Pros
I started working at Net@Work two months ago. I was hired as the new Chief Human Resources Officer to improve the overall effectiveness of the HR department. This includes providing expected, consistent and valuable programs and services to our employees, partnering with our management team to help them and their teams do what they do better in order to grow their businesses, and enhancing the employee experience and our culture. The previous HR team was unsuccessful in these areas.
I accepted the offer to work here as a direct result of the company’s two Owners’ expression of caring, loyalty and passionate commitment to the employees to do right by them and continuously advance. I report directly to both Owners and am so excited that they have already empowered me to build a new team as well as make immediate recommendations for improvements in all areas of HR and Recruiting, some of which I have already started to implement.
I recently attended our annual Leadership retreat in which I had the opportunity to meet our management team comprised of approximately 40 Managers, Directors and Vice Presidents (who are regularly based at various locations throughout North America) and found them to be super-smart, genuine, creative and welcoming. One of the Owners hosted this event at his home for all 40 of us. (yes, really!). The agenda was filled with business updates, recognition of accomplishments as well as fun social and team-building events. This was so valuable to me in terms of getting to know the team both personally and professionally.
The business operates at a very fast pace and you definitely need to be resourceful, disciplined, self-motivated and have the ability to develop relationships quickly in order to be effective in your role and make an impact. There is a focus on hiring as well as building “A” Players who are high performers. This this creates enormous opportunities for those who embrace the challenge.
Net@Work is extremely stable and focused on rapid growth both organically and through acquisitions. The acquisitions are particularly exciting to me as I can already see how we benefit from gaining new talent, fresh perspectives and multi-faceted industry expertise while having the opportunity to diversify our teams and blend different cultures together.
While I have been getting to know all of our office-based and remote employees, I have been impressed by the connection our teams share and the level of collaboration they achieve despite not all working in the same physical location. People care about each other here, communicate frequently and go out of their way to help make each other successful. Updated technology and tools are plentiful and there are several initiatives in progress to identify and introduce improved systems to simplify processes and improve automation.
So far my experience has been positive and I am excited to turn the vision for my position into a reality and work with this talented group of people!
Cons
Many employees don’t realize how deeply the Owners and the senior team care about our people. They are committed to building a culture where employees love what they do, have fun while they are doing it and get to reap the rewards of being wildly successful! I believe this is a factor of our rapid growth in recent years and our fast-paced business. It will be a priority for me to identify opportunities for employees at all levels to get more exposure to them so they can see and experience this for themselves.
