Jane Yu on Papa's Inaugural Transparency Report and Promoting Safety on Caregiving Platforms

Jane Yu [00:00:00]:
Papa does have a big culture of kind of eating our own dog food. It's like a Google term of going on visits themselves. So our CEO goes on Papa pal visits all the time, as well as our executive team. But we wanted to take that a step further and also expose our leadership to our frontline workers who are the voice and what members and pals experience when they think of Papa.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:00:25]:
This is click to trust, a podcast that delves into the intricate challenges of protecting online communities. Hi Jane, welcome to click to trust. I'm so excited to have you on the podcast this week. How are you doing?

Jane Yu [00:00:37]:
Good. Thanks for having me. I'm excited.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:00:39]:
I know you and I have known each other for a while. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and your work with Papa?

Jane Yu [00:00:46]:
Yeah, of course. So I'm the head of trust and safety at Papa and like you, serve on the advisory board of marketplace risk and a little bit about Papa. So Papa's vision is to create a world where no one has to go it alone. What we do is we connect older adults, underserved populations and families to pop up pals. These are compassionate caregivers who provide companionship and assistance with everyday tasks. So things like help around the home, and transportation for running errands and going to doctors appointments. And so we're a two sided marketplace. We have the pals who are vetted and trained independent contractors.

Jane Yu [00:01:23]:
They pick up visits on a flexible basis when it works for their schedule. And then we have members who are older adults, underserved populations and families. Our customers are primarily insurance plans who provide this as a benefit to their Medicare and Medicaid members and employers who really want to support employees who might be juggling caregiving responsibilities outside of work. So since our founding, we've had about 2.6 million visits across 7300 cities. That covers about 80% of the us population. And what we found is that human connection is really the answer to improving our health. And we see that these interactions and social support can really have a meaningful impact on health outcomes and reduced healthcare costs. And my role specifically at the company involves working closely with our cross functional stakeholders, from product to ops, to legal and compliance, to bring to life new trust and safety initiatives.

Jane Yu [00:02:21]:
So that could be like if we launch a new feature, working upstream with our development team to think through product policy, or forging new corporate policies and sops. I also oversee our safety, investigations and response team and do a bit of external engagement.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:02:38]:
For me as a millennial, having aging parents and then also starting families. That mission really resonates, uh, with me personally. I've been in situations where I've needed care or support, uh, for family members. But for folks who may not be as kind of informed on the issue, can you share a little bit more about why this is so important and what is the gap kind of, in the industry that Papa is. Is aiming to fill? I think what you were saying about human connection is. Is so key as well. I think during COVID obviously, during the pandemic, we lost that. And you could.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:03:11]:
You. You could tangibly see and measure, I think the who maybe put out a report about the impact on mental health, especially for certain communities. So I just love to hear more about, like, maybe, like I said, some education for folks who might not be familiar. Why is this such an important mission?

Jane Yu [00:03:29]:
So, like you mentioned, I think Covid really brought it to life for a lot of people. You could feel the impact of loneliness acutely, and then the world kind of, like, resumed, right? Things opened up again, and we went on with our day to day. But what a lot of people don't realize is that, like, what we felt during COVID is a day to day reality for so many people. So aging spares no one. Like, you're either going to be a caregiver or, you know, need a caregiver at some point in your life. And I honestly think that our country and countries around the world are facing a huge demographic crisis that we're just not ready for. So in the US, over 10,000 people turn 65 every day. 90% of those older adults who are 65 plus, they live in their homes.

