This episode was more of a blooper reel mixed with a confessional. We’ve never been bashful when it comes to sharing how we could have done things better.

We were joined by our community manager, Ashlyn Puckett, who originally was hired as a virtual assistant for Explorateur Travel. After learning about the industry, Ashlyn’s role transitioned into a Client Experience Manager where she became responsible for all client-based and communications social media, blogs, and much more.

The Importance Of Onboarding

The foundation to create a solid onboarding process is to have a defined job description. This will allow you to work backward from the job description to create resources. In the onboarding schedule, we recommend including a mixture of scheduled shadowing and one-on-one training sessions with a team member, as well as time for the new team member to watch online tutorials for systems that your business utilizes.

It’s easy to overwhelm a new team member by introducing too many systems or topics at once. We recommend giving your new hire one area to learn per week. This ensures that you are giving ample time for the new hire to learn before moving on to another topic.

We personally use a Google document to create a master checklist of every topic for our new hires to learn. This was used when Ashlyn was onboarding and it allowed us to see the outline of her onboarding from a birds-eye view and group tutorials together that coincided with one another.

What Ashlyn Had To Say

“Something you may or may not know about me is that I am a die-hard Loom fan. I did not know Loom existed until working for Jennifer at Explorateur Travel, so my love for Loom developed during my time [there]! My training at Explorateur was a mix of Looms teaching me how to use different systems and perform different tasks, as well as 1:1 face-to-face training! I loved both methods and I felt having those Looms in my back pocket helped me learn the industry faster.

Jennifer also created a Trello board for me where my daily, weekly, and monthly tasks lived. Everyday Jennifer would make sure my tasks were in Trello, in order of most important to least important, and when I was done I would cross off the task. Had I not had this, I would have probably lost track of some things because that is just the nature of this industry, there is always something to do and it can be very face paced depending on your client volume.

I think if I was to say ANYTHING, now having been onboarded by Tique, I do think I would have loved having a similar Google Doc set up, which I am about to share with you… but the Trello board satisfied the need for this. If you asked me what cons I had 2 years ago I would have said none other than feeling a bit lost because I hadn’t learned the industry yet! Once I learned the company workflow and processes, how to use our systems, etc. everything really started to flow.”

Management Style

Ashlyn shared that she absolutely loves our team meetings. This is a one-hour meeting per week where the Tique team gets together and does a round-table of all tasks on each team member’s plate. This format created an open-door feeling throughout the team and cultivated a strong team culture.

Another aspect of the management at Tique that Ashlyn loves, is the autonomy to make decisions that best serve her role. While there are key things in the business that should be escalated, Ashlyn is empowered to make the best decision that fits each circumstance. She attributes her happiness in the role to feeling trusted, and not micromanaged.

Communication

Our team has always been big on constant communication, even if it’s just for fun! Ashlyn loves the ability to collaborate with other team members through Slack, phone, or face-to-face. We prefer to use Slack for better efficiency. Ashlyn particularly loves the ability to communicate through voicenotes, which is an upgraded Slack functionality.

Systems

We love leveraging technology to unify our team and work smarter, not harder. Ashlyn accredits the use of technology for making her role at Explorateur easier. Whether it was utilizing the brand kit in Canva to make marketing materials or automating the client experience in TravelJoy, having a company that was comfortable and confident employing the use of systems ultimately makes being a team member a smoother experience.

The Freedom To Make Mistakes

One of the most important thing that Ashlyn mentioned as an important characteristic of both roles, is that she had the freedom to make mistakes. So many managers expect their new hires to learn quickly and to skip over making mistakes. The reality is that we all make mistakes, and our team members are no different. Each mistake is a learning opportunity and should be a stepping stone to becoming a stronger team player!