Roboculture: Onboarding, Mentoring, and Burnout
As you know, all employing companies are also different. We suggest you look into them to understand how everything is arranged for them.
A few weeks ago, I talked with the creative director of Redmadrobot about whether robots want to capture humanity, and also learned how guys look like onboarding, mentoring and where they put sensors on the burnout of employees. Now I want to share this with you.
About our interlocutor: Zhenya Bondarev – Creative Director of Redmadrobot. Teacher of the Digital Product Design course at the British Higher School of Design. The author and curator of the course on the design of mobile interfaces for children. Eugene is actively exploring methods for developing creative competencies, design and innovation. He has experience in launching dozens of projects in the USA, Germany and Russia (from digital products and services to new businesses and digital divisions). Nominee for European Design Awards 2019.
It seemed to me that in a company with this name there is no place for humanity. Indeed, to be honest, the product of these guys robs people of jobs, replacing them with a digit. However, after a detailed conversation, I realized that these are some of the most reverent little things in terms of the approach to the psychological comfort of their employees. Today I want to tell you how onboarding, mentoring and burnout sensors are arranged in Redmadrobot. I do not rely on this system as the only true one; rather, I just want to share what is happening in this modern world.
Wall-E, what do you want to become when you grow up?
At one of the final stages of the interview, a candidate at Redmadrobot is asked the question: “What do you want to become?”
Variations of similar issues exist in many companies. For example, we ask, “Imagine that from tomorrow you are provided with money until the end of your life. What would you do then? ” When you sit on the candidate’s chair, it often starts to burn from such questions.
And it’s very cool that Redmadrobot has a clear answer, why ask about it. The answer to the question “What do you want to become?” gives an idea of a person, his goals, awareness. The important thing is not what kind of person is now, but what kind of person he wants to become. When a person has a transparent understanding of what he wants to achieve, then most likely he also has an understanding of what resources he needs for this, what projects he wants to participate in, what kind of people he needs in his environment. The more transparent a person’s understanding of himself is, the clearer is whether he is on the road with this company.
Becoming an employee robot
After the Rubicon with this difficult question and paperwork, it is time for onboarding. Allotted for the entire trial period (3 months).
The main task of onboarding is to “take a position”, that is, to understand all the processes, internal culture and get acquainted with all departments.
For 3 months, each employee holds meetings with at least one person inside each department (yes, even with accounting and finance). If a person has come to a position close to the leading one, he faces an additional task – to look at the processes, methodologies, principles and at the assessment tell his opinion about the structure of the company and possible points of growth, changes. This is a very cool win-win tool: the company gets a fresh look at what can be improved, and the employee thus forms his position in 3 months, becomes a combat unit with a good understanding of internal processes, plus he has already accumulated internal connections .
In addition to the above process, there are also welk-meetings and welk-parties: once a month everyone who comes this month gathers, and the CEO tells how everything is arranged, tells inspirational, exciting things to charge people to work. Along with large general meetings, there are chamber rooms inside departments. For example, when a new person arrives, they order burgers (or maybe pizza) and get acquainted in an informal setting.
Thanks to large and small, short and long onboarding events, after 3 months a person becomes his own on the board.
Robomenting and Robomenty: who is it?
Everyone knows what difficulties the labor market is experiencing in IT. Every employer spins as he can and as he sees fit to solve hiring problems.
Mentoring is a highly developed institution at Redmadrobot – a large and complex system that allows you to play frames. From the first day of work, each person has a mentor. The mentor’s task is to pump the beginner along his individual development path. The guys say that this system allows them to control the self-reproduction of personnel and expertise within the company.
An interesting point is that a mentor is not a ready-made single model that should work equally in all cases. On the contrary, the whole joke is that mentoring is different from department to department.
The mentor is often a person who allows you to move along a pre-designed path for a particular person. Where does the trajectory come from?
Each person undergoes an assessment of their competencies approximately once every 6-9 months. The man himself says that he wants to move in one direction or another. In response, he is told that such and such skills are needed for development in that direction. And on the basis of this, a personal development trajectory is formed for the next 6-9 months.
Further, depending on what software-hard should be pumped, a mentor is selected. The mentor’s arsenal includes a set of standard tools: coaching, recommendations for reading books, training, individual tasks or learning by example. The interaction within the mentor-mentor pair may vary from person to person, and this is normal.
It is important to note that the mentor is a rather close person, often knowing not only about the worker, but also about the more personal one, which goes beyond the working moments of the menti.
Keeping an eye on the cops is an important, sometimes delicate task. After all, you know what happens in a person’s life and you understand that this directly affects his work. Therefore, it is very important to build good trusting relationships within mentoring.
This robomenter is broken, carry another
There are situations when you need a replacement mentor. There is nothing to worry about.
- It’s time. When one person mentors another for about a year, it makes sense to make a replacement. A year is an excellent period of time for which you can transfer a pool of knowledge, a way of thinking. There comes a time when everyone just needs to move on.
- I like you. We are all human beings, and things happen to people: misunderstanding, personal hostility, psychological incompatibility – all this is reality. It’s not necessary to breed drama, to attach special importance, you just need to change the mentor and live on.
- Pikachu, I choose you! Personal initiative menti. Based on his development path, an employee can choose a mentor for himself. Contact him with a request in mentoring. And if he has time, then why not?
How to put out a robot?
Burnout is one of the most frequently covered topics of recent years. Whom do not stick, everyone either burned out, either in the process, or successfully mastered the skill of the Phoenix. We in Dodo now stand only at the origins of a system that will allow us to identify a person’s self-ignition in time and extinguish it.
The guys from Redmadrobot use the mentoring resource to notice problems when a person has just started to burn. A close relationship with the mentor allows you to come to him and honestly say: “Listen, I’m tired of everything! I can’t quit anymore; I’ll quit the hell. ”
Each mentor begins the meeting with simple questions: “How are you? How are you feeling? How do you feel?”. Usually this is enough for people to start sharing their pains.
In addition to mentoring, there is a special moment in tracking the state of people on complex projects. If it is clear in advance that the project is complex and nervous, a cut-off of 3 months is set. This is the time allotted for adjusting the situation. If in a month or two the situation does not level out and people suffer, you need to look for a replacement: individuals or the whole team. Redmadrobot has cases when they had to refuse further work with the client in order to keep the team safe and sound. Losing a large team is more painful than losing a large client.
Burnout – sucks, from which no one is safe. But here the moment of openness, sewn into the culture of the company, is important. It’s bad when a person comes with the words “I don’t want to work, I’m tired of everything, I’m tired”, but for everyone it’s like snow on my head. It is good when a person comes to this decision with the company.
It is important to part with people in good relationships. Because in the end it’s just a person who is important to help and to the very end, to the door, to support and help him. The most humanistic approach is to help get settled in another place or somehow help with its further development.
Podcast Nothing of the Thing. Dear reader, this article was written under the impression of the pilot release of our new podcast. We became interested in what the culture looks like, teams and processes are being built in various technology companies like Miro, Yandex, Amazon, Microsoft, Edadila, Redmadrobot. Therefore, we met with the guys from there and chatted on these topics.
Now you can listen to it:
- Soundcloud
- Apple podcasts
- Yandex.Music
- Spotify
- VK
- Or download in our channel in Telegram.
Podcast Nothing of the Thing. Dear reader, this article was written under the impression of the pilot release of our new podcast. We became interested in what the culture looks like, teams and processes are being built in various technology companies like Miro, Yandex, Amazon, Microsoft, Edadila, Redmadrobot. Therefore, we met with the guys from there and chatted on these topics.
