Some of the greatest leaders in the world use the same phrase to describe what they need their team members to do, which is to  “just do  your job and trust that your other teammates will do theirs”. You hear it time and time again, just watch a Patriots game and you will see their head coach Bill Belichick screaming that phrase to each sub team (i.e. offense, defense, special teams) when they are on the sidelines. Sounds so simple, however, staying focused and reassuring each team member that if they “just do their job” and trust their teammate to do their job too – they will win.

When you have high performing teams, TRUST is the key ingredient to success, which is why it is one of or core values. LearnKey’s Gregg Akin, who is our newest employee of the month, is a perfect example of someone who comes in and does his job, day in and day out. That is why his manager Scott Walker nominated Gregg and had these comments to say about him:

“Gregg has demonstrated our Core values in many ways. He has brought Value to Learnkey by providing a great work ethic, following up with clients that could have easily been lost. He has taken a huge load off of Client Services, by importing thousands of students in the past several months, training teachers and helping them with the ease of OnlineExpert. You can trust him to follow through with any tasks until they are finished – he gets results. He understands the importance and value of our clients. He is very Easy to receive instructions and complete tasks assigned to him, then goes the extra mile to accomplish them to get results.

Gregg is a great asset to LearnKey, and his dedication and hard work show his team members not only is he doing his job, but he is trusting that his other team members will do their job (i.e. selling, creating and producing great video based training).

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Team player exudes talent, builds trust and makes cool courses!

One of the most enjoyable parts of my job is sharing to the world what great people we have as part of the Better Learning Systems/LearnKey family. What is even better is when newbies join the team and spread their positive energy making an immediate impact and generating positive results.

That could not be more evident than when Marian Eckley joined our Salt Lake City production team last October. From the day she started it’s been a “breath of fresh air” for the entire team. For someone who is new to a team and to build trust with the existing team members so fast is amazing. In the beginning it was not easy the transition happened fast and the team was required to not miss a beat as we were beginning full production of our Adobe CS6 rollout. What did Marian do? Not only did she “dig” in and learn what we were doing, but she also drove higher expectations and confidence to a group that welcomed it.

Here’s what her manager Liz McEuen had to say during Marians nomination:

“I have had the opportunity to work side-by-side with Marian for the last several months and she naturally embodies our core values of trust, ease and value.  Anyone who works with Marian knows they can trust her to finish a project on time and with a production value.  When you are working in video production problems and questions may come up but not to worry.  She will solve the problem with ease and a clear understanding of what needs to happen to achieve the result we are looking for”.

We are so proud of Marian’s success as she has made several changes to our editing process and these changes have lead to a better product in a shorter amount of time making her extremely valuable to the company.

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Even though this post is a little late, I wanted give everyone a peek into our Employee Appreciation Day festivities. I want to start off by thanking everyone at LearnKey for all that they do, to create fantastic training and experience for our customers. We couldn’t do it without you, so once again THANK YOU!  Due to our busy production and work schedules each office celebrated on different days. Technically that would mean that we celebrated Employee Appreciation Month right?

Each office celebrated in their own way by providing lunch for their employees, along with other activities.

In the corporate office located in St. George, Utah they treated their “ROCK STAR” employees to deli sandwiches served with fruit, veggies, chips, and cookies. Each employee wore their rock concert T-shirts, and throughout the day employees had the opportunity to answer questions about LearnKey and Rock music with the opportunity to win $10.00 gift certificates to local lunch spots.

The production office in Cedar City, Utah celebrated with BBQ pulled pork sandwiches with mac and cheese. During lunch employees participated in LearnKey Quote Book Jeopardy and employee based crossword and word search puzzles. Winners of these activities received certificates for double scoop ice cream cones and cash. Cedar employees enjoyed having a break and spending time bonding over the LearnKey quote book sayings.

In behalf of all LearnKey employees I want to thank the management team for showing their appreciation and recognizing all of the top notch employees that work at LearnKey. I know that everyone appreciates not only the free lunch, but everything that you do for each of us.

At Better Learning Systems, while supporting hundreds of thousands of users, we get a lot of questions about training: how to use our learning systems, technical support, how to deliver our courses to third world countries with no internet… the list goes on and on. It really makes you appreciate those employees who spend the time to have the product knowledge and experience to answer those questions. One person who prides himself in helping people is Kevin Jacobsen our February employee of the month. It’s the one thing we can get right each and every time we interact with our customers when they ask for our help. Kevin truly takes pride in being professional, knowledgeable, respectful and courteous at all times.

Kevin’s leadership team had this to say about his nomination and selection:

“Over the past two months Kevin has demonstrated our core values in several ways. Providing great value by putting in additional hours, supporting customers’ inquires over the phones, in addition to assisting employees with technical needs internally. He is considered a Trusted resource as he will always follow through with what he is given. He has transitioned into a new role and made it easy for all parties who interact with him regarding technical support.

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As we move into February, it’s time again for me to celebrate another employee accomplishment. This has to do with one of our Salt Lake City team members who has demonstrated not only the importance of being a team player, but one who does it on a consistent basis. Since LearnKey is dependent on everyone working together as a team, it means there is no “I” in LearnKey or team! It gives me great pleasure to welcome Rob McNeil as a Better Learning Systems/LearnKey employee of the month. You see Rob is someone who comes to work everyday, on time with the mentality of “do what needs to get done” and how refreshing it is for us to have such a steady employee. His peers VALUE his contributions as he has clearly earned their TRUST and his work effort makes it EASY for everyone.

His manager had this to say during his nomination:

“When you are working in the trenches you want someone who you can trust to get the job done.  Rob McNeil is that person!  Rob not only get his work done but he embodies the core value of ease. He is happy to take on a project and will see it through to completion. I value the skill set Rob brings to both the table and the trenches! He is a major asset to our studio and I am so thrilled that he is on my team.”

