Emmy Thomas, VP of Brand and Marketing for Logical Position, talks about her career with LP and how the company has tackled challenges brought on by the pandemic and an ever-increasing remote workforce. Learn how to engage employees, ramp up clear communication, and lead effectively, whether your team is in-office, hybrid, or remote.
GUEST AT A GLANCE
Emmy Thomas worked her way from an entry-level sales job at Logical Position to their VP of Brand and Marketing. With experience in sales, recruiting, HR, and new hire onboarding, Emmy is uniquely qualified to lead and inspire others in virtually any area of the business.
A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST
🔊 Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, sponsored by Xenium HR
🎙️ Host: Brandon Laws
📋 In his own words: “The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders.”
A GROWING COMPANY, A GROWING CAREER
Emmy Thomas has been with Logical Position for just over six years, working in everything from an entry-level sales position to recruiting manager. Between 2016 and today, the company has gone from just 120 employees to an astounding 900. While in her recruiting role, Emmy and a colleague worked on new hire orientation and training.
“I was invested in the operational side of the company, learning even the HR side of it,” Emmy explained, “and it trickled nicely into the culture of our organization.” She started working hand-in-hand with Logical Position’s Culture Team, which paved the way for a seamless transition into Employee Experience.
With such versatile experience at LP, Emmy was able to take on an executive position, VP of Brand and Marketing, and is an excellent source of insight into what makes employees stay.
PODCAST EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
Curating Employee Experience
“Employee experience, as a whole, is exactly what it sounds like. We are in charge of creating and making sure that the culture within the office and the culture throughout […] is everything that it can be. I say that the mission of our department is making employees proud of where they work.”
Pre-Pandemic Culture
“Before the pandemic, we had six different offices throughout the country. […]
I was fortunate to travel to all of our offices, doing different new hire orientations and checking in on culture in each of the different places. And there’s just a very strong energy, especially on the sales floor. The sales floor, in my opinion, is the most fun place to be — you can never beat the energy of a salesforce. So the sales managers definitely know how to get their teams going. I always loved when I would visit the other offices — I would purposely sit out on the sales floor and do my work from there because it’s the hot spot for good energy.”
Plugging the Holes
“And I think what is important during the pandemic is to realize that there’s going to be some holes created with this new remote work environment. [..] At that point in time, we needed to rethink communication, right? When you just walk past somebody and have a quick impromptu meeting, those sorts of things aren’t happening the same anymore. So how do we keep people engaged if we no longer, as silly as that sounds, have things like catered lunches in the office or office parties and happy hours?”
Taking the Good with the Bad
“But some really positive things have come out of the remote work environment — it has really leveled the playing field of the employee experience across the board.
Because before, it almost felt like these different offices might be a little bit segregated from each other. You know, the experience at one office might’ve felt different than the experience at another office. And so now when we have company communication — it’s the entire company all at the same time receiving the same information. The past few years have really allowed us to streamline that.”
Onboarding From Afar
“There’s a lot to be said about the dynamic and content that you’re including in the new hire orientation presentation — not just talking at employees through a screen all day, but having engaging segments, having video segments, having separate lessons that they can then go do afterwards. We try to pull people through an experience where we switch it up throughout their onboarding. It’s not just, ‘Hey, listen to me,’ and we give you the information for an entire eight-hour day, because of course, that’s hard in person, and it’s even harder through a virtual screen.”
Elevating From Within
“It’s in the DNA of LP where we, 9 times out of 10, promote from within because all of our strategies, especially on the product side or the sales side, are proprietary to LP and how we manage accounts. So people have to grow with the company to get to those different management level positions or senior positions on their team. We are very much all about growing from within and promoting from within, in terms of continued education.”
An Open Conversation
“Our leadership team truly has open ears for feedback from all levels of the company, and we do a lot of employee surveying. We really, truly want to have a pulse on how employees are feeling, areas that we could improve on, and areas that we could expand on. […] It’s about listening to the people and using all levels of employees at the company as a resource, because there’s so much talent, right? I think our leadership team does a great job of trying to pull from the ideas that are happening everywhere, not just from the executives.”
LEARN MORE
If you’re a business owner looking for help with digital marketing, check out www.logicalposition.com and connect with the right person for your needs.