Adapting to change: Alpha Serve’s online approach to language learning

“At eTalk, we find great joy in discussing our clients and celebrating their stories and accomplishments. Their dedication and success often serve as inspiration for our team. Today, we’d like to spotlight an incredible client who has truly impressed us with their achievements.”

 

Alpha Serve – the market leader in software development

Alpha Serve has been an active market player for 15 years, and their professional team develops software for companies from all over the world. The portfolio includes more than 30 products – B2B applications. The key vector is BI connectors, which enable easy and reliable data export to Microsoft Power BI from Jira, ServiceNow, Zendesk, Shopify and other reporting and business analytics platforms. Today Alpha Serve is a Platinum Partner of Atlassian, Technology Partner of ServiceNow and Zendesk.

Changes in company organization and employee training

Several years ago, before the Covid-19 epidemic, employees had a positive experience learning English offline. At that time the main office of the company was located in Nikolaev (Ukraine), but the classes were suspended due to quarantine restrictions.

Since then, many changes have taken place. First, the Alpha Serve team significantly increased and expanded geographically: specialists from other cities and even countries joined them. Secondly, because of the war in Ukraine and active military operations, including in the south of the country, the company’s office in Nikolaev had to close, and part of the staff left the country in the long run. Therefore, communication with the full team, as well as learning English became possible exclusively online.

 

The choice of the language school eTalk and the start of the learning process

Fortunately, the company management was not confused, as they already had a “covid” experience of building an effective work process in a remote format. In order to strengthen the English level of their employees they turned to the language school eTalk, having received the most positive recommendations about its work from their partner-counterparty PRNEWS.IO.

 

Employee motivation and payment format for education

Just from the beginning of 2022, as an added bonus for employees, English language training with top eTalk teachers was launched. The training costs were fully covered by the company, and an important factor was that the classes were held during working hours, which were also paid for. This allowed the team members to keep the focus on language skills development and avoid the negative experience that many companies have with corporate training.

Given this kind of experience, Alpha Serve initially came up with the idea: to keep employees motivated, they should pay for half of the classes out of their own pockets. The other half of the training cost would be paid by the company. The calculation was not to save money, but to discipline people.

In fact, it turned out that during the first months they did not deduct the cost of training from the employees’ salaries: and yet everyone was learning, everyone joined eTalk lessons in a disciplined manner. So the company’s management decided that they would pay in full for additional English training for those who were ready for it.

 

Advantages of collaborating with eTalk language school

The absolute advantages of the format of cooperation with eTalk language school for Alpha Serve are flexibility in the choice of the teacher, the ability to learn the language directly with a native speaker, the adaptability of the schedule and personalization of the course. In terms of personalization, it was important to the company team that each employee be able to focus on the essentials: grammar, vocabulary, speaking skills, more homework, etc.

Staff results will be measured at the beginning of next year. But we can already say that team members who are systematically engaged will advance to the next level or improve scores within the current level.