Our company operations team assures that those working at Voice123 have the resources, tools, and frameworks to craft the future of the voice over industry.
Meet the Company Operations team, they’re the ones who take care of Voice123‘s internal team cohesion. The team’s personal mission is to craft the future of organizational management.
“We focus on how everything clicks internally, in order for the company to scale. So you could say we are learning and in turn, shaping Voice123 by setting up foundations on how remote companies work so we can handle whatever comes our way in the near future. It’s all about how we improve from here and how we look out for every single team member, to make sure they’re okay with our frameworks and structures, and make sure we can continue contributing to their well-being.”
What's the company value that the company operations team resonates with most?
“We provide memorable experiences. This is something that really defines Company Operations. We always think of ways to provide the best experiences with an optimization mindset, “how can we improve what we’re doing,” and “how can we improve this experience?””
“We also relate to forward thinking, reflecting back to what we just talked about, crafting the future of organizational management in remote structures. And transparency as well! For instance, all our job postings include the salary; why hide that from people who are interested in joining our team? And to add, on a financial end, our budgets, forecasts; nothing is a secret and every document is accessible by anyone on the team.”
What were your proudest accomplishments as a team in 2020?
“We improved our team members’ experience at Voice123 and worked on different projects to foster team bonding opportunities. Most of our work efforts last year were around team bonding. We started to invest in structured efforts, like:
1. We started doing Happy Hours, where we played games (e.g., Mario Kart tournaments)
2. Initiated Donuts conversations
Aleja pipes in thoughtfully: “In the past, conversations or meetings were mostly between teams. We were facing problems of being siloed. In my experience, as a junior people ops coordinator, my team consists of Rocio! So if I didn’t have these bonding spaces, Rocio would’ve been the only person I spoke with. And we’re speaking almost throughout the entire day, but I needed to meet other people and find instances to bond with them. So Donuts have been helpful in that sense.”
3. Had our first ever virtual retreat
We had high participation during the retreat, even when team members were waking up super early or staying up super late to accommodate for timezone differences, they were excited and engaged, participating in the activities and helping with the logistics.
Rocio adds, “When I see Company Operations and specifically, People Operations, I think we don’t build the culture of the company. We don’t build bonding. We are in charge of opening spaces to facilitate those efforts. A highlight for me was when a colleague commented on our #company-ops channel:
We initially stopped them for a bit in our third quarter because we felt that they weren’t working. And to see someone ask to bring it back? We were like, “deal.”
We also implemented a new process to support our Secure Payment services. The service was designed from a financial perspective, and alongside the Customer Success team, we built the processes to give the best experience to the clients and voice actors who are using it.
Finally, we also improved our data analysis for our financial models and forecasts to provide better information for decision making. We focused on our goal of improving the data we were providing to Voice123, stakeholders and/or leaders to make decisions. Being superbly data driven last year on our finances not only helped us triple confirm the accuracy of the information we were providing. But for the leadership team, it helped carve out an even more accurate strategy for the years to come.”
What's down the pipeline?
“We’re still working on defining a structured strategy for our social efforts. Even though the Virtual Social Hackathon was very helpful, we are working on solidifying our strategy for Voice123’s social efforts intertwined with Project Authentic Voices. We want it to be feasible for us to act upon!
And we’re also working on improving our internal processes for them to be more user-centric. Sometimes, we focus more on the processes and not on the final results. Part of the goals for 2021 is for the team to define our desired team experience, and the strategy around that. Improving our internal processes involves everything that’s to come in 2021. Our main focus for this year is to show the other team members that #werock. Voice123 provides a lot of support, tools and resources, but sometimes this is not clear to team members. We recognize it’s because our communication methods need improvement, and we’re looking to build a more user-centric approach to it.
On the side of our financial processes, we’ve got a similar goal of being more user-centric. We’ve been in compliance mode for so long that we’ve got that down on lock. Now we need to make sure the experiences are also enjoyable for those going through it first-hand. For instance, this could apply to voice actors and/or clients on Voice123, such as services that help with getting funds paid directly and in time by clients… we always ask,“what is the best experience for them?” and “what is the best way to do this process?”And in an internal team aspect, this would be finding ways to improve the quality and ways of communicating our financial reports and status updates to our team.”
Anything to add?
From Valentina Perdomo, finance intern: “For me to meet the company operations team, and spend so much time with everyone, I think of this team as the first floor of a building – we support everyone and everything (teams and colleagues). Rocio and Alejandra do frequent check-ins, always asking teams if we’re doing OK, if we need anything and it’s very supportive. And it’s not always work related, they check in and ask about our physical and mental health; I really appreciate that.”