Growing fast with training at Greenhouse
Company: Greenhouse
Overview: Talent acquisition software that helps companies become great at hiring.
Fun Fact: Team members get a personalized bobblehead on their 5th anniversary.
Year founded: 2012
Employees: 350
Location: NYC
TL;DR: To keep manager effectiveness high while growing fast, Greenhouse and LifeLabs used a combination of training, refreshers, and well-timed nudges to enable employees to solidify their learning through practice.
THE CHALLENGE: Building Effective Management
As Greenhouse grew, the People Team wanted to align on managerial expectations across the company and ensure managers at all levels had foundational skills for success.
THE SOLUTION: A strategic approach to training while scaling
Since 2018, we’ve teamed up to provide existing and newly-onboarded managers a standardized training program, in parallel with executive training and team-building with leadership teams across multiple business units.
Manager & Executive Development
Greenhouse rolled out 5 waves of Manager CORE 1 programs, and 2 waves of Executive CORE programs giving leaders critical skills to develop their reports and effectively lead their teams. One year later, Greenhouse is now gearing up to roll out Manager CORE 2 programs to offer advanced training and deepen their managers’ skills.
High Performance Teams Sessions
Leaders across multiple business units participated in High Performance Team Sessions. These half-day sessions gave Greenhouse leaders a chance to slow down to speed up, ensuring teammates are connected and aligned to solve complicated problems faster, while leading their company towards sustainable growth.
Learning Stickiness
The LifeLabs Booster Series and Post-Program integration tools were a big hit at Greenhouse. With a 94% open rate, Greenhouse leaders maximized their learning by keeping new tools and vocabulary top of mind and integrated into their daily work. Participants even reached out proactively to share how helpful they found the Booster Series!
In-house at Greenhouse, managers participate in breakout sessions during monthly management meetings where they revisit skills and concepts covered in CORE 1 to share how they are implementing tools successfully and solidify their learning.
THE RESULTS: Effective managers at scale
Across 179 survey responses, Greenhouse employees rated their LifeLabs Learning experiences extremely favorably.
Greenhouse also measures outcomes in their biannual engagement survey. Since launching the Manager CORE 1 program in 2018, Greenhouse has seen improvement in manager effectiveness scores, in particular coaching and feedback (with reports sharing they receive actionable ways to improve based on feedback from their manager). Best of all, Greenhouse maintained an overall 85%+ positive management sentiment while the management team grew by 28%.
LESSON LEARNED: Small changes, big impact
For high-growth companies, time can seem like the one thing there just isn’t enough of, but Greenhouse’s decision to continuously invest in managers and execs is a strategic approach to supporting rapid growth. The secret? A huge impact doesn’t require a huge amount of time. The Greenhouse training program requires minimal training contact hours but achieves effectiveness thanks to consistency, spaced learning, and thoughtful refreshers, repetition, and nudges for participants to practice after workshops are over.
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