Promoting Employee Growth and Engagement at January

Despite significant effort towards improving work/life balance, the average person will spend upwards of 90,000 hours of their waking life at work. Consequently, finding a working environment that matches your needs can’t be a secondary consideration when selecting your next role. Experts have identified key tenants of meaningful work, including: working on important problems, having opportunities to grow, and being surrounded by hard-working and empathetic people.

At January, we strive to provide a happy, productive, and supportive work environment for our team. To do this, we have a set of standard practices that cut across all departments. In this article, I describe what we do weekly to promote a supportive and engaging work environment. These principles have developed over my three years at the company and will continue to evolve in the coming years.

Work on Meaningful Problems

Our user research program confirms that having delinquent debt is one of the most emotionally difficult financial times of a person’s life. People we’ve interviewed have described the experience as feeling like they are “just another number” or that traditional collection agencies treat them like they “aren’t human.” Our team actively improves the experience of being in debt. Making it easier, less stressful, and more empathetic. Many current team members, myself included, joined the company after they, or a loved one, had a bad interaction with a debt collector. We believe the industry can help borrowers get back on track with payments without losing trust with their creditors or feeling dehumanized in the process.

Every week all departments at the company have an opportunity to interact with borrowers directly or to build technology that makes their lives easier. For example, our contact center answers phone calls, text messages, and emails from borrowers, answering questions and finding paths to get them out of debt. Our operations team ensures that we follow and even exceed the standards set by regulatory bodies, and strengthen our relationships with creditors so we can help more borrowers. Our product and engineering teams hold responsibility for building technology that makes it easier for borrowers and creditors to manage delinquent debt without interacting with a live person (one of the most stressful parts of paying off a delinquent debt). Last, but not least, we evaluate all potential team members on how they handle difficult situations with empathy, an important thing to keep in mind if you are currently in our recruiting process! As a result, our work at January directly empowers millions of Americans to get out of debt without feeling shame.

We can see the direct results of this work from the feedback we get from borrowers. Some recent reviews we’ve received include:

Examples of how we’ve improved the borrower experience include:

• Overdraft protection on ACH payments to stop borrowers from paying extra fees
• Settlement negotiation without a human in the loop, giving borrowers the time and space to think about their financial situation without the pressure of talking to a live person
• Ability to pause all communications from January for 30 days, 60 days, or permanently, allowing borrowers can interact with us on their terms
• Easy options to push back payment plan installments if another significant expense comes up in a borrower’s life
• Maintaining a contact center with a CSAT score over 80 (on par with e-commerce companies), giving borrowers access to real people that will treat them with dignity and respect

Managers as Advocates

Managers at January are responsible for the growth and well-being of people on their teams. We believe in decentralizing decisions and power, where the managers hold accountability for unblocking and giving teams guidance. Given this approach, all managers hold weekly "one on one" meetings with their direct reports. In these meetings, direct reports have the space to talk through accomplishments and challenges and to give and receive feedback. This meeting is a weekly opportunity for everyone on the team to work through problems, plan their career, and get the support they need from leadership.

In addition to weekly meetings, managers are also responsible for building a strong “performance culture” so team members always know where they stand and where they need to grow. This is made possible through ongoing formal and informal feedback, career maps with clearly defined competencies and expectations, and individualized coaching on growth and development for each team member’s goals. Given our relatively small team size, there is significant room for growth in all departments at the company. To learn more about growth opportunities at January, read this article by our VP of Engineering, Matt Flower

Opportunities for Learning

At January, we strive to create an environment where every team member constantly develops their professional skill set. To promote learning internally, all team members have the opportunity to host or participate in bi-weekly cross-team knowledge sharing meetings and weekly book clubs on technical and non-technical topics. In addition, our leadership team hosts a regular series on topics and skills that cut across all departments: root cause analysis, inbox zero, manager training, time management best practices (including calendar audits!), decentralization & delegation, and business & competitive strategy. We also have dedicated Slack channels for sharing industry news and relevant articles/videos on all things business strategy that provide insights to our team every week.

We recognize that there are opportunities for our team members to further expand their knowledge through external sources, so we also created a learning and development program that provides up to $1,000 for individual contributors and up to $3,000 for managers. For example, many of our current team members participate in programs like Reforge, attend industry wide conferences like PyCon, and get hands-on coaching from external experts. We encourage team members to block time on their calendars to take advantage of these learning opportunities. In this Built in NYC article I talk in more depth about my growth and learning opportunities.

And More!

In addition to everything written above, you can learn more about our cultural values by visiting our about page. These tenants guide how departments and individuals work together daily. If our way of working sounds interesting, check out our open roles! We'd love to discuss current and future opportunities with you.