July Employee Spotlight: Ben Hipwell

We are so excited to feature Ben Hipwell as our Employee Spotlight for the month of July. Read below to discover more about Ben, his professional journey, and what makes him successful.

Employee Name: Ben Hipwell
Location: Devon, United Kingdom
Job Title: Group Product Manager – Risk
Length of time at GTreasury: 15 months

Q: What do you believe are your key strengths?

A: Optimism and enthusiasm: It’s super important to be data driven and realistic, but problems are there to be solved and challenges are opportunities to learn and improve. Most people find sensible enthusiasm to be appealing and attractive, and so the best way to galvanize activity towards a goal is to ensure that you are optimistic about the outcome you’re looking to achieve and enthusiastic about the path you are proposing to follow.

Ruthless prioritization: There are always many opportunities and limitless possible directions of travel, the key is not working out what could be done, but what should be done with limited resources. We should all always be working on the items that will deliver the most value.

Communication and relationships: People are the key to making progress and to ensuring that value is realized, but everyone has their own ways of working and their likes and dislikes. Understanding what makes your collaborators tick is key. Clear communication is critical for a Product Manager (and for most roles!), but it’s important to be able to tailor your content and delivery style to the audience to make sure that you’re always clearly and concisely getting the relevant message across. Active listening is a critical skill for a product manager, I’ve found that it’s super important to be open and amenable to different viewpoints and perspectives to determine the best path forward.

Q: How do you keep track of the things you need to do?

A: Lists! I use Confluence and Microsoft Loop extensively to document actions and objectives. I’ve found that it’s useful to share and update action lists with collaborators to ensure that everyone is on the same page, to align expectations and to provide progress transparency.

Q: What makes you happy in a job?

A: Providing clarity on product strategy and vision, and then working with the team to deliver on the plan, by solving problems and deploying great solutions to clients.

Q: Why do you feel you have work/life balance? Do you have any tips/tricks for others to improve their work/life balance?

A: My work life balance has taken a dramatic turn for the better since joining GTreasury. Previously I would be in the office from 7am to 6pm and so through the working week I would often only see my kids on a Friday evening. I now work from home and do the same amount of work (or maybe more), but I get to see them every day. I would suggest to everyone that you build time for family or leisure into your working day. For example, as I’m UK based, I tend to start at 6:30 or 7am to speak with colleagues in Manilla or Australia, but I then pause at 8:30am to walk the kids to school. I try to do that every day as I find it really helps my day to start in the right way. Everyone’s working day needs to be balanced to be sustainable in the long term.

Q: Think about a good manager you’ve had. What did they do that made them a good manager?

A: The best managers I have had have been clear about macro direction and thoughtful about regularly sharing their perspective, priorities, and expectations. Most importantly, the best managers I have had provided developmental feedback continuously and thoughtfully. There shouldn’t be any surprises in your end-of-year review.  Managers that operate in that way ensure their team understand how to improve and are well positioned to effectively prioritize. Helping all team members to ensure their efforts are always focused appropriately

Q: What do you like about the work environment or culture here?

A: The company-wide focus we have at GTreasury to constantly deliver to clients and the shared desire to provide great solutions to clients is awesome.  I also love the broad understanding that continuous Win, Learn, Change is the key to improving outcomes.

Q: Who are some of your biggest inspirations at GTreasury?

Victoria Blake was one of the reasons I joined GTreasury, it’s fantastic to work alongside and learn from someone with such a high level of passion, enthusiasm, and product knowledge. Victoria’s support and understanding that great product strategy requires continuous product discovery has been super liberating for me.

Q: How have you grown professionally at GTreasury?

A: I’ve learnt a lot both in terms of my product and client knowledge but also my delivery methodology. For example, I’ve gone from working at organizations with 250,000+ employees to working at GTreasury. Which has meant I’ve made a huge shift from operating in a very rigid environment where every proposed process change has seemingly endless stakeholders to one where we have the capability and freedom to sensibly and thoughtfully evolve and adapt processes to most effectively deliver to clients or, if there is a gap, to propose and create new processes. That’s required a mindset shift and a different approach to my product delivery.

Q: What’s the best advice you can give to someone who just started their career?

A: I would make two suggestions to help us all ensure career success, 1) It is critical to be constantly learning. Slipping into a “comfy chair” where you stop learning means you are stagnating. At that point, others are advancing around you, and you are becoming a drag on progress. 2) I would advise us all to always consider “why?”. Whenever someone requests work, provides feedback or makes a decision. Make sure you take the time to consider why from their perspective. That will enable you to understand not what is being requested but what is required and ultimately will help you to be successful.

Q: What’s something you are passionate about outside of the workplace?

A: My family and I are lucky enough to have lovely beaches close by and getting in the water regularly is super important to me. If it’s flat, that may just be swimming or paddleboarding but if there’s a wave I’ll be looking to go surfing, windsurfing, or kitesurfing. All three sports have been a passion for me for a long time, pre kids I mostly windsurfed but post kids I find that I surf and kitesurf more as it’s easier to align my free time with the conditions needed for a great session.