Ramona Strategies
Our Services
Ramona Strategies offers a range of non-legal services which help employers build stronger, safer, and ultimately more productive workplaces. The specific services that Ramona Strategies can provide to each employer will depend on a consultation, after which a tailored written proposal is provided. If there are particular issues or concerns not addressed here, please inquire directly as some components of our services may not be itemized below.
Trainings & Workshops
Ramona Strategies works with whole organizations, departments, or discrete teams to provide a range of personalized trainings, workshops, or facilitated round-tables and meetings. Our offerings in this area include sessions on:
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Preventing and Addressing Inappropriate Workplace Behaviors
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Nurturing Collaborative Team Dynamics
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Cultivating Diverse Leadership Structures
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Articulating & Implementing Organizational Values
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Managing Across Difference
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Hiring Robust and Effective Teams
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Understanding a Board's Obligations on Culture and Personnel Practices
We also can work with Leadership to help facilitate discussions or provide trainings around difficult topics such as specific cross-cultural communication and collaboration hurdles, organizational failings, short- and long-term planning, Board relationships, or Leadership succession-planning.
Culture Assesments
& Interventions
Smart employers are proactive about assessing and monitoring the range of factors that can drive employees’ morale and performance. Ramona Strategies offers options to help employers understand the nature, scope, and source(s) of any employee morale or satisfaction issues. In addition, Ramona Strategies can act as an intermediary between Leadership and staff to provide confidential avenues for staff to voice concerns and to provide recommendations and support to Leadership in implementing reforms or adjustments to address those concerns. Work in this area includes building out mechanisms for staff to be engaged in decision-making and for outcome-related sponsorship programs.
Corrective Coaching
Depending on an organization’s size, the sensitivity of the issue, and the relative seniority of the individual in question, it can sometimes be easier for an organization to utilize outside help in managing a performance issue, negotiating a frustrating relationship between individuals, or in providing coaching to an errant employee. Ramona Strategies can provide behind-the-scenes support to Leadership or we can take a lead role in handling delicate performance management challenges directly.
Policy Review
& Development
It is essential that an organization’s written policies and rules are aligned with the culture, norms and business realities of the organization. How those policies are communicated, monitored, and enforced dictates the day-to-day experiences of employees.
Ramona Strategies works with Leadership in assessing and updating the written policies and practices regarding hiring, performance management, development and promotion, compensation, and HR investigation and interventions. We also provide coaching and ongoing support to management and leadership teams to make certain that implementation of these policies mirrors the expectations and hopes that went into their formulation.
Executive Support
Even the most adept Leader needs assistance from time to time. Ramona Strategies can counsel Executives through particular situations, act as a second pair of hands/ears/eyes when assessing organizational challenges, and even help generate solutions and materials. Assistance plus discretion ensures both the individual and the organization get the best and most effective contributions during trying times.
Internal
Investigation
Supports
Ramona Strategies supports individuals tasked with responding to culture concerns, employee relations issues, and/or complaints. We help revise internal protocols; develop template materials and tracking systems; and train staff working for HR, GC, people/culture, and/or operations teams. We also offer periodic courses for certification of internal investigators on better, more holistic approaches to investigations and more people-centered interview strategies.
Reconciliations
& Restorative
Accountability
Processes
Organizations in the process of culture change sometimes realize they want or need to provide an avenue for taking account of the scope and scale of past or ongoing harm, for providing a safe space for employees to share the breadth of their experiences and perspectives, and for the organization to assume responsibility for organizational missteps, mistakes, or failures. Built on the principle that healing requires an understanding and reckoning with the past, these processes focus on what changes the organization needs to make in order to provide safer, more supportive, and more inclusive workplaces. We seek to facilitate the urgency necessary for cultural transformation by combining a holistic approach to investigations with our expertise on change management, the complex interplay between power and privilege, and trauma-informed best practices.
Strategic Planning
Strategic planning -- whether happening on a regular schedule, for the first time, or to respond to unexpected challenges or changes -- often benefits from the assistance of someone not embedded in the day-to-day operations. Ramona Strategies believes that the best strategic plans are ones that are ambitious but realistic, outcome-oriented, and measurable or observable. We offer services at a range of levels, from taking the leading hand in facilitating and drafting, to simply serving as a smart voice in the room when facilitating Board or staff interactions around strategic planning.
Board Services
Whether it is help with Board recruitment and diversification; basic bylaw revisions; or the creation of appropriate HR or personnel subcommittees, Board onboarding or assessment mechanisms, Ramona Strategies can help. In addition, we offer trainings and facilitated workshops for Boards around the obligations and opportunities that exist for Boards around diversity, equity, and inclusion and ways to strengthen the culture of their own Board and the organizations they serve.