Students to LearnKey: In Susan we trust

Our quarterly award (Key Contributor) is something we are very proud of at LearnKey. This person or team is recognized for exceeding expectations and or demonstrating our core values (Ease, Value and Trust). Our newest recipient is someone who has been with us for almost 5 ½ years, and here is an amazing number that we want all of you to know about her: two seventy-two (272). That number, 272, represents the total number of globally recognized industry certifications (i.e. Microsoft, CompTIA, Cisco, Adobe, etc.) her students achieved in 2019. Take that number, along with her “can do” attitude, and you have our one and only Mrs. Susan Somerville.

Susan is Senior Student Services Representative. Someone who gets to see first-hand how our programs can touch and change people’s lives. She handles anywhere between 60-80 students at a time, helping them complete their online training on time, practice & study for exams, assisting them in coordinating any special tutoring needs, documenting and distributing monthly reports to counselors, the list goes on and on. She is someone who is always smiling and looking at the positive in everything, even when she has to give a student some “tough love” and remind them of their “Why” and motivator to complete our online programs. Her work directly impacts our students and their success in achieving their end goal: gaining employment. She has changed many people’s lives.

Here is what some of the leaders who nominated her had to say: “Susan has an amazing ability to help her students’ progress and is a pro at having the ‘hard conversations’ with them.” Another person said “she’s very helpful in our Cedar office, has a wonderfully positive attitude, and strives each day to help her students succeed.” Another added “she truly lives our mission of improving employability for her students, every day.”

When we presented Susan with the award she was actually spending the day in our St. George, UT office sharing best practices to some of our newer student service representatives so they can do their jobs as effectively.

Congratulations Susan for a job well done. Keep being present, doing your job, and making LearnKey better every day!

Newest Key Contributor Award Winner truly believes our “Why”

For a company to be on the same page it has helped a great deal that everyone knows our “Why” – Improving Employability Every Day. Our newest Key Contributor Award recipient Beth Ciaramello lives it every day as our Chief Employability Officer.

Beth’s job is to connect our students to employers, work study programs, and get them job ready/hired. She is also quite worldly as one of her personal accomplishments last year was traveling abroad working remotely.

She is being recognized for taking on three major projects, creating and implementing a ProScan to Placement process (P2P), finding new great talent to support the new process, taking over Brighton Colleges Employability activities, and taking over all recruiting and hiring for LearnKey staff (yes we are hiring).

Her “can do attitude” has resulted in two awesome new team members (Jeff & Wendy) based in Scottsdale, who have learned the P2P process and fully implemented it. We now have improved tracking and placements for both Brighton and LearnKey. Additionally, Beth continues to recruit awesome talent and truly displays our core values (ease, value, and trust).

The value she brings to our internal teams and external customers is exceptional. A great example is a recent partnership she has established with a new employer to our programs. This has required a lot of moving parts to come together and she has stayed with it all the way.

As a leader she knows our business and students as well as anyone else. One of her greatest qualities is the ease in which she works with everyone. Always willing to listen, offer advice and support no matter what. What that has left along the way is a tremendous amount of trust between Beth and everyone she interacts with on our teams.

We are so fortunate to have you on our team. Congratulations Beth for always keeping our Why – Improving Employability Every Day front and center for all of us.

Best,

Jeff

Q1 2017 Key Contributor Award Winner “epitomizes core values”

At LeanKey if you need help with a marketing piece, ask Beau. If you need help creating a newsletter, ask Beau. If you need to learn how we process student reports, ask Beau. If you need help creating a CTE/K-12 online marketing campaign, ask Beau. Website redesign ideas, ask Beau. So what has become perfectly clear? “Beau knows”!

