Melanie Haratunian, Executive Vice President and General Counsel at Akamai Technologies, explains how a simplified organizational system made a world of difference.
Editor’s Note: Melanie Haratunian was featured in issue 11 of Forefront Magazine. This post accompanies her feature story you can read here.
Get Rid of Position Pigeonholes and Level Up!
What do litigation, intellectual property and transaction lawyers have in common? I’m sure I don’t know, but Melanie Haratunian does. When Melanie joined Akamai Technologies as its Executive Vice President and General Counsel, the company had just been hit hard by an economic downturn. Staffing levels had shrunk everywhere and the legal department was down to just 7 staff members.
Melanie engaged in a really creative “leveling exercise” to rebuild and strengthen the legal team to a strong and diverse team of 35 professionals. In the exercise, she ignored legal specialties and instead identified common skill sets needed across different job levels. With the simpler classification system, employee attributes are more visible to managers across the organization and when employees want to level up to a higher job, they can clearly see what skills they need to develop.
Melanie Haratunian is the Executive Vice President and General Counsel at Akamai Technologies. She was featured in Issue 11 of Forefront Magazine.
Stephanie Harris is a Freelance Writer at Forefront Magazine
Latest posts by Jaclyn Crawford (see all)
- When Those Who Play Can Also Coach - February 11, 2015
- A look back at New Year’s reSOLUTIONS - January 8, 2015
- Staying Cool Under Pressure and Coming Through in the Clutch - January 6, 2015
This information will never be shared with third parties.