Jane Yu [00:04:16]:
They want to age in place. We have a shortage of nursing facilities. We have a shortage of professional and unpaid caregivers. And if you want to pay for this out of pocket, round the clock care costs about $24,000 a month already. There are about a million, like, what we call kinless seniors who have no one to call on if they need some help. And so what Papa represents is this new caregiving model, one that can scale, one that believes that you don't have to be a nurse or work at a nursing facility to make a difference in someone's life who needs it and to help their wellbeing.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:04:54]:
Absolutely. I love this mission so much. My grandmother was actually recently diagnosed with dementia, and so it just. It resonates a lot. And I think it's true. I think many people don't realize how many seniors or disabled individuals in our community are going without help and support. And so I love that y'all are finding a way to kind of plug that gap, especially when you said, like you mentioned, $24,000 a month. That's insane.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:05:20]:
I don't know anyone able to. So that's. That's incredible. All right, awesome. Now, kind of getting into the big announcement for today, y'all are coming out with your first transparency report, which is super exciting, I think. You know, historically in the industry, transparency reports are something that you see from Vlops or very large online platforms, but they're not as much expected from maybe smaller to medium sized platforms and marketplaces. Why was it so important for you and for Papa to now make this move of putting out your first transparency report?

Jane Yu [00:05:53]:
Taking a step back. I think trust and safety is a relatively new field, as are gig economy models and these new types of models that exist today that are enabled by technology. And I didn't grow up thinking I was going to work in trust and safety one day. The field did not exist, really. And because it's a newer industry, what I really love about it is that the people who work in it know the importance of learning from each other and sharing best practices. And so I really think that all companies that facilitate in person interactions can really learn from each other. And we wanted to contribute what we have learned along the way while building our trust and safety practice, because we need to work together, we need to grow together to make human health accessible at scale and to do it as safely as possible.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:06:44]:
Absolutely. And I know you mentioned earlier you're on the advisory board for marketplace risk. You recently launched a new safety advisory council, which is super exciting. You've worked with, I believe, shared advisory. Also some commentary at the end of the transparency report. What did you learn from all of these people who, like you said, I love that. I kind of agree with that. Trust and safety is not a zero sum game.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:07:06]:
It's something that we can all work together to promote across the industry. And I'm just curious, in working with these consultants, what did you learn about promoting safety when it comes to facilitating these offline interactions?

Jane Yu [00:07:20]:
Yeah. So I think the biggest high level takeaway that I gleaned from working with our advisory board, who's amazing, and also just talking to other people who work in trust and safety, is that people aren't perfect. And the work that we do is not easy. But at a time when society is really missing a lot of social support like this, work is really important. And in person interactions have been around for longer than these new platform models have existed. So people ride the subway, they share cars with strangers. Like before Uber existed, people shared living spaces. Before Airbnb existed, people hired caregivers from newspaper ads before, like papa or care.com existed.

Jane Yu [00:08:05]:
Right. And these real world risks are there, and they always will be there. But these days you have these new technologies and tools that can be harnessed to mitigate those risks and to provide additional support to facilitate safe interactions. And so I think I'm really inspired by some of these new marketplace models and some of these kind of plug and play solutions that exist out there in the field. And I think it's really our responsibility and mission to make sure that anyone who needs help can access it safely through these new models and really address some of the challenges that lie ahead as our world and our communities evolve.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:08:44]:
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a really taking a step back. I think that's a really great way to look at it. You're right. All of these kinds of interactions and opportunities for, unfortunately, abuse or inappropriate behavior, they all existed before us and they will exist after us. And it's kind of like, well, what can we do with the technology and tools that we have at our disposal to kind of mitigate some of those risks? And I know I'm jumping around a little bit here with the interview questions, but you guys have made a lot of updates to your product itself, right? Can you tell me a little bit more about some of the features that you've been implementing to help promote this sense of safety and security, both for your members and for the pals?

Jane Yu [00:09:23]:
We really thought about it from the perspective of, like, what do members and pals care about when it comes to safety? And when you think about it, when you think about what safety means to any particular population, it really boils down to a few things, like what are the nuances of that demographic? What is the context in which they're operating in? And what is that setting where they're interacting? And so when you think about these things, you'll start to realize the dual vulnerability of the populations that are, you know, engaging on your platform. So for members, a lot of times they may be older adults, they're inviting people who they don't know into their homes, but they're also the service recipient, right? They're the customer. At the end of the day for pals, you have this really diverse population of service providers. They're also going into unfamiliar homes. They don't know who these people are. Right. Some may have some caregiving experience, some may not. They might not feel like they're adequately prepared.

