a flexible remote work policy. |
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Intro: “Why Telesystem?” is a question that we often get asked during our interview process. People choose Telesystem because they want to be part of an organization that allows people to come to work as their authentic self and work towards a greater goal. |
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Impact statements
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Advancement Opportunities:
Telesystem’s practice of first looking to promote from within before seeking external candidates, has resulted in multiple promotions to supervisor or management roles throughout the company. Some of our director-level employees started off as individual contributors. Our structure has provided them with the ability to grow and learn valuable skills to rise in the leadership ranks. For those employees not interested in managing people, we also have “lead” or “senior” roles providing advancement through a technical or SME ladder. We acknowledge that not everyone wants to be in management and therefore provide multiple ways to grow.
We also offer and encourage employees to spend times doing cross-functional exposure in other groups. This allows them to examine other areas of interest throughout the company as possible career opportunities.
Training Opportunities:
We offer a multitude of training opportunities to our employees. Company-wide, we offer a competitive reimbursement program for those employees wishing to further their education either via higher learning institutions or certifications, including master’s-level programs. Each employee has access to a Learning Management System that has over 2,500 courses focused not only on certification preparation, up-skilling, and re-skilling but personal development. These range from professional project management certification prep and networking to cooking basics and personal finance. Our focus on who employees are as people and what they want to learn in and outside of work sets us apart.
Community service/charitable causes:
Telesystem has a strong organizational commitment to giving back to the communities that support us. Being an avid supporter of local charities and sponsoring events hosted by our customers is incredibly important to us. Along with the dozens of community-based sponsorships and donations we participate in, Telesystem has launched a series of Cybersecurity Summits this year and teamed up with Tech4Change, grassroots giving-as-a-service organization, to identify and assist in the supporting of a charity in each community where the events are held. Telesystem will be matching dollar-for-dollar with event attendees in hopes of raising over $10,000 for the chosen charity in each city.
Measuring satisfaction:
Telesystem utilizes a variety of tools to measure team member satisfaction. First and foremost, we conduct an annual survey in March including both satisfaction and engagement questions and have been doing so for nine years. Our response rate is consistently near or at 100%. Our data show, for the most part, an upward trend in both satisfaction and engagement, with recent scores at near benchmark levels. We also request detailed feedback on the lowest scoring items from the previous year. Those results are shared with executive leadership and the entire management team. In addition to the survey itself, we conduct departmental group follow-ups with all team members to provide additional context to their responses and determine specific areas for improvement for which action plans are developed and tracked. Based on those meetings, it was determined that, across the board, a slight drop in 2022 was primarily due a lack of a full-time remote work policy for eligible positions (we already had a hybrid work policy in place). This was put into effect in May of last year. Our 2023 results are due out next month, and we anticipate a return to those higher numbers.
In addition to that survey, we conduct surveys after each of our quarterly, all-employee State of the Business meetings. Again, results are shared with senior leaders, and any questions that arise as part of the survey are answered by the pertinent senior leader(s) and the information shared with all team members. Multiple adjustments have been made to these meetings based on received feedback, including time and length of the meetings, live-in person/live-virtual/recorded formats, etc.
Again, with the onset of hybrid/fully remote work, we have adequate space for everyone in a leadership role to have a separate office in which to hold private conversations with their team members, as well as adequate meeting space for larger/departmental gatherings. We have a stocked “coffee bar” and a kitchen area for breaks and lunch. One of our office locations also has overstuffed couches and chairs, video/arcade games, a small cafeteria, and free pop for well-needed breaks. Regularly, people bring in various treats to share with their fellow team members.
Further, we conduct stay interviews to assess motivators for continued high performance, which may include specific tasks/activities, task team leadership roles, and/or involvement in special projects.
Many departments also have key performance indicators (KPIs) that involve inter-departmental communication and processes. Gathering that information is done in a variety of ways; tracked on a regular basis and shared with the pertinent departments.
Work/Life:
Unlike some companies who still require some sort of “tether” to their work, Telesystem has a very generous PTO policy. Our leadership team is dedicated to employees truly unplugging during their PTO. This is done by ensuring the team feels comfortable communicating up through leadership if their leader is out, as well as feeling at ease with shared duties because of our cross training efforts.
