Holly Laurier is a small business owner who created Holly’s Homeware in the spring of 2018. Over 5 years later, she takes pride in her success which she measures in content employees, happy and loyal customers, and, of course, growing revenue. Holly’s Homeware is a store curated for folks who enjoy the finer things in life at an affordable price point. Holly enjoys stocking her store with unique home goods which operates both online and locally in Seattle, Washington. From cooking utensils to wall art to furniture, Holly provides locals and interior design lovers with quality products to adorn their homes.
The Story of Holly
After becoming inspired at her previous job as Design Coordinator at an interior design firm, Holly left to pursue a lifelong goal of owning a shop that will inspire others and give homeowners the tools to create spaces they love. She set up shop in her hometown and created a brand for herself. Holly has faced many challenges over the years such as financial stress, teaching herself new skills, and learning how to manage a team. Utilizing her previous experience as a team member and as a leader managing projects, Holly has found and created a team that shares her vision for the company. Although her total of 9 employees (5 in-store and 4 remote) agree with her values, new problems have arisen that, if left unchecked, can severely damage the work Holly has invested in her team. With the help of GettaMeeting, however, her employees became empowered to reach their fullest potential and create healthy communication and connection.
The Challenge of Communication
As in many retail environments, communication problems were prominent at Holly’s Homeware which greatly affected team dynamics. Managers often find mitigating and condoning communication to be an ongoing challenge. Holly found various problems in her team that affected her business, communication being the common denominator.
Holly, with the help of honest feedback from her employees, narrowed the problems down to the following causes:
- Lack of effective communication between employees
- Misunderstanding tasks, promotions, and policies
- Inadequate information flow between shifts or departments
Holly pinpointed other areas that she struggled with, which also relate to communication but mostly lacked structure and consistency. From a managerial standpoint, Holly identified the issue of difficulty managing and restocking merchandise efficiently.
Why GettaMeeting?
After speaking with her network of business professionals and searching the web for resources to help her team get on track and solve the issues affecting her business, Holly decided on GettaMeeting to help her solve the issues she was facing. GettaMeeting delivers ready-to-use presentation videos for professional meetings. Each meeting module includes team-building activities and enhancements which drew Holly in as her team and its communication methods were her biggest priority. It was an easy decision: GettaMeeting has exactly what she was looking for and was highly recommended by her trusted friends. Ultimately, Holly chose GettaMeeting because of how little preparation was needed to host effective meetings. She simply doesn’t have the time to research and put together presentations for her team, therefore, GettaMeeting was a no-brainer.
Although her team would benefit from every meeting module GettaMeeting has to offer, she landed on the Employee Empowerment series bundle because it addresses all of her concerns.
The Employee Empowerment series includes three meeting modules. Purchasing this series means Holly didn't have to prepare three engaging meetings that thoroughly address and workshop solutions to the issues she’s experiencing. Holly simply had to download the video and enhancements, use the enhancements to bring the meeting to life in minutes, and watch her team learn, work together, and grow.
Holly was intrigued by the themes of the meetings. The Employee Empowerment Series is culinary-themed with each module having a more specific motif. The Build Relationships: Breaking Bread module is bread and baking themed, Power of Positive Influence: Recipe for Positive Influence revolves around baking and sweet treats, and the Get: Organized: Mise en Place module includes a cooking and organization theme.
Holly said “I don’t think I’ve ever attended a themed meeting, but I sure wish I had at my previous firm. It’s a small detail but it gives teams something to look forward to. It also makes the meeting feel grounded and cohesive because all of the meeting content revolves around a well-defined theme and objective. It makes so much sense, I’m not sure why it isn’t a norm for businesses but it definitely will be for us from now on.”
The Process: How Holly Used GettaMeeting’s Employee Empowerment Series
Preparation
Bringing Holly’s three meetings to life took almost no time at all. She simply went to GettaMeeting.com, chose the Employee Empowerment Series on the Modules page, purchased it, and downloaded the assets. From there, she could host all three meetings, yet she wanted to utilize everything GettaMeeting had to offer. So, she used the Enhancements in each module.
Holly decided to host the three meetings within a month as a training opportunity. Therefore, she decided to prepare for all of the meetings at once so she could facilitate the day of without any preparation.
Because some of her team is remote and some in-person, Holly had to first decide how to facilitate the meeting. GettaMeeting’s videos can be streamed or downloaded so Holly could have easily facilitated the meetings remotely. However, because she observed that the problems her team had been experiencing were occurring at her physical store and her remote employees were communicating well, she decided to facilitate the three meetings in person with her in-house team.
On each of the module’s Enhancement PDFs, Holly had fun picking and choosing in what ways she wanted to bring the meeting to life. GettaMeeting provides many options for managers and meeting facilitators to curate their meetings for their teams and their needs. Every meeting module’s Enhancement PDF includes unique:
- Book recommendations
- Book club review questions
- Take-away item suggestions
- Decor ideas
- Playlist
- Games
- Suggested prizes
- Refreshment ideas
- Inspirational quotes
Holly, knowing her team well, used each piece of the enhancement PDFs wisely as she prepared for the three meetings. Because all of the enhancements include links to listed products, it was incredibly easy for Holly to order everything she needed online and receive it at the office.