Jane Yu [00:10:24]:
And so when you think about those dynamics, they present some different concerns and different risks. And we wanted to think about our product and our features in ways to mitigate those concerns and risks. And so for members, they might be thinking, is a person trustworthy? Are they who they say they are? And so that's why we've really invested in revamping our background check processes, adding continuous monitoring, doing all sorts of additional features on the background check, embedding side, designing a customized learning program so people know what's ahead of them and how to be successful, and id verification, as well as a id badge that serves as a check in screen. So when pals check into a visit, they get a badge, they show the member. The member then feels better that they know, like this person is from Papa. They are who they say they are. That matches the person who's supposed to come to my visit. For pals, they're thinking, am I going to be safe going into this environment? It's an unfamiliar environment, like, I'm going to be in someone's home.

Jane Yu [00:11:20]:
Is this person going to treat me with respect? And more broadly, parties are wondering, what will prapa do to prevent issues? Support me, take action. One of the new features that I'm pretty excited about is we have an emergency button. So within the app, when a pal is on a visit, there's a button that's very clear, it's a shield, they could push it and immediately they get access to our third party emergency operator, who will text them, make sure that they're okay. They have access to their location. If they don't respond to the text message, they'll call them. And they know how to discreetly kind of handle calls to figure out what's going on. And then they could dispatch emergency first responders to that exact location. So pals can use this for a variety of different things.

Jane Yu [00:12:06]:
Sometimes it's not a true emergency. It might just be that they can't find the member's home. They're walking around a neighborhood and they don't feel safe, and they want someone to be on the phone with them. Right. And so it adds that extra layer of security and support as they're going into these new environments and for everyone. We launched mass numbers because we think that people have the right to privacy, they have the right to go on a visit without having to share their personal information. And we can also sever that connection if we need to. So that's kind of a sampling of some of the things that we have launched for our members and pals that we're really excited about.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:12:43]:
That's so awesome. And I think traditionally, when you look at trust and safety, we've kind of, historically, as a sector, kind of focused on prevention and response, but maybe not so much. The support feature, which I know is one of your three pillars, which I really love, and the focus that you have on productizing some of these solutions is really cool. I also really love that you brought up the risk for the pals. I think that's something that gets overlooked. A lot of nannied all throughout school to help pay for school. And I was one of those people who found families on apps and was thinking, I don't know these people, am I safe? Am I going to be safe going into their home? And I think sometimes we focus on one side of the marketplace and we kind of forget safety for the other half, but you need both sides for the marketplace to work and be successful. So I love that emphasis.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:13:33]:
You also mentioned background checks, which I feel like are a super. I only learned more about background checks recently, and I was just kind of floored to discover how complicated and complex they can actually be as products. What is something that you wish your users knew more about or understood when it came to background checks and the role that they play in prevention and promoting safety on your platform?

Jane Yu [00:14:00]:
With background checks, I think there are two key things that come to mind. The first is that the thoroughness of background checks can really vary due to differences in federal, state and local laws and how the court reporting systems are set up. So this is not due to any limitations on the vendor or platform side. It's really a reality of the industry because of the way in which the primary sources are structured. And so I think it's really important to complement some of these background check processes with additional measures, such as id verification and additional screening, and importantly, ongoing monitoring of performance when someone is on the platform. So it's not just about vetting them on the front end, but it's really important to continue to monitor what's happening once they're on the platform and once they're engaging with other users. So some context about the industry. There are primary sources, there are data furnishers who will collect this raw data from government sources, and, you know, some states and counties, just due to the structure of how their data is set up.

Jane Yu [00:15:09]:
It's really difficult to search every single county and every single courthouse. Like, you literally have to send court runners to some areas to go get the records in person. They're not digitized. And, you know, background check vendors usually contract with these data furnishers. Right. So they're all getting the same data. They're all working with the same data. But what sets a vendor apart from another is their proprietary software that allows you to kind of look through all this raw data, match it with the individual and who they're claiming to be, and then produce the results back to you.

