Results of the annual Star Tribune Top Workplaces survey award program were released on Sunday and Avionté is proud to announce that we’ve made the list again this year!

The Minnesota Star Tribune’s Top Workplaces award program, which is based on the belief that “the most successful companies are the ones that employees believe in”, began in 2006 and is determined by WorkplaceDynamics LLC, a survey company out of Exton, PA. The Top Workplaces program assembles the list of award recipients based on employee’s opinions of their employers, gathered through a WorkplaceDynamics survey, which is distributed company-wide to all employees of the companies that apply.

Survey creators have learned since beginning of the survey program that there are three things that drive the long term health of a company: a clear direction for the company’s future, a culture of high performance and a strong connection between employees and the company. Bottom line, inspiration trumps other factors such as career, pay and management.

CEO of WorkplaceDynamics Doug Claffey agrees.

“You cannot pay more money to get someone to remain engaged in a bad workplace,” Claffey said to the Star Tribune. “Fundamentally, most people are not going to get excited to make more money. They get excited about doing something meaningful with people they believe in and enjoy working with.”

Over 300 other Minnesota companies applied for this year’s Top Workplaces award. Congratulations to all of the other companies that made the list!

Avionté, a rapidly growing staffing technology firm, is seeking dynamic, high energy Account Managers with staffing industry backgrounds. Avionté’s Customer Care department provides exceptional relationship-based customer service and support of our proprietary software system to our nationwide client base.

Avionté is a firm believer that our most important asset is our customers and we are looking for dedicated staffing industry professionals that can relate to them with their everyday business needs.

Customer Care Department Responsibilities/Specializations:

The customer care team has many facets and variety allowing individual team members to focus in specific areas:

• Customer Care/Account Management: you will be in charge of managing customer relationships with our clients that utilize our proprietary software. From providing regular check-in calls to assisting with development requests or customizations, you will be their main point of contact.
• External & Internal Training: this position requires the aptitude to learn a comprehensive staffing software inside and out. This department provides training on work flow, processes, new functionality, etc. to internal employees as well as external customers. Training for external clients will require travel across the US and Canada, up to 25%.
• QA: as we are constantly developing and improving the software, new functionality is always being added or changed. This position will assist in supporting QA initiatives.
• Documentation: Updating and maintaining documentation for the software.
• 3rd Party Integrations: We integrate and partner with many other staffing industry vendors, this position will be responsible for consulting on and identifying integrations to bring further efficiencies to our clients.

Skills/Qualifications:

• Staffing Industry experience, min 2+ years (this is a mandatory requirement for the position)
• Extremely detailed oriented and very organized
• Great multi-tasking and follow-up
• Ability to work and thrive in a fast paced environment
• Bring an enthusiastic energy, drive to create lasting relationships with clients
• Technical aptitude and motivation to learn a comprehensive software program
• Bachelor’s degree
• Previous account management experience a bonus but not required
• Excellent customer service skills, written and verbal communication skills

Perks:

• Work for a high growth, energetic organization
• Competitive benefits including retirement plan, company paid health insurance and profit sharing
• Work with others that share your drive and commitment for excellence
• A career with extreme advancement opportunities that will take you as far as you want to go!

Avionté is based in Eagan, Minnesota. While there are other offices nationwide, the candidate must work from the Eagan, MN office. This position is not ideal for timid, measured, slow thinking, coasting individuals. This position is hard, fast and intense but also very rewarding.

Apply now

Just one week from today, Avionte will be out at Oak Marsh for the 2013 Golf Classic event, put on by the Minnesota Recruiting and Staffing Association (MNRSA). Avionté is excited to be a part of the event again this year! Last year we had a ton of fun sponsoring a hole and interracting with all of the golfers that came by.

Here are some fun photos from last year’s event:

We had some fun challenges set up at our hole!

We wanted to add some unique activities to the course!

We had a lot of fun sponsoring the event last year.

We even broke the tee!

Looking forward to seeing friends again this year!

We will be sponsoring a hole again this year and we hope to run into you on the green!!

Jenna Campbell

Earlier this week, a tornado struck Oklahoma City and its surrounding suburbs. The tornado killed 24 people and is now being referred to as one of the most devastating tornados in U.S. history. While residents were warned that a tornado was on its way, it was just hours before it hit that metiorologists were able to predict just how detrimental the tornados could potentially be.

These types of natural disasters remind us of how important it is to be adequately prepared for what could go wrong, in all scenarios – so that we are able to recover in quicker and more effective ways. As a society, we still can’t see all that’s coming, but I argue that we are far more prepared today for what’s to come than we were yesterday. And we’ve definitely come a long way.

Although they are rare, disasters can occur throughout all industries, including the software industry. This is why it is important that all software companies work continuously to ensure that they are not only providing a disaster-free product, but are also prepared to react to whatever could occur.

At Avionté, development initiatives and various testing scenarios are a significant part of the daily responsibilities of many of our employees. We work hard to ensure that a software disaster scenario will never occur with our product. We have a great team of developers and support specialists here that are dedicated to our product and to our customers. Our development team is continuously churning out new releases and our support team is available to our customers around-the-clock, to work through any support issues they may be experiencing.

