Stephan Daoust, Darryl Hill Explain TaskUs’ Choice of Medellín’s Punto Clave for New Facility

US based TaskUs continues to grow across the globe, but especially in Colombia. Opening its first location in Cali during the COVID-19 pandemic, the customer experience outsourcing company already has several locations throughout Cali and Medellín Colombia. During the company’s celebration of the opening of its newest facility in Medellín’s centrally located Punto Clave shopping complex, with a direct connection to Medellín’s metro system, Finance Colombia’s Executive Editor Loren Moss sat down with Taskus executives Stephan Daoust and Darryl Hill to better understand what is fueling the company’s industry leading growth and strong bet on Colombia.

Finance Colombia: So we’re here in Medellín at your new facility. Tell me, first, let’s talk about why TaskUs chose Colombia. You guys haven’t been in Colombia very long, less than five years, but you’re already growing rapidly down here. What caused you to first look at Colombia and then kind of, you know, go ahead and jump in and commit to the market?

Stephan Daoust: Sure, as an organization, we realized that we wanted to be more global and expand our footprint. Although the company started in the Philippines, we knew that if we wanted to compete on a larger scale, we would have to be in multiple areas around the world.

Click on the above image to watch the video.

When we looked at LATAM, we had opportunities in several countries, but we narrowed the field by looking at the culture, the talent, the opportunity, what our clients may be looking for, as well as in terms of locations, we looked at real estate. So several factors come in when we start looking at where we’re going to establish. So when we came into Colombia, we decided to start in Cali and then expand from there.

But what we found in Cali was that the talent, the richness of the talent, the opportunity was very strong, and the demand from our clients became very strong. We see great performance, we see great opportunity, and the teams are well-educated and work well in terms of supporting. And they have this hunger for development and career, and this allows them to tie our rapid growth with their demands for growth, and it’s a great fit. And that’s why we’ve seen this success in Colombia, and that’s why we continue to invest in Colombia.

Finance Colombia: How do you find, as the senior vice president in charge of different regions, how do you find the ease of doing business in Colombia compared to the other areas, compared to the EMEA region, for example?

Darryl Hill: Yes, what I like about Colombia is that it executes flawlessly in the main, and we deliver a great product for our clients. The clients, when we get them into this part of our global business, they want to grow with us, and that’s important. There are cultural differences across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas, and different clients have different needs, okay?

When I think about Europe, the needs are very different from what we have in LATAM. It’s predominantly around what we call multilingual hubs, where TaskUs provides the capability of around 30 languages in Europe. When I look at LATAM, it’s predominantly Spanish and English, and that gives us a different cultural alignment. We’ve got different requirements for our clients. But ultimately, we developed a culture that’s pretty consistent within TaskUs, so the cultural element, for me, is not any different. The client’s requirements are what make a change in terms of where we go next.

Finance Colombia: Yeah, I notice that culture is very, very strong in TaskUs. I noticed that even down in Cali. What do you guys do to nurture that unified culture among your different locations?

Stephan Daoust: Yeah, I mean, it starts with… The co-founders have started with this in mind, right? They started with an opportunity that’s focused on employees, and looking at respecting their needs. When you look at our structure and where we’re located, we’re predominantly located in Tier 2 cities. We do have some Tier 1 cities that we compete in, and the reason why we do that is because we need more specialized skills, or there’s a requirement from a client perspective. But from a TaskUs selection process, we start with looking at Tier 2 cities. Why?

Because we found tremendous talent, we find the opportunity to employ many, and we go to the locations where people are located. They don’t have to move to Bogotá, they can have a job in Medellín, they can have a job in Cali, they can have a job wherever they’re located, wherever they want to be located. So, it diminishes the movement and the pressure of having to try to move to find employment, and it allows people to just grow in the areas that they want to grow. May that be their homes and their families, and have that support as well as grow their careers

So, it starts at the foundation of how we’ve set up. When we look at our sites, we’ve built our sites with culture in mind, making sure that they have their own identity. The sites are named by the employees, not by the organization. So, the employees get to identify their own identity within the sites as well, and want to kind of contribute to growing. They feel more natural here, right?