Which is why it was exciting to announce earlier this week that Beau Shakespear was named Better Learning Systems/LearnKey’s 2017 Q1 Key Contributor Award winner. He is someone that truly demonstrates our core values: Ease, Value and Trust. He is by far one of the easiest team members to work with, and always displays a “can do” attitude. As noted above by the many “hats” he wears he has significant value, but it truly is the trust and respect he has from his peers that sets him apart. It is really hard to find anyone who is more of a team player than Beau, and when it comes to our “Why” he truly is all about “improving employability every day.”

Here are some of his key accomplishments over this past quarter:

Played a key role in the new design of our LearnKey.com website
Facilitated the new design of our tradeshow banners
Revised VA Catalogs – Worked patiently as they were re-worked close to four times over the past year (DI, VA, & Voc Rehab) and accomplished it down to one catalog now.
Created a tracking method and follow-up process for all new BO Students
Reviewed 50+ resumes and LinkedIn profiles

He accomplished the above in addition to managing a busy VA student workload and always coordinating the monthly LKVS newsletters. When members of the leadership team nominated Beau they used words like: rock star, dedication, focus, accuracy, respect, ultimate team player, even keel, nice, never a bad attitude, helpful, and “can do attitude” to describe him. Beau is no stranger to awards; three years ago he was recognized as LearnKey’s employee of the month.

Again, please join me in congratulating Beau for receiving this award. We are fortunate to have great employees, who are great team members and share our passion around “Improving Employability Every Day”!

Key Contributor Award Winners – all about Teamwork and Support!

Last week Better Learning Systems announced the recipients of our 2016 2^nd quarter Key Contributor Awards. One of the key benefits of this announcement is I use it as an opportunity to remind our team members of how important a role our core values, Ease, Value, & Trust, have in this accomplishment.

You see this award truly rolls up to making sure those individuals exemplify our core values, and the one thing that stays constant is they can’t do it alone; it takes a team. Our past recipients, Kim Johnson, Wyett Ihler, and Jason Manibog are big team players and truly support any team member they can.

Speaking of support we also had a theme this past year and it has been SUPPORT. There is a ton of that going on within our companies – it truly is part of our culture. Our production teams, mobile workforce, sales/client services, Veteran Services team, technical support teams, and administrative support working together is what is helping drive our success.

One team that really jumped out year-to-date was our Know Your Talents team. The behavioral consulting arm of the company is not only living our core values and supporting one another, they have also increased revenues 200% vs. same period last year.

That is why it gives me great pleasure to announce the Better Learning Systems Key Contributor Award winners for the 2^nd quarter are Melanie Benitez and Sarah Blik!

Sarah has had such a great year with her new sales and growth of existing customers. The largest to date for Sarah has been the Sundt/DPR joint ventures that she has sold. AND she continues to gain referrals across the country due to her success and relationships built with all the Executive Directors of the projects. Sarah has also launched us into the Title and Escrow industry, setting up a paid speaking engagement as general speaker to 200 plus executives. This is now an industry that we are beginning to circulate in which there are not many competitors. Customers always have and do love Sarah. For fun, if you know her ask her why people call her ‘Gnat’!

As for Melanie, she has almost 5 times the amount of workshops on her plate, which includes coordinating, printing, and follow up exercises after each and every workshop. She creates a ‘turn-key’ box of all ProScans, workbooks, badges, handouts, and framed certificates for each workshop and her contributions make everyone’s (all facilitators) jobs so much easier. Melanie has developed such tremendous relationships with all clients from a customer service standpoint. As we have had two large national accounts launch this year with ‘unlimited platinums,’ (Creative Testing Solutions, in all Blood Systems facilities, and HealthPlanOne) it requires a ton of coordination from the beginning of implementation and integration throughout the entire company, and Melanie has been in the forefront making this happen. Her Tutor Tuesdays now compete with Tristan’s at LearnKey in that she is gaining more and more attendance each week.

Both Sarah & Melanie make it Easy for our customers to work with them, as well as always bring Value to the equation, and we know there is no better way to build relationships unless there is a lot of Trust. That’s our core values at work.

Please join me in congratulating both of them for their great accomplishments this past year.

Jeff