Customer Story
Centralizing Documentation To Keep Growing Teams Accountable
December 23, 2020
The Spiggle Law Firm is an employment law firm that focuses on protecting employees from wrongful employment practices. And they solely represent plaintiffs who've been fired, discriminated against, or paid unfairly by employers.
When Angela Miller, the Office Manager at The Spiggle Law Firm, joined the firm 2 years ago, she worked on a team of 5 people. Today, her team has 20 people on it.
The fast growth was great for business. But without a centralized place for training and process documentation, it was affecting the firm’s ability to efficiently onboard new employees and hold them accountable.
“When we were a team of 5 people, we all knew we were doing the right thing. But as we got bigger and we brought on more people, we realized we couldn’t just trust that [the new hires] were doing their job correctly,” Angela shared.
Haphazard onboarding and no accountability
The firm started to document their onboarding and role responsibilities as a result. But Angela says it was all over the place.
“Some of it was in writing, and some of it was on Google Drive,” she explained. “But nobody really knew where anything was, so we couldn’t access it.”
The disjointed documentation caused big problems down the road. Without access to shared knowledge, new hires were making mistakes and ultimately causing clients to complain about the quality of work they received.
That’s when the firm realized their approach wasn’t working. They needed a way to standardize their onboarding process. And they needed to set up periodic check-ins to ensure new employees were doing the right thing.
And Angela bet if they could prevent mistakes from Day 1, then they could better serve clients without slowing their rapid growth. (Spoiler: She was right!)
Discovering Trainual by word of mouth
Angela says her boss was the first to learn about Trainual in a Facebook group that supports small law firms. Several people in the group were all using the training software. And they were all raving about the results.
So Angela’s boss sent her the Trainual website and asked her to look into it. And she quickly got everyone on board.
The Spiggle Law Firm started building its new onboarding program with Trainual. And it was Angela’s job to get it off the ground.
Building the foundation for future growth
When Angela started building their Trainual, she said it was easy to migrate the firm's existing documentation.
And with everything organized in one place, she could easily see what processes and procedures were missing. Office WIFI passwords, bathroom locations, and other general information new hires needed to know included.
But most of her focus went toward making sure individuals were positioned for success from Day 1.
The Spiggle Law Firm didn't have a scalable way to set expectations. So Angela created comprehensive descriptions for each role's responsibilities. Complete with the processes and procedures someone in that role would need to be successful.
And in the process, she built a 90-day check-in program to help managers make sure their teams were aligned and accountable.
Within 2 weeks, Angela had laid the foundation for her firm’s onboarding. And she was ready to roll it out to her team.
An unexpected pivot to remote onboarding
When the pandemic hit, the law firm transitioned to remote work. But the team was still growing fast. And soon, they found themselves hiring new team members for their intake team.
Admittedly, Angela was nervous about the idea of remote onboarding. “I've never had to teach someone how to be an Intake Specialist without being with them in person.”
But thanks to the solid foundation she built in Trainual, remote onboarding was as easy as the firm's new in-person onboarding.
Plus, the content builder made it easy to repurpose the existing content. By cloning what she had, she could adjust the information for a remote work environment - without losing anything that was in-office specific.
Then, all Angela had to do was assign it out, and Trainual took care of the rest! She explained that the best part was it didn't matter where her new team members had set up shop (in this case, it was another country). With Trainual, they were quickly contributing to the firm.
Remote onboarding was impossible before Trainual. But since the pandemic hit, The Spiggle Law Firm has brought on 2 remote employees. And they’ve both been high performing since their first week.
Evolving Trainual for a growing firm
According to Angela, their Trainual account is complete. Meaning, all their current company knowledge is documented and assigned out to their team. But she also notes that it’s never really done.
Angela routinely goes in and adjusts the existing content. And she documents any new processes to reflect the company’s growth.
When something is updated in Trainual, the app automatically notifies everyone who’s assigned that content. This way, everyone is always up to date on the latest way to do things. And Angela doesn’t have to waste time communicating new procedures to individual team members.
Keeping employees accountable
Angela says Trainual’s accountability is what makes the tool invaluable for the law firm. From the Admin view, she can easily see who’s completed their training and who's lagging behind. And the app automatically follows-up with employees, reminding them to complete their training before it's due.
Before, there was no way to really know if a new employee had ever seen — let alone read — any of their onboarding materials. Now, there's no excuse because it’s all in one place and easy to access.
With Trainual, everyone knows which processes they’re responsible for and how to do them! And new employees have a better understanding of how things work at The Spiggle Law Firm. They make fewer mistakes and better serve their clients. And ultimately, the law firm is ready to support future growth or any other pivots that might come their way.