I’ve heard many times this week, just having these focus groups with our people, that they talk about, you know, “We’re not a number,” right? “We’re treated like humans and it’s personal,” and that interaction. So, it starts at the top, in terms of driving that culture and that support, but the everyday function of our team leaders, our managers, our senior managers, they’re approachable. They support our teams. They have personal conversations, not just about work, but they’re looking to administer life. We look for both passion and purpose within their work, but outside of work as well. And that promotes this culture of, you know, being tied together, wanting to be successful together, rather than the individualism that we often see in this kind of industry.

Finance Colombia: And tell me about, we’re here in Punto Clave (‘Key Point’), and Punto Clave, and I don’t know how much you guys know locally from being in Medellín, but one of the reasons it has that name is because it’s kind of a nice area, but it’s also very central. You’re not really in downtown, but you can also reach both ends (north & south) of the city with the metro and everything like that. How did you guys come to choose the Punto Clave location?

Stephan Daoust: Yeah, I mean, once you come to the location and understand our culture, you know exactly why we picked it. Ease of getting here, right? Our teammates don’t have to travel two or three hours to get here. They don’t have to get into three different modes of transportation to be able to connect and come here. The station is just outside. So the selection process comes with the culture in mind, thinking about how we make this easier for people to come to us, rather than making it difficult, and being in a central location where maybe it’s great for business, and perhaps it looks posh and comfortable for a company. We’re not about that. We’re about the employee experience. So it was very easy to select this process or select this area because of the accessibility that they have to come to work every day, and making that, as much as possible, easier for them.

They have great shops in the area. They got great food. They want to run an errand after they’re done at work; they can do that, right? So there’s plenty of opportunity for them to be here and support. We would never be in a location where it’d be very difficult to get to and people would have to travel hours to get to, because that would just not be our DNA. That’s not who we are.

“So it is critical that we can hire the talent. The talent is here. In some cases, even if it’s a bit raw and we need to develop, that’s great.” – Stephan Daoust

Finance Colombia: What is it that you guys do in your talent process to ensure that you not only cultivate the right talent once you have it, but also select the right talent? You know, I told somebody the other day, talent is hard. Talent is the hardest part of, I think, any business, but especially in a business where… I think this place has a capacity of 800, when you need to hire a lot of people, and there’s competition in the city. What is the method or the ingredient that TaskUs has that sets it apart when it comes to recruiting and developing talent?

Darryl Hill: What’s important is that we align on the profile from the very beginning in terms of the job and the responsibility. And it’s so important that we continue to evolve that profile. So with all the clients that we have all over the world, there are very different requirements. So, for this particular environment that we have in Medellín, we’ve got a very young environment, I would say 20 to 25-year-olds, because I asked the question this week; they are conscious that the BPO industry is evolving, and they want to work somewhere where it’s a little bit different. And the TaskUs secret sauce that we have in Colombia is that we’ve created a perception in the open market that we look after our people.

And every time I ask the same question, what sets us apart? It’s about the culture and the people. And the only other thing I’d add to the last question is that when we select leadership, it’s all about humility. And the people who are most important in this organization are our teammates. And that is clear for all levels of responsibility. And we continue to drive that with our people. Very, very humble approach to how we hire, retain, and develop our people.

Finance Colombia: What is your evaluation? And this is for both of you, so please both of you chime in. As a company that operates globally from the APAC region to the EMEA region to here in the Americas, what is your evaluation of the talent and everything from management potential and technical literacy, and bilingualism of the workforce that you have in Medellín?

Stephan Daoust: Yeah, I mean, one of the selection processes, the level of education and opportunity for us to identify people who want to learn, want to grow, and can commit to growing their career, or want to commit to growing their career. The other part that we do quite well is that we also create our programs to develop people. So we have the academy, which looks at a range of businesses.

So if you want to do quality, there’s a program for that. If you want to do workforce management, there’s a program for that. You want to be a team leader, there’s a program for that, manager… So every position that we have within the business has a development program that’s attached to it. So, what we hire for from a leadership standpoint is really about the capability to learn, the capability to be adaptable, and the capability of caring for people. Those are probably the three fundamental areas that we look at when we look at our leadership.

