Case Study

How Wurk is increasing their remote team’s engagement and wellbeing by training managers

Industry: Tech and Services
Number of team members: 80
Location: 100% remote team, HQ in Denver, CO 

Wurk is the first all-in-one workforce management solution dedicated to serving the cannabis industry.

The company was founded in 2015 and in just a few short years has become the largest solution of its kind in the industry – processing payroll in 46 states and over 500 jurisdictions.

Wurk is proud of its team and has purposely increased headcount thoughtfully, with a focus on employee engagement and care. Wurk’s People team has geared significant resources towards making sure employees are empowered their mental health is prioritized, and they have the necessary skills to be successful in their jobs.

The challenge

Off the back of such impressive momentum, Wurk experienced a ton of internal employee growth and movement. The company’s management team featured a broad mix of experience levels and capabilities – some had managed their entire careers, others were first time managers who had been promoted from individual contributor roles.

The net impact? A variety of different expectations, processes, and procedures for its managers.

As Taylor Colotti, People Business Partner at Wurk puts it, “It’s hard to do something when you don’t know what the expectations are. Our managers were going in blindfolded.”

The trickle down impact of this uncertainty was significant. Important interactions between managers and direct reports, like 1:1 meetings, weren’t happening, leading to some employees feeling a lack of care and burnout. Communication between managers, and managers to HR, was also limited.

As a result, Wurk was seeing a lack of engagement and interest among some on the team, across all levels. The People team, in partnership with the CEO, knew they needed a fix. And with a new study from UKG showing that managers impact workers’ mental health more than both doctors and therapists, they were wise to act fast.

Why The Mintable?

Just like their expectations for their team, Wurk’s bar for an external partner to entrust their manager training with was high. Happily, in Taylor’s words, it was “love at first sight,” for Wurk and The Mintable.

“The Mintable provides training that our managers are actually excited about,” she says.

The Mintable’s practical, soft skills training accelerators, with cohorts kicking off monthly, have given Wurk’s People team the ability to train all of their managers with the foundational skills and capabilities they need to lead. When new managers join the team or are promoted, Wurk’s People team can easily enroll them and get them up to speed quickly.

Additionally, The Mintable’s content library gives Wurk’s managers instant access to how-to-guides and templates so they can put those skills to work in everyday situations.

“The Mintable has been there to help us with a lot more than just manager training. We see them as a partner,” Taylor Colotti.

The impact

To kick off, Wurk’s entire management team went through The Mintable’s 4-week intensive manager training accelerator, Manager Foundation, together. Soon after, they gathered for a team offsite and, based on their learnings, they were able to define and set a shared baseline of expectations about what it means to be a great manager at Wurk.

Across the board, the results of Wurk and The Mintable’s partnership have been exciting. Managers are now having more 1:1 conversations, setting clear expectations, and sharing feedback effectively with their direct reports.

Communication has also significantly improved. Wurk’s managers are turning to each other for advice, support, and sharing resources that work well for them (like 1:1 templates). They’re also increasingly looking to Wurk’s People team as a valuable partner and resource.

And it’s working. According to Taylor, “our managers are more confident and engaged, which has flowed on through our teams, resulting in reduced employee burnout.”

The Mintable could not be more proud to partner with Taylor and the team at Wurk, as they continue to develop confident, effective managers, and a happy, high-performing team.

Case Study

Hostfully ramps new managers 20% faster with The Mintable

Industry: Tech
Number of team members: 70
Location: 100% remote, with team members in Argentina, Canada, France, Ghana, India, Poland, Turkey, United States, Uruguay, Turkey, Vietnam 

Hostfully is a rapidly growing, award-winning property management platform that helps vacation rental managers scale their hospitality worldwide.

The technology company has more than doubled in revenue over the last two years, and headcount over the past year, and has invested heavily in building an employee-first culture. As a result, the Hostfully team is passionate and enjoys a great work-life balance, with a perfect employee NPS score of 100 for 8 consecutive quarters to prove it.

As the team continues to expand, new people managers are instrumental to growth. They make up a large percentage of the overall workforce and heavily influence the experience of the team’s individual contributors.

CEO and Co-Founder Margot Schmorak quickly realized that to maintain the company’s incredible people-first culture and high levels of employee satisfaction, Hostfully’s managers needed to be trained with the right skills and processes to ensure a consistent, equitable environment across the board.

Enter The Mintable.

