Our Secret Sauce to People & Processes

By Romi Dexter September 30, 2020 | 6 min read

When it comes to marketing and operations, management of internal comms and processes are regularly the poor cousins in comparison to external and client-facing initiatives. It's easy to let your internal focus slide too, with pressing client needs and the urgency around closing deals and delivering what you promise on time, every time.

The problem with not investing in a robust system to set your people up for success is it often results in critical internal processes and information being managed out of spreadsheets, email and random third-party platforms (sounding familiar...?).

This can cause increased overhead in managing multiple spreadsheets and registers, missing of important processes, increased risks around security, additional hidden costs of not managing licenses and other internal services - and here's the crux, it impacts your company culture. Happy staff equals happy clients.

For most businesses, people are one their most important assets, yet internal comms and processes are often the first to slip through the cracks. We're all a little guilty of it, and at H&D we've been actively refining exactly these things to streamline our processes, manage our internal comms, policies and ICT, but most of all, empower our people to do their job well, with as little admin as possible.

Here's exactly how we're making it happen.

Using HubSpot to Automate the Recruitment Process

Attracting the right people and bringing team members on board is a challenge that every business faces as they scale and grow. It's also a really admin-heavy process if you're doing it all yourself and not using a recruiter.

Here's some insight into how we use HubSpot to do the heavy lifting when it comes to our new recruits.

We use HubSpot landing pages and forms to capture applications from individuals who want to work with Hype & Dexter, which we then promote via our website and social media channels.
Applications from third-party job sites such as Seek, TradeMe and Monster push to a HubSpot Conversations Inbox.
Additionally, if we have a recruitment drive we use our Chatbot tool on recruitment pages to help answer FAQs, connect candidates with hiring managers and generally drive excitement about working at H&D.
Dependent on what information has been captured about the individual and the job that they have applied for we can lead score candidates and automatically reject or move them to the next stage of recruitment.
For candidates we want to pursue, they are entered into email nurture flows to tell them a bit more about working at H&D, our culture and values and our recruitment process.
Behind the scenes, when we have a successful application we create a ticket for our hiring managers under our 'recruitment pipeline'.
Our recruitment pipeline includes the key stages of our recruitment process with links to Internal Articles within our HubSpot Knowledge base for additional information on our process, as well as links to Google templates and folders for capturing interview outcomes, etc.
Communications for each point in the process are captured as templates and snippets to reduce the work on the hiring manager.
If a candidate is unsuccessful the hiring manager is prompted to select the reason.
If a candidate is successful, the hiring manager is prompted for key info regarding the new employee - emergency contact details, hardware requirements, buddy, start date, employee type, team manager, etc. (not salary, though!)
Tasks are generated for the buddy, mentor, reporting manager and back-office teams to organise Hardware, Software, Contracts, Desks and Onboarding.

HubSpot to Help New Team Members to Hit the Ground Running

Of course, once we've been through the recruitment process and selected a candidate to hire, there's still work to be done when it comes to onboarding them without a hiccup and giving them all the tools to jump right into it.

New candidates are automatically added to our HubSpot CRM when they apply for a job.
On successfully becoming an employee, we update their record to include their H&D email address and automatically update their start date and employee type from the recruitment ticket.
We also enrol them in an email nurture series to get them excited about H&D and ready to start their new role.
Shortly before the new employee start date, Onboarding tasks are generated (this could be anything from a first-day coffee to a walkthrough of the Hub they'll most likely be working within - it's all accounted for both the new team member and the buddy teaching them).
These tasks are reviewed and updated by the reporting manager, buddy and mentor to ensure the best possible onboarding.
The tasks include detailed checklists, information and links to our internal articles on our HubSpot knowledge base to quickly get individuals up to speed.

What Happens when a Team member leaves?

If one of our employees resigns, an end date is entered against the contact record in HubSpot
Entering this date generates a ticket within our 'Employee Exit' pipeline
Tasks are assigned to the reporting manager and relevant back-office teams ICT, Finance, HR, etc.
The Employee Exit pipeline captures the key stages of the exit process, including any links to exit templates and folders within Google Drive and internal articles within our HubSpot KB for more detailed information around the process.

Get to Know Your People Better and Remember The Little Things that Count

Against the employee contact record in HubSpot we capture the individual employee contact details, emergency contact details and other useful non-sensitive information such as food and drink preferences, allergies, interests, air points membership ID and birthdays.

This information can be used when booking meetings, sourcing rewards, booking flights, organising birthdays - without the need to ask the employee every time something is booked and removing the possibility of forgetting the details.

As part of our onboarding, we include installing the HubSpot App - this means that all of our team have quick and easy access to the whole team's contact details from their mobile or desktop.

The Evolution of Internal Comms Through Personalisation

When it comes to personalising our internal comms and capturing information about our own people at H&D, we use HubSpot Email Marketing and Landing pages. Within these we send internal comms (like newsletters and updates) and manage our internal campaigns.

This is particularly brilliant for us, as lists are automatically generated from employees who are currently working for H&D (based on their contact record).

As a bunch of non-sensitive information is captured about the individual around their role, manager, interests, preferences and start date, we can use this to personalise internal communications. This provides a much richer experience for our team and cuts down on the effort for those managing internal comms and creating segments.

Empowering Your People Through Personal Development (...and Planning it in Effectively)

Personal development is a cornerstone when it comes to investing in your people, upskilling staff and empowering your workforce to grow and progress. However, it can be really difficult to make personal development a priority, fit in the time to get it done and have an oversight of who's learning what and where. At H&D, we came to the realisation that these things needed to be properly planned and accounted for. Here's how we make it happen for our people.

Individual training and certifications are managed in HubSpot so these can be scheduled in and resource managed accordingly.
Internal training is predefined in templates that are created and assigned to individuals to include links to training resources and checklists.
Monthly one-on-one tasks are generated in HubSpot and assigned to the reporting manager and mentor (where applicable), these include links to restricted documentation to capture one-on-one outputs.
We also have custom reports to monitor and ensure that individuals are having regular one-on-ones.
Last but not least, our annual reviews tasks are automatically generated for individuals and reporting managers to update documentation and hold the annual review. All of these tasks link to internal articles within our HubSpot knowledge base which include additional process details, guidelines and links to useful templates.

Management of Information & Communication Technology

In all businesses, but particularly when you're working in a digital environment, making sure that your ICT is manage appropriately and with as little manual monitoring as possible can be a game changer. We've put some key processes and automation into place to streamline this for the H&D team.

Guidelines and ICT information are captured in internal articles within our HS Knowledge Base. This includes all of our policies from Cinch HR as well other more detailed policies that are captured within Google Drive and linked to from these articles.
HubSpot Landing pages with forms are used to capture adherence to various policies, e.g. that or people have watched the video, read our policy and ensured that all passwords adhere to our Password guidelines.

H&D _ Secret Sauce Blog Image 3

Tasks are generated for the reporting manager and ICT where new employees have not completed policies within a certain period from the individual start date.
All hardware and software are managed as tickets within ICT Hardware and Software Register pipelines.
These include key stages to highlight what is happening with the asset, e.g. In repair, In reformat, Available for Assignment and Assigned.
Software and Hardware tickets are associated with the employee contact records.
Tasks are generated with standard checks and processes based on the pipeline stage and last reviews.
Custom reports and ticket views/filters are used to monitor hardware and software.