Keeping our staffing and recruiting customers satisfied with our product has always been Avionté’s main goal.  We work hard every day to ensure that our software not only meets customer expectations, but far exceeds them. Afterall, our clients are what make what we do everyday valuable and worthwhile. And although no company or product is perfect, we know we’ve got something special here.

Customer Care Rep Rod Barsness posing with employees from Employee Solutions.

Avionte employees pose with clients at 2012′s Client Connection Forum.

We love our employees and customers! Posing here at Client Connection, 2012.

The Sales side of the office has been quite quiet these past couple of weeks! May has been a fun and busy month for our team; many of our employees have been out of the office for conferences and tradeshows. Here’s a recap of where Avionté has been recently:

After returning from Chicago, where our VP of Sales Mike Scoville attended the Midwest Staffing Conference on May 1^st, Mike flew out with our Chief Software Architect Samar Basnet to May’s two-day ASG event. The conference was held in Chicago from May 8^th to May 10^th. Samar started Wednesday’s series of presentations off with his presentation on Affordable Care Act tracking and Avionté Best Practices. On May 14^th, Mike was out of the office again, networking at the NYSA’s Super Seminar Day event.

The ASG conference featured a series of presentations regarding technology & The Affordable Care Act.

Last week, our CEO John Long and Director of Operations Laura Schmitz attended the Staffing Law Conference in Chicago, which was put on by ASA and took place from May 8^th to May 9^th. Laura said it was an informative event that provided some fresh news. To learn about Avionté’s progress in adapting our software to the ACA, email aca@avionte.com.

Our VP of Sales Jason Ortner and Director of Staffing Technology Angela Pitts have spent most of the week in Toronto at the World Employment Conference, hosted by the Association of Canadian Search Employment and Staffing Services. Jason flew out earlier this morning to join Brenda Long, our Director of Marketing, and our Customer Care Rep Sarah Freitag at the California Staffing Professionals Conference. Angela’s packing up the booth and heading home later tonight. We hope you came by to say hi if you were also there!

Avionte, all set for the World Employment Conference in Toronto.

Customer Care Rep Sarah Freitag, at the CSP Conference.

As you can tell, our sales team has been busy! We’ve enjoyed being able to be a part of so many of these events and networking with old and new friends.

Have you missed one of the past Tips of the Week?  Here are some of my favorites that our users have found to be helpful.

Counters are Cool

Who Changed That?

Match ‘em Up Automatch

Paycheck Voids/Reversals

Save Time – Shortcuts

Generating Resumes

Do You Document?

Forgotten Timecards

I’ve Got Skills

Sometimes Basic is Best

Search Options

Too Many Tabs

Favorites v2010

Keeping Track of Candidates

Start Sheets

Do You Inspect?

Ending Assignments

Tracking Sources

Quarter End Reports

Look What I Can See

My Favorite Child

Assignment Changes

Data Requirement Message

Mass Resume Parser

QuickPlace

Mass Mail

More Than a Message

Mass Mail

New Back Office Features

Search Options in Advanced Search

New Back Office Features

Adding Transactions to Orders

Agency

New Resume Parser Feature

Web Time Entry

Employer Health Reporting

Contacts

User Security

Data Requirement Message

Using Quick Place to Track Orders

I Love Skill Marketing

User Security

Contacts

Back Office Corrections

A Little “Extra” Tracking

Advance Search

Favorites and Mass Mail

Text Messaging

Users

Easy Labels

Candidate vs. Candidates

Counters are Cool Part 2

Do You See What I See?

Two AQ’s for You

Clean Up Time

Do More in Less Time

 EEO/Affirmative Action

Why Worksite?

A Few of My Favorites

Filling an Assignment 101

Do you have an idea for the Tip of the Week?  Send me an email.

By: Tyler Long, Technical Support Specialist

I was chosen, along with three other people from the support department, to go along to the Children’s Hospital of Minnesota and to present them with a check from the Avionté Hope Foundation, which will go towards the Clinics’ Child Life fund.

This money was raised by Avionté through our monthly fundraising event in the office. Our support department won the challenge and was given the opportunity to choose where the money went to, along with who would go to the hospital to present the check.

After some deliberation, we decided that giving the money to the Clinics’ Child Life fund would make the most impact on a person’s life. We knew the money we were giving to them would go towards buying real things and would make the children happy.

Once we decided on the location, Children’s invited four support reps to take a tour of the Minneapolis location and to present the check. The tour was great! The four of us took a complete tour of the Children’s Hospital and got to see all of the amazing things Children’s has implemented solely to make a sick child feel as safe and at home as they can. One of my favorite parts was a musical device in the hallways that changed when you waved your hand over it.

Avionte employees, from left to right: Tony Yang, Mitch Hamann, Chad Roesler and Tyler Long.

After taking the tour, the four of us agreed that the decision to give the money to Children’s was the right one. We all felt good that a sick child will be able to get some enjoyment out of a scary situation because of us.