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Case Study

Manager Spotlight: Brandon Boyle, Senior Sales Manager @ Brex

Who is Brandon Boyle?

Brandon Boyle is a Senior Sales Manager at Brex, a SaaS fintech that offers finance to fast-growing companies. Brex’s sales team alone consists of more than 50 Account Executives and Sales Development Representatives.

Brandon started at Brex as an Account Executive – an individual contributor. Six months later Brandon was promoted to Sales Manager and then within seventeen months, to Senior Manager. Come July, he’ll be a Director (managing managers) and has his sights set on becoming VP of Sales. To state the obvious: this guy is going places. 

Like so many managers, developing strong sales skills afforded him the opportunity to move into management. But it was experiencing exceptional management himself that encouraged Brandon to embrace it as a career path. 
Prior to working at Brex, Brandon was at Zenefits and then Gusto where there were hundreds of sales reps.

“I was very average. One of my sales managers was hands-down the best sales professional I’ve seen. He had an unbelievable natural ability. He would help me close deals and I thought I could learn simply by watching him in action. But I remained average at the job,” Brandon explains. 

It wasn’t until Brandon was managed by one of his now mentors, Simi Sapir, that his sales skills skyrocketed. He became the number one Account Executive in his team, bringing in and closing deals month after month. 

“From her leadership I saw what incredible management could do for someone’s career. Following that path felt better to me than hitting quota every month,” says Brandon. 

And so a people leader was born.

People Manager Problems

As any manager knows, watching good management and executing good management are two very different things. For Brandon, there were some surprises when he landed his first management role. 

“Realizing the people you manage are all motivated and wired differently came as a surprise to me” he says. 

“Every individual needs a slightly nuanced communication style, requiring me to adjust my style accordingly while maintaining continuity across how I present and operate within the organization as a whole” he says. 

Why did Brandon join The Mintable?

Brandon has a coach with whom he meets every three weeks. Whilst he stresses the value of having 1:1 relationships with mentors, he understands the importance of access to a community of people managers, from varied organizations and industries. This was his driving motivation to join The Mintable’s program: to gain varied perspectives on the same problems.

“I’m in sales, so naturally things can be very sales focused,” he says.

He also wisely notes that “a manager is a manager is a manager. We are all having the same internal conversations and struggles, regardless of what industry said manager is in.”

Another problem Brandon was facing as a people manager was seeing the Big Picture. So much happens on any given day, pulling a manager in every direction imaginable. Like so many other managers, Brandon was stuck.

“Having a range of different perspectives from leaders like Lauren and Mel, to the other 30 odd managers in your cohort – being able to pick their brains is invaluable,” he says.

Once managers leave the course, they have ongoing access to their cohort Slack channel and all resources on Notion.

“Access to these resources has been of as much value as the course itself,” says Brandon.

Advice to other ambitious people managers

Brandon’s successful journey into management didn’t happen by osmosis or dumb luck. He worked hard to find the tools he needed to become the people manager he is today.

“You think you’re going to wake up one day and know how to be a manager but you don’t. I had nowhere to learn this skill set. There wasn’t a playbook or a network when I started managing people. But now with The Mintable, there is,” he says.

Brandon credits The Mintable with providing him the tools, connections and network he needs to face the daily challenges of management.

Brandon’s parting advice to all ambitious people managers is to understand why they want to become a people manager. Getting into management purely on the basis of seeking a promotion or ‘taking the next step’ won’t cut it.

“It’s not just you you’re responsible for anymore, it’s a whole team of people counting on you,” says Brandon.

At The Mintable, we couldn’t agree more. Because being a manager is more than a job: it’s a mindset.

Join The Mintable today.

Case Study

How Great Wrap fast tracks new manager development with The Mintable

Great Wrap

Industry: Consumer packaged goods
Location: Sorrento, Victoria, Australia

A company that cares about the planet, and its people

An Australian winemaker and architect couple started Great Wrap in 2019 to end plastic waste. They’ve built an incredible brand and a small empire of world first compostable products (they break down in compost in under 180 days!), like cling wrap, catering wrap, and soon pallet wrap.

Not only are the leaders at Great Wrap planet-first, they are people-first. CEO, Jordy Kay, learned about The Mintable through the Australian start-up community. Given that the team had grown 15x in the last 8 months, he tapped Head of Strategy, Pete Burgess, to assess whether The Mintable could help them.