It has not always been easy in our Salt Lake City office. In order to get better at producing courses we had to bring on new team members, and never once did Rob question our decisions to do so. What he did do was welcome these new team members with open arms and a “can do” attitude. We are so fortunate to have Rob on our team.

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At Better Learning Systems we recently announced the formation of an “A” Team within our LearnKey company who will lead strategic sales in our K-12 vertical. While we are very excited about the group during one of our conversations with a LearnKey team member Justin Walker ( a new member all of 8 months)  explaining the realignment details we asked him if he had any questions. He answered “Yes” How can I be a member of the “A” team? The best part of all was when Lori and I heard that response- we both looked at each other and said that is EXACTLY what we expected to hear from Justin. That’s because “A” players work at it all the time and Justin is quickly becoming an “A Player”. He is willing and able to do whatever it takes to be a good team player for the right cause and working his “tail off” (small inside joke).

It is with great pride we announce that Justin Walker is our most recent November/December employee of the month. Over the past eight months Justin has worked extremely hard to learn the elearning industry, the “ins and outs” of selling to the education market, and most importantly do whatever it takes to be a great team player. He has demonstrated our core values making it Easy for people to work with him because he is a good listener. Second, he is quickly learning the importance of understanding what Value he can bring to not only his external customers but internal team members as well. Third, understanding the importance of patience while he builds his pipeline knowing that it takes time to build Trust, which is the trigger to successful partnerships.

Here are some fun facts about Justin so all of you can get to know him a little better:

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One of my favorite days at LearnKey is Veteran’s Day. The parade route in St. George Ut goes directly past our corporate office, and those of us that can get away from the phones are able to show our support to the veteran’s in our community. I look forward to it every year and thouroughly enjoy the amazing photo opportunities that come by, flags and uniforms, marching bands, balloons and lots of old cars. It’s fun and beautiful, and always makes me proud and sad at the same time.

I love seeing the men and women in their uniforms, especially the old-times from the world wars. Today I learned that we have 4 remaining Pearl Harbor survivors in our community, and at least one of them was in the parade today. That’s pretty incredible. It is a sombering thought to see them replaced with much younger veteran’s, young men and women that have already faught to make the world a better place.

LearnKey has been developing programs to support our veteran’s for some time now. We are very proud to offer programs that will create better lives for the men and women that have given so much to protect and serve.

I want to send a special shout out to all of the veterans but especially to those that I work with on a daily basis here at LearnKey. Thank you for your service.

We have all been touched by war, and most of us know someone that has faught for our freedom. Many of us have loved ones that are serving this very day. I hope that I am always able to attend the Veteran’s Day Parade, to show my support and thankfulness for a job well done.

Writing is an important part of our business. It can be objectives for an upcoming course, a workbook or projects used in the classroom environment, or even a MasterExam thats going to help a student/learner get college or career ready, all very important parts of the learning experience. At LearnKey we are fortunate to have Brittni Traynor who, as a lead agent for our Technical Writing team, makes sure all our writing activities get done on time.

Even better, is that her leadership team voted Brittni our October employee of the month for hard work and never ending commitment to lead by example. That’s right, she jumps in to help her team on a daily basis. Here is what her manager Brad Washburn had to say about her :

“As a team lead, she is very good at helping her team stay focused and motivated. She has forged a strong bond between the members of her team and turned them into a family”.

We are fortunate to have Brittni who truly does demonstrate our core values around Ease, Value and Trust. She makes it easy for her team members to work with her, shows them her support and how much she Values their work each and every day, in addition to building a level of trust that motivates them to work together and operating at a high performing capacity.

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What a crazy year it has been. Remeber back in May when I told everyone to be excited for the end of Summer? Well there is no place where that statement was more true than here at LearnKey. Don’t get me wrong we love the great summer weather here is Southern Utah, but over the past few months the LearnKey team has been busy creating and releasing our latest A+, Network+, and IC³ courses. These courses turned out totally awesome, and if you have not had a chance to look at them, follow the previous links to view their product overviews.

We also had the big release of our Career Readiness Bundle, which includes courses that offers valuable information to teens and those who are trying to enter the workforce. Take a look at the course overview.

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There are a variety of different definitions around being a team player, but the one that stands out to me recently is the one demonstrated last month by Carole Heaton in our LearnKey video production office in Cedar City, UT. It is what made her our employee of the month for September 2012. Our team has just completed the roll out of: A+  2012, IC³ GS4 and our Career Readiness bundle of courses (14 in total). At the last minute, we identified several ways to enhance the learning experience for A+ 2012 which meant we needed people to work overtime. When we needed help the most to meet our deadlines, it was Carole Heaton who stepped up big time.

Everyone in our Cedar office had been working overtime hours, everyone was tired. These projects needed to be delivered on time and Carole was willing to go the extra mile and work practically around the clock to help us meet our deadlines. Here is what her manager had to say when he nominated her for employee of the month:

“It seems like I can come into the office at just about any time, day or night, and find Carole either at her desk or online on my IM. She has put in more hours over the last month than any other member of her team. She is always willing to do whatever is asked of her as soon as it is asked, which has provided that level of Ease in getting fixes and files done on a tight deadline. I can always Trust that her files will look good and the fixes she is asked to do will be done correctly. She is always a positive force in the office, despite doing the lion’s share of work, and she can always be counted on to have a ready smile and a laugh available.”

Everyday in some way shape or form we communicate about our core values – Ease, Value and Trust. Carole clearly demonstrated all three of them by making it easier for us to meet our deadlines, valuing the importance of these courses and what it meant to get them out on time, and trusting the broader team that these improvements did merit being implemented for the benefit of our customers/learners. I thank you Carole for all your efforts.

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