Jane Yu [00:15:41]:
It's also an evolving landscape. So it's really governed by a lot of federal laws and regulations and state regulations. And so these regulations are put into place to protect consumers rights and privacy and impartiality in making these, like, pre employment screening decisions. But they govern how far you can look back. So there are some states where you can't look back further than seven or ten years, and no person can do that. It's a law. The vendor will not actually provide you with those results if it's regulated by the state. And so I think that's something that people commonly don't understand, because they'll say, why don't you go back further? And it's like, well, you can't.

Jane Yu [00:16:19]:
You have to be compliant with the law. But all of this is to say, it's really important to compliment background checks. It's not a, you know, it's not a silver bullet. And making sure that your community is safe, you. You need other screening methods. You need to monitor your community on an ongoing basis, and you need to have, like, clear cut policies to take action when something doesn't go according to plan or if someone's in violation of your standards.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:16:44]:
Absolutely. And that was kind of my takeaway, too. Like, I was, I was kind of learning a lot about background checks last year and was kind of newer to the space. And that's one of the things that I learned and I found, is they're not a panacea, right. They are a tool within the trust and safety toolbox. But there are a lot of limitations, either because, like you said, they're not digitized, so you're literally sending somebody to the courthouse to find them, or there's various important privacy laws in place that mitigate our ability to look into somebody's criminal history. So I agree. I think it's one of many tools in a toolbox.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:17:18]:
Another one that I've noticed papa has been investing in is the kind of education. Right. And I think that is equally important in prevention, is educating. You know, background checks are great, but they're not everything. How can we kind of educate our users and communicate with our users to promote their understanding of how they can kind of take charge of their own safety as well.

Jane Yu [00:18:07]:
We looked at what they were asking us and what they were saying to us. So Papa's operations are pretty complex. We have a very active call center. We have different mechanisms to get feedback from our users and our teams, our frontline teams, they facilitate tens of thousands of human interactions every week. We're looking at what were members asking us about, what were pals asking us about? What are they curious about? What do they need to know on the job? What are some things that lead to issues on visits due to lack of understanding? And so what we saw with member questions and feedback was that they weren't understanding, you know, service scope, what can a pal help me with? What can they not help me with? And what is appropriate to ask or what to expect on a first visit, like, who's going to show up? How do I. I know they're from Papa, and they want to know how. We also vet and educate pals before coming on these visits. For pals, they wanted to know how to be successful at doing the task at hand.

Jane Yu [00:19:09]:
So how do you make conversation with someone you're meeting for the first time who might, you know, be in a different demographic as you, and, you know, have a different kind of cultural context as you? We worked with the purple method. Allie Call is also one of our trust and safety advisors. She's the founder of the purple Method. They design custom workplace harassment prevention solutions. And so she looked at our operations from end to end and really looked at what kinds of things pals might face while they're on the job and how to handle those situations, how to decline if something is out of service scope, how to report issues when they happen. Our pals have access to this customized learning program where they can actually walk through different scenarios that are relevant to the tasks at hand.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:19:55]:
That's awesome. It's nice to also hear, in your own words, how all of these different tools in your toolkit support different pillars. Right. We have the prevention side of things, the support. And that also kind of leads me to my next question about response. Right. So let's say, you know, you've been, obviously you've invested in background checks, you've invested in educational resources, you've invested in, in product safety tools and features. Let's say despite all of that, something goes wrong.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:20:24]:
How do you kind of create a reporting mechanism that users feel like they can trust? I know for me that's been a struggle whether like both in tech and in my profession, working in the NGO space, it's, you know, it's not, these aren't easy things to talk about. So it's hard to get users to kind of come to you and share when some, that, when there's been an incident and then once they have reported and hopefully they are reporting, how do you kind of action those? Because I know, like for me personally, it was hard, right, trying to figure out a, you kind of going based off these reports and you can do follow up with the individuals, but you weren't there, right. So you kind of have to make sometimes a judgment call as to what happened or what was appropriate. Can you kind of walk me through how you establish some guardrails around that for your trust and safety team?

