Beacon Communities

The Challenges
Beacon Communities is a privately owned real estate firm that develops, acquires, invests in, and manages a wide range of multi-family housing: ranging from new construction, to historic adaptive reuse, to the renovation of existing housing. Beacon is known for making challenging developments succeed through close collaboration among all its skilled professionals.

Which itself has been a challenge as the company has expanded exponentially. The Beacon workforce now numbers nearly one thousand employees nationwide, and is incredibly diverse — ranging from helpers and aides to senior vice presidents – all at scattered sites. It was time to address:

• The need for a formal, online training program to meet new skill requirements
• A slow-moving, paper-based performance process that limited fast, agile employee actions
• A disconnected, paper-based employee experience

The Results
Beacon turned to SilkRoad for three products that tied together learning, development and talent management into a solution that created a completely new employee experience.

• Deliver individualized learning content for each employee using a blended curriculum. Complete automation of managing, scheduling and tracking through SilkRoad Learning.
• Provide a central, personalized spot for employees to access all their HR and development information using SilkRoad Talent Center
• Facilitate frequent check-ins, feedback and quick adjustments to goals with SilkRoad Agile Performance

Their Story

Beacon turned to agile, easy-to-use technology to bring each employee a personal, meaningful experience.

“We used to have new managers starting who didn’t have someone easily available to show them where to go. Now someone new coming in can have complete understanding on day one.”

Continuous Learning Environment
Transformed a manual, paper-intensive into an engaging program where employees grow skills whenever and however they want. Less paperwork. Blended learning with courses delivered on-demand, in-office and mobile.

Centralized HR Experience
Offers an HR portal that can be customized with apps for specific employee needs. Access through Office 365, using systems where employees already work.

Frequent Discussions
Moves to 12 touchpoints a year using app-based technology. Empowers employees to initiate discussions. Facilitates immediate peer-to-peer feedback and frequent employee/manager conversations.

Engaged Culture
Everyone feels more connected, whether based in the office or remote. Everyone from new hires through long-timers receives ongoing coaching, customized content and empowering tools that reflect organizational values.

Lower Costs
By enabling the right learning modality for each particular skill, and putting employees in command of the process, SilkRoad eliminates hours of unnecessary confusion and repetition.

Favorite Discovery

“SilkRoad’s Talent Center take it up so many notches. It’s an amazing product that ties it all together. We even created our own heath and wellness app to connect our people just a little bit more.”