Creating a great employee experience that drives long term client relationships: the IQTalent Partners story.

HR | UNITED STATES | 300+ USERS

Founded in 2009, IQTalent Partners is based in Nashville, TN, with more than 300 team members across the United States. It has a unique business model, researching, sourcing, and placing candidates based on an hourly billing process rather than a traditional contingency fee. This allows the company to spend the appropriate time to find the right skill sets – general roles fill quickly, hard-to-find candidates take longer to identify.

IQTalent Partners thrives on collaboration between remote teams – these teams come together to solve a particular client requirement, and then re–form in other configurations.

The Challenge

IQTalent Partners is a different kind of talent firm. It’s technology-driven, with many of its staff working away from its Nashville, TN headquarters, combining into cross-functional teams to fulfil client headcount and recruiting goals. The consultants work as an extension of the client’s in-house corporate team, serving as an on-demand talent acquisition partner. With its far-flung consultant base, communication and collaboration is essential to drive the business, maintain connections, and serve its clients.

The Solution

The company needed to replace its existing SharePoint and Yammer internal communications solution to get a single, simple-to-manage system that was as easy to publish as it was to use. The existing setup was complicated to manage as a content owner and limited engagement by separating corporate from cultural information. IQTalent Partners turned to LiveTiles Reach, a compelling and integrated employee communications solution that allows the company to connect, inform and engage with their people while enabling the creation of business and social interest groups among consultants no matter their role, device, or location.

The Result

An integrated, engaging, and dynamic internal communications platform that is used across the business, from the Nashville head office to remote consultants wherever they happen to work. Communications – both business and social – are now coordinated and streamlined so that there is a ‘single source of truth’ for everyone to turn to and engage with.

Previous image

Next image

Working with distributed teams

“We believe in the benefit of being together,” says Judson Lancina, Product Lead, and one of the first employees at IQTalent Partners, “But we also know the strength of being distributed.” It’s a philosophy that has been at the core of IQTalent Partners since it was founded in 2009. This thinking has driven the growth of 45% in annual CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) and the expansion to over 300 employees.

The work environment is flexible for most employees, although, as Director of Marketing Stacie Kinder says, “from a company cultural standpoint we encourage our new hires to begin their career with us at our head office.” This emphasis on culture, collaboration, and flexibility drove IQTalent Partners to consider LiveTiles to modernize their internal communications. The company used SharePoint and Yammer previously but was looking to create a more integrated and appealing platform that would encourage not just organic engagement but would enable richer communications between all teammates.

Judson added, “Having separate apps – one for business and one for communications – just didn’t work for us. Engagement levels were low and, frankly, the patchy user experience for our colleagues was not up to par with the consumer-focused apps we all use every day. LiveTiles is great for us because it’s one place employees can go to communicate, collaborate and get informed.”

“There’s a place for static communications,” added Stacie Kinder, “Company announcements, HR policies, marketing brand guidelines and implementations – these are all examples of information we want everyone to have. But what sets us apart is our fast, authentic, ‘always on’ collaborative mindset, and we wanted our internal comms platform to reflect that. LiveTiles Reach gives us that capability and really drives us to be creative with how we communicate with each other.”

Interest groups to encourage employee comms

Interest groups use the Reach platform to communicate with each other and promote their work to the wider organization. These groups engage in topics such as diversity and inclusion, volunteering and company events, driven by remote and head office teammates.

IQTalent Partners also has its own version of ‘Lifelong Learning’, making sure all of its employees are continually current with the latest technology and best practices. Judson, who describes himself as “a mentor (and Swiss Army knife) for associates in our Nashville office, focusing on employee success and knowledge sharing across the firm,” has developed a strategic training program for new hires. During the four-week intensive new–hire training initiative, they learn and train together, bringing that collaborative approach right from the start of their careers. All of the training and associated materials are stored and available 24/7 through Reach.

The program continues as their career advances through the company. “We are deliberate about training and developing generalists,” he adds, “who can take skills and aptitudes to pretty much any client situation.”

Holly Parsons, associate product manager at the company, who was responsible for building the site structure, creating and migrating content, and driving further engagement, has been pleased with the way her colleagues have taken to the Reach platform, both as content owners and consumers. Also, slick design, customized to the IQTalent Partners brand, has helped ease of use and user adoption. “Unlike many companies, we don’t have a ‘head office and everybody else’ culture, so that’s not a problem we’re trying to solve with internal communications. LiveTiles Reach is for everyone.”

“Just because you’re in the head office doesn’t mean you have access to more knowledge,” adds Parsons. “With interest groups and frequent news pieces, Reach encourages that fluidity between all 300-plus of us. Reach also provides a ‘single up to date source of truth’ for all of us at the company – this is especially valuable in these times, as we’ve continued to hire new people, many of whom have never met another employee in person. It gives them a sense of the pulse of the company.”

Whether an IQTalent Partners employee is at their kitchen table or at headquarters, LiveTiles is there, providing news and community connections while empowering each employee with the information they need to serve their clients better.