Jane Yu [00:21:12]:
So with regard to reporting mechanism, I think it's really important to have both, like formal reporting mechanisms as well as things that are more informal channels where people can provide feedback that, you know, lead you to want to follow up with that individual. So on our end, we have the call center, we have in app chap support, we have an online portal to submit tickets, and we have frontline teams that are manning all of these things. We also have informal channels. And this is a big learning that I came across. So after every visit, pals and members are asked to rate and comment on the visit. And these are like optional things that they can do. And what's really interesting was that sometimes this channel might actually surface the most candid feedback, even if it's short. So it catches things that a user might not otherwise take the time to call in to formally report because that just feels like a big endeavor.

Jane Yu [00:22:09]:
For example, my team actually goes through all the visit ratings and comments and things like that. We scrape that information and we check if for any red flags, things that require follow up. And what we found was that pals can share things that they might not normally call in to report. So they might even share things like, hey, this member might need some additional support. They seem to have unmet needs. They might be running out of food I'm a little concerned about them. Or they might say something like, this visit was uncomfortable or neighborhood unsafe, like, you know, or angry dog, just like very brieftain. But this was enough for us, our team, to then follow up with that person, get a sense of what's happening, and then take appropriate action on the other side of this.

Jane Yu [00:22:54]:
When we do hear about something, anyone who works in an investigations type role kind of comes across this he said, she said conundrum. And I think it's really important to be equitable. So fair, equitable. Talk to both parties that are involved in any kind of scenario to get both sides of the story and to fact check details against, like, what we know are facts about the visit, like when it occurred, what time it occurred, who was present, based on the various data that we have about that interaction. And then I think it's also really important for companies to take a very clear stance on certain issues. And so where we draw a clear line, like, if there were to be a report of sexual harassment, we choose to believe the victim. These are things that are historically underreported. And it's just something that's really important to us is to make sure that we're on the side of the victim who might be potentially reporting this very uncomfortable scenario that takes a lot of courage to report.

Jane Yu [00:23:56]:
Also, if we hear reports of egregious issues or things that could compromise public safety, we don't have a lot of time to deliberate. If someone's making a threat to public safety, we have to take action. We have to be really vigilant and report that to the local authorities and do our duty care in that regard. Other things we might look at are like, does someone have any evidence? So, like, do they have any other witnesses documentation, or, you know, things that support their claim? And a caveat there is that that can actually be quite rare. Like, you won't. You won't oftentimes get evidence, and that's where patterns come into play. So one other thing we want to look at is whether there are patterns of behavior. So, like I mentioned earlier, we have this extensive repository of feedback and visit details and comments and ratings and things that our team can actually look up and do a lot of research on before they even speak with the person who's recording this, to get a sense of, like, okay, like, this person reported this, they might have had a visit with this other person, they reported something similar.

Jane Yu [00:24:59]:
And so we might have more reason to think that this could be a pattern of behavior. But obviously, you kind of have to do that a little bit carefully because you want to safeguard protected health information and other sensitive details and be mindful of when you're talking to someone who might have information but might not be necessarily privy to the details in the investigation that is currently taking place.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:25:23]:
Yeah, absolutely. And a shout out to everyone in an investigations role. I think you and I both know how hard and how tricky that can be. It's not easy work at all. So definitely a shout out to all the investigators working for online marketplaces. We appreciate you. I think what you said about reviews and ratings is so important. And I think a lot of marketplaces have kind of come to this realization lately that you're right.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:25:46]:
A lot of the time, users don't want to call in or, like, file an official complaint or report, so they will share sometimes allegations of abuse or inappropriate behavior in the review. And so you also kind of have to be mindful of that. You can't just man the hotlines. You have to also be reviewing each review for indications of, you know, violent or inappropriate behavior. And I also love what you said about being on the side of the victim. Like, personally, I came from a background in sexual violence prevention before getting into tech, and I remember that was like our motto when people walked through the doors. We believe you because it's so, there's a lot of misconceptions floating around out there, I think, about sexual harassment and reporting sexual harassment. But you're right, it's actually really challenging to report.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:26:31]:
It can be traumatic in its own right, and it takes a lot of courage. And so I think that provides a lot of comfort, knowing that, hey, if something happened and you come to us, especially something this severe, we believe you, and we take that at face value. One thing I wanted to ask you about was if you've been able to glean any insightful data based on your kind of. I read in the report you have kind of like a taxonomy or a policy for how you deal with different types of allegations. Have you been able. I'm a data nerd. I love going through the data and seeing what I can learn. Have you been able to identify any trends that would maybe help inform some of your other pillars, like how you prevent issues or how you support users when they're potentially in the middle of a conflict?

