Class is in session.
A closer look at Net Conversion’s internal learning initiative during the pandemic.
Situation
When the COVID-19 crisis began and travel restrictions started, many of our travel clients paused their media campaigns. We thankfully had a diverse enough client portfolio to mitigate the impact, but a large stream of revenue and workload was lost with the hiatus in travel paid media. Despite this, we were committed to keeping the team whole by avoiding layoffs and refocusing the team’s time on training and development. Our goal was to come out of this period stronger and better as an organization.
Strategy
Our Exec team was very transparent about the agency’s situation, hosting multiple “town hall” business updates with the whole team and reiterating our two primary goals: maintain the team and come out of this stronger.
To avoid layoffs or furloughs, we put significant cost cutting measures in place and the agency’s Co-Founders, Frank and Ryan, injected their own money to sustain the team and the business. The goal for operation Come Out Stronger was to utilize our down time to optimize our accounts, organizational processes, and training. We created Net Con U, an internal academy built around online educational center Udemy, with monthly lesson plans catered to each team member based on individual development opportunities.
Concurrently, we established a Diversity and Inclusion committee to put focus on the civil rights movement that was developing during this same time period. The Diversity & Inclusion committee developed monthly themes and online training covering racial bias, stereotypes, communication, etc.
Results
So far this year, our team has completed a total of 826 hours of training and development with over 230 courses completed for an average of just over 16 hours per team member. The training topics ranged from accountability, problem solving, diversity & inclusion, effective communication & listening, and more. Moving forward, we will continue to make Net Con U a part of our lives post-COVID to ensure we’re putting priority on our development.
