A Culture Unlike Anywhere Else

Speaker A My name is Jane Hobbs. I am a coordinator for our Shared Services Department and I've been with novice for almost two years. I am currently a role level two and I work with a team that reports through the HR department. My manager is Sabrina Hamilton. I started with Novus as a role level One in an administrative assistant position, supporting the Executive Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing. When I came to Novus, it was a culture shock, to say the least. It was an environment and a culture unlike anywhere else I had been. I had been with large companies, I had been with small companies, I had been in environments where we were very structured and you didn't work outside of your job description. And I had been in environments where you had no boundaries. I never had been exposed to a multidimensional management system before. Most of the exposure I had was to processes and procedures that the Human Resources department put in place that you applied to your management practices. The thing that I have noticed at Novus is it's not a practice, it is the culture. They have institutionalized the novice management system to a point where it is what drives our business, it is what drives our decisions, and we always take the business and our employees interests into the equation as we are making our decisions. And that is the value that the Novus management system brings to me in my role when I am making decisions. I started off not managing any one person. I managed myself and I helped Geo manage his life. I've gone from that environment to managing a team of my own. And the aspects of the novice management system that have helped me make that transition into a management role really are the assessments, capability assessment and complexity of information processing. I rely on those almost daily in my management responsibilities when I'm assessing someone's performance. When I'm having a particular issue with temperament, I rely on the novice management system a lot in my communications. Am I communicating with the right people at the right level in order to ensure that everyone that needs to be involved in a particular issue is involved? That there is an understanding across the cross functional teams that we are all working from the same page. I don't think without the understanding of the Novus management system, those kind of communications would be practiced. I was very excited when we moved into the new building and I heard that we were doing the complimentary lunches and it was all going to be healthy choice based. We had the wellness room, we have the fitness center, we're being given conducive work environments, all to make our time in the office much more comfortable, much more relaxed, and to integrate a healthier lifestyle into our quote unquote work life balance. I had seen on CNBC many companies that have been featured with this kind of practice or culture and always thought that would be really neat if I could ever work for a company like that. Well, here I am. And the very first time that we introduced the lunches in the cafeteria, I was amazed at the response that we received. People wanted to be involved. They had suggestions. We got lots of emails, and it evolved into such a menu and such a well rounded menu that not only are we able to provide healthy choices, low salt, low fat, but high protein, it's all about how the food is prepared, and it allows our employees to see that, okay, it can be prepared this way. It can have a nice flavor, it can taste good, and it's something that you can take home with you. You're learning as you're experiencing the environment that's been created for us. What strikes me from what I'm hearing from Alma and from Kevna is we have wonderful employees, and they're very helpful. We have positive attitudes. But I think innately, it stems from the fact that we do have the novice management system, because we have that people don't have to think about, oh, am I doing something right? Am I doing something wrong? Am I following the process? Am I following the procedures? We do a wonderful job of giving people a great foundation to work from. We train them in it, and we train them how to apply it. When you give that kind of environment where things are so transparent, then it filters out the noise, and people can focus on doing their jobs and working as a team to accomplish the goals. If we didn't have that solid foundation, I don't know that the environment would be exactly the way that it is now. I don't know that we could replicate it without it's.