The Questrade team focuses on the customer journey

Philip Lengden joined Questrade Financial Group in 2022, not long before the company’s leaders began working to wrap their organizational model around their customer’s journey. Within a year and a half, Lengden had become a squad leader responsible for supporting a cross-functional team of 23 developers to meet organizational goals.

QuestWork, the new customer journey framework, was implemented in the last half of 2023. “Our mission and goals are front and centre, and teams, roles, duties and expectations are clearly defined. It’s easy to see how all our team goals align,” says Lengden, senior product manager, personal finance.

“It’s transparent,” says Praneil Ladwa, chief product officer and head, international operations. “Each team works to enhance a customer journey through a different stage of life, from managing cash flow to growing wealth to owning a home and protecting valuables. The teams understand the unique financial challenges and aspirations of clients and the outcomes their team is driving.”

As journey leader, Ladwa keeps everyone on track toward Questrade’s mission to help Canadians become much more financially successful and secure. He leads annual planning and quarterly update meetings. He meets weekly with his mission leaders, who work directly with squad leaders, to assess how work is progressing. It’s all in service of customer needs.

“QuestWork has rekindled our entrepreneurial spirit and execution. This empowers us to harness our collective expertise while embracing the agility of a start-up – even as a global enterprise with close to 3,000 employees,” says Ladwa.

Questrade Financial Group is headquartered in Toronto. Through its companies, it provides securities and foreign currency investment, professionally managed investment portfolios, mortgages, insurance, real estate services, financing, and more.

The workplace is flexible – a combination of remote and in-person work. Lengden’s team comes into the office twice a week. A downtown office, in addition to the head office in North York, eases the commute for many employees. Professional development is encouraged, and Lengden takes part in an internal leadership program. His recent behavioural science certification was subsidized by the company’s education assistance program.

Questrade has several initiatives aimed at promoting from within. Newsletters and emails inform staff of upcoming positions. The Spotlight Program recognizes and showcases an employee in a different role every month on LinkedIn, which also provides information for potential candidates who want a glimpse into the Questrade culture.

Lengden finds the culture at the company to be friendly and collaborative. Right from the start, he experienced an open-door policy across the organization where questions are encouraged. Now he runs a bi-weekly brainstorming session with colleagues across teams, often looking for ideas to solve concerns brought up by mission and journey leaders.

“In our new organizational model, creativity and innovation emerge from cross-team conversations,” says Lengden.

Holding quarterly planning sessions and collaborating with other teams on how to execute organizational objectives has been invigorating for Lengden. Each quarter, his team members work in five to six two-week sprints that each result in something being released to customers. “It‘s motivating to see results,” says Lengden.

In the end, Ladwa believes that strategy can go only so far. “Two things make Questrade a top employer – a supportive culture with good people who care, and the opportunity for employees to see their work make an impact.”

This article appeared in the magazine announcing this year's Canada's Top 100 Employers winners, published November 15, 2024 in The Globe and Mail. This article was prepared with the financial support of the employer, which reviewed but did not write its contents.