Jane Yu [00:27:23]:
Well, I think it's really important to have feedback loops. A lot of what we get on, we have the PSC pillars, prevent, support, and act, and I, the support and act, we kind of use that for prevention and support as well. And our teams work really closely with other operating teams to make sure that these feedback loops are active and working. So this could be, like, smaller things that we notice. So, for example, our trust and safety team works really closely with our pal engagement team, who designs content and newsletters and learning materials on an ongoing basis once they're on the platform. So once we identify some needs, we can address them in regular communications to Pals, as well as figure out if there's a need for ongoing education. So one example is when we launched the emergency response button, we noticed that a lot of pals were using it for non emergency purposes, and so we just had to kind of reiterate, like, here's how it works, here's what's going on. Because people do need to have, you know, repeat communications to have an idea stick beyond those routine feedback loops.

Jane Yu [00:28:22]:
One thing that we did notice that was a little bit unexpected, really was kind of pertaining to that informal feedback loop thing that I mentioned earlier. We noticed that pals were a lot of times, like reporting when they were concerned about their member, and maybe they felt that the member needed something that was beyond the scope of Papa pal. So this could be unmet needs or if they felt concerned about potential neglect. And this could be something that is a serious issue amongst older adults and that really, like, emphasize for me the importance of cross sectional collaboration in addressing these things. So, like, you know, the pals might not formally call in to report that they're concerned about a member or if they have a lack of basic necessities, but they might write this in a post visit review, and some of them do actually report this in formal channels. And, you know, some examples of this is like, maybe the member might live in conditions that present unsafe working environments for pals. And this could span a wide range of different things. And, you know, the pals have a right to feel safe at work.

Jane Yu [00:29:34]:
We want to protect them. We don't want to send more pals into these situations. But our duty of care doesn't stop there. What about the members who are living in those conditions? Right. How can we help them understand and navigate the resources that are available to them? And it really takes a village when you are addressing issues like these that are quite complex. So, you know, we work with our compliance and legal teams to make sure that we're reporting some of these things to adult protective services. If we feel that there might be a risk that an older adult is a potential victim of abuse or neglect, we work really hand in hand with our social care navigation team. So we have a social care navigation team.

Jane Yu [00:30:17]:
As some context, they are experts at helping members connect to local resources and public agencies that can offer support because it's really hard to kind of navigate that on your own right to know what's available to you. So our social care navigation team will also step in and we work really closely with their health plans. They have their own care management teams as well that's able to provide additional resources to these members. And so that was one thing that I found pretty interesting, like that Pals are reporting a lot of things that were not really about visit safety, but just overall well being. And it really was quite touching to see how much they truly care. And then it made me realize that our duty of care expands beyond just like making our platform safe, but making sure that the people who are using Papa, they have what they need in their day to day lives and that we're able to support their safety even outside of visits.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:31:11]:
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's so thoughtful and so well said. Like you said, there can be situations where it's not a safe working environment for somebody, but that doesn't mean that that individual doesn't need help anymore. So how can we, as platforms, connect those individuals to the right resources while also maintaining the safety of all of our members? I think that's really thoughtful. And I also love what you were saying about taking the data that you have and I feeding that back into your education and your comms with members. I think that's, you know, that's something that a lot of companies do in kind of little ways, but we miss it. Like, I get emails from my bank all the time about like new fraud scams and stuff like that. And I'm like, and now that I work for like platforms and marketplaces, I'm like, thank you.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:31:56]:
Thank you for letting me know about this new trend. Whereas before I might have ignored it. But no, it's really important to look at your data, especially around reports, and see how you can use that, like in your prevention and your support pillars as well. I also agree with you. I love closing feedback loops. I think that's really important. And one thing I read in the report that I thought was not funny but kind of hilarious and awesome was mandatory shadowing for your leadership team. I love this idea so much that I want to impose it on all of the other platforms.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:32:31]:
Well, I'm curious, what was the feedback? Having your executive level or directors at Papa sitting in on some of these, like, trust and safety decisions or investigations, what did they kind of learn from the process. And how has that kind of informed your strategy as a company? Do you think so?