When actively working, Telesystem promotes a work/life balance by understanding that our employees have lives outside of a typical 8-5 and offer flexible scheduling for the positions that allow it. Our remote work policy also gives employees the opportunity to work where they feel most comfortable.
Perks:
Besides our robust health insurance plan, additional perks such as: a discount purchasing program, robust EAP, weight loss program, 401k match, and a health services concierge. In our corporate location, we have a corporate membership with EPIC Toledo which provides free or discounted events for young professionals in the area. We also offer our female team members the option to join Alliance of Channel Women (ACW), who works to empower and advance women’s careers and leadership in the telecom and IT sales channel.
Fun:
The opportunities for people to participate in fun activities have changed dramatically since COVID and the implementation of hybrid and fully remote work schedules. And since our company now has team members spread out across 20 states (Alaska to New York to Florida to Nevada) and multiple time zones, it further complicates our ability to come fully together as a single, unified team for fun/teambuilding types of activities as we have in the past.
As a result, department leaders have focused on fun activities for their individual departments such as virtual happy hours, escape rooms, online holiday games, secret Santa, wine & painting, trivia teams, etc. We also have periodic office activities (for the two main office locations) such as potlucks, pizza parties, Employee Appreciation Day, March Madness game viewing, Easter Egg Hunts, Christmas in July, Trunk or Treat for families, and Reindeer Games. In the past we have held corn hole competitions, Halloween decorating contests, door decorating contests using only items found at the office, and chili/soup cook-offs.
Currently we have a contest going for creating your best elevator speech about Telesystem called Telesystem’s Perfect Pitch contest with cash prizes at every bracket level.
In general, we try to spend a few moments at the beginning of meetings either celebrating accomplishments/milestones and or just talking about things unrelated to work.
How corporate vision is communicated:
Corporate vision is communicated through multiple venues. Initially, this is presented by Organization Development through new hire acculturation and by the Telesystem President during orientation sessions wherein the Telesystem Leadership Document is reviewed with each person, outlining each of our purposes: higher purpose (brand ideal), guiding purpose (values/principles), future purpose (vision), and current purpose (mission).
Further, deeper understanding of our corporate vision is reiterated during our quarterly, all-employee State of the Business as each of the presenters focuses on tying our actual accomplishments back to our key results and mission/vision/values. Vision is also reinforced for management and full team development during our extensive exploration of key concepts in various book studies: Good to Great (Collins), Team of Teams (McChrystal), One Mission (Fussell), Extreme Ownership (Willink), and the Oz Principle (Conners, Smith & Hickman), among others.
Over the last year an in-depth renewal of our basic culture concepts/beliefs and our business strategy took place requiring every team member to participate in 4 hours of review/discussion. To a lesser extent, each team member is strongly encouraged to be able to make the tie between what they do on a daily basis and how that impacts our key results (and therefore our vision).
Empowering employees:
A key component of our culture is operating in an atmosphere of full-disclosure and “dialogue and debate”. Decisions are made through group alignment after a period of discussion wherein pertinent parties have an opportunity to present relevant facts, opinions, and recommendations.
Additionally, cross-functional teams provide input into the products/services we offer, designing how best to configure them for the needs of our customers, and delivering them to instill confidence that empowers our customers’ businesses.
Each new team member completes Accountability training within their first 6 months or so. As part of that, each person is required to develop and implement a “See It Own It Solve It Do It” project in which they identify a gap in their area jeopardizing achievement of one of our four main key results. Not only does this process teach them a disciplined method for improvement (applicable in both their professional and personal lives), but it also creates better ways of conducting business within the organization.
Further, we conduct regular “stop/start/continue” exercises, along with “lessons learned” exercises when outcomes were not as expected. Changes are employed and measured to ensure effectiveness and then modified as necessary. Annual strategic planning sessions take place with senior leaders to determine paths forward to achieve our desired key results and strategic objectives.
Our employees can provide valuable feedback to other departments during cross functional exposure exercises. This allows them to look at processes within their own area and in others to continuously improve our operations.
Recognition is one of our key team practices and demonstrated in many ways. A welcome email is sent to all team members everyone a new hire comes on board or someone is promoted into a new role. The email includes their new position, reporting structure, background information, how they will add value to the organization, and a warm welcome to the Telesystem family (if new). Typical practice is that that person receives multiple emails from current team individuals adding in their personal sentiments. Also, new hires are typical walked around the office by their manager and personally introduced to their fellow teammates.
