Resourcing is a big challenge and a major source of frustration for small enterprises like Empire Code. It is especially so when we are operating in a niche market such as Computer Science education.
When my co-founder Jasmine and I started Empire Code, our primary aim was (and still is) to make Computer Science education affordable and accessible to all. We are able to provide quality and highly engaging education for our students, whilst ensuring class fees are 30-40% lower than the existing coding schools. To operate sustainably in Singapore – a high-rent and high-wage country, we were required to run a rather lean operation.
In Singapore, I have a strong core team of 4 full-time teachers and we tap on an additional pool of our own 10 highly trained teachers who only come in for our busy periods such as weekends and school holidays. (P.S. in my perfect world, all my full-timers would work 7 days a week, but then, they would probably quit on me en-masse 😝) Can you imagine my distress when one of our weekend teachers informed us with just 2 days’ notice that she was not available to work on the Saturday she was booked in for?? Wait, it gets better. While we were scrambling to look for a backup, ANOTHER teacher cancelled on us on the same day.
Thank God we averted a disaster in the end. The two weekend teachers knew they would get into trouble with me 👿 and agreed to come in to teach for half a day. PHEW! To prevent such situations in the future, I have a plan. All “offending” weekend teachers have to contribute $$ to a kitty for each last-minute cancellation to ‘compensate’ the rest of the team with donuts 🍩🍩🍩! What do you think? Leave me a comment please!