Suddenly It All Makes Sense

Speaker A My name is April Poor. I'm a human resources manager and I'm actually with Novus for a second time. I worked for Novus back in 95 until about 97 and came back in 2005. So I'm going into my fourth year. I guess the thing that I obviously when I came back, we were still using the Novus management system. But I guess the difference between my work here before and my recent work is the growth that there are a good number of employees who are here now that obviously weren't here back then. But I find that the novice management system still works. It works because it offers that structure. I am big on structure. I need structure. I don't do well without structure. I think everyone needs structure and maybe so, maybe not. But the Novus management system offers that structure that sort of guides people. When you have as many new people in the organization as we have, you simply must have some structure so that people know sort of what their responsibility is, what they're required to do, the time span with which they're required to do it. And it just helps. I'm not sure that you're able to be successful without it. I went to a larger organization and while they did have a management system, I found that because it was so large, it was difficult to and because we didn't have everyone in one place, it was pretty difficult to get everyone on board. And I think part of the problem might have been that you didn't get it as soon as you came in. So people sort of came in and maybe they knew about it and maybe they didn't. Here at Novus there is a structured learning system and while it may not happen within a week of your starting or it may not happen within a month, it does happen. And I'm not sure that it necessarily has to happen within a week of your starting because I do think that it is important that you get into your role, get familiar with your department and your manager and sort of get a feel for things and then go into the novice management system training because then you have that moment where it suddenly all makes sense to you. And so I think the way we structure our training here does help that. It gets people into their environment and comfortable into their role and then it sort of puts them into the novice management system and they're able to see them both and they're able to see how it makes it work. Well, I think that in my role it's important to understand that people come from different environments and that often what is just a given to me or to anybody else, it might possibly be something they've not been familiar with. And so in bringing people into Novus, we familiarize them with the novice management training and we show them that when it's used properly, it really does work. And so I think that's been sort of a challenge in our rapid growth, is bringing people in from all over and getting them to understand that in this rapid pace that it is certainly worth taking the time to get familiar with the novice management system and seeing how much easier it'll make things. I think the mentoring process does help because when it's done right, you sit down and you have a very candid conversation about sort of the role that you're in. You talk about your strengths, and when you have that conversation, it sort of forces you to look at what you do and what you value and maybe even what you don't value. And so I think that conversation, when you work every day, you sort of just come in and do what you do, and those conversations sort of force you to think about what it is that you do well and maybe what you don't do so well and kind of where you see yourself going. So I do think that that is a piece of the training that is very helpful. Okay, thank you.