Good Employership in The Netherlands
Jeroen Geelhoed & Ingrid Smolders
A fantastic event took place in Amsterdam Bright City on April 8th, organised by Great Place to Work. The evening program included the traditional awards ceremony for the best employers in the Netherlands. And for the third time in a row &samhoud is the #1 Great Place to Work in the Netherlands. Although of course we are extremely pleased with this, we especially gained a great deal of inspiration at the afternoon event during which the Manifest of Good Employership was produced. What happened there? And why?
Group
Together with around 60 people, using a pressure-cooker type approach, a manifest was drawn up that aims to inspire and help Dutch organizations to actually achieve good employership. And those 60 men and women, they were no ‘softies’. It was a selected group of companies that have been praised for achieving and maintaining good employership, such as Vitae, Microsoft, NetApp, SAS and us. But they were also experts specialised in good employership or in certain aspects of it, for example Michiel Drijper of the community ‘Iedereen elke dag plezier’ (‘Fun for Everyone Every Day’), and Huub van Zwieten, author of various management books on ‘Man and Work’. And finally there were representatives of employers’ and employee organizations. In short, those who brought about the manifest are those who know what it is about. The outcome of this unique collaboration was a roaring manifest with recommendations that can be directly applied in Dutch organizations.
Gap
Now, was that needed? Absolutely! Prior to the event, Great Place to Work had carried out a major survey into good employership in the Netherlands. The outcomes of that survey showed a major gap. Whereas the best employers scored an average of 78% in the confidence index (‘a B-’), the score of the average Dutch organization was 58% (‘a C-’). That is quite a gap. If as a nation we want to win the battle, then as organizations we’ll need to ensure that the best people want to work for us and want to stay working for us. For the average Dutch organization there is still a lot of territory to be gained here. And that’s where Great Place to Work wanted to offer support – together with the above mentioned 60 people who know how to put good employership into practise. Support by drawing up an exciting, concise, and action-focused manifest with which Dutch organizations can start to work. The manifest was presented to Hans Kamps, crown-appointed member of the Social Economic Council.
Good Employership
The manifest includes a range of recommendations, ordered in the various areas that Great Place to Work uses when reviewing human resource policies in organizations, i.e. recruiting & welcoming, listening, speaking, inspiring, celebrating, caring, developing, thanking and sharing. We would like to share a number of important elements with you. To begin with, the importance of recruiting people based on their attitude was underlined. It is extremely important to not only look at people’s knowledge and skills, but particularly also their fit with the culture, with your organization’s core values. In this area you need to ensure unity. On the other hand, in your recruitment policy you need to ensure diversity and that people complement one another. The combination of, on the one hand, unity in values and attitudes and, on the other hand, diversity in the composition of an organisation brings great rewards.
Another aspect that was mentioned is the importance of inspiration. In order to create inspiration within organizations, living out your vision on a daily basis is a must. In addition, it is important to ensure that co-workers get to know one another better, so that they can inspire one another. And it is important to bring the outside world into your organization (customers, suppliers and other groups in your environment). This results in inspiration that is needed to create fun in the workplace and at the same time contributes to achieving better results.
These are only a few examples and the manifest includes many more of such examples. Of course it would take too long to tell the whole story in this blog. But the manifest as a whole does deserve to be considered. That is why you can download the full Manifest Good Employership (the text of the Manifest is in Dutch). In short, if you are already a very good employer, consider which aspects you can still improve or strengthen. If you are not yet a very good employer, then you can use the outcome of the collaboration between 60 professional experts to your advantage.
By the way, while we’re talking about creating Great Places to Work…. As mentioned &samhoud has become the #1 for the third time in a row. We would like to share how we achieved this. You can therefore expect a publication from us in which we will divulge what we did to make it to the #1 position. Watch this space.
Working Mothers At &samhoud Follow The School Holidays
One benefit of working in education is the holiday schedule of about 9 to 10 weeks every year. At the consultancy firm &samhoud working mothers with young children will also stick to the school holidays from now on. This is the outcome of discussions held between Managing Partner Ingrid Smolders, herself mother of two children, and her fellow consultants who are also mums.
“At &samhoud we recruit highly gifted staff, people who fit the vision of our consultancy firm” according to Smolders. “Their quality is that they can achieve breakthroughs by inspiring and connecting people. They are management consultants and in this profession you often work long and intensive days. This applies to everyone, so also to women who have small children at home. I think it’s important that these women also continue to develop. After all, they are excellent consultants as well. We had agreed before that mothers working at &samhoud are provided with an ultra lightweight laptop. Because how often do working mothers seemingly carry all their worldly belongings when their children need to be taken to or picked up from school or nursery.
Together with the group of mothers working at &samhoud Smolders took a closer look at the existing needs. Mothers at &samhoud who have young children all work part-time. But in practice it seems that they fit a full-time working week into their working days, so 40 hours or even more than that.
Smolders: “Next to their work they also want to have spare time and when I suggested that they should then take some annual leave, they looked surprised at first. They had not considered taking annual leave regularly to be an option. By comparing their actual working hours with their contractual working hours we came to a simple conclusion. The overtime can easily be compensated by time off – in fact the same days that the children are not in school. So we established that mothers at &samhoud will follow their children’s holiday schedule from now on. It’s a case of planning hours and projects well internally. Besides, it saves a lot of hassle of having to organise child care during the holidays for when you need to go to work.”
The arrangement for working mothers fully fits in &samhoud’s culture where the work-life balance is always being considered. “Everyone loses out when motivation for work is lost because things can no longer be organized at home” according to Ingrid Smolders. “As the employer you need to also consider your staff’s living conditions outside the office walls. Every person is different. For example, for young fathers we introduced paternity leave three years ago. The father stays at home for the first two months after the birth, fully paid.”