From each module, she ordered one of the book recommendations and printed the list of book review questions. At the end of each meeting, she gave the books to her employees and a copy of the questions for their leisurely reading. The team could get together and form a book club if they chose to do so.
Next, she chose a notebook, pen, and small item from the Take-away items Pinterest board and ordered one for each team member. She ordered them online and set the conference room table with them before each meeting began.
Holly then chose a few decor items for each meeting. She opted for simple items that made the meetings feel themed and fun.
Next, Holly easily put together the playlist suggested. She chose her preferred streaming platform and added the songs to a playlist.
“I was particularly excited about the playlist! Because my team is fairly young, I just knew they would enjoy the added element of music. And the way that the songs connected to the content? Genius!”
She then chose one of the three suggested games that she thought her team would enjoy and that would bring the team bonding result she was looking for. She purchased one of the suggested prizes for the game too.
She also planned for snacks using the Refreshments Pinterest board. She drew up a quick grocery list that she could refer to before each meeting.
Lastly, she printed off the list of inspirational quotes for each team member to include with the notebook and pen.
After this process, Holly recognized how much time she had wasted in the past preparing for meetings when she could have invested her time into more important tasks or making her meetings truly engaging and enjoyable. Preparing for the three meetings only took Holly an hour and a half! All she had to do on the day of the meetings was plug her laptop into the projector in the conference room, bring in her planned snacks, and set out the meeting materials.
She also recognized that she made a good investment by purchasing the modules.
Holly recalls that “the discount was such a great perk, especially for a first-time buyer like myself. It made me feel like I was getting a lot of value for such a reasonable price point. If you choose to use GettaMeeting, definitely consider downloading a series rather than individual modules - you get a lot of bang for your buck.”
Facilitation
Since the three modules do not need to be used consecutively because they have an overarching theme yet no overlapping content, Holly chose the most pressing problems she was facing and facilitated meetings with the corresponding GettaMeeting modules.
To address the lack of ineffective communication between employees, Holly used the Power of Positive Influence: Recipe for Positive Influence module for her first team meeting. The meeting consisted of a video with breaks for activities followed by the enhancements Holly prepared. The video guided team members through how powerful our influence can be through authenticity, engagement, and inspiration. Employees learned how to make sincere connections with their team members and find value in shared goals. The video guides team members through how communication can be improved to make our work and personal lives particularly productive. From getting aligned with the team to having fun and taking pride in work, the video gave Holly’s employees many tactics to help improve their communication with one another.
Holly then utilized the Build Relationships: Breaking Bread module to tackle the inadequate information flow between shifts and departments and team members misunderstanding tasks, policies, and promotions. The meeting began with an engaging video that led the team through how they can better build connections and better understand their colleagues and, therefore, tasks, expectations, and rules. Through learning about the importance of community, team members discovered what makes them special members of the team, how they can work well with others, how they can create a cohort at work, and how each employee needs each other. These fundamentals helped employees discover where they are lacking in communication and why information has been falling through the cracks. They also were able to better understand their obligations and how to align with the company’s policies.
After this meeting, Holly noticed her employees were excited for the next module in the series. They were truly invested in their growth and seemed to regain their “spark” and passion for the business.
The third meeting Holly hosted was to address the difficulty she and her team experienced with efficiently managing and restocking merchandise. She used the last module of the Employee Empowerment Series, the Get Organized: Mise en Place module. This final meeting taught employees tools and tactics to get more organized at and outside of work. Using a fun culinary theme, the video discussed how important preparation is to our execution and how organization and routine can be genuinely fun. The video thoroughly explained actionable ways employees could realistically tackle organizational issues in their lives and how they can better optimize their processes. During the meeting, the GettaMeeting module gave the team opportunities to brainstorm and share exactly how they can use their new knowledge to solve merchandise issues. By the end of the video, the team had already put a plan into action.
The Results
After the three meeting modules were utilized, Holly noticed the issues had subsided as she encouraged her team to remember and use the tools GettaMeeting provided to work through the communication issues.
Holly’s employees no longer came to her for information that originated from another employee - the team felt empowered to reach out to each other for clarification, help, support, and even advice. Because of this newfound sense of community in the team, Holly recognized much fewer misunderstandings and better information flow between shifts and departments.
“I saw an immediate shift in the team. GettaMeeting jumpstarted them - they began communicating more effectively, letting less fall through the cracks, and even putting better systems in place so the business could run more smoothly. Having a change of pace and participating in meetings that are fun and engaging made all the difference for my team.”
Holly asked for feedback from the team to workshop the solution to inefficiencies with merchandising. She empowered a few team members to take on more substantial roles to help optimize the restocking of merchandise.
Through this process, Holly was able to put more trust in her team and see her business bloom. Revenue grew, customers kept coming back, and every department ran smoother than ever.
Holly's excited about the future as she grows her business and team. She's looking forward to meetings now as she “can’t wait to continue utilizing GettaMeeting’s modules. Next on [her] list is the Leadership Development series!”
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If you want to experience similar results as Holly and empower, build, and lead a productive team, discover GettaMeeting’s meeting modules here.