Our client is a venture-backed fintech with a mission to give employees instant access to their earned wages, which solves a major problem for real people, while killing predatory financial products like payday loans. It is the fastest-growing startup in the category and was incubated by QED Capital, a top fintech venture fund.
The company’s app provides earned wage access for employees at mid- to large-sized organizations to improve their financial wellness and to increase employee engagement and productivity.
With many workers living paycheck to paycheck, financial wellness tools are an important part of any employee benefits package. The company gives employees access to the money that they have already earned whenever they need or want it, without needing to wait for the month-end paycheck. The service is mobile app-based, very easy and intuitive to use. There’s a small transaction fee and no interest to pay - a much healthier solution than payday loans or bank overdrafts with their exorbitant charges.
The company’s ultimate mission is to help people attain financial freedom, which starts with giving people full control over their income.
ABOUT THE ROLE:
We are looking for an ambitious, self-motivated Talent Development and Learning Leader that wants to play a leading role in building a world class, high engagement and high accountability, employee experience for a mission-driven fast growing Fintech startup.
In this role, you will have the opportunity to use your thought leadership in people development, particularly in Adaptive Leadership. You will work with the company’s most senior leaders to understand their needs and create effective formal, social and workplace development solutions. Our ambition is to be a successfully operating globally distributed company which creates unique challenges for people development and communication. You will design, launch and oversee programs that will drive high engagement and performance across our global locations and functions. We believe that great leaders will attract and retain great talent and this is where you will play a critical role in ensuring that our leadership team has the right capabilities, coaching and support to succeed. While part of this role will also be designing and facilitating some learning programs yourself the company is looking for scalable solutions that can be rolled out worldwide. Since we are still an early stage startup there will not be a team to support this role in the short-term and so we are looking for a self-propelling one-person army that can rally resources across the company to still deliver on a wide variety of programs. One great feature is that the leadership is very open to testing out new, innovative, maybe less conventional, solutions in a “lean startup” fashion making it an ideal canvas for a new leader to build something new that will surprise and delight the team.
The ideal candidate will embrace the team’s global culture, which is rooted in Shokunin - the Japanese philosophy of giving your very best for the general welfare of people. The company’s other core values are radical transparency and zero ego.
SPECIFIC RESPONSIBILITIES:
● Be the organization’s global center of excellence for all Talent Developments related topics.
● Create a global Talent Development strategy and plan that will align closely with the company’s organizational objectives, culture and available resources.
● Design, source, implement and oversee company-wide Talent Developments programs that drive learning, performance and engagement across or global locations.
● Effectively manage tradeoff to buy or build solutions, and how we maximize impact while being resourceful and stay lean and nimble, and make effective use of existing tools.
● Provide thought leadership in leadership development, particularly Adaptive Leadership, helping to grow and retain the leadership team in a rapidly evolving environment.
● Identifies and addresses critical gaps in Talent Development by anticipating future organizational learning needs identifying stakeholders and partners, and potential scalable solutions.
● Keep up to date and disseminate the latest thinking and external trends in Talent Development
● Coordinate and guide change management across multiple senior stakeholders. Includes senior business leadership teams, employees, internal HR, and external partners/vendors to ensure a successful deployment of programs across the global organization. Rally resources and support for programs.
● Design a differentiating onboarding experience, including pre-boarding before the start date and functional onboarding for the role, that can be used as a blueprint across our global locations, powered by scalable and innovative tools that reduce the dependency on manual processes and can automate the process in an asynchronous manner.
● Propose and manage the global Talent Development budget. Source and negotiate agreements with external vendors that will offer talent development platforms and/or programs and provide maximum value towards the client’s organizational objectives. Effectively make use of existing tools in combination with new solutions.
● Support program design and implementation for potential adjacent areas related to Talent Development such as Performance Management, internal communication, and employee engagement.
● Depending on experience, provide executive coaching to senior leaders.
WORK EXPERIENCE AND REQUIREMENTS:
● 10+ years of relevant experience in Learning & Development or other related HR fields (exec coaching, performance management, engagement, employee relations, culture).
● 5+ years experience leading complex Learning, Leadership Development, Performance Management and/or Engagement programs in a high growth, constantly evolving environment.
● Experience working in a globally distributed matrix organization is a plus as well as having worked in a fast-growing, dynamic, tech startup environment.
● Bachelors or master’s degree, preferably associated with either Psychology, Leadership, Adult Education or HR.
● Expert in People Development and could teach the course, invent new approaches and see the future of the topic area.
● Has overseen a company onboarding process and has clear ideas on what could make a differentiating and effective company as well as functional onboarding experience.
● Knowledgeable of new and innovative solutions in the onboarding, learning, people development, performance management and engagement space. In particular solutions that support a globally distributed workforce and asynchronous workflows.
● Experience with innovative knowledge management solutions, especially as it pertains to onboarding, is a plus.
● Executive coaching experience and certifications are a plus.
● Expert in facilitation/teaching of complex concepts at all organizational levels
● Expert in change management and communications including influencing senior stakeholders.
● A proven track record of managing complex projects, within budget, on time. Experience deploying integrated IT solutions company-wide, including integrations with other relevant systems.
● Excellent data analytic skills including a) the ability to convey complex information to support decision making b) developing success measures and c) tracking performance
● Vendor management skills - negotiation, developing solutions together with vendors, performance management.
● Highly effective and efficient in situations involving uncertainty or lack of information.
● Strong ability to identify desired outcomes and deliver outcomes when there is no precedent or structure in place.
● Self propelling and able to operate with limited direction. Will ensure themselves that there is alignment and commitment on the work they are driving.
● Super individual contributor who can influence without authority and does not require a staff perse to deploy and run a variety of programs.
● Ability to effectively manage multiple different programs and deployments at the same time and can effectively prioritize when faced with multiple competing goals.