“Taking a personal approach with your people leads not only to individual applications of working conditions, it also contributes to your co-workers’ self-awareness” notes Smolders. “We discovered that working mothers at &samhoud struggle to claim things for themselves. That mental sting has now been removed. So from an employer’s point of view we do everything we can to enable the combination of motherhood and hard work, but we also encourage these women by being proactive in asking them about these matters and in researching and using opportunities ourselves. This empowers them a great deal.”
“You know that on every front working mothers need to take on a lot. With this arrangement we meet their needs appropriately” Smolders concludes. “The beauty of it is that everyone is enthousiastic, and that generates energy.”
Twee keer achter elkaar nummer 1 Great Place to Work
Op donderdag 16 april 2009 realiseerde &Samhoud een doorbraak. Voor het tweede jaar op rij eindigden we op de nummer 1 positie van Great Place to Work. En dat is niet eerder vertoond. Trots zijn we dat we hebben laten zien aan de top te kunnen blijven. Het betekent dat we nog beter zijn geworden dan we vorig jaar waren.
Ingrid Smolders, managing partner bij &Samhoud, deed de speech die avond. Ze feiliciteerde iedereen in de zaal: ‘Want u en wij zijn allemaal winnaars. Wij mogen ons allemaal een Great Place to Work noemen. Dat betekent dat wij hier bij elkaar gelijkgestemd zijn over het belang van medewerkerswaarde en dat het de medewerkers zijn die groei realiseren.’ Ze had gelijk, kijk maar eens naar de mooie lijst van organisaties.
Nummer 1 Great Place to Work blijven, dat is een ware doorbraak. Niet eerder is dat in Nederland voorgekomen. En ja, we doen heel gave dingen. Maar die bijzondere reizen en evenementen hebben altijd een diepere betekenis, een enorme impact en zijn altijd terug te voeren naar onze visie. Bijvoorbeeld naar ons hoger doel: ‘Together we’ll build a brighterfuture. Wij realiseren doorbraken door het inspireren en verbinden van mensen.’
Of naar onze kernwaarden: ‘Intensiteit, Authenticiteit en Vriendschap.’
Of onze kernkwaliteiten: ‘Creativiteit, Verandering en Ondernemerschap.’
En naar ons gewaagd doel: ‘In 2015 is &Samhoud de nummer 1 Great Place om voor en mee te werken in minimaal vijf landen.’
Als je deze visie legt naast het feit dat we met alle collega’s in januari in Washington op de Mall stonden te kijken en luisteren naar de inauguratie van Barack Obama, dan zijn er overal parallellen. Yes, we did!
Doorbraken realiseren zou je kunnen zeggen, dat is de harde kant van ons werk. In een organisatie waar de werkdruk erg hoog is en waar dagelijks wordt gestuurd op output van elk van ons, kan het gebeuren dat je niet altijd blij bent met je werk. Of dat je moe bent. Mensen moeten ook fit zijn en hun eigen energie managen. Dat komt soms in conflict met onze gedragsregels, bijvoorbeeld dat we verwachtingen willen overtreffen. Want we streven naar een klanttevredenheid die boven de 8 ligt. Dat halen we ook, maar liever nog gaan we naar de 9. Om in zo’n situatie toch door medewerkers te worden aangemerkt als een top Great Place to Work, dat is bijzonder.
Kortom, continuïteit behouden op een heel hoog niveau, dat is een doorbraak. Wat dat betreft is het heel erg knap van een bedrijf als Microsoft dat ze al 6 jaar in de lijst staan. Dit jaar bezetten ze voor het eerst de nummer 1 positie in de categorie van grote organisaties.
Continuïteit behouden op een heel hoog niveau, dat geldt natuurlijk ook voor Great Place to Work Institute zelf. Zij voeren audits uit bij tientallen hoogwaardige organisaties en zijn dus omgeven door kwaliteit. En ze hebben de beschikking over heel veel informatie over medewerkerswaarde. Dit instituut staat zelf ook aan de lat en moet net zo goed streven naar het hoogste. Ik vind dat Great Place to Work Institute scherper mag worden, zowel inhoudelijk als qua presentatie. Want een betere toekomst, die bouwen we samen.
Nawoord
Van Obama is bekend dat hij een aantal jaar geleden het advies kreeg om niet te gaan strijden voor het presidentschap van Amerika. Het kon nog wel 40 jaar, heel misschien 20 jaar duren, voordat het land een gekleurde president zou accepteren. Obama zei: ‘Over 20 jaar is mijn momentum voorbij. En als het toch zo lang moet duren, waarom zou ik er nu dan niet voor gaan?’
Op weg naar de ingang van het festijn, de Award uitreiking vond plaats in de Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam, liepen mij vijf Marokkaanse jongens tegemoet. Ze zagen de bordjes met de bewegwijzering en de woorden die er op stonden: ‘Great Place to Work’. Ik hoorde er een zeggen: ’Daar zou ik wel willen solliciteren.’ Een andere jongen zei: ‘Maar dan moeten ze ons eerst aannemen.’ Ik liep door, ging naar binnen, kreeg bij de receptie mijn naambadge uitgereikt, accepteerde een glas champagne en wandelde de zaal met aanwezigen binnen, allemaal mensen in mooie pakken en prachtige jurken. En ik dacht bij mezelf: wanneer komt de dag dat die jongens hier zullen binnenwandelen om die titel in de wacht te slepen?
