The ultimate employee experience: Vandemoortele’s three tips

Two conclusions emerged from a recent study by SAP. The first is that practically every organisation is aware of the significance of the employee experience. The second is that almost nobody shares their best practices or specific advice on this.Up to now: Marc Croonen, CHRO of Vandemoortele, shares these three tips from their journey towards the ultimate employee experience.

Vandemoortele successfactors

Start with why

According to Marc, everything starts with focusing on your organisation’s goals. “At Vandemoortele, we focus on the three Ps of profit, planet and people. These three are not unrelated. Caring about the planet while neglecting your people is not an option. An integrated approach is required to convert the why's into coherent policy, and so, a well-thought-out strategy is essential.”

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Leverage your employees’ strengths

Marc: “From managerial staff to manual workers, we need the right employees in the right places. This is why we focus on competency management not only among our office workers but also among our manual workers. The competencies required of the latter are often quite specific and diverse, according to the type of production and the machinery they are using. Through this new system, team leaders and site managers will be able to anticipate future operational needs and manage daily staffing levels.”

“For commercial roles such as sales and marketing, we take a more central approach in that we define the desired competencies at a strategic level, taking into account our long-term trends and plans.”

So, how does Vandemoortele support its managers and employees in practice? They use the Competency Matrix developed by Flexso. Marc: “This matrix forms the core of our policy because it is linked to our employees’ career paths and the continuous monitoring of our performance and development goals.

What is the Competency Matrix?

The Competency Matrix is a SuccessFactors extension developed by Flexso. Through the intuitive and interactive dashboard, managers can use it to easily track their employees’ competencies, in order to plan the necessary training. Its central database clearly displays the competencies of each team member and of each team within the organisation.

Discover the Competency Matrix.

Commit to development and trust

If you want your employees and organisation to grow, you need to create a culture of trust and personal development. Marc: “Together, sound leadership and an efficient culture represent the cornerstones of the employee experience. To what extent do employees have autonomy and responsibility? Just how much trust and mental security do they experience? And what can you offer them in terms of growth?”

“It is essential to have the appropriate tools, such as SAP SuccessFactors. Moreover, the Goals & Performance module of SAP SuccessFactors is the backbone of our development policy for everyone in the company, from managerial staff to office workers and manual workers. For example, everyone has continuous access to their personal development plans, as well as their performance targets, personal data, etc.”

Vandemoortele supports these development plans with various in-house training courses as part of the Vandemoortele Academy, which also includes e-learning from LinkedIn and Bookboon as well as its own e-learning content platform. With great success, according to Marc: “Employees can follow refresher courses in short sessions, and they do so intensively. In the space of just six months, over half of our employees have already downloaded one or more modules from the platform. We also see employees returning frequently and downloading new lessons, books or information, which is a clear indicator that having the appropriate tools makes all the difference.”

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