The culture of Vena Solutions makes it easy for employees to tamp down imposter syndrome, that common scourge of, in particular, younger and female workers. So says associate product manager Luana Faria-Fichelli of the Toronto-based finance tech company, whose Complete Planning cloud software serves finance teams, operations professionals and business leaders.
Since joining Vena in 2019, she has moved from consultant to senior consultant to her current role, and the company and its culture helped her to conquer self-doubt along the way. “I’ve had really great managers who have coached me and given me lots of feedback, and that really helped me move up,” she says.
“I used to work at a company that was definitely more hierarchical and very traditional, and you could expect to work three to five years in a position before you got a promotion,” she continues. “At Vena, you don’t have to fight to move up. They do a really good job of fostering you because they want to see you succeed, and they encourage you to take courses on the side and shadow other team members.”
CEO Hunter Madeley says all that opportunity reflects Vena’s rapid growth. “In the next two years, we expect to be moving from our current 500 or so employees to 1,000, and moving from about 1,000 customers to likely about 2,500. Our level of scale and expansion presents all sorts of really interesting challenges and opportunities.”
Madeley notes that there were over 160 promotions and new roles in the first eight months of the current fiscal year. “We do hire in external experience, which helps with diversity of thinking, but we have a real program of developing folks from within – with flexibility in technical or people-leader tracks.
“We also encourage cross-functional movement among our employees,” he continues. “The messaging is, once you’ve mastered the role you’re in, you might want to explore working in another area.”
Another part of Vena’s ethos, observes Faria-Fichelli, is a real commitment to communication among staff. “Since the pandemic began, we’ve had weekly town halls where we have an ask-me-anything portion at the end. If asked, leadership addresses their questions the following week. But that’s not the only channel. Everyone can always reach out to anyone from top to bottom, on either Slack, Zoom or email. People are very friendly and open to hearing what you have to say.”
One example of that since COVID-19 was employee feedback suggesting the company rebrand sick days as wellness days because, says Faria-Fichelli, “sick” doesn't fully encompass all the reasons somebody might need time off. “Maybe you’re having a poor mental health day. And it’s so much less stigmatizing to say you need a wellness day.” Vena happily complied.
That focus on open communication at Vena extends to how the business operates, says Madeley. “We are very transparent and encouraging of discussion about even the biggest strategic initiatives we run. Our leadership team shares all the data about how the company is doing – the financials of, and reasons for, our strategic decisions. And we allow folks to have conversations about whether they think we’re moving in the right direction. As a result, you get this really dynamic culture where ideas are being debated.”
Vena is also committed to community involvement. Employees get one paid day a year for volunteerism, but they can also use four personal days to engage in charitable activity. Plus, the company focuses on diversity and inclusion. “Our head of diversity, equity and inclusion is building wonderful programming around unconscious bias,” says Madeley, “and how we actually manage it and build inclusion into recruiting, hiring and promoting.”