Jane Yu [00:32:50]:
I think it begins at the top. So Papa does have a big culture of kind of eating our own dog food. It's like a Google term of going on visits themselves. So our CEO goes on Papa pal visits all the time, as well as our executive team. But we wanted to take that a step further and also expose our leadership to our frontline workers who are the voice and what members and pals experience when they think of papa. And so the leaders had a chance to shadow a variety of different frontline teams. Trust and safety was one of them. Also, our inbound call center, our outbound call center, and various individuals who make these operations happen.

Jane Yu [00:33:31]:
They had the chance to shadow them. The leaders loved it, the main and the person, the people who were being shadowed also loved it. The main feedback we actually got was that they wish the sessions were longer, so they had more chance, a deeper chance to really understand what the day to day looked like. And I think it was really empowering for the people who were being shadowed to think like, hey, this person's taking time to really understand what I do day to day. And they had the chance to showcase their work and get exposure to leadership. Our real goals were to cross pollinate areas of the business that don't interact with each other day to day. And this had a real world impact on how we think about product design and continuous improvement of operations. And so leaders had a chance to know, hey, how can we improve our internal tech and systems so that the agents are set up for success? They're the voice of Papa.

Jane Yu [00:34:26]:
They should have answers to all the questions that the tip of their fingertips when someone calls in to ask, we really need to improve how we're thinking about l and D and communications to these individuals. And, you know, what were members calling in about the most often? Are they confused about this new feature? Like, is it accessible enough? Like, are we designing it with, like, you know, their needs in mind and their level of digital literacy in mind? I think some takeaways after setting up this program is that you really need to position the program from the onset with the intention to empower both parties. So we were really clear with our leadership that this is not about you joining a Zoom call and, you know, watching with your video off and, like, observing someone working and not engaging with them. You know, your job is to make sure that the employee felt heard, that they felt valued, and you got to know them as people. And we even incorporated into the surveys, like, after these sessions, for the frontline workers who were shadowed, we asked them to rate their shadower. So rate the executive who shadowed you, did they make you feel like it heard? Were they a good shadower? Did they ask good questions? Did they get to know so much?

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:35:36]:
I hope everyone who's listening to this right now makes this a thing for their platform. This is so awesome.

Jane Yu [00:35:42]:
Yeah. So it was positive all around, and we're going to continue to invest in that.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:35:48]:
Yeah, it sounds like. And that resonates for me as well. I think trust and safety, I don't think it's intentional, but it can sometimes kind of be siloed because it's not a traditional kind of business function within a company or an organization, but that's really detrimental. Right. When you have trust and safety kind of woven throughout product or communications or other functions, that's when you can really establish a safe platform that users trust. So it sounds like, on one hand, it was really good for promoting that, like, cross functional collaboration and integration of trust and safety throughout the company. But it also sounds like it was great for morale, which I love, because trust and safety teams tend to have really high turnover. It's not, you know, and that's not specific to any platform, just like statistically kind of writ large.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:36:36]:
It's. It's a really hard job, and sometimes I think getting that acknowledgement from your leadership team of like, hey, I see you, this is really hard, important work that you're doing, and we really, really appreciate it. It means a lot. It goes a long way. What advice do you have for other marketplaces? Like I said, you're the first kind of marketplace in this space that is putting out a transparency report, which is super exciting. What kind of advice would you give, maybe to other marketplaces in the space who want to follow suit and be more transparent with their users?