At the start of nearly every meeting, we spend a few minutes recognizing any birthdays, work anniversaries, or recent accomplishments (personal or work-related) by participants.
During our quarterly all-team meetings there is specific time set aside where people are publicly welcomed/recognized by the president as new team members, newly promoted, or at tenure milestones. Further, we include a “story-telling” time to share experiences where people have gone above and beyond to exceed customer expectations, meet a tight deadline, collaborate to accomplish a goal, achieved a degree or certification, etc.
We also publish a monthly company newsletter which reinforces many of these recognitions.
Externally, we’re always eager to share news about new hires, promotions, and milestones with our Channel publication connections, Newswire and through our social media outlets.
Ensuring well-being:
We have a generous PTO policy for our employees. We recently moved from separate sick, vacation, personal banks to a single, combined bank of time. This allows our employees to manage their earned time off in ways that are most beneficial to their personal lifestyle and family needs. All our employees immediately start accruing time and, in most cases, they can begin taking it right away.
We also have a work-out room well-equipped with free weights, resistance machines, and cardiovascular machines, among other items. There is also a marked walking path on the corporate campus used not only for dedicated physical exercise but for “walking meetings” as well.
Our fantastic EAP program offers help with childcare, elder care, marital issues, grief counseling, depression, anxiety, and many other issues that come up throughout life. In addition, it offers personal services like financial and legal advice. Employees and household members can use this for up to 5 visits per incident. With the health services concierge, our employees don’t have to go through the hassle of navigating the health care system on their own. We have a dedicated pod of nurses, clinicians, and administrative professionals that can assist during some of life’s most difficult diagnoses.
Telesystem was the first subsidiary in our larger corporation to authorize work from home occurring within days after the national pandemic was declared. We quickly deployed the necessary equipment (computers/monitors/keyboards/laptops, etc.) to our people to keep them productive while ensuring they had safe workspaces in their homes. Multiple resources were provided to the leadership team to help them manage remote employees (for some this was a first-time experience) as well as ideas for fun teambuilding activities in lieu of face-to-face physical interactions. Additionally, family-centered activities were provided to team members since in most cases, everyone was at home. For those team members who, because of their job responsibilities still needed to come into the physical office, the cleaning schedule was increased with specialized cleaning solutions to reduce the spread of infection. Full PPE was provided to team members required to enter customer locations to maintain continuity of services. And team members were given the ability to refuse to go to customer sites if they felt unsafe to do so (e.g. presence of active COVID cases in nursing homes). In some cases, a merit bonus was paid to compensate for the hazardous working conditions.
Pulse surveys focusing on team members’ emotional and physical well-being were sent out periodically during the period of the pandemic to ensure people had what they needed, but also that they felt safe and cared for. Scores came back consistently high; and in fact, the question “Sr. Leadership/Management cares about me.” from our annual survey yielded the highest response ever during this time. Leaders checked in virtually with their teams more frequently to maintain a personal touch.
Upon returning to the office in July 2021, Telesystem was the first business unit to enact a hybrid-work policy and followed that up a year later with a full remote work policy (for certain positions) based on team members performance during the pandemic, personnel requests, and the competitive work environment post-pandemic.
Career development was not suspended during the pandemic time; individual development plans were still executed, people used the time as opportunities for training on various skills and abilities, and promotions/hirings took place as needed.
Honestly, when the pandemic hit, we discussed that fact that this was an opportunity to assess how well we had been doing with all the culture activities previously in place; i.e. now that we had to make a withdrawal, how strong was our “culture bank account”? Our survey results demonstrated we were operating in the black.
| Closing company statements:
Each voice is heard and is important here. Our culture of feedback and dialogue and debate forces our teammates to think differently and grow. Our employees get the opportunity to work alongside people that come in every day to do their best and provide the best possible services and solutions to our customers. Our average employee tenure in 2022 was 8.5 years. Our tenure has dipped slightly since then, but not because of turnover or attrition but because of growth. We’ve had a record number of hires in last 90 days because our leadership team is dedicated to the growth and potential of our team, and is committed to executing on our strategic plans. |
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