Charlie started Next Jump from his college dorm room in 1994, as a print coupon book: The Collegiate Web. He went to school on financial aid and did not intend to start his own company; the coupon book was a means of funding his long-distance relationship with his high school sweetheart.

We launched our first products aimed at corporate HR departments in 1998. ClickatWork was a combination of playbill-sized guidebooks and websites aimed at corporate employees.

This was our first e-commerce platform where small businesses could add themselves; we became a hub for new and developing merchants to showcase their products. This laid the foundations for our ONECart technology.

By the time of the first dot-com bubble, we had grown to 150 employees in 5 offices (Boston, New York, Washington, Chicago, and San Francisco). We survived the dot-com bust by shrinking down to 4 employees before building the business back up.

Full Engagement. Exceeding Expectations. Consistent Execution. Active Learning. Trust. Collaboration. Tenacity.

We introduced a loyalty currency, WOWPoints, into our employee perks program.

We introduced Human Capital Engineering (HCE) programs as a way for Next Jumpers to upgrade their leadership development.

Next Jump became top recruiter in tech; turnover skyrockets.

Our holiday party at Next Jump is held once a year in February, and we bring together all employees from four offices for the event. It’s an amazing perk of being a Next Jumper, one that truly connects us. The highlight of the evening is the Dance Battle, in which each of our four offices performs three choreographed routines in front of external judges to compete for the best dance crew of Next Jump, and the coveted trophy. We don’t hire dancers at Next Jump. From engineers to customer service reps, we all dance.

What started as a casual dance battle turned into a fierce yearly competition as we discovered the dance battle was also a great practice ground for leadership development. It has been said in only halfway jest that Next Jumpers take nothing more seriously than the dance competition.

We introduced our first ever “Avengers Award,” the highest honor given at Next Jump. This award recognizes the Next Jumper who most exemplifies steward leadership and honors our mothers, who taught us to help others.

We worked with Simon Sinek to better articulate this culture we have developed and strengthened the articulation of our WHY, Better ME + Better YOU = Better US

Aside from increasing our hiring standards, this was a signal of intent for employees to show that you can expose vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and faults without the fear of losing your job.

Read this Charlie HR interview with London MDs Kevin McCoy and Tarun Gidoomal: https://magazine.charliehr.com/next-jump-ddo/

We began hosting regular Next Jump Leadership Academy workshops, bringing in Heads of Talent Development and Culture to observe, learn, and participate in our culture.

The New York Office launched its Adopt-a-School Program, adopting PS-119 in the Bronx.

We upgraded and launched our most powerful e-commerce platform globally: Perks at Work. We are the largest employee benefits provider in the US and make over $2bil in sales annually.

We released our first 5 apps to the Apple App and Google Play store available to our clients. These are the first of over 50 culture apps developed internally to help run our company culture better.

We set up an environment to help people grow – training, feedback loops and coaching, and baked it into our culture. This allows for faster learning and leads to more agile teams.

Next Jump was recognized by Harvard Professors Dr Lisa Laskow and Robert Kegan in the book ‘An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization’ and by the organization, Way to Grow, as a Deliberately Developmental Organization. A Deliberately Developmental Organization (a DDO) is an organization – large or small, private or public, for-profit or not – with a culture explicitly designed to advance the mutual flourishing of the organization and its people. Next Jump was one of three organizations globally recognized for this honor.

So much of our lives have been disrupted. For the fortunate ones of us that have our job and can be at home, we have new challenges of balancing work, kids, life all in close quarters – all while having fear of staying healthy and for loved ones.