We consider ourselves lucky, here at the Avionté office in Eagan, Minn. Why? Because in addition to our team of employees in the U.S., we have a brilliant and talented team that works with us out of Kathmandu, Nepal, who bring a wide range of experience to our growing company. With these additional team members in Nepal, Avionté employees are working litterally around the clock; While we’re fast asleep here in the U.S., this dedicated team is hard at work in Nepal.

And while there are many opportunities throughout the year for our customers and team members in the U.S. to interact (whether it’s at conferences and trade show events, during on-site visits, or at our annual Client Connection Forum) – our employees in Nepal work behind the scenes to ensure a quality product, and rarely interract with our customers. So, we’ve decided to choose one Nepal team member each month, to be our honorary “Nepal Team Employee of the Month”, so that you can get to know the great team members that support our team here in the U.S. But before we choose our first Nepal team member, we’d like to provide a brief introduction to the team overall – to how the team is structured and how they operate on a day-to-day basis.

Our Nepal team is made up of four departments: operations, development, implementation and technical services. The Operations team assists with upgrades and web portal setup, while the Nepal development team assists our U.S. development team with projects and support tickets. The implementation team in Nepal further supports our U.S. implementation support team with conversion and import/export feeds, while the Nepal support team helps out with Edocs, support issues and managing reports.

Introducing the Managers:

  Gaurav Basnyat has been with Avionté for six months and said his main responsibilities at Avionté are monitoring operations and HR issues at the Nepal office, along with managing the upgrade process and scheduling. Outside of the office he’s big into music; he enjoys playing it, going to shows and listening to music. He also enjoys reading in his spare time.

  Santosh Newa helps the Development team prioritize incoming tickets and increase productivity as the Sr. Application Developer. He’s been with Avionté for about six years and said he loves the friendly work environment and internal motivation that the partners continually provide. Outside of work, Santosh loves to travel, listen to music, play video games and watch movies.

Sanjib Pokharel, our implementation team manager, has been with Avionté for six years and leads the implementation team as the Sr. Implementation Analyst. Outside of the office, Sanjib loves exploring the interesting things about Kathmandu, a city that he describes as “rich in culture”. He’s also very active and enjoys football, cycling, swimming and beach volleyball.

Tinu Manandhar manages our technical services team. Tinu has been on the Avionté team for 2 1/2 years and spends her time helping manage reports, Edocs and keeping the Support team on track. She says her favorite thing about working at Avionté is the team-based environment, where everyone treats one another equally. Outside of work, Tinu enjoys watching movies, listening to music and being with friends and family.

 _

Stay tuned for the announcement of our first “Nepal Team Employee of the Month” blog post in May!

Last week, our Project Manager Jenna LaGesse was on site with our client, LeadingEdge Personnel, and was told some startling news. Jenna found out one of our client’s temporary employees’ family home (which also served as their family business) burned down from a fire that broke out after the house was struck by lightning.

“They lost everything,” Vice President of LeadingEdge Personnel Patty Yarbrough said.

But there is more to the story. The fire came just three weeks after the employee had lost her Mother to a battle with breast cancer. Furthermore, the employee was 32 weeks pregnant when the fire broke out.

Needless to say, the fire came at a less than ideal time.

Patty said they decided to give the employee a $500 check, which they hoped would help her Dad and brother buy what they needed to get by. Our Project Manager Jenna was moved by this story, and reached out to us at the office to tell us what had happened. After hearing the story, Avionté (through the Avionté Hope Foundation) decided to match the $500 donation.

The employee was in tears when the folks at LeadingEdge Personnel presented her with the checks. Unfortunately, what is left of the employee’s home will need to be demolished, but we hope our donations will lead to a faster bounce back for the employee.

Some members of the LeadingEdge team, prior to going live with Avionte.

On Tuesday, many Avionté employees attended an informative session, organized to provide attendees with insight on how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) could affect staffing firms and customers. The event was put on by the Minnesota Recruiting and Staffing Association (MNRSA) and was held at the Ridgedale Library Community Room in Minnetonka, Minnesota.

The presenter at the event was John Rutledge, Vice President of Assurance Agency Ltd., who works as a Senior Benefits Consultant and Broker with the firm’s Staffing Practice and is widely recognized as an expert on the Affordable Care Act, and on how it could impact staffing agencies.

“It’s a new world with the Affordable Care Act,” Rutledge said as he began his presentation. “And I’m going to ask you to view it pragmatically … But I think you’ll walk away from this meeting, saying, ‘there may be some hope after all.’”

Vice President at Assurance Agency John Rutledge speaks at MNRSA event.

Approximately 80 staffing and recruiting professionals attended the event and reactions to the presentation were widely positive. Employees from our sales and development departments attended the session, along with our Vice President of Operations Laura Schmitz, who presented a webinar on the topic last Thursday called “Affordable Care Act: Using Technology to Take Out the Guesswork”. If you’re interested in viewing this webinar, or in learning more information about how Avionté is preparing for the transition, email us at aca@avionte.com.

We are happy to have had the opportunity to attend the presentation and although we don’t have all of the answers, here at Avionté, we’re continually seeking opportunities to learn as much as we can about the ACA and how it will affect the staffing and recruiting industries, so that we can provide the best software product to our customers, throughout this transition.