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This outsourcing company is a ‘millennial magnet’ thanks to a comprehensive LGBTQ HMO coverage, MMA fighting sessions, and more
“TaskUs is an equal opportunity employer so much so that in the Philippines, we have pioneered the 120-day maternity leave since the late 2015, even before the PH government. We also highlight that in TaskUs, love wins because we provide a comprehensive LGBTQ HMO coverage,” Bryce Maddock, CEO of TaskUs, proudly tells us over email.
It sounds like straight out of Scandinavian employment scenario, where employees come first, but that’s where you’ll be wrong — or at least partly wrong.
It is not a Scandinavian company and neither is it based in that part of the world. TaskUs is an outsourcing company — what we’d know as a BPO — that established roots in the Philippines. Since 2015 when it first opened in the Philippines, TaskUs has grown into over 180,000 square feet of Silicon Valley-inspired office space spread across six sites in five different Philippine cities.
But like most Scandinavian employers, employees come first at TaskUs. “Our most important competitive advantage is our employee centric and values-driven culture,” says Maddok, adding, “It is a bedrock on which everything else is build. It has set the tone of how we operate and do business as a company.”
Among the benefits that attract millennials to TaskUs include onboard dieticians, wellness coaches, MMA fighting sessions, running fitness challenges. And just to show how seriously they take care of their employees, TaskUs has also banned sugar, too.
Their offices have cozy nooks with bean bags for when the desk feels like a drag, and bring-your-pet-to-work days, happy hours, and random one-offs like celebrating street art, going to Pride March, and so on. That’s not mentioning the aforementioned comprehensive HMO coverage for LGBTQ employees as well as the 120-day maternity leave.
This seeming freedom and tolerance for risk define TaskUs from all the other outsourcing organizations. “When you look at other employers, you walk in and there’s a process, a regulation, a rule. There’s no creativity allowed. Until you rise within the ranks, you don’t earn the right to make decisions on your own. For us, one thing we’ve proven time and time again is that if you treat your people well, it results in trust, which allows them to be innovative and creative and take your business forward – make the next leap that other businesses can’t make. Because the trust is there.”
Another thing that makes TaskUs so attractive to millennials. Here, employee opinion matters. It matters so much that they roll out their Employee Satisfaction Surveys four times a year. They take feedback seriously, keeping tabs on employee satisfaction through things like Facebook reviews.
Perhaps this setup explains why unlike other outsourcing companies with skyrocketing turnover rates, TaskUs boasts of 22 percent attrition rate, the lowest in the industry. It also has a score of 63 percent Employee Net Promoter Score on employee satisfaction. “We only consider scores of 8 and above to be the standard benchmarks of employees being happy.”
There is more avenue for employee opinion and insight here too: TaskUs has a company-wide pitching contest that has employees working in teams to pitch ideas to the leadership panel. The business idea will be critiqued, there will be a winner, and there will be project implementation. “The winner is given P100,000 for his project to be implemented,” Maddock proudly shares. In fact, one TaskUs employee recently created, launched, and “now runs a service that is the Tinder for real estate.”
Perhaps the most attractive of TaskUs perks: the option they give to employees to choose among the six offices to work at. Not having to deal with traffic? We’re so there. — LA, GMA News