Much of our leadership is growing internally. If you look at both Darryl and me, we both started as teammates. We won’t mention the years here. It’s been a couple of years, but ultimately, I started as a teammate taking calls. I’ve done every role within the operation. So we create this and we have our leaders understand what it means to be a teammate, what it means to be a team leader, and have some empathy and some compassion on what that role means, and also be able to support the future of that.

So it is critical that we can hire the talent. The talent is here. In some cases, even if it’s a bit raw and we need to develop, that’s great. That’s what we want. We want to be in a position where we create this culture and push that culture into them. And we teach them the rest. At the very end, we can teach them skills. If people want to learn and they’re adaptable, we will teach them whatever they need to learn to be successful in this environment.

Darryl Hill: Yeah. The only thing I’ll add is that our retention at the leadership level is phenomenal, which I have not seen before. And that is, again, going back to the culture, but also we have developed an internal strategy about how we keep those people interested in their current roles. And we give them the opportunities to grow. There is no particular part of my region that doesn’t continually grow. So there’s always an opportunity.

And when we get feedback around surveys, whatever else, one of the fundamental challenges I’ve seen in other organizations is, I have no opportunity to grow. But as we continue to do a good job and our clients appreciate what we’re doing for them, we continue to grow those clients, and people see those opportunities that they may not see in other places, which is important.

Finance Colombia: One of the things I noticed about TaskUs is that it has a very appetizing benefit package. And I hear that you guys give all of your employees, not just the mandatory EPS, but the same plan that the executives get, like the SURA plan, which is, you know, what I have that I pay for. And that’s kind of unheard of. That’s like for bank executives. Tell me about your philosophy. Is that true? And expand upon your philosophy when it comes to taking care of your teammates from the top to the very entry level.

Stephan Daoust: Yeah, and I think it goes back to the culture, right? The fundamental piece of the culture is that we don’t treat our C-suite level any differently than we treat our frontline. Yeah, there are some things that we need to manage, do, and support. But when it comes to benefits, we do provide additional benefits, not just the requirements in the country. And that is one of the reasons why some of the employees have been attracted to us because we’re providing that. There is no difference between the VP level in terms of what he has received in terms of a package at this site and the teammate level.

Why is that? Because the teammates are the most important. The frontline is the most important function. Without them, there’s none of us, right? So we provide them no distinction. We provide them the same access and the same support that we would provide our executive team for that reason alone, because at the very core, we’re about the people, caring about the people who take care of us.

Darryl Hill: Yeah, the only thing I’ll add to that, what I like about TaskUs is that we continue to reassess those benefits, right? In the main, it’s annually, but we get feedback locally. We get expert guidance from our leadership and our teammates in particular. And we take action on their feedback. So if something isn’t working out, we will make a change. We’re not afraid to do that.

Stephan Daoust: Just the interesting thing about that. Darryl and I both spend time in our locations. And when we go into locations, the most important meeting that we have is with our teammates. So we have focus groups. We meet with our teammates directly with no leadership in the room. And we ask them, “What do you love about us? What can we do better? How can we make this thing better for us and you, right? How can we take care of you so we can take care of our clients?”

So we don’t need a suggestion box. I mean, we formally do an opinion survey, but not only when we travel, but the leadership team is responsible for doing them regularly, and to report on them and identify what the opportunities are. Some things are easy to fix. You can do it the same day. Some will take a bit longer, and some will be challenged. But the reality is that’s why we exist. We exist here to make that life better. And our job is to get better every single day. That’s the motto.

Finance Colombia: Impressive. Is there anything that you wanted to mention that I neglected to ask?

Stephan Daoust: No, I think, I mean, ultimately, we want to continue to grow. I think we have a great opportunity to do that. It’s been fantastic so far in terms of Colombia’s support; our partners, when you talk about ease of doing business and supporting, we get media partnerships, we have government partnerships, we have non-governmental partnerships.

We’re just so happy with the support that we’re getting. I think everyone realizes the common ground that we are trying to create an environment of opportunity and careers, and they want to go on that journey with us, so we’re happy to take them along. TaskUs is growing faster than anyone in our space. We continue to grow at double digits. And that is because of the work that our teammates are doing every single day. So I can’t be more pleased with the story in Colombia, and we look forward to growing.