In every company there are specific standards and company requirements needed for employee regularization. Five months ago, I moved to a new company and will be under probationary review this week. I am used to the usual reviews where the manager would track down your performance (based on numbers of course!) for the past months and provide recommendation for regularization or the opposite. What's new about the company I am with now is the BRONZE certification.
Having worked for the airline-travel industry for the most of my career, it's surreal to find myself working for a company offering technical support. You could just imagine how I started. Although they hired me for my management skills... I still consider my technical skills as mediocre. I have conscious incompetence in this area so to speak. When I had my final interview with the Charles and Nate (exchangees from WK), I was a bit defensive on this aspect. Good thing I was able to "sell" myself in such a way that they took me in. c',) Landing the job was one thing, doing the job was another thing.
I went through training together with another team leader (from TeleTech Roxas too!) and the rest of Wave 8.0. To say I was flabbergasted was an understatement. It was quite a jump from airline rates..travel taxes...booking classess to volt-amps...ground loop...and hysteresis! Mind you, I am only referring to our first topic..POWER. We have not started our product training yet. whew! To be honest, I found myself thinking if I belong to this company. I even joked around and told my "wavemates" I am not a Meralco employee. But.. being the goal oriented person that I am, I posed myself a challenge to continue the training and pass it. Well, I did pass the training and still with the company as of this writing. You might be wondering what BRONZE is.
BRONZE is a course in our Customer Care Center University that has 3 parts. Homework, Hands on and Online testing. When I say homework.. you have to believe me it is what you perceive it to be. We are given several topics in which corresponding questions are to be answered based on available resources. After completing the HW, we have to do hands on testing, this phase is the application of what we have researched on (HW) and the learnings we have during actual calls and new hire training. This part can be grueling... I have seen reps stay on our lab for 4 straight hours just to complete one topic. And again, when everything is done..comes the online testing. Which is to test the knowledge you have acquired from HW and hands on. This is tricky, you can only take a test one time per week on a particular topic. If you fail a test, the refresh period for the testing software takes one whole week. Why am I including this information on this blog? Simply because, for our batch and moving forward.. this is part of our requirements for regularization.
I must say the Bronze certification did help me a lot. For a not so technical person handling a team of technical support reps, any form of education or additional training would be very handy to say the least. I am being evaluated for this as well. I am proud to say all of the reps on my team (except for the new hires) are all bronze certified. Latest addition to the pool would be James, who got his certification a few hours ago. As a team leader who would conduct evaluation and provide feedback on employee regularization, it is very heartwarming to see happy faces after you have delivered the 5th month reviews. I am not a fan of negative attrition. I believe that each rep deserves a chance to prove oneself, and it won't be possible in a mere 6month period. There is one exception though... attendance (reliability). I can vouch and fight for regularization for a rep who needs improvement on his KPIs or other metrics but not attendance. I value the reliability of a team member. The most important metric that an employee should always pass with flying colors would be attendance. Everything starts from being present at work when you are needed by the team and the company to do the tasks you are getting paid for.
Kudos to my team... MASERATI.
For always being on top of the game. Passion through excellence, always.
This blog has become too lengthy than I had planned it to be..but WHO CARES? This is my blog. c',)