High-growth problems

We caught up with Pete recently and he shared about business challenges: “We’re a rapidly growing team but don’t have the infrastructure we expect to have in 12 months time. In a start-up, you’re often bringing together unique talents, early-in-career, all into one place without management experience. Scalability is all about consistency”.

Consistently investing in manager development and effectiveness requires extensive time, expertise, and resources that most businesses lack. Many start-ups defer supporting managers and wind up fighting fires and dealing with issues across the business. Pete and the leadership team saw an opportunity to make investing in Great Wrap managers turnkey.

“We can put new managers into [The Mintable] and learn what good looks like – to have a clear picture on what you should and shouldn’t do; talking through examples and impact on staff is really important too,” said Pete.

Easy process, lots of excitement

Jordy quickly gauged interest with other managers on the team, most of whom were new to people management. One of those was Madieson Ryan, Digital Marketing Manager, who has been pivotal to the company’s brand since early on. “I’d never managed someone before. I didn’t know what I was doing to be completely honest. I was basing it off of what not to do,” said Madieson during our recent catch-up.

She and other new managers were excited to try out The Mintable, “I had just switched into that role. This couldn’t come at a better time for me. Learning good habits from the start. I was really stoked.”

New people managers join The Mintable by first completing a cohort-based learning accelerator designed to build the right foundation and boost their growth. The program consists of 4 weekly, virtual, learning sessions alongside ambitious fellow managers. Afterwards, managers gain access to ongoing learning, connection, and tools.

Great Wrap was able to set up the program for new managers in roughly 30 minutes. Madieson and Pete were joined by two other managers and another team member has since joined. Their plan is to send aspiring and emerging managers to The Mintable as the business grows. Pete said, “I’m super confident that by putting them through a program, such as The Mintable, that we can put them into a management role. We will be positioned to acquire raw talent and grow them into management roles.”

Takeaways, big and small

Pete’s main takeaways: “I take little tidbits from everything. There was one about transformation of information vs transfer of information. We’ve since created a clear and defined way of communicating for the company. Those tiny little things are invaluable and The Mintable fast-tracked that learning. Hearing what other people do is really valuable too”.

Madieson’s takeaways: “That lightbulb moment of setting clear expectations before giving feedback – wow! How are you supposed to give feedback without a clear brief? It’s common sense but to hear it in that way and practice it was impactful.”

It was not love-at-first-sight. Pete remarked, “When Jordy first sent it through, I hadn’t appreciated the model. I’d been through so many trainings that I’d become numb. But The Mintable is not sitting in a room at a large corporation with copy and paste material, which doesn’t hit the mark for most people. I like to talk about things and listen. I learn really well through The Mintable format.”

Advice for other talent-minded companies and managers

Pete: “Well, without saying, “Get them to go through The Mintable” [laughs]. We can take it for granted that a lot of people know how to manage. This is an opportunity to understand what good looks like. If you don’t have this understanding, it’s going to be really hard to scale and have a good team and culture”.

Madieson: “Take the time to sit down with the people you work with and explain the landscape fully. Actually invest the time upfront and not just throw people into the deep end. I’m excited we have that bank of material to go back to and do a check-in moving forward”.

Whether you’re saving the planet or tackling another epic problem, The Mintable has your back. We give companies the confidence and expertise to support and grow their talent. We give managers the confidence and skills to lead happy, high-performing teams.

To invest in developing your team of great managers, schedule a time to talk to us today. 

 

Case Study

How Gusto develops more confident, empowered managers with The Mintable

Gusto

Industry: Tech
Number of team members: 1,300
Location: San Francisco, Denver, New York + remote 

Gusto’s people are affectionately called Gusties and managers are called People Empowerers because, well, that’s exactly how the company sees them. 

The Mintable’s Co-Founders Melissa Miller and Lauren Humphrey met at Gusto where they worked as department heads prior to founding their platform built for managers. It’s safe to say Gusto’s commitment to People & Culture is the genesis of The Mintable. And this management love story continues to blossom today.

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Case Study

How FrankieOne sets new managers up for success with The Mintable

Industry: Tech
Location: Melbourne, Australia

The rapidly growing Melbourne based regtech startup, FrankieOne, understands the importance of its people when it comes to growth.

In September 2021, the company made a strategic hire in Sarah Dobson, wooing her away from KPMG where she had worked for six years as a Manager and then Associate Director, focusing on transformation and advisory projects. To put it simply, she’s a People Person. 

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