It started around a dining room table. Three people, a dictionary, a thesaurus, and four other assessments. The trio wanted to make sure their instrument was different.
And as a member of Omnia’s current team, I’m grateful they did. Without that first idea, that first meeting of the minds to make something unique, I wouldn’t be writing this blog today where Heather Caswell, Omnia co-founder and CEO, shares how she and John Caswell started The Omnia Group.
While we were refining our assessment algorithms and creating our business plan, John and I flew to Tampa, Florida to see if it really was the future megatrend city and the perfect home for our startup. We discussed on the flight down how we would not make any rash decisions, such as buying a house… and wouldn’t you know we were signing a contract on the return flight back to Hartford!
A Macintosh 128 was purchased, along with a stack of floppy discs, which many readers may not have heard of, but it was the height of Apple technology at the time and capable of giving us the horizontal graphs we needed.
During that first year, we validated the assessment and would ask anyone who came within six feet of us to fill one out. We would also ask clients to critique the results of their employees, sending the critiques directly to the independent organization running the validation… through snail mail! Remember, it was 1985. We revalidated the assessment in 2000 and are undergoing a new study now. Thankfully, technology is making the process much more efficient.
Of course, any great organization has great people, and we were building our team from the ground up. Towards the end of 1985, we hired our first three employees, all salespeople. It was time to spread the word. One was with us for many years and found our first partner. We have a thriving partner network today. Another ended up as one of our first analysts and a client favorite. She provided verbal consults followed by a written report. With this one great hire, we were on the road to building the exceptional analysis and service process we have today.
When we began, the Omnia Profile was printed (and yes, mailed) in batches to each client and then completed by the candidate or employee in the client’s office, using pen or pencil, and then posted back to us. The trip to the post office was an important part of each day. One of our very first clients encouraged us to embrace the fax which revolutionized our time frames. We went from a bank of fax machines to being fully online once the internet became a tool that was revolutionizing business.
As part of this evolution, the Omnia software has been revised several times. Of course, none of this could have happened without the team we built over time, from salespeople and analysts to a customer success team, an IT department, and strong leaders. To this day, our client platform is tinkered with on a continual basis, incorporating suggestions from both clients and our employees.
In the early ‘90s, we started a few remote offices in Boca Raton, Atlanta, and Boston. However, it became obvious that they would need a great deal more support and oversight than we had the ability to give at that stage. Instead, we increased our Sales and Customer Success teams significantly and bought a building. Being more risk-averse than John (shout out to the Omnia Assessment), this gave me sleepless nights, but in the end, it was one of the best decisions we made, and we occupied Omnia’s worldwide headquarters for over 20 years. Currently, like many organizations, we are moving to a fully remote workforce.
Over our 37-year history, we have worked with thousands of clients and their employees. We are proud of how much we have helped create productive, engaged teams. For us, providing great customer service to cultivate strong partnerships with our clients is our guiding principle.
And that brings us back to people, as it always does. We have had many wonderful employees over the years. It’s a personal source of pride that Omnia has touched the lives of so many individuals and their families. And it is a joy to see employees grow both personally and professionally. We have had employees retire naturally; others are still with us after 25+ years. And we are continually adding new talent to our team as we grow. Of course, we have also, sadly, lost some employees, John being among them in 2008.
Every employee, past and present, is important to me and to Omnia. As leaders, it is our responsibility to make sure that their days are a source of pride and happiness to them. I thank each one of them, past and present, for helping make Omnia the organization it is today. My personal mission is to make all of them proud of their past and future contributions. End quote.
Omnia is on the path forward. Like all businesses today, we are navigating some significant global changes. Technology, the pandemic, the shift to remote work, all are new challenges that we will conquer thanks to our current and future team members, as well as our clients who show every day their own commitment to their workforce.
What began around a dining room table has led to a winning team of people on a mission to help other organizations build their own winning teams. That’s the power of people.