Jane Yu [00:37:09]:
I certainly want to acknowledge that we didn't develop the report on our own. We had these incredible advisors from shared advisory. We had Juliet Eccleston, James Gator, Allie Calls, Jato Mukherjee, and Jeremy Gottschalk, who all helped to contribute to this. And the way the project came about was actually as our trust and safety advisors, they were reviewing internal documentation about all of our trust and safety initiatives from end to end. And so that goes to also say, like, it's really important to document early and often as a company and to have a documentation focused culture. Papa's business model is like, so complex. We have all these stakeholders, so it was really important for us to know what was going on how things work and share it with all these stakeholders. We also are a remote first company, so that makes us have a very strong documentation culture.

Jane Yu [00:38:02]:
It enables asynchronous communication and allows people to collaborate with each other in different time zones and things like that. So we had all this documentation about, like, our end to end trust and safety stuff, and our advisors reviewed it. And I thought it was really important to get their third party perspective and kind of analysis and, like, recap of what we're trying to do and how it's different. And, you know, I think those two things are really important. The documentation, especially when you're moving really fast. It's easy to move fast and iterate quickly and kind of forget all the details about how things work, but it makes things easier, not only for your own employees and your stakeholders if you have all those things documented, but it enables you to potentially share it with the world as well when the time is right. So I'd say document early and then, you know, get advisors. People are going to be helpful and want to help if you're working in this field.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:39:01]:
So, yeah, I'm a policy writer by trade, and I can't. I. I love my coworkers, but whenever somebody tells me, don't worry, it's all up here, I'm like, write it down. I can't operationalize that. Let's write it down. So there's the documentation kind of phase of things, and then reaching out to third party consultants, which you guys have done a lot of, like you said, with your advisory council, with marketplace risk, with shared advisory. And I feel like there's also a level of humility to that. Right.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:39:31]:
Of, like, kind of baring your soul to these consultants and saying, like, hey, just like, tell it to me straight. What do we need to do? There's a level of, you have to be open to that feedback, too, which I think is awesome and just really important. Right. Because I think at first, when you potentially, when you're rigging in a third party consultant, it can feel very critical. And you just kind of have to remind yourself that, like this, you guys are working together to make a safe experience for users on the same side. Yeah.

Jane Yu [00:40:00]:
Yeah. And they're trying to make you better because that's why they do what they do as well. So.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:40:07]:
Yeah. Especially Jeremy. I know him great.

Jane Yu [00:40:13]:
Yeah.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:40:13]:
And I love that you also acknowledge that, you know, it's definitely a team effort. It is not easy. A transparency report is a huge thing to put out for anyone who hasn't worked in trust and safety before. It takes a lot of work to put out a transparency report. And for what it's worth, I really enjoyed reading yours. I thought it was really well written and I was really excited to kind of see you kicking off transparency reporting in the sector. So thank you so much. I really appreciate.

Jane Yu [00:40:42]:
And we'll continue to improve from here. Right? So this is just the beginning and I hope that people find it valuable and I hope that people provide us with feedback on it because that's important. I hope that people can take this and incorporate this into how they're thinking about their trust and safety practice as well.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:41:01]:
Awesome. And for our listeners, where can they find out more about Papa, about you, about the transparency report?

Jane Yu [00:41:09]:
So you can go to Papa.com and we will be setting up a website link that will have a link to the report shortly when it's released.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:41:19]:
Awesome. Thanks so much, Jane. Really appreciate it.

Jane Yu [00:41:22]:
Thank you.

Carmo Braga da Costa [00:41:26]:
Thanks for listening to click to trust. For more information on Papa's transparency report, check the show notes for this episode. Don't forget to subscribe to never miss an episode and we'll see you next time on click to trust.